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- A young trans woman in Barcelona deals with her transition, dating and daily life.
- Claire and Kevin both attend a French village school. They are in the same class, CE2, for children aged eight and nine. Claire is the target of constant bullying by Kevin and his friends, and this is even starting to get violent. It seems very difficult to do anything about it. Reporting it to the teacher or parents often backfires. When her mother finally takes action, it becomes clear that Kevin is facing a complicated, unsafe situation at home. Against all expectations, a friendship arises between the two children, and their two families come to understand one another better.
- Before his death in 1932, a monk created his own camera in one of the most isolated places in the world. 90 years later, a filmmaker discovers and reconstructs the found footage.
- A broken body in a white dress, lying lifeless in a swaying soya field. The image of this motionless body lends an extra charge to everything that follows. Marcheti follows three protagonists in turn. They don't know one another, but are all in some way connected through Madalena. Luziane, a club hostess, knocks on her door for money. Wealthy Cristiano inspects the vast expanse of soya fields for his demanding father. Trans woman Bianca and her girlfriends divide Madalena's things between them while reminiscing. Marcheti shot the film in the agrarian region where he grew up, capturing with great visual flair this largely unfilmed rural part of Brazil. A place where big agricultural machinery crawls monster-like across the landscape and the farthest corners are known only to drones. A world that can also take on a spooky aspect - now and then, Marcheti inventively gives an eerie twist to even the most everyday scene. Madalena is above all a window on a world that is getting out of control. But Marcheti is also clearly making a statement about his country, which has the highest rate of murder of transgender people in the world. A plea for empathy, rather than pity.
- Naomi, a student dropout, only believes in things he can touch. However, when he really wants to touch someone, he recoils. As is the case when he befriends Maki, a happy-go-lucky young man who lives with Midori, a blind woman who dreamily expounds about places she has never been. When Midori becomes seriously ill, Maki and Naomi send her tapes from an imaginary trip around the world. Their relationship becomes more intimate whilst recording, but they only dare engage in rough, painful horseplay.
- Director Jonás Trueba captures the spirit of a group of teens in Spain in an empathic, compelling, and moving way. In 2016, Trueba asked the teens to participate in a five-year project, in which they recreated situations from their lives. They talk about their insecurities, wanting to be accepted, loneliness, and what they are supposed to do with their lives. They demonstrate against school privatisation, debate politics and, like many adults, worry about the planet's future.
- The philosopher Edmund Burke has fled London, debt collectors and a ramping midlife crisis to go on a grand tour of the Alps to rewrite his book on the Sublime in this 18th century road movie.
- Tachibana Ayako and Keisuke became darlings of the YouTubeverse due to their cute videos, which mainly she makes but he gets all the credit for. As if that wasn't enough, Keisuke also cheats on Ayako - watching happy videos of them together while doing the dirty with the other woman. But Ayako will get her credit, and her revenge.
- Exploring the state of depression among the current citizens on Hong Kong as China consolidates its power over the metropolis.
- A girl wakes up after a car crash. Her younger brother has disappeared. As she promised him, she boards a cargo ship to find a new life. Then the shady Gábor crosses her path. A surreal trip on the fragile edge of life and death.
- My Friend Fela provides a new perspective on the Nigerian musician Fela Kuti, in order to counter the most often portrayed narrative of Fela "as an eccentric African pop idol of the ghetto", according to director Joel Zito Araújo. The complexity of Fela's life is unravelled through the eyes and conversations of his close friend and official biographer, the African-Cuban Carlos Moore. As the documentary unfolds, it reveals the many influences and forces that shaped Fela's extraordinary life: from the relationship he had with his mother to his many and problematic relationships with women, from his ties with his spiritual advisor Professor Hindu to his mutually influential encounters with African Americans. By placing Fela's personal history in a pan-African context, the film becomes not only a portrait of one man but also of a pan-African generation.
- « Set in the confines of an impoverished Cairo neighborhood, a community's everyday life is threatened by the ruthless rhythms of Tanneries, rotary driers crushing animal skin, hazards of poisonous waste water, Tahyea desperately clings to her brother, Saqr, whose only dream is to escape »
- While the matriarch of the Bechtani clan wants to clear out the family land and sell it, her son and granddaughter live within nature in a fully mystical way, paying heed to coincidences and signs that announce a coming social revolution.
- A young chauffeur investigates the disappearance of a client. He is aided by his Italian teacher, a homeless estate agent, and an artist who uses random stock photos to illustrate her dreams. Everything seems like a clue in this slightly absurdist world, but to what?
- In artist Su Hui-yu's signature style, a moody slow-motion pan captures a wild, glitter-scattered, blood-splattered orgy during the Tang dynasty. The film is an invocation of scenes from 1985 Taiwanese cult film Tang Chao Chi Li that only existed in the screenplay, unfilmed until now due to what can only be imagined as budgetary restrictions and censorship pressures during the Martial Law era. Presented without narrative context, the orgiastic murder scene plays out like an unsettling nightmare.
- The story of finding a place to put down roots when life's obstacles have discouraged you. Centered on the lives of Changsu and Yamabuki.
- 'As We Like It,' a reworking of Shakespeare's 'As You Like It,' tells of the love blossoming between Orlando and Rosalind, who is disguised as a man. Filmmakers Chen Hung-i and Muni Wei opted for the lovebirds to be played by women, thereby referencing Shakespeare's era when women were banned from the stage and all roles were played by men. This colorful, energetic film follows Orlando and Rosalind and three other potential couples in their search for one another in an internet-free neighborhood in the bustling metropolis of Taipei, where there is no rush and people consciously live together. Fairy-tale settings, magical meetings, cryptic messages, but also fights, kidnappings, and family feuds. The film upends the binary world, making it a loving spectacle with plenty of music and doll-like design.
- Monk Can Chen has a cloudy past, and withdraws from a temple bearing a sack of money. Innkeeper Wang Haili labours under an uneasy conscience while being haunted by his dead wife, Su Mei. Retiree Fang Yiguo has abandoned his son Shangqin, only to find out that emotional entanglements and unacknowledged family sins have unavoidable consequences.
- This compelling, playful collage film constantly ignores and challenges the rules of what film should be. Fox Maxy is fearless and averse to anything. He captures the moment in which he lives in raw, sometimes sentimental situations, and take the freedom to speak up. Time and again, activism squeezes itself forward through the background, which gives the entire film an inescapable political layer.
- As a teenager, Eisenstein signed his drawings with 'Sir Gay'. Roguish essayist Rappaport sees clear signs of his sexual preferences throughout the Russian's film oeuvre. Numerous asides illustrate how Hollywood productions likewise frequently played with nods and winks and typical motifs from gay culture.
- Brian never thought he would become a political dissident living in exile. Jenny didn't think she would develop a fear of trains. Peter was just a student wondering how best to spend his summer vacation. Eddie was sure his belief in non-violence would never waver. And yet, by the end of summer 2019, everything had changed for all of them. Hundreds of thousands - perhaps even millions - of protestors have taken to the streets of Hong Kong since early June. Sparked initially by the government's plans for a controversial extradition bill, the movement has now transformed into a broader push for greater freedoms and democracy, with anger over police brutality fuelling a cycle of violence. The protests are Hong Kong's biggest challenge to Beijing since its return to China in 1997. If We Burn looks at the movement through the eyes of Hong Kongers whose fates, like their city's future, now hang in the balance.
- A los libros y a las mujeres canto (To Books and Women I Sing) is titled after a cleverly rewritten quote from Virgil. This bold opening gesture already announces what lies at the heart of the film: the civilising role of women and literature. María Elorza's first feature is structured around four portraits of women and their libraries (containing more than books). While there is much admiration in the director's gaze, this documentary is the opposite of the heroic-epic narratives so characteristic of a male-centred culture: the director wants to give voice to (and sing with) the kinds of characters and stories that often remain at the margins of literature and cinema - while paying homage to the earthiness of these spirited women.
- Cities do not repeat themselves; they transmute. Some cities are created by philosophical ideas. The lively city portrayed in Terranova is made of reflections, memories of other cities, and visions of the future. It has a certain solemnity in its soundscape, without losing those strong sounds that make it unique. This particular universe that has been brought together contains many magical scenes that are filmed through a camera obscura.
- The engaging story of the Cairo Jazz Festival and a portrait of its founder Amr Salah. Running it is a risky undertaking, not only due to limited experience, but also due to the increasingly intolerant social climate in Egypt.
- As a student, the director managed to flee revolutionary Iran. Many who stayed behind did not survive. When there are renewed protests in Teheran 30 years later, she goes looking for a couple of other survivors who fled. An emotional, very personal documentary.
- The Sky Is on Fire presents a hypothetical digital ruin of a virtual Miami street. This lifeless world resonates with the monologue of a Miami resident who reflects on the desire for immortality that drives our need to capture everything in an image. A critical reflection on our hyper-mediated reality.
- A villa in Hillegersberg with a speedboat moored to his own jetty, expensive cars, lunch at Old Dutch - life smiled at criminal lawyer Géza Szegedi. Until the tax authorities came to put things straight. Penniless and without regret, he looks back at his glory years. Portrait of a colorful character who refuses to be tragic.
- Depicts the epic human complexity of the Source Family and Father Yod / Ya Ho Wa - the man formally known as James Edward Baker. Going back to the Beatnik era of the late 1950s, when Baker ran a sandal shop in Hollywood, Wells cuts, pastes, and animates a story around 'being all out of tune but in harmony.' It's a family story of communal living, Hollywood Hills health food, and a single-minded devotion to costumes, communal idylls and following things through though they've long since fallen apart.
- Near Mogulmari in the south of West-Bengal in India lies a mound known locally as Sakhisona. The stories about it are still sung by local musicians. A dig nearby recently uncovered the remains of a monastery as well as some 6th-century objects. The film shows the objects unearthed and re-enacts the stories and folklore.
- A worn-out floor, the hole underneath, a political activist, and the Ouled Sbita tribe are the protagonists in this political satire. For 23 years, the director's chair at an international art institute scratched the wooden floor. This 102cm x 120cm floor section is cut out and sent to an expropriated piece of land in Morocco. In The Hole's Journey, Ghita Skali uses sharp wit, personal stories and playful editing to touch on specific power dynamics and freedom of choice.
- Pasquale, an old crook who lost his fortune to gambling, organizes his last big heist and reunites The Wolves, a gang of North-Italian fairground operators who moonlight as thieves. The robbery of a money truck - transporting 12 million euros in cash - could be a good pension for everybody, and secure the legacy of their old-school craftsmanship.
- The expansive mountainscapes of the Andes are the basis for this new, 35mm film by Daïchi Saïto, who won the 2016 Tiger Award for Short Films with Engram of Returning. Once again propelled by the free, pulsating improvisation of saxophonist Jason Sharp, in which his heartbeat and breathing play a prominent role, the series of images slowly becomes more abstract. The end result is a hypnotic, sensory meditation on 'our' earth.
- In this film shot on 16mm, Sanzgiri traces lines and lineages of ancestral memory, poetry and his history. A search for solidarity in the sounds and colours of a spontaneous movement in Delhi led by Muslim women, an Iqbal Bano song, images of B.R. Ambedkar - a radical anti-caste Dalit intellectual - all revolving around a letter addressed to a distant relative. Seeking to reclaim the past from erasure, and provide a journey towards a potential future.
- Sensitive and refined drama in which experiences from the puberty of a female teacher and a piano student reflected in the world of the younger generation they have contact with. Ryo is a young teacher who, unlike her colleagues, does not adopt an authoritarian attitude to the adolescents she has in her care. She does not realise at first that, by doing this, she is putting herself at risk. The 14-year-olds feel misunderstood by the adults who insensitively snuff out their young ambitions. When their frustration grows, the adolescents turn into secretive and hard-bitten kids. As a result, Ryo is thrown back in time and confronted with her own dark past, in which she resisted the insensitive world of her superiors. Then she meets Koichi, a man she knows from her studies. He was a talented pianist in his youth, but his ambitions were also made impotence by an adult. Now he works for the local electricity company and he has allowed himself to be persuaded to give piano lessons to the son of a colleague. It becomes clear that Ryo and Koichi have shared experiences that they can only now relive and then come to terms with. Fourteen is an atmospheric and subtle drama in which two different generations mirror each other in the most vulnerable period of their lives
- Finding inspiration in Kafka's short text The Silence of the Sirens, in which he reinterprets Homer's deadly songstresses as silent apparitions, Diana Vidrascu has created the mesmerising portrait of Céline, a young actress from Martinique living in Paris and struggling to find her place in the world. As she returns to her roots in order to explore her identity, we take the trip with her in this intimate story of origins and destinations.
- A frame narrative about a curious bunch of Rotterdammers and the 'fairy-tale' of their lives. This is the story of two women and the people and things they encounter. Interviews with a high percentage of nonsense, credibly acted scenes, coincidence, dry humor and erotic elements: this Rotterdam does not bore for a moment.
- A poetic and visual portrait of the old Polish woman Jadwiga Kubis Waslicka. Her life coincided with the 20th century. The great movements of history, such as communism, capitalism and fascism, meant she had to roam Europe from Poland via Germany and the United Kingdom to Holland. Now she's back in her homeland, in Warsaw. She is old. Her body is decaying and she's basically waiting until the angels come to fetch her. The filmmaker is aware of Jadwiga's old age and approaching demise, but he also sees much beauty in her appearance. He juxtaposes her wrinkled face with the guilty Polish landscape. At the most intimate of moments, he does not look away and continues to seek beauty in fragility. The woman no longer leaves her house, but the filmmaker does. He brings images and sounds back that tell us things about her life, but without words. Images that mix the suffering from the past with the suffering now.
- Filmed after the lockdown caused by COVID-19, Flowers blooming in our throats is an intimate, poetic portrait of the fragile balances that govern everyday life in a domestic setting. The artist films a group of her friends in their own homes, performing various small actions in accordance with her instructions. Giolo chooses to walk a shifting line where gestures remain ambiguous, expressing a kind of violence that is not immediately recognisable.
- The Angolan Civil War still casts its shadow across the life of a young widow. The camera wanders through the rooms in her house, recording everyday objects and activities, while she describes how the war entered the family in a poetic monologue.
- Abigail Child uses home-movie aesthetics to reconstruct a life in a time when film still had to be invented. Based on diary notes by Mary Shelley (1797-1851) and her stepsister Claire, she filmed the problems of love, pregnancies, babies who died and the written work of these women, who were very emancipated for their day. Child focuses primarily on Mary's intense love affair with Percy Shelley in the years when she was also writing her classic gothic novel, Frankenstein (1818). The form of A Shape of Error is playful and adventurous, with split screen shots filled with doublings and mirrors, chronological facts in inter-titles and Mary's poetic voiceover. For Child, the authenticity of the home video is a way to create intimacy. At the same time, her film is a self-reflective investigation of this authenticity, as she previously did in The Future Is Behind You. A Shape of Error is the first part of a trilogy about women and ideology, in which Shelley's biography tackles Romanticism.
- A crazy and diabolical homage to Invocation of My Demon Brother, the legendary cult film by the equally legendary Kenneth Anger. The occult eroticism of Anger is translated into what is possible and what is impossible within the very strictly censored cultural life of today's Singapore.
- An experimental film that, although it is short, comprises at least three genres. It's a poetic homage to the great American poet of Howl. And a political pamphlet against the repressive censorship of Singapore. And it's also an artistic piece of pornography.
- Oliver Laxe's second feature, Mimosas, screened at IFFR in 2017. Earlier, he played the lead in Ben Rivers' experimental fiction The Sky Trembles and the Earth Is Afraid and the Two Eyes Are Not Brothers, screened at IFFR in 2015. This year, the director can again be seen in front of the camera, in Anton Corbal's debut long documentary. Having spent five years in Morocco, Laxe returns to Vilela to renovate his grandparents' dilapidated family home. Together with a small crew he films this Spanish village, hidden deep in nature, on 16mm. According to Laxe, this film-in-progress is like 'tutti frutti' - an experimental mix of images that illustrate his relationship to the village. Corbal films not only the filmmaker at work, but also the historic environment. The idyllic shots of the quiet countryside are not just for show but an essential element of what Laxe is trying to capture on film, namely the spiritual relationship between man and environment.
- How does one visualise an amorphous idea, one that has become abstract to the point of obscurity? Landscape, real and imagined, provides the backdrop for a visual narrative, while sound, intertwined with a self-narrated monologue, adds a third dimension to this specific portrayal. Newsha Tavakolian is detached from the real world and yet achingly affected by it. An experimental take on a reality intensified by the emotional flare of PMS (Premenstrual Syndrome).
- Agnès b. is a fashion designer who has also made films for twenty years. Not only fashion films that she shows in her shop, but also video diaries. She put this film together especially for the IFFR from her archive. It is a film that talks about Agnès b. as designer and person. About her sources of inspiration and views on life.
- A feast for the eye, this essay on trompe-l'oeil, deception, privileges, seductions and false freedoms. The façade of public life hides the private lives of individuals and hidden agendas. We develop new skills to test our happiness in the non-stop flow of images and information. How to live in the post-privacy age?
- In a landscape on the brink of extinction, a son and mother trek into a native cave to be revitalized. By just quietly sitting together in their humble shelter, a loving energy is shared through these two human beings' naked bodies. This personal portrait cuts deep into the vulnerable present of an ex-colonised nation transiting into the digital age. Seen from a first-person perspective, the film also explores a new possibility of storytelling.
- An Algerian is driving with his little son through Paris. He is stopped by the police, apparently because his headlamp is broken. The policemen start badgering him, the tension rises, until an outburst comes from an unexpected corner. Amin is a sensitive drama about injustice and power relationships, not just between authorities and individuals, but also between father and son.
- An attempt at mourning both personal and political futures that never arrived, organised around a broad interpretation of the trope of the ghost. We see depersonalised figures, urban ruins, consuming fires and microscopic images of decaying bodily matter; footage was shot in Washington DC, Lima and Amsterdam. Issues like failed neoliberal promises of progress, the rise of fascism, and self-image and adulthood are brought together, set to a poem that shifts between Spanish and Dutch.
- A voice-over by American psychologist Timothy Leary professes that psychedelic drugs trigger the expansion of consciousness. Meanwhile, the subtitles we read tell us about a teenager from 1990s South London who spends acid-infused weekends with a friend. Following both perspectives simultaneously is a mind-twisting exercise, but Morgan Quaintance's seamless editing evokes that firm feeling when a connection is established between two people. But just like hallucinations, teenage friendships feel like they'll last forever but rarely do.