Festival films

Sasha Gordic is the 19-year-old Junior Marksmanship Champion of Yugoslavia. His hero is his older brother, Igor. In his youth, Igor rose to the title of World Marksmanship Champion. However, his experience in the war in Croatia and Bosnia has left him scarred. Returning home, Igor fell victim to his former friend, Neske, an affluent drug dealer. Igor is now a desperate heroin addict, completely under Neske’s thumb. Sasha watches his brother’s ignoble decline, as Igor suffers all kinds of disrespect at the hands of Neske and his thugs. Days before the World Championship, forced to interrupt his training and threatened by the same people that torment his brother, Sasha decides to take matters into his own hands.

I found her interesting and unbelievably accurate. But I still failed to figure out my subject. I jumped on my 50cc motorbike, equipped with my DV. I was determined to ask, face to face, via my DV, whether God could please grant me permission to film her. While I was on my way, I was caught in a traffic jam. People gathered at a feast and banquet tables took over a large part of the road. My camera did not capture any god..

In Actress, Stanley Kwan and his actress Maggie Cheung set out in search of actress Ruan Ling-yu, China’s answer to Greta Garbo and one of that country’s most highly regarded silent film stars. The film is a compelling glimpse into not only the brief life of its subject –Ruan Ling-yu committed suicide at age 25– but also the early years of Chinese filmmaking. Kwan obviously holds the memory of Ling-yu in high regard, having lovingly recreated what is known of her tragic personal life at the time. In a unique twist on the standard biopic, Kwan uses archival footage from the actress’ six surviving films and even goes so far as to have the players step out of their character from time to time, to discuss what Ling-yu meant to them and to the history of silent films in China.

Addiction is surrounded by hypocrisy and denial, according to Rodriguez. The myth that addiction is just lack of willpower only serves to maintain the phenomenon: victims are burdened by shame, guilt and self-hatred. In her film, Rodriguez shows that a drug addict, someone who is a failure in the opinion of society, is not really much different from someone who is successful and leads a «normal» life. Alix lives on the street and is a heroin addict. Digna is a talented photographer who is about to break through. She has a house and a good relationship. The place where she finds the inspiration for her work is the same one where Alix gets her drugs. However different the two women may seem, when they meet they turn out to be the two sides of the same coin...

Fifteen-year-old Sammy has lived with her older brother Jakob since their prematurely senile father was institutionalized. The siblings have not heard from their mother in ages, so Jakob provides for them by trading in substandard meat. Due to their situation, Jakob was forced to accept a tremendous amount of responsibility and burden at a very early age. As a result, he has forgotten his own dreams and lives only to protect his little sister. Sammy has always found their relationship reassuring, but things change when she begins to wake up to her sexuality and realizes that members of the opposite sex find her attractive. Feeling the need to free herself of her brother’s possessive love, she becomes increasingly provocative towards boys at school and Jacob’s friends, finally seducing the father of her best friend...

Loukas runs a small publishing house of poetry books. He’s broke and struggling to get by. His assistant, Marios, a dreamer, urges Loukas to publish the poems of a friend of his, but meanwhile Loukas has discovered another young and promising poet, Ghoghos, in whom he believes. Loukas’ printer demands to be paid in cash and suggests that Loukas publish another, more commercial book, that will surely sell. However, Loukas has a low opinion of this specific literary genre, regardless of its commercial potential.

A young man from Komotini falls in love with Aishe, a Muslim girl. He met her in a Thessaloniki hospital where he had gone to visit a friend. He didn’t know that the girl he met and immediately fell in love with was a Muslim from Komotini and that her father was a wealthy and fanatic Muslim. When he finds out he decides to live with her. The young couple considers leaving Komotini and moving to Thessaloniki or Athens. They have decided that they will each keep their religion. When their love affair becomes known, Alexandros’ father and the Bishop pressure him to persuade Aishe to convert to Christianity. At the same time, the Turkish Consul in Komotini and Aishe’s father and brothers pressure her, threaten her and coerce her to make Alexandros a Muslim.

A man, who has been betrayed by his wife, has isolated his daughter in a villa. In this way, he believes that he will protect her from falling in love and being left as he was by her mother...

Tomokawa, a notoriously lazy policeman, spends his days teasing his friend Sukemasa, a retarded boy, cycling through the city and having affairs with married women. One day, he meets Yoko, a 15-year-old who offers to go to bed with him for money. The policeman becomes infatuated with her. Before long, the two discover that they have lots of things in common: Sukemasa is Yoko’s brother, their mother was one of Tomokawa’s former lovers, and Yoko’s grandfather had tattooed a one-winged male phoenix on Tomokawa’s back. According to a Chinese proverb, a one-winged bird represents a sacred vow between a man and a woman. Tomokawa tells Yoko that his bird needs a mate in order to be able to fly...

Georgia, the Soviet Union, 1937. Two boys, a Greek and a Georgian, meet and become friends. From their carefree, everyday routine and the calm, humorous life of the small neighborhood, emerges the tragedy of the period with the persecution of the Greeks, who were exiled and imprisoned. The film takes us back in time, as we follow these two young souls as they seek their own answer to the present-day question «What is homeland?»

The lives of Julio and Tenoch, like the lives of most 17-year-old boys, are ruled by their hormones, their friendship, and their headlong rush into adulthood. At a family celebration, they meet Luisa, the 28-year-old wife of Tenoch’s cousin. In an attempt to seduce her, they fabricate a plan about a road trip to an imaginary beach paradise called Boca del Ciel (Heaven’s Mouth). To their surprise, Luisa calls them soon after and asks to come along for the ride. She is facing her own struggles –ones that are far more serious than Julio and Tenoch’s adolescent yearnings– and is hoping that the trip will provide the much needed space to heal. On the road, a subtle competition for her affections is ignited between the two boys, unspoken jealousies turn into a battle that exposes the fragility of their friendship, and soon none of them are speaking to each other. But when they reach the coast, they discover that Boca del Ciel exists after all...

Anna Castelano is packing up the home that belonged to her family on a Greek island. She is considering putting it up for sale. However, in these familiar surroundings, she is revisited by memories of her own past and that of her Sephardic-Jewish family. Anna has not yet got over the death of her husband Max. She spends the summer on the island, which has become her second home, trying to come to terms with her solitude. For the first time, she opens the family’s iron chest. Memories and ghosts rise up, with whom she cooks, dances and picks figs. She finds old telegrams relating to the fate of her grandmother Anna. She also discovers the diary of another Anna, her father’s first love. But the present also makes itself felt. Anna meets Nikola. He is considerably younger than her and does odd jobs around the island...

A documentary about the National Greek Minority living in Albania, this is the first film ever to be made on this subject. Through the poetry, legends, music and polyphonic songs of Northern Epirus, the film traces the history of «apeke» Hellenism (Greeks living «on the other side») from antiquity to the present day. It is a chronicle of the struggle waged to preserve the Greek language and Orthodox religion, as well as of the harsh present-day reality of the desolate homesteads, left behind by the young people who have all fled to Greece. Filming began in 1991 and ended in 2000, and took place in all parts of Albania where there is a Greek minority (Gjirokaster, Delvine, Sarande, Himare, etc.), during different seasons of the year and under extremely adverse conditions due to the lack of roads, accomodation and, above all, safety.

Astero, the poor servant girl of the wealthy landowner Mitros, is in love with Thymios, her master’s son. Disapproving of the love between the young couple, Mitros sends Astero to the winter sheep pens. There, the rich shepherd Thanos sees Astero bathing naked in the river, falls in love with her and asks Mitros for her hand in marriage. However, shortly before her wedding, Astero goes mad and runs off into the mountains. Thymios finds her, makes her well, and order in the realm of love is reinstated. The film was selected by the 1959 Berlin Film Festival.

The life and work of the Kastoria-born poet Athanassios Christopoulos, an unknown but important figure of neo-Hellenism, who lived during the 18th century, mostly in the Principalities of the Danube. He came from a poor family and, leading an almost ascetic life as a young man, he succeeded in enriching his mind with learning which was unheard of at the time and rising to the highest ranks of office. A political writer, philosopher, doctor, legislator, Supreme Court justice, translator of ancient texts, man of letters and playwright, he went down in the history of Modern Greece as primarily a master craftsman of verse and a lyrical poet. The film follows in the poet’s footsteps, visiting the place where he lived and worked, in an attempt to shed light on the unknown aspects of this multifarious personality, while at the same time illustrating the sociopolitical conditions of the time.

Nine characters, a host of parallel incidents and the manner in which they are interwoven in the course of a warm summer night. A six-year-old boy runs away from home to explore what goes on in the world during a summer night. He discovers a magical city and meets people who are totally different from the ones he sees during the day.

An inexperienced young adventure-lover, becomes the key to the unfolding of an ancient mystery, when he joins a group of fearless explorers in search of the mythical city of Atlantis. The naive, but forceful, chartographer and linguist Milo Thatch, dreams of completing the research begun by his grandfather, a famous explorer. When new evidence is revealed regarding the location of Atlantis, an eccentric billionaire decides to finance the expedition, giving things a whole new twist. Milo leads Captain Rourke and his team to the kingdom that lies at the bottom of the sea, but when they get there, what they see falls short of their expectations. Milo will try and explain what’s gone wrong...

As Nasuhi is returning to his homeland which he left years ago, his young nephew Selim is heading out to a new life. Olga is a young Russian girl, who has run away from home to search for her missing father, a sea captain. She thought he was in Istanbul, but now finds out that he has moved to Sydney, so she tries to get together the money to go to Australia. Nasuhi finds Olga beaten up after her first attempt at prostitution. Together, Nasuhi, Selim and Olga set out for Alacati, the Aegean town that Nasuhi left 50 years ago. The olive grove and stone house that Selim has inherited is the only home Nasuhi has. For Selim, settling in the USA is his only dream. Selim has to make a decision between selling his inheritance in Turkey or giving it to Nasuhi, who desperately needs to find his roots.