FILMS A-Z 2019

83rd Street

After executing poor judgement on the job, a newbie police officer must accept his fate when accused of murder.

Tancredi Di Paola

A Jar of Nuts

Isolated in his apartment, the lonely forty-year old Giorgos meticulously devises an intricate plan to take his life after his beloved mother chokes to death on a pistachio. As the day progresses, Giorgos allows excuses, obstacles and people to hinder his final deadly leap from the balcony, completely oblivious to the true reason behind all his stalling.

Savvas Stavrou

Acta Non Verba

On October 6, 2012, at approximately midnight, a Swiss banker, Michel Yagchi, committed suicide in the basement of his house in Geneva. That evening, Michel’s entire family was abroad, travelling to Brussels to attend the graduation of Michel’s eldest son Yvann. Three years later, Yvann began investigating his father’s mysterious suicide, concurrently confronting his family and his father’s friends and colleagues.

Yvann Yagchi

ALIS UBBO

After the crisis came tourism and Lisbon's transformation. Alis Ubbo (Phoenician for safe port) follows the change in the urban landscape of the city in the last 2 years

Paulo Abreu

An Act of Terror

The true story of Virginia Christian, a 16-year-old African American girl accused of murder in the Jim Crow South.

Ashley Paige Brim

As the first time

Oscar is a photographer. He always tried to stop the time, the memories, the thoughts and he had succeeded until the illness of his wife and the digital seem to steal all forms of memory.

Emanuela Mascherini

As Time Goes by, the Man who Painted Dreams

Silvano Campeggi, aka Nano, was the last great illustrator of cinema. His posters, from Gone with the Wind to West Side Story, passing through Casablanca and Ben Hur| have made generations of spectators dream. A prolific artist| he has designed over 3,000 posters for all the major American production companies: Warner Bros, Paramount, Universal, Columbia, United Artists, 20th Century Fox. Nano crossed the 20th century with a pencil in his hand, working every day up to 95 years. This documentary is a journey into his life and twentieth-century imaginary.

Simone Aleandri

August Sun

Javier, an Argentine expat living in Europe, is back in his hometown of Buenos Aires following his father's death to help his mother, Miriam, who suffers from mental health issues.

Franco Volpi

Bet on Yourself

The story of John Reeve, an 80 year old entrepreneurial legend from war-torn England, who sailed to the Caribbean to become a cruise ship excursion mogul. John owned an island-themed nightclub in the centre of Birmingham| hosting crooners like Dusty Springfield, Liberace and Tom Jones. He intrepidly sailed across the Atlantic with no experience and no motor, crashed at least three airplanes and two boats, lived with Pygmy Indians| had his skull caved in with a 4ft iron pipe, escaped from a Grenadian revolution, and entered the '88 Winter Olympics as the US Virgin Islands bobsled team (yes, the same year as the Jamaicans). Nothing in life has ever stopped John and he is an inspiration for everyone to go out, make mistakes and make a mark on the world.

Harvey Eaton

C’mon Tigre · Behold The Man

Taking inspiration from a science fiction novel from 1969 by Michael Moorcock, the story is about a modern version of the first human being, who appears on earth as an adult child, being enthusiastic for discovering the great inebriation that freedom can give, the liberation of the body using the metaphor of dance. Something that makes you lose the brakes, makes you sweat and feel good. Then it happens that when you come into contact with other human beings who are learning like you to manage their freedom, you stumble on the concept of limit.

Marco Molinelli, Domenico Tedone

Catacombe

When his gambling debt is claimed by a match fixing syndicate, Jermaine Slagter, a professional football player from professional football’s lowest tier, must do everything to keep his life from falling apart.

Victor D. Ponten

Celeste

Hidden from the world at a crumbling estate in lush tropical Far North Queensland, Celeste anxiously reaches out to Jack| her late husband’s son, inviting him to return to the languid, sprawling family home for her much-anticipated recital. Jack’s reappearance after a long absence stirs up unsettling memories, pulling them both into a mutually precarious orbit.

Ben Hackworth

Circuit Session #002

Is a series of audiovisual films by Berlin based media artist fabian grobe in collaboration with a broad network of international artists and musicians. Vibrational expressions in space and moment.

Fabian Grobe

City of the Dead

Death is still a taboo that causes fascination and fear in equal parts. Nevertheless, there are people who face it every day in their work and have found another way to understand and cope with it. The cemetery and the funeral home in Palma are the settings for this story. City of the Dead is a discourse on death, narrated by those who have learned to live with it.

Miguel Eek

Clementine

In an unspecified Mediterranean island a boy comes across two peculiar men in striped costumes. Soon, the boy realizes that life also has two faces. It can be both an ugly war and a beautiful girl called Clementine.

Longinos Panagi

Coco Bottle

The club's loud music, alcohol and cigarettes are no longer excitement to the man. He then drinks a coke in the club. Suddenly| he meets a woman who is in a similar situation as him, and they get on an old train together, leaving the boring clubs and cities behind. The train arrives in the middle of a desert and the woman leads the man into a completely different space he has never experienced before….

Jinwoo Lee

Don’t Fear The Healer

After unearthing an old keepsake box buried long ago, Sarah decides to host a peculiar dinner party in order to face the long-forgotten contents of the box.

Sarah Hanner

Down

Marc lost everything. Without any solution to fill the financial bankruptcy that led to the loss of his relationship| he decided to join a band of outlaws to make a robbery.

Arnaud Mizzon

Elvis walks home

Mickey Jones is marooned in the Balkan wars – carrying a guitar and wearing an Elvis Presley jumpsuit. His world tour kicks off by entertaining the British troops, but when the military police discover he is an Albanian they try to arrest him. So Mickey flees. He meets a group of refugee children trying to get to the United Nations camp. They hold him at gunpoint; Mickey claims he is a UN doctor and will lead them to UN. The children agree, but never really trust him. Their dangerous journey through the horrors of war tests them all. Mickey has a choice; does he follow his Elvis dreams, or does he sacrifice them to save children whose only dream is to stay alive?

Fatmir Koci

Free to work

What does remain in your body and in your memory of all the work you've done? “Fondata sul lavoro” is the first article of the Italian Constitution: “Italy is a democratic republic founded on work”. Yet citizens leave, because there is no work. The lm retraces what remains of the work that people used to do| how it is inscribed in their bodies and stuck in their memories. Meet Antonio, Eros, Paola and many others. Nine Italian migrants. Each one of them is recalling and repeating, as in a theatrical performance, words and gestures of their past jobs, tapping into humor, poetry and monotony of repetitive mundane activities. In front of a grey background their reenacted stories retrace the transition from manual and material labour into immaterial work.

Agnese Cornelio

Good Tidings

When the climate in the Mediterranean returns mild, boats full of migrants leave from the coasts of Africa and Asia trying to reach Europe, the "promised land". On a summer night, Bochra arrived on a beach in Sicily with over 130 people on board. All soon escaped. And Bochra remained alone in the limbo between sea and earth… until the tourists arrived.

Sebastiano Luca Insinga

Homesick

A crisis in a young woman's life forces her to return to her parents' home. Her reappearance shakes the delicate balance in the family nest.

Hila Einy, Yoav Aluf, Noy Bar

I Am The Wolf

Court ordered to a psychiatric hospital, opioid addicts Ruth and Macy, blackmail their way into an unaccompanied 24-hours of freedom to attend Ruth’s grand-baby’s third birthday party. Heedless, instead of a celebration they’re confronted with the trauma that brought them to the hospital in the first place.

Joseph Pulitzer: Voice of the People

Joseph Pulitzer, a Hungarian immigrant maintained his concern for immigrants and others less fortunate than himself, long after he became a successful newspaperman. He spoke of “fake news” over 100 years ago and fought the dangers that the suppression of news had for a democracy long before our present threats to press freedom. His heroic battles have been forgotten along with anything we might learn from the tools he deployed to fight against the enemies of truth and democracy.

Oren Rudavsky

Kiruna – A Brand New World

Located more than 200 km above the polar circle, the Swedish mining town Kiruna is built on the world’s largest and most modern iron ore mining tunnel, which created a significant income for the Swedish government. However, due to the mining the city has started to collapse and in order to save the industry, the city council together with the mining company LKAB have decided to move the town and its citizens 3 kilometres to the east. In doing so, the town has turned a potential disaster into a great opportunity. The new Kiruna will be an even more progressive, even better society for the future. But is it even possible to plan an ideal world? On the backdrop of a moving city, the citizens of the New Kiruna are fighting their own battles. We follow the teacher Timo, a local activist against the moving, the teenage Sami girl Maja who is discovering her family roots and cultural heritage as well as Abdalrahman, a teenage boy from Yemen, who came to the town as a refugee and slowly realizes that it takes more than just a paper to become a Swede. The seemingly very different characters are facing the same questions as the city is looking for its place. They are starting their personal search for identity, values and a greater future. KIRUNA – A BRAND NEW WORLD is a portrait of a utopian and dystopian town as well as a hard-hitting reflection of today’s society.

Greta Stocklassa

Love Gilda – The Eternal Spirit of Gilda Radner

The story of how one beloved comedienne found her humor in the midst of the most unfunny thing to ever happen to her.

Lisa D'Apolito

Luneta

In a black & white universe, where there is no sign of human presence or urban interference in the landscape, we follow the poetic and sensory gaze of a boy upon the nature of Rio de Janeiro. As the boy observes the environment with his open and original perception| he is amazed by the "invisible" and "silent" life that hides in the sea, in the forest, in the rivers, waterfalls, rocks, and mountains. The sound design and photography bring to the viewer the Rio that moves and touches the boy. A Rio that, like time, flows forever and never returns. A Rio where silence screams, action paralyzes, and poetry offers small insights into what time is and its impact on life and nature. All the images of coastal and terrestrial environments in this documentary were produced in the surroundings and in the heart of the city of Rio de Janeiro, between 2014 and 2018.

Duda Carvalho

Minotaur // Black Vulpine

It is cold. She closes her eyes and drowns. It's getting dark. A surreal and nightmarish quest of a woman facing her anxieties. Will she be able to overcome herself and find what she is searching for? A music film.

Natalie Plaskura

Moment to Moment

A combat soldier returns home to Jerusalem for the weekend. He witnesses a stabbing during which he just freezes up in face of this violence. Yoav is in denial, and leaves the crime scene alone. But when he gets home| his attempts to have a normal weekend at home are overwhelmed by an unshakable anxiety.

Tal Ninyo

Mount Everest

In this hybrid between documentary and fiction, Aria (48) is a an Iranian, big-bellied dreamer with grand gestures and kind eyes living in Copenhagen with wife and son. But the true love of his life, is his piano school where he teaches. Unfortunately he is blinded by his own passion and has neglected years of financial troubles – now threatening to bankrupt him and his family. At a rather absurd bank meeting he shows up with cardboards and a speaker to deliver an audio-visual presentation where Chopin's nocturnes is compared to a locomotive from 1830 to underline the present relevance of classical music – and thereby his piano school. Half way through his wife shows up unexpectedly. When they return home she is furious and forces him to confess to their son about their current state of living. After the humiliation he seeks comfort by his piano, the one stable thing in his life. Maybe he’s going to change, maybe not. Maybe the world just isn't suited for dreamers like him.

Rasmus Nyholm Schmidt

My Last Lullaby

Is there a suitable age to face a loss for the first time? Pamela, is 20 years old. She has just lost her grandfather. Her entire family gets together in the grandparents’s house, the day before the funeral. It is a place full of memories. Without noticing, Paloma is led to confront her loss. As if this end of summer marked the end of her frivolity.

Pauline Garcia

Natalia Rising

A mystical teen prodigy squelched by her overprotective dad forms a covert band with a vivacious singer and her psychic dog in a win/lose battle for her autonomy.

Donna Bonilla Wheeler

No One Knows

As his parents' marriage fell apart, the seven-year-old boy Cai Sen was abandoned to an orphanage where he felt excluded. He met a distinctive but adorable girl who soon became his only friend. Cai thought he has met another lonely soul, but unexpectedly got framed and betrayed by her. He fled the orphanage with rage. After taken back to the orphanage by the police, the boy faced a hard decision of whether to forgive his only friend or to be lonely again.

Tao Zhang

NO ONE’S HOME

A house on the countryside in Bosnia, window shutters closed. Smoke rises from the chimney. It is no one's home, a place, where since decades no one has been welcome. Ivica, a man in the end of his 70s, lives alone and isolated in this house and falls gradually into decay. In the short film „Ničiji Dom – No One's Home“ we follow Ivica in his routine of stagnation.

Nevena Savic

Non è una bufala

Renzo, 40, lives alone in an apartment that has turned into a kind of bunker. It's been a long time since he leaves home and the only source of livelihood are pizzas and supplì that come home. Convinced that jihadist terrorism is on the verge of attacking Italy| he decides to take justice on his own by sending a bombshell to the Embassy of Saudi Arabia, a nation guilty, in his opinion, of financing terrorists. Not everything will run smoothly as he had expected.

Niccolò Gentili, Ignacio Paurici

One Day at the Sea

After years of absence, Agatha returns to the sea resort of her childhood, in Normandy, with her six years old son| honoré. On edge, loaded with memories, she paces along the boardwalks of Deauville, while her son stays alone in the car. To his few questions, she gives no answers. On the wide beach of Trouville, in front of the old Hôtel des Roches Noires, she leaves him one more time. The film is freely inspired from Marguerite Duras’s play, Agatha.

Jonathan Borgel

Online Billie

A young up-and-coming actor meets an intriguing waitress. As he starts having feelings| he discovers she's a 'camgirl'.

Lou Assous

Our Father’s Cabin

When past merges with present, two half brothers get a last chance to say goodbye.

Jon Olav Stokke

Penelope

With the myth as an engine, Penelope unfolds in an imposing landscape as an elliptical and twilight version of Homer’s Odyssey, as intimate as it is absorbing. Penelope is called Carme and is the dressmaker of a small town in the interior of Catalonia. She has sewn and unstitched the threads of a whole town. It has the character of a hard but heartfelt generation. She waits but in an active and not at all nostalgic way. Ulises, Ramon de la Nissa, returns to town after years of absence. A final journey, the meaning of which, beyond the experience, is the return to a homeland and a way of life that will be extinguished with them.

Eva Vila

Play

A man consumed by guilt because he did not dare to defend his mother, plays the role of a murderer and forces his ten-year-old self to face his original trauma…

Piotr Sulkowski

Portraits of Zanzibari Women

PORTRAITS OF ZANZIBARI WOMEN is a documentary about 7 mothers from Zanzibar who sent their kids to an orphanage in Dar es Salaam due to financial and educational deficiencies. Documentary starts with a question “ Can you define to be a woman ?”. It shows the perception of being women from their words. Women share their motherhood experience and their challenges in the life by answering simple questions about their daily lives. The documentary aims to tell the story of mothers who are challenged to live multidimensional poverty. In 2018, 1.334.000 people in the world experienced poverty by Multidimensional Poverty Index. No doubt the most affected area is Sub-Saharan Africa where 560 millions of those people are living. United Republic of Tanzania has one of the highest percentage: 55,63 % of population is suffering from multidimensional poverty. Women are more vulnerable. The documentary takes you to a journey to Zanzibar which is known as honeymoon island and also will show you a face of Island which is rarely seen. Documentary film is directed and produced by Deniz Bagriacik who herself met the kids during her Ph.D field research in Tanzania where they are living in extreme poverty. Bagriacik is an author, columnist, sociologist who is specialised in gender, poverty issues and about the foreigners in a society. 

Deniz Bagriacik

Riding the Moon

JN_Riding the Moon_Final3 folder

Gerardo C Ibarra

Scraping Coconut

"Scraping coconut" documents the health impacts and cultural and culinary traditions surrounding coconut, as remembered and experienced by Afro-Ecuadorians in the northern coastal region of Esmeraldas, Ecuador. The documentary is based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted and shot between 2012 and 2017 in various locations in the province of Esmeraldas, and in Quito, Ecuador. Through the voices of medical and culinary specialists, as well as Afro-Ecuadorian cultural and culinary experts, the film offers a unique window into ancestral cooking methods and medicinal traditions in coastal Ecuador. It also offers insights into the socio-economic and health impacts and value of the consumption and use of traditional foods and medicinal practices, as lived and told by Afro-Ecuadorians themselves.

Pilar Egüez Guevara

Sidewalk Angels

An old man seeks a new purpose to his life, trying to get accepted by a reluctant ambulance crew, assisting homeless people.

Paulo Miranda

Soundwave

A teenage inventor’s life spirals into chaos when a nefarious group discovers he’s invented a device that can hear into the past.

Dylan Narang

Teranga – Life in the Waiting Room

Teranga is an observational short documentary about youth, music and collective trauma. Set in Naples and filmed over two years, it seeks to humanise West-African migrants living in Europe. Haunted by the difficulties of their pasts and dreaming of a future with indefinite leave to remain, two young Gambian asylum seekers escape the boredom and fear of life as a migrant in Matteo Salvini’s Italy by dancing away their trauma in Teranga, an Afrobeats migrant-run nightclub in Naples. Fata wants to become a world famous DJ; Yankuba is an aspiring biochemist. By day, they tirelessly pursue their dreams in corrupt and dank refugee camps in the middle of nowhere, and by night they converge in Teranga, which manifests as a rare safe space where migrants can forget their troubles and find a community. This short-documentary mixes professional and phone footage shot by the directors and the contributors over two years. The film seeks to show asylum seekers as rarely seen before, figuring out how to fill the time as they wait for notice on their documents. Unable to work and with their lives on hold for years, they find ways to keep themselves feeling alive relying on music as a crucial tool for resistance, survival and integration.

Daisy Squires, Lou Marillier, Sophia Seymour

The Art of Museums – The Uffizi, Florence, with Wolfgang Joop

THE ART OF MUSEUMS presents uniques portrait of the world’s most distinguished galleries through the eyes of a stellar cast of creatives. In the empty halls of eight monumental museums, we experience the raw power of art. Our museums span Europe and reach across the Atlantic| housing paintings from the Middle Ages to the present day. We do this through the eyes and hearts of world renowned creatives. Celebrities like Vivienne Westwood, Marina Abramovic and Karl Ove Knausgaard explore artists from Caravaggio to Kandinsky, from Gentileschi to Goya, showing us how just how relevant and important their artworks continue to be, both to themselves and within the public imagination. In this film we accompany Wolfgang Joop, world famous fashion designer—who has worked in New York, Paris and London to name but a few—around the hallowed halls of one of Europe's oldest art galleries: the Uffizi galleries in Florence. He encounters some of the most famous old-master paintings such as the Venus by Boticelli, and some more esoteric masterpieces like Michelangelo's Doni Tondo.

Sylvie Kürsten

The Bastards

Mateo, Sofia and Alejo are three teenagers who enjoy an afternoon and a night in an apartment without their owners. While Alejo listens and dances to some music in the living room, Mateo narrates a short story he is writing to Sofia. When Alejo interrupts them, Mateo kicks him out. Sofia seizes the opportunity to leave the room. It's night time. While the two boys play a Playstation football game, Sofia cooks. The match starts to fire up. Alejo grabs Mateo by the neck and a gun falls on the floor. They look at each other as Sofia announces that dinner is ready. Dinner is very pleasant. Now we hear some music coming out of a record player. They all dance| hug each other, sweat, smoke cigarettes and drink alcohol, in ecstasy thanks to some pills Mateo found in the bathroom. Dawn. Alejo contemplates the city. We see behind him that a door opens. A women, clearly frightened as she look at him, gets into the apartment. Alejo runs towards her and grabs her by the arms. She screams, while Alejo tries to cover her mouth. The yelling wakes up Sofia, that unsuccessfully tries to wake up Mateo. She sits on the bed and with her feet discovers the gun that is hiding underneath a pile of clothes. Sofia walks through the corridor with the gun in her hand. Alejo gets surprised as he sees Sofia with the gun. She tells him to go get some tape in the kitchen and points the gun to the woman telling her not to move. Mateo wakes up. The woman is now sitting in the couch with her mouth taped. Sofia points the gun at hear. Mateo walks in. Sofia hits the woman in the back of her head with the gun, who falls unconscious. Sofia finds a car keychain. The three of them walk through a parking lot. Sofia makes different attempt with the alarm. One of the cars opens, and they get in. We see the car as it gets lost in the highway.

Tomas Posse

The Choice

Italy’s biggest political party, the Five Star Movement, promotes direct democracy through internet voting. Five Star Movement uses a digital platform named Rousseau, that allows Movement’s members to vote online and express their opinion on various issues. But who governs this data? The Choice is an investigative current affairs documentary that takes a close look at Italy’s governing party Five Star Movement, its transparency and the powers behind the party. Who ever have access to Rousseau’s data| have great political power and intelligence. The platform was founded by internet consulting company Casaleggio Associati and Five Star Movement’s co-founder Gianroberto Casaleggio. Within 24 hours of operating system Rousseau’s upload, two hackers cracked the system.

Gabriele Rossi, Giorgio Viscardini

The Divine way

“The path to paradise begins in hell” — Dante Alighieri Loosely based on Dante’s Divine Comedy, The Divine Way takes viewers along on the protagonist’s epic descent through an endless labyrinth of staircases. As the woman journeys deeper, the staircases mutate and she is trapped and pulled into their dangerous landscape, conducting us through more than fifty magnificent locations.

Ilaria Di Carlo

The Rabbit

Young sprinter Maria has to face the greatest race of her life in order to reunite with her best friend and find a long lost connection to her mother.

Lana Vlady

The Silo

The only thing smaller than the prairie town of Sylvan Lake is the minds of the people who live there. Except for seventeen year old artist, SAM SIMCHUK. When she tries to solve the forty year old mystery behind the ghost she befriends, Sam's forced to choose between chasing her dreams, defending her friend or saving her mother's life.

The Song and the Sorrow

Musician Catherine MacLellan—the daughter of Canadian singer/songwriting legend Gene MacLellan (Snowbird, Put Your Hand in the Hand) —grew up surrounded by her father’s music. He died by suicide when she was 14. Two decades after his loss, Catherine is finally ready to confront the hurtful mystery of her absent parent and embrace his musical legacy. The Song and the Sorrow follows Catherine as she journeys to understand her father and face her own struggles with mental illness. Through archival footage and intimate conversations with friends, family members, and musicians who knew and played with Gene—including Anne Murray, Lennie Gallant, and the late Ron Hynes—the film reveals a troubled and loving man who was never at ease with fame or money. Anne Murray's rendition of Snowbird was the most played song in the world in 1970, but Gene, as its author, shunned fame and its trappings. Catherine is determined to lift the oppressive burden of silence that accompanies the stigma of mental illness and hopes that others can take strength and solace from her story.

Millefiore Clarkes

Unforgivable

Imperdonabile is the story of Alice and Emmanuel, two people on opposing sides during the Rwandan genocide in 1994. It reveals what happens when the person who nearly destroyed your life confronts you and asks for forgiveness.

Giosue Petrone

We

Animated short documentary film that shows the unique strength of “us” that comes from surviving two earthquakes that happened the same day… 32 years apart.

Marcos Almada Rivero. Alejandra Chacón Gallardo, Monique Zepeda

X-ray Machines: Africa’s Broken System

Today, less than 14% of the world's population consumes more than 80% of medical technology. Like other developing countries, Cameroon deplores its poor access to essential medical equipment. Due to lack of financial resources, the country then receives many donations of equipment, from various countries. Yet nearly 70% of donated medical equipment is never actually used in Sub-Saharan Africa. What does the future hold for medical technology in the parts of the world where our equipment is now piling up?

Inglin Sophie