Festival films

When Monica was born, her parents believed she was a boy.They named her Morten. In April 2002 Monica, then 22, had her body surgically corrected to make it fit her real sex.Her mother believes the alternative would have been a grave.Most of us can relate to the search for true identity.Very few have to endure surgery to attain this goal. But to experience loss, fear, joy, sorrow and lust on this journey is something we all have in common.This is an exciting and tender experience about Monica who really knows what it takes to become oneself.Monica confided to a camera during the months before and after her operation, creating a unique video-diary. Her total honesty, sense of humour, and direct way of telling things as they are will break down myths and prejudices about people in her situation.

Mixed couples from Turkey and Greece discuss their problems in an informal setting.While she waits for Tudge’s mother who is visiting from Turkey, Lefteris’ mother tells us about how the couple met. The two doors are Christianity and Islam which lead to one God; the Hellenic and Ottoman civilizations which are flourishing in the same region, as well as the two monitors which open onto the same chat room. The web brought together two of the couples and the web is where the various inserts were “remotely filmed” in order to structure aesthetically this brief narrative.

The film tells the story of Ami Ankilewitz,a 3-D animator in Israel whose bodily motion is limited to a single finger on his left hand.At birth,Ami was diagnosed with a rare form of muscular dystrophy, later diagnosed as Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA), and was predicted to survive only to the age of 6. Now, thirty years later, he leaves the woman he loves and returns to the United States to confront the childhood doctor who predicted his early demise.Along the way,he comes to terms with a major incident from his past and pursues a lifelong dream:to ride a Harley Davidson.39 Pounds of Loveis an emotional roller coaster, a fascinating,humorous and inspirational ride through life with someone who truly embodies the motto carpe diem(seize the day)...

Doug Block had every reason to believe his parents’ 55-year marriage was a good one. So he isn’t prepared when, a few months after his mother’s unexpected death, his father phones to announce that he’s moving to Florida to live with his secretary from 40 years before.Always close to his mother and equally distant from his father, he’s stunned.When the long-time family home is sold, Doug realizes that he has only a few short weeks before his father will be gone, and a lifetime of memories will be packed away forever. He grabs his camera and heads to suburban Long Island determined to learn more about his parents’ marriage and confront this stranger who is his father.Through probing conversations and the surprising discovery of 35 years of his mother’s daily diaries, he comes to terms with two parents who are far more complex and troubled than he ever imagined.

On the 15th of August 2005, Israel began the Disengagement of the Gaza Strip. In a unilateral move, decided on by the Israeli government, the Jewish settlers were removed from their homes and villages. It is one of the most significant historical events of the past few decades in the Middle East. After years of confrontation with the Palestinians, the Israeli army has earned a reputation for firmness. For the first time, it is being forced to turn its iron fist against a Jewish population. This film tracks the key events of the Disengagement over the course of five days.

Abdullah Ibrahim is a pianist, a composer, an arranger of music, bandleader and a teacher. He is considered to be the spiritual heir of Duke Ellington’s legacy, an African music icon, a symbol of change in South Africa and the embodiment of a jazz tradition that draws on its roots. In other words: Ibrahim is one of the greatest jazz musicians of our time. Ciro Capelllari’s film concentrates on Ibrahim’s life between cultures. The film starts in Capetown, the hometown he returned to. Abdullah Ibrahim is shown trying to mend the biographical and cultural wounds Apartheid inflicted. Before taking a journey back in time to his life in Zurich and New York, the film explores the effects of exile, not only in a geographical sense, but in the mind as well. Cappellari’s documentary not only delves into the effects of displacement and exile; this film serves as an introduction to Abdullah Ibrahim’s music.

In the summer of 2002, trucks appear in the Junkkonen farmyard. They have come to get the cows, to take them to the slaughterhouse. Maija and Pentti Junkkonen, the director’s parents, have yielded to the pressure of progress. They are old, and none of their children want to succeed them. The small village they live in has modern development plans. Soon, this section of rural land will become an industrial zone. At a leisurely pace, Mervi Junkkonen follows her parents as they bid goodbye to life on the farm. Idyllic 8mm footage shot by her father depicts a world that has vanished forever. In their extensive comment, the director and her parents reflect on what they are going through and discuss their thoughts. Junkkonen realises that with her generation a chapter will be closed.

What would you do if you found young children playing a game called ?Funerals? instead of ?House?? In the South African province of KwaZulu-Natal, as many as one in five children have lost their parents to AIDS, but it is not the disease or the adults that are the focus, rather the minds and hearts of the children left behind. This achingly poignant documentary explores what it’s like to grow up without a mother or father. Some of the children in this film live entirely on their own, others stay in orphanages, while some have parents who are sick and they fear will die. This unique and compelling journey chronicles an innovative process of encouraging self-expression: a diverse group of children comes together to sing and record a song about the meaning of family, home and childhood?

Greeks use cigarettes as a unit to measure distance and time. One cigarette is around 500 meters distance or 7 minutes time. We travel in five European countries, to discover, through real life stories, that health, freedom and life could be just a cigarette away from us...

A Cry for Madiom is a rare experience exposing the shockingly harsh conditions of millions of ill-fated internally displaced Sudanese. The film drops you into a remote feeding centre, near the Darfur border, and leaves you there for 24 hours. To achieve this total sensorial experience, the film is created from mostly untouched, unedited material. Vancouver-based director, Erez T. Yanuv Barzilay, uses no narration and bases the film on original footage recorded a few years ago in Ajiep, one of the hunger centres in the hard-hit famine regions of southern Sudan.?Although the situation in southern Sudan has improved a bit, it is my sincere belief that A Cry for Madiom portrays the exact same situation which existed then, and which still exists at this very moment, in many of the displaced persons camps inside Sudan. Sadly, nothing has changed and the media’s gaze has been diverted elsewhere,? says Erez.

A Decent Factory is a documentary film about globalization using Nokia as the subject. In our global economy Western companies are more and more moving their production to countries where costs are lower.This is causing cultural and moral dilemmas,because in these countries the working conditions, workers’ rights and environmental issues are often in conflict with the practices of Western countries.At the same time international investment funds are looking much closer at the ethical side of businesses. French filmmaker Thomas Balmes decided to approach this subject using Nokia. He was particularly interested in the question of whether there were some Nordic or Finnish values, a sort of softer capitalism, behind Nokia’s success.

Mrs Mukasa, the new headmistress at Masindi Secondary School, finds herself in dire financial straits. Three quarters of the students have failed to pay their school fees and the teachers have gone without full pay for three months. She is determined that all the children must pay and instigates a tough new gate policy that is supposed to catch the defaulters. But her students are equally desperate to get into school. Eddie, an orphan, tries to scrape the fees together through odd jobs and help from his brother. And Justice, a skilled dodger, crawls under the fence and tricks his teachers with a borrowed payment card to get into class.

Zico came to Iceland from Morocco to seek his fortune. After ten years running his own small business, Zico goes bankrupt. Desperate and depressed he decides to fire up his amateur team called Africa United and take them into the semi-professional third division. He calls upon immigrants all over Iceland, players from Morocco, Nigeria, Colombia, Serbia,Kosovo, Gambia and Guinea to help realize his vision.The road to success is rocky and midseason Africa United has lost all games. Τheir best player walks out and Zico decides to meet his role model in football in England for advice. Having done so, he comes back with fresh ideas on how to approach his goals in life and football.

After Innocence tells the dramatic and compelling story of the exonerated – innocent men wrongfully imprisoned for decades and then released after DNA evidence proved their innocence. The film focuses on the gripping story of seven men and their emotional journey back into society and their efforts to rebuild their lives. Included are a police officer, an army sergeant and a young father sent to prison and even death row for decades for crimes they did not commit.The men are thrust back into society with little or no support from the system that put them behind bars.While the public views exonerations as success stories – wrongs that have been righted – the film shows that the human toll of wrongful imprisonment can last far longer than the sentences served. The film raises basic questions about human rights and society’s moral obligation to the exonerated and places a spotlight on the flaws in the criminal justice system that lead to wrongful conviction of the innocent.

Agathi Chrysafi is an old lady living in a mountain village on the island of Lesvos, Greece. Her life is made up of ordinary activities, such as picking olives and wild greens, taking care of her goats and helping her son in his café.When she feels like it, she paints the inner walls of her home.The stairs, the kitchen, her bedroom, in fact the whole house is full of murals of flowers, peacocks, parrots and whatever else has stimulated her imagination. She doesn’t follow any particular artistic style, she doesn’t look at other artists’ work and she never invites anyone inside to see her paintings.“I take pride in them,” she says and when she gets bored of them, she paints over the old ones. This wonderful lady manages to express her intuition in a very personal way.

A three-part, 27-minute-long documentary, showing fragments from the life of a person who is videotaping himself: Travel: A cure for “kapsoura”, a road movie (from Meteora to Epirus) on the theme of obsessing over an unrequited love. Caesarean, an obstetrical-political exclusivity. Dusk.

She looks shyly into the camera, then lowers her eyes again. Rhaissa laughs. Laughs at what her girlfriend Fatima says about the man who will become her husband in a matter of days. He is not particularly handsome, nor does he have an abundance of “ashek,” or pride. But Rhaissa will marry him anyway.The proposal was made, her parents accepted and so she is resigned to her fate. One final time she will shepherd the goats, sing from the heights of Niger’s Aïr Mountains and be a girl.What will follow are long, calm days in her mother’s tent.The marriage ritual is governed by the unspoken rules of “Takaret,” which require that she neither speak nor leave the tent until her wedding night.We learn from people close to Rhaissa what she herself cannot say. The perspective of a young girl in her cultural context becomes the subject of this beautiful, warm film, which shows from a discreet angle a different sense of time, one with its own value system and view of love.

Generally unheralded at the time, the early 1980s hardcore punk rock scene gave birth to much of the rock music and culture that followed.There would be no Nirvana, Beastie Boys or Red Hot Chili Peppers were it not for hardcore pioneers such as Black Flag, Bad Brains and Minor Threat. Hardcore was more than music – it was a social movement created by Reagan-era misfit kids. The participants constituted a tribe unto themselves – some finding a voice, others an escape in the hard-edged music. And while some sought a better world, others were just angry and wanted to raise hell. American Hardcore traces this lost subculture, from its early roots in 1980 to its extinction in 1986.

This video documents a day in the life of pastoral nomad shepherds of the Andean plateau, a lifestyle that is rapidly becoming extinct. The Puna is a vast plateau in the Andean cordillera. This land of contrasts alternates modest valleys with barren, arid highlands. The Puna, once part of the Inca Εmpire, once a disputed territory -now shared by Argentina,Bolivia,Chile and Peru- is, in fact, a nation. The altiplano inhabitants are highly independent people, used to the harshness and isolation imposed by Mother Earth or Pacha Mama. Their rich traditions and culture have survived ages of unkind, treacherous weather and traumatic colonisation,political shifts and persecution. Perhaps partners in a secret conspiracy, the people of the regionhave learned from the Pacha Mamathat silence is a key element to their survival and the survival of their culture.

Through rare archival material and through the memories of people who were very close to Andreas Papandreou, this documentary brings to life a period of fourteen years of Papandreou’s political career as well as of Greek history. The film begins with Andrea Papandreou’s first trip to Greece, in 1953, after a thirteen-year stay in the US. This is followed by two subsequent visits, his permanent move back to Greece, which is marked by the founding of the Centre for Economic Research, his entry into politics and the unfolding of his political career. The film ends with Papandreou leaving Greece once again, after the enforcement of the military dictatorship of 21 April 1967.

A young gipsy woman named Irini, who is living on the edge of the city of Volos, narrates her story. She talks about her childhood, her dreams, and her life as a drifter.