8th CHENNAI INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL Gallery
8th CHENNAI INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL ( 8th CIFF )
SYNOPSIS
ARGENTINA
1. PUZZLE / Rompecabezas (2009)/Dir: Natalia Smirnoff/87mins / col / spanish
It’s Maria’s fiftieth birthday and her family give her a jigsaw puzzle as a present. She is highly delighted and pleasantly surprised, because Maria has made an astonishing discovery: not only does this patient housewife enjoy doing puzzles – she’s also extremely good at them. Thrilled by her new passion, she goes straight back to the shop where her present was bought to get another puzzle, and comes across an ad on the notice board: “Partner wanted for puzzle tournament.” Maria plucks up all her courage and, ignoring her family’s reservations, decides to respond to the ad. The man who wrote the note is an elderly bachelor who lives in an impressive mansion in town. He is soon enchanted by Maria’s anarchistic way of solving puzzles. Together they decide to enter for the World Puzzle Tournament in Germany. But first Maria and her partner must qualify in the local heats.Obsessed by her new hobby and, irresistibly attracted to the hitherto unknown world of the wealthy, she tells her family a little white lie so that she can train in peace. She bones up on the rules, immerses herself in the world of jigsaw puzzles and, together with her partner contestant, does everything in her power to make their dream a reality and bring the puzzle championship to Argentina. Maria’s family has no idea about her new passion since it means nothing to either her husband or her sons. But before long her puzzle mania becomes a serious testing ground, and Maria must decide how much she can expect from her men.
2. THE LAST SUMMER OF THE BOYITA / El último verano de la Boyita (2009)/Dir: Julia Solomonoff
92mins / col / spanish
La Boyita is a caravan and a magical hiding place, a refuge for Jorgelina, a curious girl on the passage from childhood to adolescence. Going on holiday to the countryside with her father, she meets Mario, who has already started working on his family’s ranch. One day, returning from a horse ride, she discovers a bloodstain on Mario’s saddle and another one on his trousers. Jorgelina tries to understand, but Mario, ashamed and insecure, has no clue of why he is not like the other boys. This revelation, instead of separating them, brings the two friends even closer together…
3. WINE / Vino (2010)/Dir: Diego Fried/76mins / col / Spanish
A woman, a man, a dinner, wine, a night that will change their lives. Encounter and disencounter between a man and a woman. A dialectics of details, improvisations and subtractions: a few words, one single camera and a little room constitute the arena where an austere mise an scène suggests the fluctuation between love’s possibility/impossibility, shot in a way that crisscrosses and simultaneously dismantles these warring bodies, that searches for their eyes, that encapsulates their gestures. The film is based on acting and the way it is shot, essential resources to kick-start a love story.
AUSTRALIA
1. LITTLE SPARROWS / Little Sparrows (2010)/Dir: Yu-Hsiu Camille Chen/88mins / col / english
This nuanced, heart rending independent feature debut traces the emotional lives of three sisters whose mother Susan (Nicola Bartlett) is dying of cancer. One summery Christmas lunch is the pivotal event around which the film’s elliptical structure revolves, moving with grace between the interior journeys of the three daughters and Susan’s own reconciliation with the life she has lived and her impending death. The eldest daughter Nina (Nina Deasley) is widowed with two young children; Anna (Melanie Munt) is an actress married to a filmmaker and Christine (Arielle Gray) is a medical student. All three struggle to define themselves, their relationships with each other, their loves, and their detached actor father (James Hagan). Simple and sincere, this intelligently conceived film exhibits a depth and attentiveness that mark West Australian director Yu-Hsiu Camille Chen as a talent on the rise.
2. THE TREE / L’Arbre (2010)/Dir: Julie Bertuccelli/100mins / col / english
After the sudden loss of her father, 8-year-old Simone shares a secret with her mother Dawn: her father whispers to her through the leaves of the magnificient tree by their house. Simone is convinced that he’s come back to protect her family. Soon, Simone’s three brothers and Dawn also take comfort in the reassuring tree. But the new bond between mother and daughter is threatened when Dawn starts dating George. Simone moves into the treehouse and refuses to come down. With branches infiltrating the house and roots destroying the foundations, the tree seems to be siding with Simone. Dawn refuses to let the tree take control of her family…
AUSTRIA
1. THE WHITE RIBBON / Das weisse Band – Eine deutsche Kindergeschichte (2009)/Dir: Michael Haneke/144mins / b&w / german / italian / polish / latin
Shortly before World War I, strange accidents begin occurring in a town somewhere in northern Germany, and the residents are at a loss to explain them. Who strung a wire across the road causing the local doctor to fall from his horse? Who bound and beat up the baron’s son? Who practically blinded someone’s child? Questions abound and neither the villagers nor the Protestant pastor have any answers. The people here live hand-to-mouth, the majority in the service of the manor, and all of them lead orderly lives – at least that’s what they believe. The pastor carefully sees to the raising of his seven children: his authoritarian system of praise and punishment is firmly grounded in logic, and he treats his parishioners with equal rigor. On the outside, the other families seem just as well ordered, and yet these strange incidents stir the feeling that they are manifestations of envy, revenge, or even some incomprehensible effort to punish someone. Michael Haneke is a master at creating a near horror-like atmosphere of anxiety, and although this time around he doesn’t make the viewer a direct witness to violence and cruelty, his near-perfect black-and-white film evokes claustrophobic feelings of uneasiness and indeterminate fear.
BELGIUM
1. IT’S ALREADY SUMMER / C’est déjà l’été (2010)/Dir: Martijn Maria Smits/85mins / col / french
C’EST DÉJÀ L’ÉTÉ tells the story of a family barely able to survive. Jean has been fired from his job but is too ashamed to tell his kids. Marie has a baby – she seems to be having sex with everybody in town except her boyfriend. Eric should go to school, but prefers to spend his time with friends with their mopeds, pranks and fake guns. The three only seem able to communicate when they need something from each other.
2. LOST PERSONS AREA / Lost Persons Area (2009)/Dir: Caroline Strubbe/109mins / col / english / dutch / hungarian
Bettina and Marcus, a passionate couple, live in a canteen in the middle of a vast field with endless lines of pylons. Marcus, trying to set up his own business, works as a foreman in the maintenance of these power-lines. Bettina, bored and longing for a better life, runs the canteen for the workingmen. Their 9-years-old daughter Tessa, wanders the industrial area, looking for bits and pieces to occupy her mind, skipping school whenever she can. When Marcus hires a Hungarian engineer, Szabolcs, to become part of his company, their unconventional way of living takes a new turn. A tragic accident although will shatter everyone’s pursuit of happiness. Lost Persons Area is a story about people lost in the meanders of life.
BOSNIA
1. 32ND DECEMBER / 32.Decembar (2009)/Dir: Sasa Hajdukovic/88mins / col / serbo-croatian
Piksi, a former soccer player and now owner of a bar, falls in love with Una, 19-year-old kid who, during the celebration of New Year’s Eve, is just toying with him. After this party came to an end, we see that Pikis and Una do not speak the same language. They don’t belong to the same world. As for Una, it was just plain good fun in a club, for Piksi it was something else, a beginning of a long relationship that could easily end with marriage. When these worlds collide, all close around them will die…Dragana, Una’s closest friend, spends her entire day in preparation for a romantic dinner to which she was invited by Ljubo, a young man whom she recently met. When at the door, instead of a charming prince, she finds a semi-naked pervert and instead of romantic dinner she gets two glasses of brandy, all her dreams are scattered, and what was supposed to be the most beautiful New Year’s Eve, turns into a night of violent sex and a rape. Dragana, completely destroyed, sneaks out of the apartment and Ljubo, who turned out to be a corrupted cop who lives with his parents, goes into Piksi’s bar just to take another bribe.Sina, a local punk, and Ljubica, former waitress, they want to leave this town and start a new life in a new place in the new year, together. Can love survive in a place where there is no love? Can the two of them go over all these obstacles they are facing and escape from there? Things are not evolving that smoothly. Sina is armed and determined. He has to draw the money needed for their escape, from Piksi. He enters the bar and accidentally kills Ljubo who had just come in from his “meeting“with Dragana.
Nothing is going its course and all the bright lights are gradually extinguished to New Year lights…
2. ON THE PATH / Na Putu (2010)/Dir: Jasmila Zbanic/100mins / col / bosnian
Luna and Amar are a couple. Their relationship is under great strain. First of all, Amar loses his job for being drunk at work. Luna is very worried and has little hope of realising her fragile dream of having a child with Amar. But her fears for their future increase when Amar takes on a well-paid job in a Muslim community hours away from where they live. Only after quite some time has elapsed during which they have had no contact with each other, is Luna allowed to visit Amar in this community of conservative Wahhabis in its idyllic lakeside location. She notices that the men and veiled women live in strict segregation and are closely watched. Luna asks Amar to return home with her but Amar insists that life in this isolated community of faithful followers has brought him peace and also keeps him from drinking. When he returns home a few weeks later, Luna realises that Amar’s attitude to religion has fundamentally changed. Amar claims that his only interest is to become a better person, but Luna finds it extremely difficult to follow his line of thinking. She begins to question everything that she has believed in, even her desire to have a child. As the wounds of a tragic war-filled past continue to haunt her, Luna tears herself apart searching if love is truly enough to keep her and Amar together on the path to a lifetime of happiness.
CANADA
1. EVERYBODY’S COUCH / Le divan du monde (2009)/Dir: Dominic Desjardins/76mins / col / english / french
Le Divan du Monde (tentatively in English: Everybody’s Couch…) is a romantic comedy about a francophone couple that meet in Vancouver and travel across the country together. Zoé decides to hitchhike home to Summerside (PEI, Canada) after her relationship with an Anglophone from Yellowknife turns sour. With little money, she relies on the generosity of strangers to help her out along the way, and on her lucky star to stay out of trouble. In Vancouver, she stays with ALEX, an uprooted and anglicized francophone, who on a whim decides to drop everything and join her on this journey. Alex is a romantic who believes he’s found his soul mate. From couch to couch, city to city, Alex and Zoé delve into the lives of the people they meet along the way, as they learn about each other and themselves.
2. THE CHILD PRODIGY / L’enfant prodige (2010)/Dir: Luc Dionne/100mins / col / french
On the keyboard, the young hands fly rapidly and the melody rises. For the child, nothing is easier; he hears the sounds in his head. These hands belong to 6-year-old André Mathieu. He won his audiences and fired up concerts halls in London, New York, Paris and around the world. Adulated, hailed, praised, the child prodigy seemed to have everything to succeed. From the top of his vertiginous successes, to depths of torment, the life of the “Little Canadian Mozart” blends into his music. A romantic and passionate composer wishing for happiness, his story is nevertheless played on tragic notes.
3. TWICE A WOMAN / 2 fois une femme (2010)
Dir: François Delisle
94mins / col / French
TWICE A WOMAN is the story of Catherine, who, after her violent husband puts her life in serious danger one night, decides to run away with her son and start a new life under a fresh identity.
From the straight-laced suburbs, she travels to backwoods northern Quebec. From fear, she moves through confidence to hope.
Catherine, now Sophie, untangles the complex web of identity and desire that make up the life of a single woman, marginalized and learning to embrace life. During her painful transition, the mother, hoping to regain the affection of her damaged son, does everything she can to avoid a tragic outcome. She will have to dig her heels in and fight with strength and dignity.
It’s a battle, a war she needs to win.
4. VITAL SIGNS / Les Signes Vitaux (2009)/Dir: Sophie Deraspe/86mins / col / French
After a loss in her family, Simone begins spending her days volunteering at a hospital for terminal patients. Drifting in her own life, she finds new meaning while helping guide the dying through their emotional journey towards death. Life and death hinge on commitment in this beautifully poignant drama. In the wake of her grandmother’s death, Simone has returned home from studying in Boston. Blurred by grief and disconnected from life, she enlists as a volunteer at her grandmother’s palliative care home and falls back into a casual relationship with her ex-boyfriend. Reluctant to commit to him or take hold of her future, her relationships with the terminally ill patients of the home force Simone to re-assess her life.
5. AWAY FROM HER / Loin d’elle (2006)/Dir: Sarah Polley/110mins / col / english
Married for almost 50 years, Grant and Fiona’s commitment to each other appears unwavering, and their everyday life is full of tenderness and humor. This serenity is broken only by the occasional, carefully restrained reference to the past, giving a sense that this marriage may not always have been such a fairy tale. This tendency of Fiona’s to make such references, along with her increasingly evident memory loss, creates a tension that is usually brushed off casually by both of them. But, when it is no longer possible for either of them to ignore the fact that Fiona is being consumed by Alzheimer’s disease, the limits of their love and loyalty must be wrenchingly redefined
6. BON COP BAD COP / Bon Cop Bad Cop (2007)/Dir: Erik Canuel/116mins / col / english / french
Bon Cop, Bad Cop is a Canadian action-comedy directed by Eric Canuel from the year 2006. The main roles are played by Colm Feore and Patrick Huard. It is one of Canada’s financially successful movies. Martin Ward is an English policeman from Ontario, which adheres strictly to the rules. David Bouchard, however, a policeman from French-speaking Quebec, is interpreting the law as needed. These different characters have to cooperate as a murder is found exactly at the border between the two Canadian provinces. To determine the hockey environment in order to uncover the series of murders of lawyers. As they come ever closer to the offender, abducted the masked killer tattoo Gabrielle, the daughter of Bouchard in order to exchange them for his ultimate sacrifice. Detective Ward as a last resort to unorthodox methods, such as his colleague. The two are forced deliver Harry Buttman, after the criminal his helper Luc Therrien has shot his hostage and threatens to explode into the air. In a bloody fight succeeds in bringing the villain to track, to free Buttman and the girl. The killer wanted to avenge that hockey teams from Canada were sold to the United States. In the end, promised not to do in the future.
7. DAYS OF DARKNESS / L’âge des ténèbres (2007)/Dir: Denys Arcand/104mins / col / french / english
Jean-Marc Leblanc (Labrèche), a desperate civil servant, escapes reality as we all know it, to imagine himself as the hero in imaginary adventures.
8. WHERE THE TRUTH LIES / Quand la vérité ment (2005)/Dir: Atom Egoyan/107mins / col / english
In 1957, the careers of America’s most popular comedy duo, Lanny Morris (Kevin Bacon) and Vince Collins (Colin Firth), are forever tarnished when the dead body of a naked young woman is found in their hotel room. Though Morris and Collins are never convicted of the murder, the scandal sends them on their separate ways, to salvage whatever they can of their reputations. Flash forward to 1972, when ambitious young journalist Karen O’Connor (Alison Lohman), a childhood fan of Morris and Collins, is determined to uncover the truth behind what happened. Her pursual of the story, and of Morris and Collins specifically, leads her into a tangled world of duplicity, drugs, sordid sex and unscrupulous secrets. Where the Truth Lies was nominated for five Genie Awards, winning for Egoyan’s adapted screenplay. It was also named one of Canada’s Top Ten of 2005 by an independent, national panel of filmmakers, programmers, journalists and industry professionals.
9.ONE WEEK / Sept Jours (2008)/Dir: Michael McGowan/94mins / col / English
When confronted with his mortality, Ben Tyler (Joshua Jackson) impulsively buys a vintage motorcycle and sets off on a road trip that starts in Toronto and ends up on Vancouver Island in the town of Tofino. Humorous, profound and extremely moving, One Week uses the great Canadian landscape as the backdrop to the story of a man and his life¿ journey. In the search for himself, he finds out what makes this country, and his life, so beautiful.
10. THE BLUE BUTTERFLY / Le Papillion Bleu (2004)/Dir: Léa Pool/97mins / col / english / spanish / french
Inspired by a true story, The Blue Butterfly is about ten year-old Pete Carlton (Marc Donato) who is diagnosed as terminally ill and his determined mother will stop at nothing to ensure her son’s dream. Funny and intelligent, yet somewhat shy, Pete is stoic and incredibly courageous when it comes to his condition. He seeks refuge by observing the miniature world of cocoons and insects that he collects. Given only months to live, Pete has one wish; to catch the most beautiful butterfly on earth, the legendary Blue Morpho…the Mariposa Azul, a magnificent creature found only in the tropical rain forests of Central and South America. He is convinced that this butterfly with the azure wings can reveal the mystery of life to him. Teresa Carlton (Pascale Bussieres) is Pete’s single mother. She is brave, worn out, consumed by love and sorrow for her dying son, and determined to overcome any obstacle that stands in the way of his dream. She begins by convincing Alan Osborne (William Hurt), a renowned entomologist and Pete’s hero, to take them to the jungle. Alan is a passionate, rugged yet vulnerable man who, due partly to a secret that haunts him, prefers the company of insects over people. He is initially dead-set against this idea. But, thanks to Pete’s determination, and his talent as a manipulator, his hero finally agrees to go along with the idea. However, since the Blue Morpho season is almost over, Alan will only give Pete a couple days to try to capture the magical butterfly. The Blue Butterfly is about the coming of age of a young boy and a mature man who both must learn to emerge from their protective cocoons to live life to the fullest
CHINA
1. DIAGO / Ao ge (2010)/Dir: Zhang Chi/89mins / col / chinese
The film adaptation of the novel by Macanese writer Lio Chi Heng marks the 10th anniversary of the transfer of the Portuguese colony of Macau to Chinese administration. The year is 1999 and Macau television ceaselessly informs the population of preparations for the upcoming handover. In the atmosphere of the changing society, when some submit to Chinese lessons and others consider emigration, the movie’s protagonist begins to investigate his own identity. Now more than ever he senses his Portuguese- Macanese roots, which always prevented him from feeling at home with his stepfather and sister. The title character’s pilgrimage opens up the theme of the search for personal and social identity on the threshold of postcolonial life; at the time of the transfer it represented a pressing issue for the majority of Macau’s inhabitants. In long, austere sequences imbued with melancholy, the narration captures feelings of dispossession, but it also offers hope, an ineluctable element of every quest.
COLOMBIA
1. CRAB TRAP / El Vuelco Del Cangrejo (2009)/Dir: Oscar Ruiz Navia/95mins / col / spanish
Daniel arrives in the village looking for a boat to leave the country. He intends to stay for only a few days, but a strange shortage of fish has affected La Barra and the fishermen have been sailing far out to sea in hopes of finding new resources. These circumstances make Daniel’s search more difficult. In the meantime the villagers have their own issues: Cerebro, the leader of the community, is trying to adjust to the advent of modernity. The inhabitants never bothered to attest their ownership of the land they have lived on for many generations, until El Paisa, a landowner who wants to build a beach resort, arrived…
CROATIA
1. 72 DAYS / Sedamdeset i dva dana (2010)/Dir: Danilo Serbedzija/93mins / col / croatian
The pension earned in America by late grandpa ?ura? is the only source of income for his widow Ne?a and the rest of the Paripovi? family. When Ne?a dies, their existence is put at risk. Mane, the head of the family, his son Todor and his brother Joja put their heads together and come up with an original scheme: to switch the old woman! Mane is resolute and wants to carry out his plan even if it means getting rid of the nosy neighbor Mile, a rather indifferent local policeman, a drunken mailman, and even members of his own family. Everybody is thrilled with the idea except Branko, Joja’s son, whose only wish is to get away from them all, taking his girlfriend Li?a with him. He has another problem: the loan sharks he is hiding from have traced him in this small village.
2. JUST BETWEEN US / Neka Ostane Medju Nama (2010)/Dir: Rajko Grlic/89mins / col / croatian
“Just Between Us” is a wicked, indiscreet contemporary story set in Zagreb about the whirling erotic passions that percolate beneath the dull, composed surface of everyday bourgeois life and manners. It is about things that happen in well-established families that are mainly kept secret, but that nevertheless remain painful. We meet two brothers, their wives and lovers – and their children who do not know who their real fathers are. Double lives and parallel relationships are blended into a bittersweet story about the relentless quest for love and happiness, about passion that never ceases, and the terrible consequences that arise, even by chance, when one ends up in a bed that is not one’s own.
CZECH REPUBLIC
1. MAMAS AND PAPAS / Mamas And Papas (2010)/Dir: Alice Nellis/110mins / col / Czech
The subject of relations between grandparents, parents and their sons and daughters permeates screenwriter and director Alice Nellis’ entire body of work, and in her latest film it takes the form of crucial questions relating to procreation. The director follows several couples whose approach to parenthood could not be more different – one is struggling with the question of putting her own child up for adoption, which would solve her financial woes, while another, a female physician who had a miscarriage in the past, tells us that money really means nothing. Couples’ decisions are always relative and cannot be condemned by others. The director sought to enhance credibility of the actors’ reactions by shooting the film chronologically, where the only thing the actors knew from the screenplay was the fate of their characters, not the whole story, and therefore had to improvise every step of the way.
DENMARK
1. ABOVE THE STREET, BELOW THE WATER / Over gaden under vandet (2009)/Dir: Charlotte Sieling
90mins / col / danish
Ask is married to Anne. They have everything you could ever want. Good careers, lovely children and an apartment in Christianshavn — the most beautiful part of Copenhagen. One morning Anne learns that Ask wants to take a break from their marriage. Why? Is he seeing another woman? Like rings in the water, Ask’s decision starts affecting everyone around them. »Above the Street Below the Water« is a film about the adult generation of today. A generation for whom everything is possible. The sky is the limit but all choices have consequences …
2. A FAMILY / En Familie (2010)/Dir: Pernille Fischer Christensen/102mins / col / danish
Ditte is a member of the Rheinwalds, a family of bakers. She is also a successful gallery owner and constantly on the move. Having been offered her dream job in New York she decides, along with her boyfriend Peter, to accept the offer and move to the Big Apple. The future is bright and life is fun and simple. The couple are on their way when Ditte’ beloved and charismatic father, Rikard, master baker and purveyor to the royal court, falls seriously ill. Ditte calls off the move to New York in order to be with him and before long her own way of life hangs in the balance. Rikard demands that she takes her place in the Rheinwald family business and assume ownership of the bakery, while Peter pulls in the opposite direction, feeling that she is abandoning their common dreams. All of a sudden, life is not so simple.
3. CAMPING / Camping (2009)/Dir: Jacob Bitsch/75mins / col / danish
A tragicomic tale about the gloomy Connie Nielsen who has been emotionally detached since her father two years earlier committed suicide – on his birthday! Connie’s mother, Bodil, has taken to the bottle and lives through her 1982 participation in The Eurovison Song Contest; and Connie’s kid brother, Christian, has become an overweight bully beating up those smaller than him. To put it mildly, time seems to have ceased and the family ties are hanging by a thread. The otherwise annual caravan trip to the Danish island Langeland was buried along with the father and hasn’t been repeated since – until now!
4. HOLD ME TIGHT / Hold Om Mig (2010)/Dir: Kaspar Munk/80mins / col / danish
A film about peer pressure and taking responsibility for one’s own life. The story revolves around Sara, Mikkel, Hassan and Louise, four teenagers, who are searching for their own identity and an anchor in their lives. One ill-fated day in the classroom a misunderstanding is thrown out of proportion and creates a wave of chaos. Suddenly they are the guilty ones and the victims of a game that has got out of hand.
5. OLD BOYS / Old Boys (2009)/Dir: Nikolaj Steen/97mins / col / danish
Now in his fifties, Vagn is something of an outsider. He lives alone, he goes to work and he plays football with men of his age or even older. Everyone is looking forward to the annual bus trip to Sweden where, on this occasion, they’ll be up against a tough squad of local policemen. Vagn’s football boots, which prove to be an increasing liability as the film progresses, create a situation whereby he gets left behind at a petrol station – with absolutely no money. There he meets petty thief John who, although just out of prison, tries to rob the petrol station. Their encounter is the beginning of a series of misunderstandings arising from the fact that Vagn has no idea who he is dealing with; John, for his part, is irked by the presence of a pushy old guy determined to catch up with his teammates’ bus with the lad’s help. Things get off to a pretty bad start but, in due course, a bond begins to develop between these two unlikely characters, and the surly Vagn gradually comes out of himself, back into the land of the living. This engaging road movie has its chilly Nordic moments, but it’s also warm-hearted and comic and, most importantly, it’s well written, well acted and doesn’t seek to inspire pathos.
6. R / R (2010)/Dir: Michael Noer, Tobias Lindholm/90mins / col / danish / arabic
Rune is a young Dane who has been sentenced for a serious violent crime and finds himself in an old, heavily guarded prison. He is determined to keep out of sight as much as possible and out of the battle for power, but on the first day it becomes clear he has no option. There is no escaping the merciless prison culture with its strict pecking order, violent codes of honour and secret contracts. Thanks to his dexterity, he manages to get a privileged position for himself.
EGYPT
1. THE AQUARIUM / Genenet Al Asmak (2008)/Dir: Yousry Nasrallah/111mins / col / arabic
It all takes place in Cairo, today. The action takes place over 48 hours. Laila is 32 and works as a radio-presentator. People call her on her show “Night Secrets” to reveal their innermost secrets. She plays squash; she swims; sometimes she writes stories for children and she sometimes goes out with her friend to discos. She lives with her mother and her brother. Youssef is an anaesthetist. He is about 35. In the morning he works in a perfectly respectable private hospital. At night he works in an illegal abortion clinic. His father is dying of cancer. Youssef likes to hear his patients’ delirium, just before they go into deep anesthesia. When they wake up, he tells them everything they have said. He also likes to listen to Laila’s radio-programme.Sometimes, he spends part of his nights with a woman he likes, but he doesn’t love her enough to spend the whole night with her. He lives in his car. Two characters, who don’t know each other and who will meet. Their lives will not change drastically. They will just realise how lonely they are.
2. THE WEDDING / El-Farah (2009)/Dir: Sameh Abdel Aziz/100mins / col / Arabic
Al-Farah is the story of a lie in which everyone agrees. Zeinhom wants to organize his sister’s marriage, while Mahmoud is the one who organizes parties of such kind. Zeinhom has no sister, though, and he wants to stage this marriage just to get the money he needs to buy a microbus. This money is supposed to be given as gifts by those attending the wedding.As he has no sister, he rents a husband and a wife who are looking for money.
ESTONIA
1. THE SNOW QUEEN / Lumekuninganna (2010)/Dir: Marko Raat/100mins / col / estonian
The Snow Queen is a wintry fairytale for adults. The unusual love story is based on the motifs of H. C. Andersen’s fairytale. A woman living in an ice castle lures a boy to her. He becomes so spellbound by the woman and her land of ice that he forgets the real world. The woman hides the secret of why she is living in the cold from the boy. Those, who know the original story by H.C. Andersen, will also remember that only a few lines spoke of the relationship between the boy and the Snow Queen. The question remained unanswered: what did the boy and the Snow Queen do in the ice castle for all of the time the girl spent looking for the boy? This film talks about what Andersen didn’t.
FINLAND
1. GIMME SOME RESPECT / Vähän kunnioitusta (2010)/Dir: Pekka Karjalainen/92mins / col / finnish
A young woman SIIRI is about to move from home. Her aim is to become independent and she is dreaming about LOVE. Like quite many young women. However, there is one separating factor: Siiri is intellectually disabled. Siiri is proceeding well in becoming indepent. She lives in an innovative dormitory and will not live on social security and instead gets a real job. Siiri falls in love with SANTERI. Santeri is not intellectually disabled. For awhile happiness is blooming. Siiri´s friend SUSKI who lives in the same dormitory is desperately dreaming about marriage and not being careful enough ends up sexually abused. This event along with the unbiased relationship with Siiri and Santeri explodes all the hidden attitudes of people to the surface.
2. HEARTBEATS / Kohtaamisia (2010)/Dir: Saara Cantell/81mins / col / finnish
Martta has a secret she won´t reveal to her family. Noora tries to find her wings and Meri learns that you should be careful what you wish for. Olga and Fardusa are looking chance for a better future far away from home, while Emmi looses her chances by always choosing wrong. And Anu faces her past on a supermarket parking lot. Still every one of them comes to realize, that one single encounter can change the course of their lives.
3. PLAYGROUND / Pihalla (2009)/Dir: Toni Laine/93mins / col / german / finnish / english
Laura is a German wife and mother who moves to Finland because her husband gets a job there. At first everything is very difficult, her husband constantly working, Laura unable to find friends and the November city not showing its best side. By accident , Laura is thought to be a single mother, which allows her to get to know new friends and become acquainted with Tero who runs a music session for children at the local playground. Laura ends up having an affair with Tero and the deeper she gets into the affair, Laura comes to like her new hometown more and more. When spring arrives and its time for her to move away, Laura´s life has changed in many ways.
4. PUDANA LAST OF THE LINE / Sukunsa viimeinen (2010)/Dir: Markku Lehmuskallio, Anastasia Lapsui/81mins / col / finnish
Young nenets-girl Neko is taken against her will from her family´s tepee to a boarding school in a Russian village. For the first time in her life Neko finds herself surrounded by a foreign language and culture, and rebels against the attempts to turn her into Russian. Bullied by her schoolmates and pressured by the teachers, Neko decides to run away and return to her family. She talks her fellow nenets boy Parasi from the school into fleeing with her. The children´s flight in the icy forests and tundra is short-lived and the return to the school and their new Russian life inevitable. The story is told through the memories of Neko. Now grown up she´s concious of all the good the school gave her. But something esential has changed for good; Neko – the last of her kind – has been alienated from her extincting heritage for good.
5. TWISTED ROOTS / Väärät juuret (2009)/Dir: Saara Saarela/99mins / col / finnish
Drama about traditions and legacy of the Kuura family. For the first time in years, the family is united under one roof by the father´s hereditary illness. During an unpredictable winter they search for balance between secrets and truths. The parents have to face themselves and their repressed fears. At the same time the children are trying to find their place in the family and understand their heritage.
6. THE HOUSE OF BRANCHING LOVE / Haarautuvan rakkauden talo (2009)/Dir: Mika Kaurismaki
102mins / col / finnish
Breaking up is hard to do. Staying together is even harder.
Family therapist Juhani Helin, 35, and business trainer Paula Helin, 34, decide to divorce in a civilized manner and move to separate addresses after selling their common house. But when Paula invites her one night stand, Marco, to the house and Juhani takes revenge on her by hiring a prostitute, Nina, from his half-brother and a pimp, Wolffi, to play his new girlfriend in order to force Paula to leave the house, the box of pandora of their marriage flies open and releases the plagues of love and hate.
Based on the novel by Petri Karra
FRANCE
1. 8 TIMES UP / 8 fois debout (2009)/Dir: Xabi Molia/103mins / col / French
At night, Elsa cleans buses in a deserted depot, during the day she tiredly looks after the child of a young couple. Her attempt for finding a steady job is disastrous. One day Elsa is evicted from her apartment and begins a life of uncertainty. Her unemployed neighbor, Mathieu, offers his love from time to time, which she is not prepared to receive. But the temptation to leave everything behind leads her into the forest, where Mathieu has found refuge and set up his camp. For a time they live apart from civilization, but they both know that one day they will have to come back and confront the world, or leave it for good.
2. BLACK HEAVEN / L’autre Monde (2010)/Dir: Gilles Marchand/104mins / col / French
Set in southern France in summertime. Gaspard is a happy teenager who can do as he pleases in the apartment deserted by his parents. His friends Yann and Ludo are always there to fool around with and he discovers desire and perhaps love with Marion. But behind this sunny atmosphere lies another, darker and more disturbing world: that of Audrey and her brother Vincent. This is the world of Black Hole, an online game where Audrey seems to change behind the mask of her avatar, Sam, who is looking for a partner in death.
3. CERTIFIED COPY / Copie Conforme (2010)/Dir: Abbas Kiarostami/106mins / col / french / italian
This is the story of a meeting between one man and one woman, in a small Italian village in Southern Tuscany. The man is a British author who has just finished giving a lecture at a conference. The woman, from France, owns an art gallery. This is a universal story that could happen to anyone, anywhere.
4. DOMAINE / Domaine (2009)/Dir: Patric Chiha/110mins / col / french
Pierre, a teen of 17, spends all his time with Nadia, a flamboyant mathematician in her forties. Their rapport is friendly, ambiguous, bordering on amorous. The anarchy that reigns in Nadia’s life fascinates this young man on the threshold of adulthood. But Nadia is a wounded soul, dependent on alcohol. Little by little, she slips away. Pierre thinks he can help her, bring her back from the brink…
5. RAPT / Apagofi (2009)/Dir: Lucas Belvaux/125mins / col / french
Stanislas Graff is a man of power. He is in full control of his multinational company and his family life. His public fame and wealth make him a perfect target for a kidnapping. A very high ransom is requested for his liberation, but the police and the family play against each other. Graff, whose secret life gets exposed to the media, is not the man he pretended to be. Upon his return from 60 gruelling days in captivity, he has to face the resentment of his loved ones who have discovered his true nature through the media.
6. THE QUEEN OF HEARTS / La Reine Des Pommes (2009)/Dir: Valerie Donzelli/84mins / col / french
Paris. Thirty-something Adèle is devastated by her break up with Mathieu, the love of her life. Seeing her suffering, her neighbour on the landing advises her to leave her ex’s apartment in order to start over. But Adèle has no friends or family to go to, apart from a distant cousin whom she feels would never take her in. So the neighbour goes with Adèle to this relative, Rachel, leaving the latter with little option to refuse. Unwillingly, she agrees to take Adèle in, and then, moved by her evident distress, decides to help her find a job and get her taste for life back, and to offer some advice on her emotional predicament. Her main recommendation is that Adèle should sleep with other men to demythologise the previous lover. Though heart and body are unwilling, Adèle skips from one adventure to another.
7. THE PACK / La meute (2010)/Dir: Franck Richard/85mins / col / french
Charlotte fears nothing. On an isolated side road, she picks up Max, a hitchhiker, who disappears in the bathroom of a truck-stop restaurant a few miles later. Puzzled, Charlotte comes back at night to look fo him but get caught by La Spack, a singular woman in charge of an odd pack. Alone in the middle of nowhere, Charlotte quickly realizes she’s next on the menu.
8. SWEET EVIL / L’enfance du mal (2009)/Dir: Olivier Coussemacq/90mins / col / french
Fifteen-year-old Céline knows more about life than is appropriate for her age. She wanders the streets, surviving, with the help of her boyfriend Romain, thanks to her defiance and ruthless practicality. She secretly sleeps in the garden house of a luxury villa, where one evening she is discovered by the owner, Judge Henri van Eyck. Despite his wife Nathalie’s reticence, he takes the girl in and Céline gradually gains their goodwill and affection. The fragile balance of their mutual trust, however, comes in serious jeopardy when the web of lies the girl has told her protectors begins to unravel, revealing her real motives…. Debut director Olivier Coussemacq chose the psychological thriller genre in order to challenge the viewer’s expected moral positions. Gradually it becomes more and more difficult to judge the main character, and the line between offender and victim blurs.
153. GARIMPEIRO, THE GOLD FOREST / Garimpeiro: The Gold Forest (2009)/
Dir: Marc Barrat/93mins / col / french
Rod, a young Parisian of Guyanese origin, Gonz, his lifelong friend from the projects, and Yann, a young tourist guide and ecological activist, find themselves in the middle of the Amazonian forest. They get caught up in a spiral of shady dealings that lead them far upriver, into the hostile and archaic environment of illegal gold prospectors.
GERMANY
1. EVERYONE ELSE / Alle Anderen (2009)/Dir: Maren Ade/119mins / col / german
Young love seems to know no bounds: on the surface, Chris and Gitti are lost in perfect amorous bliss during their getaway in their Sardinia vacation home. In reality, the two are polar opposites; the confrontation with another couple leads to a turning point in their playful romps, secret rituals and silly habits… On the surface, Chris and Gitti are lost in perfect amorous bliss during their getaway in their Sardinia vacation home. But amidst their playful romps, secret rituals and silly habits belies an underlying tension. Full of verve, the idiosyncratic Gitti is fearless in expressing her love and devotion for Chris, while Chris is more reserved in his outlook on life and sports varying personal and professional degrees of insecurity. When they casually run into another, obviously happier and more successful, couple that on top of it all appears to be modern gender role proof, their relationship destabilizes. In a silly attempt at life style bootlegging, Chris begins to show his wilful girlfriend who is boss, with the result that Gitti´s faith in her partner takes a hard knock. She attempts to conform to his new ideal, but what begins as a playful experiment soon turns into a quiet struggle with her own personality. While Chris flourishes in his role as the stronger one of the two, Gitti begins to loosen up in a completely new way. With their newly developed personas, Chris and Gitti get a second chance to discover themselves — and each other — and to be as happy as everyone else…
2. FAITH / Shahada (2010)/Dir: Burhan Qurbani/89mins / col / german
Berlin, today. During a razzia for clandestine employees in a warehouse, the fates of three young German-born Muslims collide. Ismail, a police officer of Turkish-descent, is about to break his loyalty towards his badge and his wife as he finds himself attracted to illegal immigrant Leyla. Sammi is torn between his Muslim faith and his irresistible desire for one of his male co-workers, despite his friends’ violent homophobia. He is appeased by the local Imam, a liberal religious leader revered by the community, who is going through a crisis of his own: his daughter, Maryam, is moving into an ultraconservative direction although she has been raised so tolerantly. The three of them must find their place between faith and modern life in a contemporary western society, between the luring liberated lifestyle and tradition.
3. HENRY 4 / Henry of Navarre (2010)/Dir: Jo Baier/153mins / col / german / french
Sixteenth-century France. Europe’s most powerful state is being torn apart by religious wars. On the one side is the Catholic majority which holds sway over the Parisian court and, on the other, are the Protestants, known as Huguenots. Paris is ruled by Catherine de Medici who is determined to make use of her power to retain the throne for her three sons. But, in the south of France, in the tiny kingdom of Navarre, an opponent is emerging about whose existence she has, as yet, no knowledge: Henry of Navarre. Henry reaches adulthood on the battlefields. He receives a letter at his camp. Catherine de Medici wishes to marry her daughter, Marguerite, to him so that Huguenots and Catholics can finally coexist peacefully. His mother urges Henry to accept the offer: Catharina’s sons suffer from a mysterious blood disease; if they were to die then Henry would become king of France. The marriage of Henry and Marguerite ends in the St.Bartholemew’s Day massacre, a bloodbath during which thirty thousand Huguenots are slaughtered. Henry survives, but is held prisoner in the Louvre. Marguerite is in love with the man that she was made to marry for reasons of state, but when Henry learns that she was aware of her mother’s murderous plan he rejects her. Henry escapes, rejoins the Protestant forces and continues the bloody religious conflict with the intention of founding a state based on humanist thought. And then he meets the love of his life: Gabrielle d’ Estrées. When Henry’s brother-in-law, Henry III, Catherine de Medici’s last son, is murdered he becomes the new king – Henry IV. Marguerite lives in hope once more. But this sets the wheels in motion for a series of betrayals and intrigues.
4. I HAVE NEVER BEEN HAPPIER / So Gluck War Ich Noch Nie (2009)/Dir: Alexander Adolph/92mins / col / german
Success is a matter of confidence, particularly in times of crisis. Life would be unbearable if there weren’t beautiful things to brighten it up a little, including pretty faces. Frank Knöpfel constantly flirts with life with his beguiling bright blue eyes. He buys a complete stranger an expensive coat in a designer boutique just because he feels like it. He disguises himself as a businessman from Oslo, a Mafia boss, a stock exchange specialist and an estate agent, whatever it takes to bring in the cash. He is the type of person who enjoys looking in the mirror, and delights in what he sees there. A flirtation with a customer in a boutique leads to Frank’s undoing. He’s busted and sent to prison. After his release, he again meets Tanja, the woman from the boutique. He is determined to free her from the brothel where she works,b ut in doing so, he succumbs once more to his addiction to assuming false identities.
5. MY WORDS, MY LIES – MY LOVE / Lila, Lila (2009)/Dir: Alain Gsponer/104mins / col / german
Until now, David Kern was a waiter and a decidedly unliterary nobody. His only true passion is Marie, who loves literature and seems to be out of reach for him. When David finds the unpublished manuscript of a novel in a second-hand night table, it seems to be his only chance to get Marie’s attention … Marie’s reaction is more than he ever hoped for. She’s ecstatic about the book and secretly finds a publisher for it.
Soon the novel is hailed as a masterpiece, and David becomes a dazzled but overwhelmed literary superstar, with Marie’s love for him growing with every review. After a public reading on his PR tour, his second worst nightmare becomes reality when Alfred Duster, a name he only knows as the author of the manuscript he found, smilingly asks for a signed copy of the novel. Duster wants money and begins to take over David’s life. Unable to bear the pressure any longer, David confesses to Marie. She leaves him dazed and confused, and David knows that he needs to show Marie his love and despair in a way she will understand.
6. SOUL KITCHEN / Soul Kitchen (2009)/Dir: Fatih Akin/99mins / col / german
Young restaurant owner Zinos is down on his luck. His girlfriend Nadine has moved to Shanghai, his “Soul Kitchen” customers are boycotting the new gourmet chef, and he’s having back trouble! Things start looking up when the hip crowd embraces his revamped culinary concept, but that doesn’t mend Zinos’ broken heart. He decides to fly to China for Nadine, leaving the restaurant in the hands of his unreliable excon brother Illias. Both decisions turn out disastrous: Illias gambles away the restaurant to a shady real estate agent and Nadine has found a new lover! But brothers Zinos and Illias might still have one last chance to get “Soul Kitchen” back if they can stop arguing and work together as a team.
GREECE
1. BLACK FIELD / Mavro livadi – (2010)/Dir: Vardis Marinakis/104mins / col / greek / turkish
BLACK FIELD is set in 1654, when Greece was under Ottoman Empire occupation. A Janissary (a Greek warrior recruited by force at a small age from his Christian family to serve at the Turkish army) arrives heavily wounded at a remote Christian female monastery. He is nursed by Anthi, a young Greek nun who has taken an oath of silence. They fall in love against all odds. But Anthi is tormented by a dark secret soon to be revealed: she is, in fact, a boy who grew up as a girl hidden in the monastery, in order to avoid being captured and becoming a Janissary. The two lovers escape to the nearby forest, in search of freedom from society’s constraints and lose themselves in a dreamlike reality until they are captured and brought back to face all they left behind…
2. THE BUILDING MANAGER / O Diachiristis – (2009)/Dir.: Periklis Hoursoglou/93mins / col / greek
Pavlos. Late forties. With two children who go to school every morning, the apartment block it’s his turn to manage, the rotten plumping and leaking sewage, the mother who’ll never get it into her head that her son is married to another woman—his wife, who feels him drifting ever further away after 10 years of marriage. But Pavlos has a dream: he wants to make this little world better! And in amongst it all a girl, Gianna, half his age. Who touches Pavlos. It’s the first time he’s kissed another woman. Gianna: a gift from God. There’s a proverb: “No tree ever reaches heaven”. More plumping problems, more money, the workers leave—the pipes still leak, his mother still pulling the carpet out from under his feet, Pavlos ever more absent from Niki. Even Gianna—the ‘gift’—becomes a burden. But life is more than bitterness. A refreshing breeze will blow and show Pavlos that the answer he’s looking for has been there inside him all along.
HUNGARY
1. AS YOU ARE / Igy Ahogy Vagytok (2010)/Dir: Karoly Makk/95mins / col / hungarian
A new mayor has been elected in a country town. Gabor Vencze, the ex-world champion of military flying, a vagabond ex-pilot lands in the middle of intrigues and political dealings when he becomes the mayor of his hometown. He has his work cut out for him. He has to fight the town’s corrupt business elite-maffia, foreign investors and their local representatives who let no one stand in their way, and last but not least the political interests. As one of the good guys warn him: „This is like an exotic zoo: snakes, hyenas, crocodiles and vultures looking for prey and if you are not careful enough, you could be their next meal.” Added to all this intricacy is a strange, unusual love story. A mystery woman from the Ukraine, Sandra shows up in Gabor’s life However, the drama of her dark past makes this difficult and creates doubts in Gabor not only about Sandra, but himself.
2. POLIGAMY / Poligamy (2009)/Dir: Denes Orosz/85mins / col / hungarian
Andras (Sandor Csanyi) and Lilla (Katya Tompos) are a young couple, who have been together for five years. Andras writes screenplays for television series and Lilla is an assistant lecturer at a university. Finally they move into an apartment together and it seems like everything is going well between them. But there is something wrong. As if the essence was missing from their life together. Lilla wants a wedding and a baby, while Andras, well, he does not really know what he wants. Then one day Lilla announces that she is pregnant. Andras is overcome by mixed feelings.The next morning Andras wakes up next to a beautiful woman who is a complete stranger. From this point on he has relationships with a variety of women, all very different from each other so he is off to a journey exploring all phases and possible relationships between men and women.
3. VIRTUALLY A VIRGIN / Majdnem szüz (2008)/Dir: Peter Basco/119mins / col / hungarian
Boroka Arva (Julia Urbankovics) has at last come of age and receives a substantial lump sum as part of her home-starter grant. All she wants to do is to be treated like a “real human being” and celebrate her birthday in a luxury hotel with her boyfriend, Janos (Ferenc Hujber), and now she has the money to realise her dream. Life in paradise looks set to come to an abrupt end when the cash runs out and so Janos talks Boroka into providing a little extra room-service to an aging gent (Sandor Lukacs) who suffers an unexpected heart attack at an inappropriate moment. Straight out of care, Boroka, with no money and no options, moves in with her boyfriend who is keen to supplement his income by selling her body to calling clients. Boroka’s fate seems set until a local pimp, Ronaldo (Gergo Kaszas), offers Janos a fabulous motorbike in exchange for his devoted girlfriend. The temptation proves too great… Ronaldo takes Boroka and plants her on the verge of a main road in the hope that his newly acquired virtual virgin will pull in plenty of punters. Used and abused by a swift succession of eager takers, she ignores Ronaldo’s threats of violence and decides to take her chances on her own. She first bumps into Moric (Attila Toth) filling in a lottery slip who later finds himself with a ringside seat to a chance meeting between Boroka and her pursuing pimp. With nowhere left to go, Boroka accepts Moric’s offer of accommodation and moves into his trendy atelier. Their lives take a turn when Moric stumbles across a course on the internet offering marketing training with EU funding to “funny, little whores”. The description seems to fit so Boroka decides to take up the challenge…
IRAN
1, SALVE / Marham (2010)/Dir: Alireza Davoodnejad/95mins / col / persian
A crusty grandmother finds herself in the unlikely role of guardian angel to her rebellious granddaughter, who runs away for love of a drug dealer and is left like a tender chick at the mercy of hawks. A sense of moody poetry runs through this story that combines the grimness of the underworld with a palpable longing for family. Two parallel stories merge when a shady developer, who has his own strong-willed grandmother hovering not so gently over his life, has a fateful encounter with the runaway.
2. TEHERAN / Tehroun (2009)/Dir: Nader Takmil Homayoun/95mins / col / persian
Ibrahim has left his village and family to try his luck in Tehran. However, in this urban jungle where everything can be bought and sold, dreams rapidly turn into nightmares. Implicated in a traffic of new born babies, Ibrahim, with the help of his two friends, is forced to go deep into the slums of the city, in Tehroun, where cohabit prostitutes, beggars and gangsters…
3. KICK IN IRAN / Kick in Iran (2010)/Dir: Fatima Geza Abdollahyan/ 82mins / col / persian – Docu
Sarah Khoshjamal, a 20-year-old Taekwondo superstar, is the first female professional athlete from Iran to qualify for the Olympics. This skillful vérité portrait follows the unassuming Khoshjamal in the nine months leading up to the 2008 Beijing games. Living in an Islamic country, she is required to wear a hijab at all times and, unlike her fellow competitors around the world, cannot train with men; however, the power in her fighting resoundingly breaks down stereotypical barriers. Khoshjamal’s experience as a world-class athlete may be familiar, but captured here is the importance of the coach-athlete relationship. The bond she shares with her feisty and much-admired female coach is revealed through everyday moments as both struggle through inequality to make their mark—in sport and society. Though it’s still the male athletes who are ultimately celebrated in her country, Khoshjamal’s accomplishments and lasting influence on scores of girls in Iran are undeniable.
ITALY
1. ESCAPE FROM THE CALL CENTER / Fuga dal Call Center (2008)/Dir: Federico Rizzo/95mins / col
Badly paid temporary work with no prospects is known in Italy as precariato. Hundreds of thousands of young people have become victims of this particular consequence of the poor economic situation, forced to forget about “impractical” university education and take on menial positions, such as call-centre jobs. This is the fate of Gianfranco, the hero of the acerbic comedy by co-writer and director Federico Rizzo. A promising graduate of volcanology, he receives life’s first slap in the face in the form of a headset with microphone, with which, armed with a set of standard questions, he is forced to plough his way through a list of randomly selected homeowners, day after day. His girlfriend Marzia, an ambitious reporter, isn’t much better off as a switchboard operator for an erotic hotline. The grotesquely stylised scenes portraying the inauspicious lives of young Italians are linked up with interviews with real-life precariati, offering their insight into the insane philosophy of ubiquitous call centres.
2. THE MAN WHO WILL COME / L’uomo che verrà (2009)/Giorgio Diritti/115mins / col / italian / german
In the fall of 1944, on the slopes of Monte Sole south of Bologna, fascism showed its face in one of the worst massacres on Italian soil. As a reprisal against local villagers for support of partisan activity, German SS troops systematically murdered nearly 800 people, most of them women, children and elderly. Giorgio Diritti illuminates the incident – now buried deep in Italy’s cultural memory, if not in the memories of its survivors – in a very specific way: He creates an almost elegiac portrait of peasant life as seen through the eyes of an eight-year-old child. Martina has fallen mute since the death of her infant brother; now her mother is pregnant again, and Martina awaits the infant as her own rebirth. Her father and other villagers, meanwhile, debate the wisdom of aiding the partisans, until encroaching violence makes it no longer a question. For some, to be a partisan is to recognize the degree to which fascism and then the war made poor peasants even poorer. For others, the issue is not one of rebellion but of morality: “The Germans do what we were taught not to do.” But the heinous crime perpetrated against these people will raze beliefs along with souls. Even so, Diritti manages to make a work as rich in beauty and hope as in wonder at the depths of inhumanity.
3. THE SICILIAN GIRL / La siciliana ribelle (2009)/Dir: Marco Amenta/115mins / col / italian
In line with the recent wave of acclaimed mob dramas from Italy such as Gomorrah and the Oscar® Nominated Il Divo, The Sicilian Girl recounts the true crime story of mafia daughter Rita Atria, who took her life into her hands to break the code of silence and testify against “The Family” in 1991.After the gangland assassinations of her father and brother, 17-year-old Rita (Veronica D’Agostino) takes it upon herself to avenge their murders. Forming an unlikely alliance with an anti-mafia judge (Gérard Jugnot), Rita charts the thin line between justice and revenge as she begins to expose the dark secrets of an enshrouded world. However, she soon finds the side of law and order to be a lonely place which puts her conviction to the test and her life on the line.
4. VELMA / Velma (2009)/Dir: Piero Tomaselli/92mins / col / Italian (venetian dialect)
The “Captain”, a sailor with a controversial past and a really aggressive nature, lives alone in a remote hut in a lagoon nearby Venice, where he has voluntarily isolated himself for many years. His only relationships with the community of fishermen are Manuel, a boy considered a bit silly by all and Giona, a “carabiniere” whose manners are a bit eccentrics, who has become very close to him. The mysterious finding of a young girl (Velma) entangled in a net on the shore of a beach and the difficult relationship that begins between the two is about to change completely the life of the Captain, until a symbolic and cathartic epilogue.
5. THE LAST EMPEROR / L’Ultimo Imperatore (1987)/Dir: Bernardo Bertolucci/156mins / col / English / Mandarin / Japanese / Russian
The Last Emperor is the true story of Aisin-Gioro Pu Yi, the last ruler of the Chinese Ching Dynasty. Told in flashback, the film covers the years 1908 to 1967. We first see the three-year-old Pu Yi being installed in the Forbidden City by ruthless, dying dowager Empress Tzu-Hsui (Lisa Lu). Though he’d prefer to lark about like other boys, the infant emperor is cossetted and cajoled into accepting the responsibilities and privileges of his office. In 1912, the young emperor (Tijer Tsou) forced to abdicate when China is declared a republic, is a prisoner in his own palace, “protected” from the outside world. Fascinated by the worldliness of his Scottish tutor (Peter O’Toole), Pu Yi plots an escape from his cocoon by means of marriage. He selects Manchu descendant Wan Jung (Joan Chen), who likewise is anxious to experience the 20th century rather than be locked into the past by tradition. Played as an adult by John Lone, Pu Yi puts into effect several social reforms, and also clears the palace of the corrupt eunuchs who’ve been shielding him from life. In 1924, an invading warlord expels the denizens of the Forbidden City, allowing Pu Yi to “westernize” himself by embracing popular music and the latest dances as a guest of the Japanese Concession in Tientsin. Six years later, his power all but gone, Pu Yi escapes to Manchuria, where he unwittingly becomes a political pawn for the now-militant Japanese government. Humiliating his faithful wife, Pu Yi falls into bad romantic company, carrying on affairs with a variety of parasitic females. During World War II, the Japanese force Pu Yi to sign a series of documents which endorse their despotic military activities. At war’s end, the emperor is taken prisoner by the Russians; while incarcerated, he is forced to fend for himself without servants at his beck and call for the first time. He is finally released in 1959 and displayed publicly as proof of the efficacy of Communist re-education. We last see him in 1967, the year of his death; now employed by the State as a gardener, Pu Yi makes one last visit to the Forbidden City…as a tourist. Bernardo Bertolucci’s first film after a six-year self-imposed exile, The Last Emperor was released in two separate versions: the 160-minute theatrical release, and a 4-hour TV miniseries. Lensed on location, the film won nine Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director.
6. LITTLE BUDDHA / Ii Piccolo Buddha (1993)/Dir: Bernardo Bertolucci/123mins / col /english
Bernardo Bertolucci attempts to mix Buddhist spirituality with childhood fantasy in Little Buddha. When Dean Conrad (Chris Isaak), a Seattle architect, comes home from work one day, he finds two robed Buddhist monks sitting in his living room talking with his wife Lisa (Bridget Fonda). Guided by a series of disturbing dreams, the monks have traveled from Nepal to Seattle because they believe that the Conrad’s ten-year-old son, Jesse (Alex Wiesendanger) may be the reincarnation of a legendary Buddhist mystic. The Conrads are initially skeptical, particularly when the monks want to take their son back to Bhutan with them. But after Dean’s partner commits suicide, Dean has a religious awakening (“I’ve been doin’ some thinkin’,” he says) and permits Jesse to go away with the monks. Then the Lama Norbu (Ruocheng Ying) gives Jesse a children’s book about the Buddha Siddhartha (Keanu Reeves). Siddhartha leads a sheltered life until he comes upon a couple of all-knowing beggars who introduce him to poverty and hunger. After this revelation, Siddhartha decides that it is his destiny to relieve all human beings from pain and suffering. Back in present day, Jesse is now knowledgeable about the basis of Buddhism. Much to Jesse’s and his father’s surprise, however, they find that there are two other children at Bhutan who show signs of being the reincarnated Buddhist mystic.
7. STEALING BEAUTY / Io Balla Da Salla (1996)/Dir: Bernardo Bertolucci/118mins / col / english / french / german / spanish / Italian
This beautiful if ponderous soufflé of a film from director Bernardo Bertolucci serves more as an Italian travelogue than a drama. Liv Tyler stars as Lucy Harmon, an American teenager arriving in the lush Tuscan countryside to visit family friends residing there. Lucy visited four years earlier and exchanged a kiss with a handsome boy with whom she hopes to become reacquainted. Lucy’s mother has committed suicide since then, and the teenager also hopes to discover the identity of her father, whom her mother hinted was a resident of the villa. Once she arrives, Lucy meets a variety of eccentric visitors, including a dying gay playwright (Jeremy Irons), a sculptor (Donal McCann), an entertainment lawyer (D.W. Moffet), and several others. Lucy has decided to lose her virginity and becomes an object of intense interest to the men of the household, but the suitor she finally selects is not the initial object of her affection. Stealing Beauty boasted an intriguing parallel between actress Tyler’s role and her real life. The daughter of a famed rock and roll star, she was brought up believing that her father was someone else, a fact that Bertolucci may have had in mind when writing the story.
8. THE DREAMERS / I sognatori (2003)/Dir: Bernardo Bertolucci/116mins / b&w –col / english / french
Veteran Italian filmmaker Bernardo Bertolucci directs the erotic drama The Dreamers, adapted from the novel The Holy Innocents: A Romance by Gilbert Adair. American student Matthew (Michael Pitt) is studying in Paris during the politically turbulent late ’60s. The story begins in 1968 with the firing of Henri Langlois, the founder of the French Cinémathèque. At a protest demonstration, Matthew meets cinema-obsessed Isabelle (Eva Green) and her twin brother, Theo (Louis Garrel). When their Bohemian parents (Robin Renucci and Anna Chancellor) leave for the summer, the twins invite Matthew to live with them. While the revolution rages on outside, the three young people stay in the comfortable flat playing decadent sexual games. Bertolucci incorporates clips from classic films like Queen Christina, Band of Outsiders, and Breathless. After showing at several European film festivals, The Dreamers made its U.S. premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in 2004.
JAPAN
1. COLD FISH / Tsumetai nettaigyo (2010)/Dir: Sono Sion/144mins / col / japanese
Fujimi city, Shizuoka prefecture, Japan, 19-31 January 2009. When Mitsuko (Kajiwara Hikari), the rebellious teenage daughter of Nobuyuki Shamato (Fukikoshi Mitsuru), is caught shoplifting, she’s let off thanks to the intervention of Murata Yukio (Denden), who originally reported her. Murata instantly forms a bond with Nobuyuki, as the two both own tropical fish shops, and the entrepreneurial, seemingly affable Murata suggests Mitsuko joins his team of salesgirls at his flashy emporium Amazon Gold. She agrees, to get away from her young stepmother, Taeko (Kagurazaka Megumi), whom she despises. Murata then seduces the strung-up Taeko and next suggests Nobuyuki joins him as a business partner, calmly poisoning his existing partner in Amazon Gold, Yoshida (Suwa Taro), in front of Nobuyuki. Murata then bullies the craven Nobuyuki into helping him and his young wife Aiko (Kurosawa Asuka) dispose of Yoshida’s corpse – his 58th victim – after cutting it up in a church on the slopes of Mt. Harakiri. Nobuyuki is separately threatened by Murata’s legal advisor, Tsutsui Takayasu (Watanabe Tetsu), with whom Aiko is having an affaire, to stick with him, as Murata will one day be found out. Soon afterwards, police inspector Kawajiri Susumu (Sakata Masahiko) questions Nobuyuki over Yoshida’s disappearance, suspecting that Murata is involved in the rash of missing persons in the region.
2. CATERPILLAR / Kyatapirâ (2010)/Dir: Kôji Wakamatsu/85mins / col / japanese
Lieutenant Kurokawa returns highly decorated from the second Sino-Japanese war. He has lost both his arms and his legs during the conflict. Before long, the attentions of everyone in his village – neighbours, friends and relatives – are focussed on his wife, Shigeko. They all look to her to honour the Emperor, do her duty to her country and provide a shining example to others by devoting herself to caring for this war hero . Koji Wakamatsu: “I had the idea for this new film while I was shooting UNITED RED ARMY. I felt that, in order to understand the youngsters of the six-ties and seventies, you should first describe their parents’ era, the time of the Pacific War. Describing a war doesn’t just mean describing the shooting and the battles. The people who are most affected by war are the women and children, who don’t even fight. Those in power fooled the citizens into believing that this war was on behalf of their country, and they manipulated them into rushing into the war. They themselves stayed at a safe distance and were still alive after the war. I thought that the youngsters in UNITED RED ARMY were born the way they were precisely because their parents had lived through such an era. So I’d already decided at the time of shooting to describe their parents’ era, the Pacific War, and the people of that time.”
KOREA (SOUTH)
1. ANIMAL TOWN / Animal Town ( 2009)/Dir: Jeon Gyu-hwan/97mins / col / korean
The wealth and technology of international Korean companies are nowhere to be seen in this second installation of the “Town trilogy” from Korean writer-director Jeon Kyu-Hwan. “Animal Town” instead conveys the smallness of an individual’s existence in the machine of the modern city with cool, almost detached camerawork. The architecture of the town is all pervading; from a main character’s work with construction to his home in an apartment building that is set to be demolished. But the disarray of structures is put in stark contrast to the seeming composure of the characters and their muted lives. While an ex-con and a small business owner are both struggling in the aftermath of the financial crises, they are bound together by a tragic event in the past. Suddenly brought together in the present by a homeless girl that roams the streets of Seoul with her belongings in a perambulator the evolving desperation of the characters pushes this revenge drama in a grim direction. Other than the instinct to survive, maybe revenge is the only other road to travel in this town. Hyeong-do, the head of a small printing company, hears that the kid who stole his motorcycle died in a traffic accident. Seong-cheul is a convicted pedophile who starts driving a cab after his salary from a construction site went unpaid. The uneventful daily lives of the two men in the depressing city are interrupted by a wild boar sighting. The description of a heartless city life and the shocking ending deliver a chilling blow.
2. DOOMAN RIVER / La rivière Tumen (2009)/Dir: Zhang Lu/89mins / col / Korean
The Tumen River marks part of the boundary between North Korea and China. The Tumen, an icy river that is frozen for many months of the year, divides the hungry from the poor. Crossing it is dangerous, not merely because of the brittle ice on its surface, but also on account of the heavily armed soldiers that patrol the North Korean border. In spite of this, the Chinese claim that over 400,000 Koreans have already crossed the Tumen hoping to find happiness in China. Many North Koreans only come to find food for their families. One such North Korean is the boy that twelve-year-old Chang-ho befriends. The boy is the same age as Chang-ho; he makes the crossing regularly to look after his sick sister. This illegal border trade is by no means viewed favourably by everyone in China. And there’s certainly no messing with the human traffickers who make a living from the poorest of the poor. The Chinese children are the only ones who make friends with the North Korean border-crossers; they play football and share what little food they have with them. Chang-ho’s mute sister Soon-hee also begins looking after her brother’s North Koreans friend and soon they all spend time together. Loudspeakers blare out announcements that punishment awaits those who fraternise with the Koreans. Life at the Tumen River is dangerous and can be cruel. There was a time when a bridge spanned the river and North Koreans and Chinese could pay each other visits. There’s only one old woman who can remember this time. She dreams of being able to cross over once more during her lifetime.
MALAYSIA
1. THE TIGER FACTORY / Hu chang (2010)/Dir: Woo Ming Jin/84mins / col / malay / cantonese / mandarin
Ping Ping is 19 and wants to go to Japan to work in a car parts company. She’s under the guardianship of her aunt, Madame Tien, who shuffles her between two jobs – working in a pig farm, and cleaning dishes in a rundown restaurant. Tien is also involved in a ‘baby factory’ scheme, pairing young women with migrant workers and then selling the babies for money. Both survive with each other in a love-hate symbiotic manner, until a truth about her aunt is revealed to Ping Ping.
NORWAY
1. NORTH / Nord (2009)/Dir: Rune Denstad Langlo/79mins / col / norwegian / saami
North is a road movie comedy set in romantic natural surroundings. It is the story of the athlete Jomar who has isolated himself in a sad and lonely existence after having a mental crises. On a snow scooter, with 5 liters of moonshine as provisions, Jomar embarks on a strange and dramatic journey towards the far north, where his ex-girlfriend lives with his child that he just learned about.
This turns into a weird expedition, during which he gets to meet other tender and confused souls, who all contribute to pushing Jomar further ahead on his reluctant journey towards reality.
2. THE STORM IN MY HEART / Jernanger (2009)/Dir: Pål Jackman/96mins / col / norwegian / saami
Eivind, lives aboard a boat in the South of Norway. The boat lies low and lopsided in the water. Thirty years ago Eivind left his homestead and his teenage sweetheart behind, and he has not been back since. He was meant to go back when everything was honky-dory- only that never happened. Then young Kris appears. He wants to travel the world but didn’t get any longer than to the lifeboat of Jernanger. The two men finds one another and together they hatch a great plan.
PALESTINE
1. POMEGRANATES AND MYRRH / Al-mor wa al rumman (2009)/Dir: Najwa Najjar/98mins / col / arabic / english / hebrew
Set in Ramallah this decade, free-spirited dancer Kamar, finds herself the wife of a prisoner, when her husband Zaid is jailed. Struggling with the grief of separation, the ongoing effects of the repressive occupation, Kamar also has to face society’s moral issues with dance. Matters are complicated when a new dance instructor, Kais, returns to the studio after many years in Lebanon and takes a special interest in Kamar. Sparks fly between Kamar and Kais resulting in more than a passionate, emotional dance for both of them. Matters become even more complicated when Zaid’s sentence is extended. The constant interference of the external conflict – her husband’s arrest, the squatters on her land, and the soldiers filling the streets – is an unavoidable aspect of Kamar’s existence but one that she will not deter her. Najjar’s intimate storytelling and Yasmine Al Massri’s sensitive portrayal of Kamar create a film that addresses honestly the way a woman might face the realities of life in modern-day Palestine while refusing to be defined by them.
PANAMA
1. COLOURS OF THE MOUNTAIN / Los colores de la montaña (2010)/Dir: Carlos César Arbeláez
88mins / col / Spanish
Manuel, 9, has an old ball with which he plays football every day in the countryside. He dreams of becoming a great goalkeeper. His wishes seem set to come true when Ernest, his father, gives him a new ball. But an unexpected accident sends the ball flying into a minefield. Despite the danger, Manuel refuses to abandon his treasure… He convinces Julián and Poca Luz, his two friends, to rescue it with him. Amid the adventures and kids’ games, the signs of armed conflict start to appear in the lives of the inhabitants of ‘La Pradera’.
PERU
1. OCTOBER / Octubre (2010)/Dir: Daniel Vega Vidal, Diego Vega Vidal/83mins / col / spanish
Clemente, an extremely quiet pawnbroker, is Sofia’s hope to avoid solitude. Being his neighbor and a single woman, she spends her days as an October’s Lord of the Miracle’s worshipper. One day, Clemente is left with a newborn baby who seems to be the outcome of a sudden relationship with a disappeared prostitute. While Clemente looks for the baby’s mother, Sofia enjoys taking care of this baby in Clemente’s house and thus discovering her life as a mother. Through the arrival of both of them to his life, Clemente has an opportunity to ponder about the emotional attachments he has never had.
PHILIPPINES
1. THE CHILD OF THE SUN / Anacbanua (2009)/Dir: Christopher Gozum/104mins / col / filipino / tagalog
A middle class and Western-educated poet (Umaanlong) returns to the Pangasinan region, the land of his birth and his ancestors from which he was uprooted for a very long time. He is sick with a lingering physical, mental and spiritual illness. He meets the Musia (Muse) who takes care of him during his illness. The Musia performs a series of rituals that identifies the cause of the Umaanlong’s disease and appeases the ancestral and nature spirits inhabiting sacred spaces in Pangasinan’s physical landscape. While in half-sleep, the Umaanlong’s soul leaves his diseased body. The soul flight transports the Umaanlong to places and time zones in Pangasinan’s landscape and history where he undergoes cosmic immersion, a deep and intense spiritual experience for chosen people like him where the self gets absorbed in the universe. The Umaanlong discovers the Ogaw (child) who serves as a spirit guide in his magical journey. In this cosmic immersion, the Umaanlong undergoes a series of gradual and violent transformations similar to the fermentation of fish sauce, slaughtering of livestock, pounding and shaping of burning metal rods in the anvil, the moulding of the clay into pottery, and the baking of the moist bricks in the fire of the kiln. These series of rituals are tests a novice undergoes when he is called and destined to serve his people. Through this soul travel, the uprooted poet reclaims his primal and ancestral connection to the water (danum), to the land (uma), and to the people (katooan), key figures that mark Pangasinan’s landscape, history and identity. Like his ancestors who belonged to the exclusive ranks of traditional healers, storytellers, and wise leaders in the ancient communities of Pangasinan, the Umaanlong completes these series of difficult tests in a novice’s initiation. The Umaanlong returns to the real world offering himself and his art towards the humanistic progress of his community and the people of Pangasinan. In this renewed and higher state of being, the Umaanlong reunites and becomes one with the Musia.
POLAND
1. ALL THAT I LOVE / Wszystko, co kocham (2010)/Dir: Jacek Borcuch/95mins / col / polish
Poland 1981: Behind the iron curtain, Janek, the teenage son of a navy captain, forms ATIL (All That I Love), a punk-rock band whose songs express a frustration with socialism and a desire for freedom, echoing the sentiments of the rising Solidarity movement. At the same time, Janek finds love with Basia, a young woman whose father is part of the movement and disapproves of Janek’s military family. When growing social turmoil leads to martial law, Janek’s relationships and ATIL’s music cause serious consequences for his family members, lovers, and friends. Jacek Borcuch refreshes the coming-of-age film and its familiar tropes—teenage rebellion, first love, and sexual exploration—by setting it within a sobering sociohistorical context. His camera captures a conflicting sense of potential change and stifling paranoia, with freedom just out of sight for his protagonists. All That I Love is a bracing, potent reminder that the personal can’t be easily separated from the political.
2. THE MAGIC TREE / Magiczna drzewo (2009)/Dir: Andrzei Maleszka/89mins / col / polish
When the magic tree in Andrzej Maleszka’s Magic Tree is struck by lightning, the locals chop it into pieces to be made into furniture and sold all over the world. Now, the magic in the tree has been spread throughout every piece, causing strange events to unfold all over the world. One day, three children – Tosia, Philip, and Kuki – find a chair made from the tree that will make any dream come true. Stuck with their mean aunt while the kids’ parents are away on work, the children decide to use the chair to find their parents. With a little bit of magic to help them deal with their aunt, the children set off on a wild adventure that also includes escaping those who want the chair’s power for themselves. Filled with imagination and fun adventure, this film is sure to amaze kids and parents alike.
3. VENICE / Wenecja (2010)/Dir.: Jan Jakub Kolski/110 mins / col / polish
Eleven-year-old Marek loves Venice. His family has gone to visit the city on water for generations. His great grandparents, his grandparents, his parents, even his 14-year-old brother Victor have made the pilgrimage. Marek knows the names of all the squares and streets of Venice by heart, but he has never actually seen his beloved city in person. Which is about to change. This summer his dream will come true; he will finally visit Venice… But this summer happens to be the summer of 1939. War with Germany looms and Marek’s father enters the army. Instead of St. Mark’s Square, Marek ends up with his mother in Zaleszczykach on the San, in the large villa of Aunt Veronica. But down in the flooded cellar of the mansion, Marek still has dreams. If he can’t go to Venice, Venice will come to him…
PORTUGAL
1.THE ART OF STEALING / Arte De Roubar (2008)/Dir: Leonel Vieira/103mins / col / english
A couple of unlucky thieves are hired by a vengeful butler to steal a valuable painting from a rural estate, but nothing goes according to plan.
ROMANIA
1. HELLO! HOW ARE YOU? / Buna, Ce Faci? (2010)/Dir: Alexandru Maftei/105mins / col / romanian
Gabriel and Gabriela have been happily married for 20 years but their sexual desire for each other no longer exists. Is this all life has to offer? After having spent a couple of nights chatting with a stranger on the Internet, they both fall in love – not knowing they have actually found each other. The passionate arousal for the unknown complicates with the guilt for cheating on a lifetime partner. Even more confused is their adolescent and sexually very active son Vladimir, when he finds out that his parents also have desires. One day an encounter of the virtual lovers becomes inevitable…
2. MEDAL OF HONOR / Medalia de onoare (2009)/Dir: Calin Peter Netzer/105mins / col / romanian
One day Ion, a 75 year old Romanian man, accidentally receives a Medal of Honor for some ‘heroic’ actions back in WW2, times he barely remembers. The medal forces Ion to reconsider his whole life. Maybe he wasn’t all the time a loser. Maybe his life has a meaning. Maybe he means something to his family.
RUSSIA
1. BLACK LAMB / ?????? ????? (2009)/Dir: Roman Khroushch/87mins / col / russian
“Black Lamb” is a story of deceit, addiction and decadence. Set in present day Paris, a city famous for romance, it dares to defy the stereotype by introducing the audience to the darker side of love and passion. It is the portrayal of global interest in superficial values and the pursuit of love through various ungratifying means. Russell Bolton, the catalyst of this twisted tale, is a man of little conscience and much charm. He lives a life of fantasy inspired by the illusion of film and its beguiling deceptiveness. During the course of the screenplay, his beauty and feminine characteristics endear him to several women, all eventually becoming entangled in his web of lies. Sherry, an old friend of Russell’s, arrives in Paris in order to begin a new life and instead finds herself slipping into his world of chaos. Trouble further ensues when Tatjana, his roommate, arrives at Sherry’s house with news of Russell’s disappearance. Sherry, unable to turn her away, offers help and home to this stranger only to find herself slowly losing grip of her own life and becoming entangled in Tatjana’s world of drug-induced hysteria. Russell’s disappearance sets off a whole chain of events that brings Sherry to a nervous breakdown, places Tatjana into the hands of the police and forever changes the lives of all others touched by this man. At the conclusion of this story, Russell once again dodges the bullet and is free to continue living out his fantasies of further conquests.
2. HOW I ENDED THIS SUMMER / Kak ya provyol etim letom (2010)/Dir: Aleksei Popogrebsky
124mins / col / russian
One place. One day. Two men. The place is a polar station on a remote island in the Arctic Ocean. A day up here in the far north lasts weeks, since the sun never sets during the summer at this high latitude. This used to be an important research station but,Sergei, an experienced meteorologist and Pavel, a high school graduate, are now the only inhabitants. Soon a ship will arrive to pick up the two men. For Sergei this will mean the end of a sojourn that has lasted several years. He is anxious about returning to his wife and child on the mainland. For his part, Pavel hopes that he might yet be able to experience the kind of real adventure he was dreaming of when he volunteered for an internship in this desolate region. And then one day when Sergei is out angling, Pavel picks up a radio message that he daren’t communicate to Sergei. Pavel does everything he can to keep the message from Sergei, in the hope that the ship’s arrival will relieve him of this particular task. But then Pavel learns that the ship will not be coming to pick them up at all this year. Director Alexei Popogrebski found the inspiration for his psychological polar thriller in the dairies of N. V. Pinegin which were written in 1912 when Pinegin accompanied Russian polar explorer Georgio J. Sedov on his tragic attempt to reach the North Pole. Popogrebski read these diaries as a fourteen- year-old. “I have been fascinated, ever since, by this ability to come to terms with notions of time and space so drastically different from our common scale of hours and minutes, or blocks and metro stops. This film, essentially, is a story of two personal (and incompatible) time-and-space scales.”
3. SILENT SOULS / Ovsyanki (2010)/Dir: Aleksei Fedorchenko/75mins / col / Russian
When Miron’s beloved wife Tanya passes away, he asks his best friend Aist to help him say goodbye to her according to the rituals of the Merya culture, an ancient Finno-Ugric tribe from Lake Nero, a picturesque region in West-Central Russia. Although the Merya people blended with the Russians in the 17th century, their myths and traditions live on in the modern life of their descendants. The two men set out on a road trip thousands of miles across the boundless landscape. With them are two small birds in a cage. Along the way, as is the custom of Merya people, Miron shares intimate memories of his conjugal life. But as they reach the banks of the sacred lake where they will forever part with the body, he realises he wasn’t the only one in love with Tanya…
SERBIA
1. MOTEL NANA / Motel Nana (2010)/Dir: Predrag Velinovic/92mins / col / serbian / croatian
Lead hero in “Motel Nana”, Ivan, played by our splendid actor Dragan Micanovic, works as a high school history professor. When, provoked by a pupil, he responds with a slap, his life takes a turn for the worse. In changed Serbia, going through transition, where sincere emotional burst is harshly punishable, Ivan has no longer his place inside the school. At council session he is suspended and transferred to a school in a destroyed mountain village in Bosnia. On his way to Bosnia he meets Jasmina who is returning from Germany at her friend Hazim’s invitation, who owns a motel. Ivan’s love with Jasmina, whom Hazim actually wants to marry, and yet another slap in school, bring Jasmina and Ivan together in their shared escape from reality. Will his stay in Bosnia, at school with only eight pupils of different ages and nationalities, in rural environment where a slap is a disciplinary measure, help Ivan comprehend life a bit better?
2. SOME OTHER STORIES / Neke druge price (2010)/Dir: Ana Maria Rossi (Srb), Ivona Juka (Cro), Ines Tanovi?(Bos),Marija Dzidzeva (Mac), HannaSlak (Slo)/114mins / col / slovenian / serbo-croatian / macedonian
In the country that used to be called Yugoslavia, no one asked women whether war was the right thing to do. But now women can decide whether it’s the right thing to do to bring children into that post-war world.
Five countries, five women, five stories. The film comprises five dramatic reflections on motherhood among young women today in the country formally known as Yugoslavia. Five films directed, in fact, by five such women. A pregnant woman in a hospital meets the man who has just killed her husband. Another hides her pregnancy from her boyfriend because she knows her work will take her away from him. Yet another woman, expecting twins, is faced with a terible choice when one fetus is diagnosed with Down’s Syndrome. Having just given birth, a drug-addicted mother is told her child must be taken away for adoption. A young nun becomes pregnant. These are everyday contemporary stories from Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia and Slovenia. Stories that look at the consequences of war from a different perspective. Stories that ask the question: what does it mean to give life after so much death?
SINGAPORE
1. SANDCASTLE / Sandcastle (2010)/Dir: Boo Junfeng/96mins / col / mandarin / chinese / hokkien / english
A gentle and affectionate study of three generations of one family, Boo Junfeng’s debut feature Sandcastle is a loving portrait of a young man coming to terms with the lives of his parents and his grandparents.En is eighteen and exasperated when he has to move in with his grandparents while his mother’s house is renovated. At his grandparent’s house, he hooks up his computer while they concentrate on their favourite, more low-tech pastimes, doing puzzles and caring for stray cats. En’s grandfather is a kind and gentle man who cares for his wife as Alzheimer’s ravages her mind. She thinks that En is his father, Boon, who died in Malaysia years ago. But no one will speak to En about his father, and certainly not his mother, who says that Boon was “brainwashed” into committing illegal acts against the government. So when En’s grandfather shows him a box of old pictures of his father as the leader of student protests in the fifties, En is astonished to learn that his father was not a thug, but a political revolutionary. Grandfather shows En how proud he was of Boon through his loving collection of old photographs. But things fall apart when En goes out clubbing one night. He returns home to find his grandfather dead. After the funeral, En’s mother insists that Grandmother move in with them and share En’s room – which really cramps his style with his new girlfriend. Family tensions worsen when Grandma goes missing under En’s not-so-watchful eye. As En struggles to understand his family history and why his mother is so reluctant to talk about his father, he learns that maybe he and his grandmother have more in common than he thought. They both feel lost in a world that doesn’t understand them and need love and acceptance in the face of loss. En must find out the true past of his family and set his ancestors at peace. A lyrical meditation on family and loss, Sandcastle is a beautiful examination of generations coming together
SOUTH AFRICA
1. THEMBA – A BOY CALLED HOPE / Themba – Das Spiel seines Lebens (2010)/Dir: Stefanie Sycholt
105mins / col / english
THEMBA is an inspiring original drama set in South Africa. It is a moving story of a young Xhosa boy, who dreams of becoming a football star. Themba breathes and lives soccer but the reality in the rural round-hut village he calls home is very different from the life he dreams of. Themba’s community is ravaged by unemployment and HIV. He has to pursue his dreams by calling on his own endurance and courage. On his road to self-discovery he finds that shame and prejudice can be temporary. He achieves footballing success, but the triumph is also a personal one, as he learns that illness can be managed.
Themba is much more than a soccer film, it’s a universal message of hope.
SPAIN
1. BIUTIFUL / Biutiful (2010)/Alejandro González Iñárritu/138mins / col / english / spanish
Biutiful is the story of Uxbal. Devoted father. Tormented lover. Mystified son. Underground businessman. Ghost seeker. Spiritual sensitive. Consumer goods pirate. Guilty conscience. Urban survivor. A man sensing the danger of death. Who tries to reconcile with love, Yet fails. Who hungers to do the right thing, But stumbles. Whose heart is broken, seduced, emptied . .Then filled with more than desire. He has blood on his hands. Weight on his soul. Urgency in his every breath. He may lose it all yet suddenly. . In a kind of midnight Finds everything to give. Sometimes our lives are like this: Fractured, overpowering, emotionally electric And still breathtakingly beautiful.
2. CELL 211 / Cel Da 211 (2009)/Dir: Daniel Monzon/114mins / col / spanish / basque / english
Juan Oliver wants to make a good impression at his new job as a prison officer and reports to work a day early, leaving his pregnant wife, Elena, at home. His destiny is forever changed by this fateful decision, as during his tour of the prison, an accident occurs that knocks him unconscious. He is rushed to the empty but visibly haunted walls of cell 211. As this diversion unfolds, inmates of the high security cell block strategically break free and hijack the penitentiary. Aware of the violence that is to come, the prison officers flee, leaving Juan stranded and unconscious in the heart of the riot. When Juan awakens, he immediately takes stock of the situation; in order to survive, he must pretend to be a prisoner. Juan develops a dialogue with the violent leader of the riot, Badass, and the two begin a partnership, Badass fully believing that Juan is a new inmate. Negotiations go smoothly until the rioters take three ETA (the militant Basque separatist organization) prisoners hostage. When this hits the news, it triggers a stream of prison riots throughout the country as well as demonstrations in the Basque Country. Juan quickly realizes that he is on his own as the situation becomes more politicized and the government gets involved, afraid of potential ramifications in the Basque community. As the drama heightens, unexpected shifts in character both within and without the prison occur.
3. FOR 80 DAYS / 80 egunean (2010)/Dir: Jon Garaño, José María Goenag/105mins / col / basque
Axun and Maite met at secondary school during a repressive era that never allowed their relationship to go beyond friendship. Later on, their paths led them apart: Axun got married and moved out to the country to live on a farm, while Maite traveled the world, clarified her sexual orientation in her own mind, and now, having had a successful career as a piano teacher, she has returned to San Sebastian to take up her retirement. Fifty years on, Axun and Maite, now both seventy, meet up by chance while visiting patients in hospital. At first, they don’t recognize one another, but soon long- suppressed feelings begin to emerge once more with the same intensity, and Axun is aware for the first time of her chance to start something entirely new. Feelings once illicit which, fifty years ago, she was unable and forbidden to identify, force her to reassess her marriage and to embark on a journey of self-knowledge…
4. STIGMATA / Estigmas (2009)/Dir: Adán Aliaga/100mins / b&w / spanish
“Stigmata” is the story of Bruno, a coarse man, strong and addicted to alcohol. Bruno’s just trying to be a normal person, but his fate is already written. One day he wakes up and his hands start to bleed, which begins a journey of redemption through suffering, pain and death. From now on he will have to live with their new stigma …
SWEDEN
1. PSALM 21 / Psalm 21 (2009)/Dir: Fredrik Hiller/114mins / col / swedish
Henrik Horneus is a beloved Stockholm priest who recently has had increasingly frightening nightmares about his dead mother. One day after service, he learns that his admired father, Gabriel Horneus, also a priest, has died mysteriously in a drowning accident. Henrik has not met him since he was a little boy, when his father, following his divorce to Henrik’s mother, moved up to his childhood village. Henrik journeys through the dark, endless forests of Northern Sweden up the desolate village Borgvattnet to investigate his father’s mysterious death. His arrival seems to set clandestine forces into motion – the door to the other side opens. Ghosts from the past cross the threshold to our world. With one single purpose, vengeance.
THE NETHERLANDS
1 . 06/05: THE SIXTH OF MAY / 06/05 (2004)/Dir: Theo van Gogh/114mins / col / dutch / english
The assassination of controversial Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn stirred up the otherwise calm waters of Dutch society. Filmmaker Theo van Gogh, the enfant terrible of Dutch culture, couldn’t pass this one by: he turned the story into a half-fictitious political thriller. It’s photographer Jim’s good luck to find himself near the scene of the assassination. Later, while looking at the photos he shot, he comes to the conclusion that there were far too many suspicious characters hanging around. Jim launches his own private investigation and gradually uncovers a sophisticated game of behind-the-scenes intrigue at the highest levels of the Dutch political scene. Soon enough, however, he’s doing everything he can merely to survive and to protect those he loves. The film skilfully combines authentic documentary footage with classic approaches to the political thriller to convey the story of a lonely journalist striving to uncover the truth as he stands against the powerful political machinery and the secret service. The cruel irony is that within a year of Fortuyn’s death, Theo van Gogh himself was murdered by an Islamic fundamentalist.
2. BARDSONGS / Birdsongs (2010)/Dir: Sander Francken/90mins / col / dutch
A plastic collector named Sahir refuses to pass judgment on fate when his son is wounded, and the outbreak of war proves him right. Young Bouba is given the task of answering the question “What is the greatest part of all knowledge?” His search leads him to love. And Sonam sets out across the Himalayas to sell his dzo, but the journey proves useful despite the fact that he doesn’t sell the animal. All three stories are presented in the form of traditional songs which intermingle in this engaging on-screen narrative. The characters are always seeking after something, thus enabling the movie to grip the viewer’s attention. These ordinary protagonists are the natural bearers of wisdom and the film systematically elevates itself above the pettiness of mundane squabbles. Instead, it concentrates on the everyday beauty of simple human existence, as well as on the similarity between various nations regardless of geographical location. “When it comes down to it, we all seem to think alike about the essence of our existence, whether you are a Hindu or a Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Jewish or anarchist, atheist or animist,” the director believes.
3. DENNIS P. / Dennis P. (2007)/Dir: Pieter Kuijpers/90mins / col / dutch
True-crime biopic about Holland’s most audacious diamond robber. The story of Dennis P, Holland’s biggest diamond thief, who walked away with the entire 20 million euros stock of an international diamond trader, using a microwave oven as a swagbag. The film explains his reasons for the heist and why he turned himself in so quickly. But at the end of the film, don’t be surprised if the whole episode turns out to be just another love story.
4. DUNYA & DESIE / Dunya & Desie In Marocco (2008)/Dir: Dana Nechushtan/90mins / col / dutch
Dunya and Desie are best friends. Both girls are 18 years old – but that’s all they have in common. Dunya is Moroccan born and bred: Ramadan, Imam and Mecca are not just foreign words to her but form an integral part of her life. Desie on the other hand is Dutch – as Dutch as cheese, clogs and tulips! When Dunya learns on her eighteenth birthday that her family has chosen a groom for her she is anything but delighted. She is to marry a distant cousin, somewhere in Morocco. Desie, on the other hand, has quite a different problem: she’s pregnant. She never knew her father, but her desire to meet him is getting stronger and stronger. When she discovers that he lives in Morocco, the two girlfriends make a snap decision to go there.
5. HOW DO I SURVIVE MYSELF? / Hoe overleef ik… mezelf? (2008)/Dir: Nicole van Kilsdonk/100mins / col / dutch
Thirteen-year old Rosa moves to Groningen. Will she survive the struggle with her new step-dad, her insecurity, and her alter ego Rooz? Thirteen-year old Rosa is a sensitive girl with a vivid imagination. But she is insecure and forced by her mother to live with a new step-father. Finding it difficult to cope within her new surroundings, Rosa creates in her mind Rooz, a brash and overly-confident version of herself. Under Rooz’s influence she begins to exhibit increasingly extreme behaviour. When she meets Neuz however, a 16-year old talented graffiti artist, she feels able to finally confront and banish her malign alter ego. And with Neuz, she also yields to her first kiss.
6. IN REAL LIFE / Het Echte Leven (2008)/Dir: Robert Jan Westdjik/84mins / col / dutch
A young director tests the extent of his girlfriend’s love. In so doing, he puts their relationship in jeopady.
Martin, a young director is making a movie called “In Real Life”. His girlfriend Simone will play the female part, while he will play the male lead (Milan). He has written the script, which tells the story of a young man who puts his girlfriend (also named Simone) through a love test, because he doubts the sincerity of her love for him. But when Simone decides to communicate with Martin only on set, through the character of Milan, he eventually discovers that all that remains of their love is this movie.
7. NIGHT RUN / Nachtrit (2006)/Dir: Dana Nechushtan/100mins / col / dutch-*/
Dennis van der Horst is a kind-hearted young entrepreneur. He lives by the rules of the street. The only people he feels any responsibility for are his brother Marco and his family, who are not very well off. When Dennis gets the chance to obtain an extremely expensive but lucrative taxi-license, he seizes it. In the presence of the manager of MOTAX, the only taxi company in Amsterdam, Dennis borrows a very large sum of money. Dennis is beside himself with joy. The hustling is over. Soon however Dennis finds out that there was a reason why it was so easy for him to obtain such a scarce license. The law is being altered, allowing competition on the taxi market. The licenses of Dennis and many of his colleagues all at once become worthless. As of that moment there is a war going on in the streets of Amsterdam. Dennis gets deeper into trouble when he finds out that he has unwittingly become part of the criminal organization behind MOTAX…
8. A FUNFAIR BEHIND THE DIKES / Pretpark Nederland (2007)/Dir: Michiel van Erp/91mins / col / dutch – Docu
A warm and amusing portrait of contemporary Holland, a country that sometimes resembles a huge national funfair. The Dutch in their hankering quest for FUN!
This first feature-length documentary by Michiel van Erp takes an entertaining and sympathetic look at The Netherlands, its occupants and their pursuit of leisure. From the Gay Pride parade, where provincial women gaze at eccentric homosexuals, to the failed launch of a new attraction at an amusement park, to the scuffles over the prized tickets for the classical music festival in Amsterdam, the contemporary Netherlands – joyous, energetic and vital – is profiled with warmth, amusement and compassion.
9. FIGNER, LAST SURVIVOR OF A CENTURY OF SILENCE / Figner, Last Survivor Of A Century Of Silence (2006)/DIr: Nathalie Alonso Casale/90mins / col / Russian – Docu-fiction
A story about the almost unknown soviet cinema through the eyes of Edgar Figner, one of the last remaining Foley Artists. A story about the mechanism of memory and about the different meanings of Silence. There is silence in the History of sound recording in the Russian cinema. There is also Silence in the social and political enclosing in which Russia remained for almost a century.
TUNISIA
1. BURIED SECRETS / Dowaha (2009)/Dir: Raja Amari/91mins / col / arabic
Aicha, Radia and their mother live removed from the world in the underground servant’s quarters of a deserted mansion. The precarious balance of their daily life is shaken by the arrival of a young couple who move into the main house. A bizarre cohabitation settles between the couple and the three women who decide not to make their presence known to these unexpected neighbors. They cannot leave their hiding place as it conceals secrets buried for years. But Aicha, the youngest sister, is attracted by the newcomers.
TURKEY
1. BROUGHT BY THE SEA / Denizden gelen (2010)/Dir: Nesli Çölgeçen/107mins / col / turkish / english
Halil who was forced by his father to be policeman causes the death of an African immigrant during his duty. Halil is captured into his inner world because of his guilty conscience, suicide attempt and bad relationship with his father. Meanwhile, Jordan’s mother is killed in an accident in Dalyan, while they are trying to cross over to Greece. Dalyan was Jordan’s last stop before meeting with his father. It is also the place where Jordan’s life crosses with the life of Halil. From his mother’s death, Jordan’s life is in Halil’s hands, Halil trusts Jordan with his life. Jordan helps Halil to get his life in a new direction. Their friendship starts off badly but ends with love and compromise.
2. PIANO GIRL / Deli Deli Olma (2009)/Dir: Murat Saracoglu/95mins / col / turkish
After the Russian ’93 War between Russia and the Ottoman Empire, the Molokan community, a part of the Russian nation, are forced to migrate to Kars in eastern Anatolia. Among the migrating families is Mi?ka’s (Tar?k Akan) family. Mi?ka grows old in Kars and now operates the only mill in the village. However, he has to struggle with financial difficulties after modern machines start replacing traditional methods. In the meantime, the cranky old woman of the village, Popuç (?erif Sezer), hates Mi?ka and does not want him in the village. Popuç lives with her son Semistan (Levent Tülek), daughter-in-law Figan (Zuhal Topal) and three grandchildren. However, the smallest and most wayward of her granddaughters, Alma, befriends the old Mi?ka. Alma will help two elderly people question their histories and reveal their big secrets.
3. ZEPHYR / Zefir (2010)/Dir: Belma Bas/93mins / col / turkish
Standing on a hilltop in the Turkish countryside, you would assume eleven-year-old Zephyr is staring boldly at the future; in fact, all she cares about is the past. Indifferent to the immense beauty that surrounds her, Zephyr’s thoughts are punctuated by departures.Her mother, Ay, a globetrotting activist, has carved deep holes in her daughter’s emotional stability owing to her frequent absences. Left to the care of her stoic grandparents, Zephyr struggles with an unremitting sense of loss. With no father, and starved increasingly of her mother’s attention, she is stuck in pre-teen limbo, apprehensive of womanhood and unsure of her fledgling identity. At times, Zephyr seems willfully unfeeling. Friendships are shied away from and responsibilities shirked; she is constantly impressionable and plagued by insecurity. The only thing that comes full circle in Zephyr’s rickety world is the procession of day into night, imbuing this haunting film with a quietly hypnotic rhythm. Will her mother ever show up? Zephyr is devastated by a false alarm, a young horticulturalist she sees at a distance. Unable to deal with the reality of her longing, Zephyr finds refuge in a sequence of dreams. She conjures images of her mother as smiling and supportive, but the audience sees something starker, an unsettling projection of a child’s loneliness. Sadly, Zephyr’s vision remains chimerical, until one day something happens….Building on a coming-of-age story, director Belma Bas chooses the perfect moment to lift the lid on Zephyr’s psyche. What follows is both gripping and unexpected. Zephyr’s failure to develop any adult emotions, including the capacity for guilt, means there is no telling what she might do. Far more complex than its simple structure suggests, Zephyr is a mesmerizing mood piece that captures the inner life of a troubled child.
4. MY LETTER TO PIPPA / Letter Pippa’ya (2010)/Dir: Bingöl Elmas/60mins / col / turkish – Docu
My Letter to Pippa is a road movie: The director wants to take the peace torch Diamond Bingham from the young Ital-ian artist Pippa Bacca, who in a wedding dress, attempted to hitchhike from Rome to Jerusalem. She was raped and assassinated a few kilometers to the east of Istanbul. The tragedy became a national affair. Political leaders, bureau-crats, intellectuals and the media all the while provoking the wrath of a large Expressed reactions to their part of society who reproaches them for their Indifference in the face of the repetition of the same act on Thousands of the country’s female Citizens. Bingöl decides to undertake the journey from the spot where the Italian fell up until the Syrian border. But she will wear a black wedding dress. Hitchhiking through the countryside with her subjective camera, she seeks to engage with the Representatives and representations of notions like the machismo and violence and to make a place for herself as a woman in the very male world of truck drivers. The end product is a documentary that defies expectations. Bingol is not angry, she is not dark, she does not reprimand. She is bright, sincere and at times even humorous as she negotiates that thin line between trying to make sense of what is, and building hope for what might be.
5. COSMOS / Kosmos (2010)/Dir: Reha Erdem/122mins / col / turkish
Kosmos is a thief who works miracles. He arrives in this timeless border town from the wilds weeping, as though a fugitive. No sooner is he there than he rescues a small boy from drowning in the river, and is recognized as a man who works miracles. Kosmos, is a rather uncommon person. He never appears to eat nor sleep. His single form of nourishment is the granulated or lump sugar he consumes by the fistful. One of his more striking skills is the ability to scale the tallest trees with uncommon agility. He is also frank in declaring his wish that startles the townspeople: He is looking for love. Soon Kosmos and Neptun, the teenager sister of the rescued boy, grow closer in the most bizarre of ways: imitating the screech of birds in trees and on rooftops.
6. THERE / Orada (2009)/Dir: Hakki Kurtulus, Melik Saraçoglu/91mins / col / Turkish
Orada (There) tells the 24-hour story of a Turkish family. After his mother?s suicide, Mazhar, who was exiled to France for 12 years, comes back to Istanbul. The reunion with his sister Neslihan is painful. After the funeral, they decide to find and tell their father about the death of their mother. Since their separation, their father Erol lives confined on an island. They reveal their unspoken secrets during their discussion, in which they don’t hesitate to blame each other and confess their past mistakes.
7. LOVELORN / Gönül yarasi (2005)/Dir: Yavuz Turgul/138mins / col / turkish
Idealist elementary school teacher Nazim (named after the great communist poet Nazim Hikmet) retires and returns home to Istanbul, after a 15 year term in the poor, forgotten Kurdish-Alevite village in Eastern Turkey. Politely ignored by his children who secretly despise him since he chose his ideal over his family long ago, he begins a new (night) life as a taxi driver. There he meets a fallen single mother who works as a “singer” in a sleazy night club. He takes the mother and her daugther in to protect them from the stalker ex-husband, falls in love with her, and the drama unfolds.
8. THE GOAL OF MY LIFE / Ask tutulmasi (2008)Dir: Murat Seker/90mins / col / turkish
U?ur Yi?it is a salesman and fanatic Fenerbahçe fan. P?nar is a successful but headstrong woman who works in a insurance company. Both are under pressure from their families to marry and settle down. U?ur’s and P?nar’s mothers who are close friends, decide to match them together. However, U?ur and P?nar meet for the first time by chance in a traffic accident when U?ur crashes his car into P?nar’s, and they develop an intense rivalry. Their parents arrange a series of meetings between the two and they eventually fall in love. As everything is going smoothly, they break up when one of U?ur’s “totems” over a football match results in a fight between him and P?nar’s father. P?nar who is asthmatic, becomes very sick and is taken to hospital. P?nar’s boss, Burçaslan who is obsessed with her, tries to threaten and then bribe U?ur to leave the city for a sum of money, but he refuses. P?nar’s parents inform U?ur about her condition and he rushes to the hospital. U?ur and his friends decide to do a grand “totem” over P?nar’s health. P?nar returns to good health and then she and U?ur get married in the end.
9. TWO LINES / Iki Çizgi (2008)/Dir: Selim Evci/93mins / col / turkish
Mert and Selin live two lives, one at daytime and one at night, imprisoned in a monotonous everyday life, where they each in their own way are observers of the world around them. Mert uses his days to photograph incidental passers-by, while Selin is a withdrawn business woman. But slowly the outside world crowds in on them, first when someone breaks into their apartment while they sleep and later when they decide to take the important step of entering the world, daring to go on a car trip to the south.
Two Lines explores this collision between Turkish traditions and Western values and how this becomes an increasing problem in matters of sex, identity and freedom. The “bildungsroman” structure of the travelogue as we know it is exchanged with a voyage into the great unknown, where the protagonists are two people who ought to be close but rather appear as strangers. Towards the end of the film, one question especially is left hanging: will this trip bring the two closer or pull them more apart than ever?
UKRAINE
1. MY WIDOW’S HUSBAND / Cholovik moyei vdovy (2010)/Dir: Leonid Horovyts/83mins / col / russian
This is a funny story based on operetta by Franc Lehar, which happened in a small country in the middle of Europe. This country was so small that its own goverment always forgets its name. Everything starts when a great man, billionaire Albert Kastandi dies. He has left all his wealth not for his own wife Anna Kastandi, but for a man who will became her new husband. The bridegrooms from the whole world are arriving to that small country. And the race for the beautiful widow’s hand, precisely for the big devise, starts.The local mafia boss Jonathan Atkinson is interested in that device too, because Albert Kastandi owed for him few millions…But it is not all, the biggest tumble in this story brings an American guy John Smith who came there to marry a girl he met in the internet.
UNITED KINGDOM
ANOTHER YEAR / Another Year (2010)/Dir: Mike Leigh/129mins / col / english
Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter. Family and friendship. Love and warmth. Joy and sadness. Hope and despair. Companionship. Loneliness. A birth. A death. Time passes…..
U.S.A.
1. SOMEWHERE / Um Lugar Qualquer (2010)/Dir: Sofia Coppola/98mins / col / English / Italian
You have probably seen him in the tabloids: Johnny Marco drives around in a Ferrari and has a constant stream of girls and pills when he feels like having a night in. Comfortably numbed, Johnny drifts along. Then, his 11-year-old daughter Cleo (Elle Fanning) from his failed marriage arrives unexpectedly at the Chateau Hotel and he is forced to confront his life.
2. THE TAQWACORES / The Taqwacores (2010)/Dir: Eyad Zahra/84mins / col / english
Yusef, a first-generation Pakistani engineering student, moves off-campus with a group of Muslim punks in Buffalo, New York. His new “un-orthodox” house mates soon introduce him to Taqwacore- a hardcore, Muslim punk rock scene that only exists out west. As the seasons change, Taqwacore influences the house more and more. The living room becomes a mosque during the day, while it continues to host punk parties at night. Ultimately, Yusef is influenced by Taqwacore too, as he begins to challenge his own faith and ideologies. The Taqwacores deals with the complexities of being young and Muslim in modern-day America.
3. WINTER’S BONE / Winter’s Bone (2010)/Dir: Debra Granik/100mins / col / english
17 year-old Ree Dolly (Jennifer Lawrence) embarks on a mission to find her father after he uses their family house as a way of securing his bail and disappears without a trace. Faced with the possibility of losing her home and being turned out into the Ozark woods, Ree challenges her outlaw kin’s code of silence and risks her life to save her family.
VENEZUELA
1. A DAY IN ORANGE / Dia Naranja (2009)/Dir: Alejandra Szeplaki/87mins / col / spanish
Three women from different cities in Latin America, they simultaneously face the same challenge: an unexpected pregnancy. They do not know each other, but a golden and invisible thread links their lives. Their stories cross-relate and meet in different points, despite the distance. Each one in her own city, culture, and personal environment, will walk the streets, traversing fantasies, fears, desires and joys, looking for a door towards their new life, with as much glam our as they possibly can. A movie with many exhilarate and dramatic situations presented in an impeccable frame, driven by fashion, music, and a very feminine and sophisticated touch. Three accents, three colors, three kinds of sound, three cities. A movie as mandatory for women as wearing make-up.
TOTAL : 44 COUNTRIES – 125 FILMS
8th CHENNAI INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL Photo Gallery
