Aruna Vasudev: Mother of Asian Cinema (Supriya Suri) India

Aruna Vasudev: Mother of Asian Cinema
Supriya Suri
India. 2021. 65 min

Aruna Vasudev, Founder of Netpac, Cinemaya & Cinefan Film festival has touched the lives of many in the world of Cinema. This documentary traces her roots from her humble origins in an undivided British India, to corridors of cinematic universe. It brings together her journey as a lm critic, cinema activist and an impresario, weaving a tapestry that connects the dots that make the large canvas that we know as Asian Cinema Renaissance. This film explores her dynamism painted through a narrative unfolding lives of critics, filmmakers, curators and programmers – who are hidden maestros that largely make the cinephilia culture and by large remain unsung in histories of Cinema.

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Incomplete Sentences (Adar Bozbay) Turkey

Incomplete Sentences
Adar Bozbay
Turkey. 2022. 58 min

Aslı Erdoğan, worldwide known author, activist, columnist have hit silence after she fled to Germany. Incomplete Sentences is a feature documentary on Erdoğan’s literature and life story that lead to a life in exile. She left Turkey after being unlawfully detained as a result of current government’s increasing pressure on writers, journalist, academics etc. Now, in Frankfurt, she is struggling while everybody is waiting for her to write again. Aslı starts telling her story just after getting out of prison. Aslı together with the director, Adar, wondering in streets of İstanbul, talks about herself. Sometimes streets, sometimes an apartment building invokes stories and sometimes it’s her books. She reads parts from her books and explains the stories behind.

Aslı then goes to Germany to receive the Erich Maria Remarque Award and yet, she doesn’t return. That’s how her exile life in Frankfurt starts; which she likens to a semi-open prison. This situation gradually disrupts her health and keeps her away from writing. I feel like I’ve been exiled from my mother tongue, it’s very strange, like my relation to it is wounded.

The director develops a different kind of relation with Aslı; as a helping friend, taking care of Aslı’s house, watering her flowers, delivering books and notes to Frankfurt, while she witnesses Aslı’s trauma first hand. There is a lot of support for Aslı, she goes from one country to another, attending audience solidarity events, receiving awards. The documentary will follow the steps of Aslı in different places around the world and with an attempt to hear her silence.

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Tree Full of Parrots (Jayaraj) India. Official Section

Tree Full of Parrots
Jayaraj
India. 2021. 90 min

Tree Full of Parrots is about an elderly person who has lost his sense of hearing and memory. Narayanan who is visually challenged and is the main teacher at the Dharmashala Model Blind school plays the leading role. He hails from Kannur Mayyil Cherupazhassi. The elderly man forgets his way home once he reaches the city. Finally, it is a fisherman’s son who helps him find his way back home. Master Adityan plays the part of the fisherman’s son.

All he knows is that his house is near a tree that had a lot of parrots. The film revolves around the search and the events surrounding it. Jayaraj’s wife Sabitha also plays an important role in the film. Another highlight of the film is that they have used the famous poem by Vayalar Rama Varma and LPR Varma.

JAYARAJ

Jayarajan Rajasekharan Nair, professionally credited as Jayaraj, is an Indian filmmaker, who predominantly works in Malayalam film industry. He is the founder of the Birds Club International and is actively involved in philanthropic work. Jayaraj is a recipient of the Crystal Bear Award at the Berlin International Film Festival, the Golden Peacock award at the IFFI , the Golden Crow Pheasant award at the IFFK , the FIPRESCI Award from the International Federation of Film Critics, the Don Quijote Award from the International Federation of Film Societies, The Network for the Promotion of Asian Cinema (NETPAC) award and a special mention award at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. He is also a 7 time recipient of the National Film Award and several Kerala State Film Awards. His notable films include, Desadanam (1996), Kaliyattam (1997), Karunam (2000), Shantham (2001), Daivanamathil (2005), Vellapokkathil (2007), Ottaal (2015), Veeram (2017) and Bhayanakam (2018).

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jayarajfilms@yahoo.com

Once Upon a Village (Srishti Lakhera) India

Once Upon a Village
Srishti Lakhera
India. 2021. 61 min

Villagers have a saying that the dead come back to visit the living. Now those of us who remain have only these ghosts for company.
Semla, is a ghost village in the Himalayan foothills. The 50 families that once lived in the village, have migrated to the city, leaving behind 7 people. With this migration, livelihood connected to the terrain and seasons have slowly faded.
Like her village, Leela is old, resilient and forgotten. Despite loneliness and struggles with an aging body, Leela doesn’t want to leave for the city. Golu is the only young person in the village.
She is desperate to escape to the city but doesn’t have the means. Dreaming for a different life, Golu roams around the abandoned village.

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Oliver Black (Tawfik Baba) Morocco

Oliver Black
Tawfik Baba
Morocco. 2020. 93 min

VENDREDI, a young black African boy walks alone in the desert, and meets WHITE MAN. Both they go into a journey into nowhere. Vendredi wants to make Circus in Morocco. White Man wants to assist to his grand daughter’s wedding. During their travel, their relationship goes higher and very deep. Vendredi gives the whole innocence and bravery he has, and saves White Man from a mine and pulls him for long distance till an army stops them.
Vendredi becomes a soldier after White sells him as a simple object. Finally Vendredi becomes a new terrorist with ISIS. He becomes Oliver Black.

TAWFIK BABA

Tawfik Baba is a filmmaker based in Ouarzazate city, in Morocco. He studied French literatures at the university; then studied Directing and screenwriting skills at the French School of Arts and Medias STUDIO M in Casablanca. He also studied Spanish Language and Accountancy. Since teenager he loved writing, and tried to write whatever as poems, short stories and philosophical essays. As living in Ouarzazate, He worked in a lot of film shootings as Kingdom of heaven, Rules of engagement, Cleopatra, Babel… etc, in many different departments. In 2013, he got the fund of the Moroccan Cinematographic center as a screenwriter in a short “Ten dollars”, then he got the same fund in 2014 for another screenplay of short “ The ring”. He wrote and directed his first short Epitaph in 2013, and then four others will follow: Winter time, Sand man, Routine, Clowns, and a feature pilot The lake House. In 2017, he wrote and directed his first indie Feature: Oliver Black released in 2020 .

DIRECTOR,S NOTE

When you just go through some lonely streets and see some foreign guys from Mali, Senegal, Ivory Coast or Burkina Faso…begging and asking strangers for a piece of bread or some money to feed themselves or their kids… When you just walk and fade into your own warmth and touch your cold heart and feel it sad. Thus you know: A new age of slavery is raised. A slavery chosen by their own free will. They dream to cross the boarders and cross the sea to reach Europe and make a beautiful tomorrow, but they stuck here. And little by little, their dreams fade away and they give up, and leave only a profound hidden tear in their beautiful eyes. In the other side, I see us, like that lizard, which witnessed those sad gloomy stories and can’t talk, like Mama Africa, can’t talk… This is how Oliver Black invades my thoughts as a writer, then as a Director.

I just tried to tell a story where I am silent. To tell a story of a journey where childhood is taken from its innocence, and where dreams can be bigger than a whole nothingness in no man’s land. Once in 1963, someone said “I have a dream!” and made it an endless hope for all the humans… But now, it becomes Friday, a used and a slaved everlasting character.
I tried to tell others, that something is happening. We’re losing our humanity, we’re losing our dignity and we just pretend we’re Ok, and we’re not. I wanted to tell that we need to stop being machines waiting to be manipulated by other machines of economy, money, war, terrorism and politics… As much as I know I am just a little single lonely voice with a very bad ugly tune to sing a freedom song.

PRESS KIT

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CONTACT

dry2rain@yahoo.fr

La Vie est dans le Pré (Eric Guéret) France

La Vie es dans la Pré
Eric Guéret
France. 2020. 52 min

Paul François is what we call a grain producer. Farmer in Charente, he cultivates 250 hectares of land. He was poisoned in 2004 by Lasso, a herbicide from Monsanto.
After ten years of doubts and hesitations, Paul decided to overcome his fears and to convert his lands into organic farming. We follow this exciting change for a year, from his last “chemical” harvest to his first crop without pesticides. Paul takes significant risks, but the stakes are high. If he succeed in organic farming, he will prove that biological agriculture is sustainable solution.

For 12 years, he has been fighting against Monsanto for the recognition of the firm’s responsibility on his health problems. This trial, which has become emblematic, will see its conclusion in this film during a final hearing at the Court d’Appel de Lyon.

ERIC GUÉRET

Eric Guéret has been making documentaries on social and environmental issues since 1992. He is specialized in the cinema of proximity, filming in total immersion, as close as possible to people, during very long periods.
Most of his films are about struggles, in all their forms. Collective struggles, as in “Greenpeace, Operation Plutonium”, which plunges into the heart of Greenpeace’s nuclear campaign, or “Tous ensemble”, which follows the struggle of CGT trade unionists.
Individual struggles, as in “La mort est dans le pré”, with farmers who are victims of pesticides, or “Femmes sans domiciles”, which recounts the survival conditions of homeless women.
He has made several investigative documentaries on environmental issues such as “Déchets, le cauchemar du nucléaire” and
“Nuclear safety, the big lie”.

He has also focused on the fight against violence and discrimination. “Les insoumises” is about women who face male violence around the world, “Homo la haine” about homophobia and its consequences, and “Trans c’est mon genre” about the rejection of transgender people.

His latest films focus more on the reconstruction of victims of trauma, such as “13 novembre, vivre avec” (November 13, living with) which accompanies some victims of the Paris attacks during their first year as survivors, or “Enfance abusée” (abused childhood) which gives voice to 8 victims of pedo-crime.
On October 21, 2020, his first film for the cinema, “Le feu sacré” (Holy Fire), was released in theaters. It tells the story of the battle of the Ascoval steelworkers in the north of France to save their factory. The film was unanimously received by the press and the public.

FILMOGRAPHY

1992 : Les Enfants du parti, documentaire – 52 min – Planète+
1998 : Histoires de profs, série documentaire de 8 épisodes de 13 min – La Cinquième
1999 : Paroles d’enfants, documentaire – 60 min – TSR (Suisse) et RTS (Sénégal)
2001 : France Gall par France Gall, documentaire – 120 min – France 3
2001 : Citoyen du vent, documentaire – 60 min – France 3 Corse
2002 : Renaud, le rouge et le noir, documentaire – 125 min – France 3
2003 : Langues maternelles, documentaire – 90 min – La Cinquième et Planète+
2003 : Julien en Clerc, documentaire – 130 min – France 3
2005 : Greenpeace, opération plutonium – feuilleton documentaire – 5 x 26 min – Arte
2006 : Les Mitterrand(s), coécrit avec Serge Moati – 57 min – Arte
2006 : Coluche, la France a besoin de toi – 52 min – France 3
2007 : Femmes sans domicile, documentaire – 98 min – Arte
2009 : Déchets : Le Cauchemar du nucléaire, documentaire – 98 min – Arte
2010 : Tous ensemble, en collaboration avec Hugues Nancy – documentaire – 75 min
2012 : La Mort est dans le pré, documentaire (sur les produits phytosanitaires1) – 52 min – France 2
2013 : Les Insoumises, documentaire – Infrarouge, 110 min – Canal+
2014 : Homos, la haine, documentaire – Infrarouge, France 2
2015 : La santé en France, documentaire – 90 min – France 3
2016 : Trans, c’est mon genre – Infrarouge, France 22,3
2016 : 13 novembre, Vivre avec – Infrarouge, France 22,3
2017 : Sécurité nucléaire : le grand mensonge, documentaire – Arte4
2018 : Enfance abusée, documentaire – Infrarouge, France 2
2020 : La vie est dans le pré, documentaire – 79 min – France 3
2020 : Le Feu sacré, documentaire – Cinéma

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communication@bonnepioche.fr