ΑΡΙΣΤΟΥΡΓΗΜΑΤΑ ΤΩΝ ΤΕΛΕΥΤΑΙΩΝ ΧΡΟΝΩΝ

Set in 1970s Ethiopia, "Teza" tells the story of a young Ethiopian as he returns from West Germany a postgraduate. The young Anberber comes back to a country at the height of the ColdWar and under the Marxist regime of Mengistu Haile Mariam. Working in a health institution, he witnesses a brutal murder and finds himself at odds with the revolutionary gangsters running the country. He is ordered by the regime to take up a post in East Germany and uses this opportunity to escape to the West until the Berlin Wall falls and Ethiopia’s military regime is overthrown. Now aged 60, Anberber finally returns to his home village. Although he finds comfort from his ageing mother, he feels alienated from those around him by his absence from home for so long and is disillusioned and haunted by his past.

Three women travel to a distant place to do welfare work. They live with the unprotected, listening and helping them. Cohabitation becomes more complex as they get to know each other. Their relationship with the others, with the community, is also difficult. But, as days go by, they will start to meld into the human landscape surrounding them. They will become a part of the mystery of the Other.

The requiem of a common journey composed by the heroes themselves: Hayuta and Berl, an Israeli elderly couple, the last of the Romantics, fail to adjust to the modern age. They live in a small appartment, surrounded by memorabilia – the remains of a lifetime. They stand for a generation of intellectuals who dreamed of better days. The society they live in will soon collapse – and so will their aging bodies. Alienated and miserable, they feel detached from an ever-changing world. A touching portrait of an era, filmed in a delicate fashion, demonstrating excellence in the use of the language of the medium. The couple’s journey towards the end brings to the fore virtues and morals undermined by rapid social changes.

Juan, Sarah – who’s dressed as a boy – and Samuel, all of them only 15 years old, take off from Guatemala to reach “El Norte”, i.e. the mythical USA, via Mexico. On the way there, they meet Chauk, an Indian of the same age, who hasn’t papers nor speaks Spanish. That the four of them are tough does not mean that they are fully aware of what they are proposing to do – and it is this naivete, and not immaturity, that ultimately allows them to make the journey and escape the traps along the way. Diego Quemada-Diez knows very well that his story has been told before, so he takes his time. He provides the children with the space they need, and gives his characters definite form and emotions. The film’s grainy images become the imprint of the dust on the children’s faces, the danger in front of them becomes tangible – and terrifying. It takes courage to make such a journey and Quemada-Diez establishes himself, with his debut, as fearless.

Along with the protagonist Lena, we are wheeled into a Russian corrections class that is made up of teenagers who are either physically or psychologically challenged. Lena ultimately proves she is much more than her myopathy, waging a war against ignorance and prejudice, and learning the hard way that discrimination does not discriminate and cannot be evaded. Based loosely on the novel of the same name by St. Petersburg psychologist Ekaterina Murashova, Corrections Class is an indictment against the stale school system and the hypocrisy of Russian society in general, but also a celebration of youth and its thrills and struggles.

A worker returns home after many years. He reunites with his ex-wife and his sick son, and meets his daughter-in-law and his grandson for the first time. The film, set against the backdrop of a sugarcane plantation in Colombia, gives a taste of Colombian rural life by building its plot around a family struggling for survival. The dialogue is minimal, the pace is slow, and the characters seem to be emotionally detached until they finally buckle under the weight of relentless hardships. First-time director Cesar Acevedo tells a simple story about modern-day Colombian society with a mixture of realism and symbolism.

A visually compelling look behind the doors of a giant textile factory in India, exploring the meaning of modern day labor, exploitation and the human cost of mass production in our globalized world. Moving through the corridors and bowels of the enormous and disorientating structure, the camera takes the viewer on a journey to a place of dehumanizing physical labor and intense hardship, generating cause for thought about persistent pre-industrial working conditions and the huge divide between first world and developing countries.

Α declaration of love to those who left and those who stayed in a society at the edge of the world, and an alternative, insider’s story of the colonial past of a “civilized” country, through the eyes of a teenager. Elle Marja, 14, is a reindeer-breading Sámi girl. Exposed to the racism of the 1930s and race biology examinations at her boarding school, she starts dreaming of another life. To achieve this other life she has to become someone else and break all ties with her family and culture.