Festival films

In 1989, the whole country watched live on television as angry crowds forced Romanian dictator Ceausescu to flee Bucharest by helicopter. In a quiet town east of the capital, sixteen years since this historic day, the owner of the local TV station invites two guests to share their moments of revolutionary glory. One is an old retiree and sometime Santa Claus, the other a history teacher who has just devoted his entire salary to his drinking debts. Together they will remember the day when they stormed their town hall shouting “Down with Ceausescu!”. But phone-in viewers dispute the claims of the heroes, who were propably drinking in the bar or making Christmas preparations rather than rebelling in the streets.

For twelve years she ignored sneers and mockery and stood up for her relationship. But perhaps that was a mistake.

In this work, the material comes from an amateur video filmed inside a coffee shop as a suicide bomber blows himself up. The only intervention I have done is to remove the image before and after the explosion leaving visible only the two seconds of the explosion, keeping only the sound present throughout the project.

Louise meets Nathan. She is able to dream again. This is also the story of her ailing brother, their mother, and the destiny of a wealthy Italian industrialist family. The story of a family that is disintegrating, an era that is ending, and a love that is beginning.

It’s a story which befalls a woman, through a question she’s asked: “Are you pregnant?” She doesn’t know, and on the spur of the moment she leaves it hanging. However that doesn’t bode well for her boyfriend, who was planning on leaving her: he winds up believing it. Try as he will to tell her he doesn’t want a child, she does nothing to terminate... because in fact she’s not pregnant. The only thing is, she can’t bring herself to tell him. She leaves things be, only to further stave off the dreaded moment of breaking that spell which draws him to her, comforts her very ill father and delights her entourage. Day by day, the fiction takes hold and nothing can seem to stop it.

Nader and Stefano: one is Egyptian but was born in Rome, the other is Italian and is his best friend. Nader’s girlfriend Brigitte is Italian too, and that’s exactly why the boy’s parents oppose their love. A week in the life of an adolescent boy who tries to flaunt the values of his family. Precariously balanced between being Arab or Italian, Nader, courageous and in love, will have to endure solitude, the streets, cold, hunger, fear and the loss of friendship, in an attempt to regain his own identity.

A young farmer named Sasha stands at the beginning of a new, happy life. The state is buying up land from small landowners. For Sasha, this is a chance to escape the potato farm he has grown tired of, and return to the city, taking along his beloved Anna, a clerk in the local land administration department. But once the deal is closed and the farm is doomed, the local villagers suddenly rise up in protest. They convince Sasha, the “boss,” to come to their aid and save the farm – the village’s only means of survival. Sasha is touched by the villagers’ eagerness to cast him in the role of a local leader and object of their love and hope. He tries his best to help the villagers. But when he puts the brakes on the transfer of the farm to the state, local officials view it as a symptom of schizophrenia, and his girlfriend takes it as his refusal to share a life in the city with her. Sasha finds himself caught up in a fight which is not his, entangled in a web of passion, pride, and irreversible actions.

A time when book possession is a crime. A scientific organization which desperately tries to find a way to protect people, and a teacher’s aide who has to carry out the most difficult mission of his life.

With archival material from early 19th century Cartagena (Spain) as his starting point, in his film Amnesialand, Stefanos Tsivopoulos combines the genres of documentary and science fiction to raise questions about images and history, collective memory and oblivion.

A black-and-white video projection with images created by visual artist Nicolas Kozakis. The text was written by philosopher and writer Raoul Vaneigem. The video was shot in Mount Athos, a mountainous peninsula in northern Greece, which is the home of many Greek Orthodox monasteries.

Mary, a 30-year-old Filipino woman, works in a village in Cyprus. She takes care of Mr. Mihalis, an 85-year-old man suffering from arteriosclerosis. Mr. Mihalis spends all day watching TV, and in particular a soap opera starring a character called Anna. It seems that he has developed an obsession with the protagonist, and he insists on calling Mary by the name of “Anna”, despite his daughter Melpo telling him off. When Mary finds an old box, she makes a significant discovery. The name “Anna” is of particular importance to Mr. Mihalis.

For the first time in her life, little Annie is faced with a true coincidence. It’s Bo, who has never met a girl before...

The film follows an unnamed character through three seemingly disparate moments in his life. With little explanation, we join him in the midst of a 15-person collective on a small Estonian island; in isolation in the majestic wilderness of Northern Finland; and during a concert as the singer and guitarist of a black metal band in Norway. Marked by loneliness, ecstatic beauty and an optimism of the darkest sort.

Fun-loving Gerda never misses her weekly appointment with her hairdresser. She always takes her friendly nature and her rubbish bag along with her. The film addresses old age, respect, and the fear of losing control of everyday life.

Part psychological thriller and part provocative character study, A Teacher explores the unraveling of a young highschool teacher, Diana, after she begins an affair with one of her teenage students, Eric. What starts as a seemingly innocent fling becomes increasingly complex and dangerous as the beautiful and confident Diana gets fully consumed by her emotions, crossing boundaries and acting out in progressively startling ways. A descent into the mind of an adult driven to break taboos against her better judgment.

Junior, a beautiful nine-year-old boy with curls, longs to straighten his hair; his fantasy of looking like a long-haired troubadour has become a fixation. His mother, Marta, exhausted from lack of steady work and single motherhood, worries about the homosexual connotations of his behaviour. Junior is caught between his mother’s anger and his grandmother’s absolute acceptance. Both women go to extremes and Junior’s process of self-discovery, complicated in and of itself, becomes imbued with confusion and guilt. Shot in the vast Caracas multi-family housing units that form a cruel tableau of thousands of families and thousands of stories, Pelo Malo is unflinchingly pragmatist, yet tender towards its protagonists. Spartan in its execution, the film portrays unique, full-blooded characters and achieves a moving and rare humanity.

Jeton, a 10-year-old boy, is sitting on the edge of a balcony on the 4th floor. Neighbors and passers-by, terrified at the sight, call the police and firefighters. But the situation quickly becomes unmanageable.

Ernesto and Helena have been married for many years. They live in an isolated estate between tobacco fields and the high mountain jungle in the northwest of Argentina. One day, Helena’s cousin Joaquin arrives. He has just been discharged from rehab, and has been sent by his family and against his will, to spend some time with his cousin and her husband. Helena and Ernesto’s marriage is going through a fragile phase, their problems with conceiving a child having plunged them into obsession and a loss of desire. This new presence is Helena’s opportunity to reinvent herself; for Ernesto it’s an infusion of oxygen. Living at close quarters will destabilize the couple and a love triangle begins to take form among the hunting, the cockfights and life in the fields. Desire can also take on the shape of a deeply felt violence.

Born and raised in an Ivory Coast township, the brothers Koroballa and Tiemogo experience the beauty and brutality of Ivorian life. Koroballa wants to escape. Not knowing that Tiemogo is following him, he sneaks into a plane’s landing gear.