Oso (Bruno Lourenço) Portugal

Oso
Bruno Lourenço
Portugal. 2021. 29 min

The report of the sighting of a lone bear in a border village is initially received with enthusiasm by the locals and by a young forest ranger. But also by an outsider, fervent supporter of the brown bear’s return to the north of Portugal. It won’t be a peaceful return, between Man-made obstacles and the bear’s will.

BRUNO LOURENÇO

Bruno Lourenço was born in Lisbon, in 1973. He studied Cinema at Escola Superior de Teatro e Cinema. Since 1996 he has been working as assistant director to Miguel Gomes, Manuel Mozos, José Fonseca e Costa, among others. OSO is his second short film.

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agencia@curtas.pt

Keep Safe Distance (Debottam Basu) India

Keep Safe Distance
Debottam Basu
India. 2021. 37 min

An 80 year old man Radhakanta suffers a heart attack and an ambulance is immediately called for him. While taking their dying father to the hospital, Radhakanta’s two middle aged sons break into a fight for sole inheritance of their father’s property.

DEBOTTAM BASU

Debottam has studied Direction & Screenplay Writing at the prestigious SRFTI, Kolkata. His film ‘Shesh Krityo/Last Rites’ was officially selected to compete at IDSFFK(International Documentary and Short Film Festival of Kerala), 2018 and has won Best Film & Best Sound Design in Cinematheque 2018. His current film Keep Safe Distance/Nirapod Durotto Bojay Rakhun too was selected at IDSFFK, 2021. Other than these he has made a couple of short documentaries, fiction films, corporate films for Coal India Limited and Northern Coalfields Limited. Currently he is writing a web series, one feature film in Hindi and one feature film in Bengali.

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basudebottam2311@gmail.com

Water Demon (Bikramjit Gupta) India

Water Demon
Bikramjit Gupta
India. 2021. 20 min

Water being scarce, the village women folk cover a long distance to a well in an old fort, to fetch water. One day, near the fort, they find Laajo, a mentally challenged girl, lying semiconscious, with signs of rape and molestation. This was the third such incident.

Tunu, a school girl, while coming home with Amma, her mother, is curious to see a chained-up Laajo. To pacify Tunu’s queries, Amma tells her that Laajo was attacked by a Water Demon, and there’s a spell which can scare the demon away.

Few days later, Amma fell sick. Water at home was over. Tunu left for the well in the fort, to fetch water. On the way she kept chanting the spell in her mind. Gets suspicious about someone behind her, as she entered the fort. She turns around in distress, only to encounter the unknown fear.

Tunu is missing ever since.

BIKRAMJIT GUPTA

I am a film director with over 15 years of experience of making feature films, documentaries, independent films, television commercials, programmes, docudramas, spots, corporate films etc. I write, direct, edit my own films from script to screen.
Over the years, my films have been selected for screening in different film festivals in India and abroad. I have received some prestigious awards for my films. My debut Bengali feature film, Achal (The Stagnant) has been officially selected for screening in Imagine India International Film Festival held in Madrid in 2013. I am a member of the Mumbai Film Writers Association. I have directed the signature film for the prestigious Kolkata International Film Festival 2006-2011.

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bikramjitgupta@gmail.com

Bad Egg (Mehak Jamal) India

Bad Egg
Mehak Jamal
India. 2022. 28 min

Zoya receives a disturbing call from her mother – her sister Zara has gone missing during the pandemic. Surprisingly, Zoya isn’t rattled enough. She’s hiding something, all of which leads back to the fateful night of a party. Throughout the film, Zoya interacts with her surroundings as if she’s re-calibrating to them. As the plot unravels, so does she. In this story, appearances can be very deceiving.

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Libya, No Escape from Hell (Sara Creta) France

Libya, No Escape from Hell
Sara Creta
France. 2021. 60 min

Libya, No Escape From Hell is an eye opener on the migrants’ reality in Libya but also on the horrific machine that has been set up and the scale of those responsible for the situation that take advantage of European policies.

​The detention centres in Libya where thousands of migrants await in inhuman conditions for someone – the militia, Europe, the UN – to decide what their fate should be, are at the heart of this documentary. If officially, detention centres are run by the UN-recognised government in Tripoli, in reality they are in the hands of militias that control the country and see in migrants a ready source of cash by kidnapping and torturing them.

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Bablu Babylon Se (Abhijeet Sarthi) India

Bablu Babylon Se
Abhijeet Sarthi
India. 2021. 40 min

In order to curb inflation, the Authority privatised all the farming and plantation activities thus forbidding the usage of seeds by common people. One of the companies that is a part of the privatisation is Babylon, which is a leading brand in Seedless fruits, fertilizers, electronics, funeral services, clothing, political parties, etc. Bablu a lonely old man working for ‘ goes on an assignment and accidentally encounters a rebel group planning a secret mission against”.

ABHIJEET SARTHI

Abhijeet Sarthi hails from the city of Raipur, Chhattisgarh. He has completed his graduation in Computer Science and Engineering. He has done his post graduation in Direction and Screenplay Writing from the prestigious Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute in Kolkata. Abhijeet felt deeply related to cinema since childhood and aspires to be a storyteller, showcasing the creativity and craziness of his mind. Though he is an introvert by nature, his narratives do not shy away from showcasing the weird side of the characters and their stories. For him, cinema is a playground to create something interesting and simultaneously expressing himself and let the audience experience the story along with him.

DIRECTOR,S NOTE

Bablu Babylon Se emerged after reading a piece of news about a forest getting cut for making a coal mine. It felt absurd that in the mid of increasing global warming, people are cutting the forest. This absurdity is the crux of the story. The absurdity leads to a thought. What if someday plantation and farming get banned. So the aim was to incorporate the absurdity in the script and the final film.

It was important to introduce something as a trivial element and then subverting the audience’s expectation by adding a satirical subtext to that trivial element. I never wanted the film to become preachy with its social message, so as a filmmaker, it was a conscious decision to make the audience experience the film through the lens of its absurd characters, situations, and elements.

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abhijeetsarthiii@gmail.com

Streetwise (Na Jiazuo) China. Official Section

Streetwise
Na Jiazuo
China. 2021. 96 min

Dongzi, a small-town youth, becomes debt-collector, Xi Jun’s henchman in an attempt to pay off his sick father’s hospital bills. A cold and estranged parent-child relationship, an unsettling life on the streets, and an ambiguous relationship with a young woman; in Dongzi’s shoes, this is what it is like to be twenty-one.

NA JIAZUO

Na Jiazuo (China, 1989) graduated from the Beijing Fine Art Academy and then the Beijing Film Academy. Streetwise is his debut film; the film picked up the award for Best Actress at the Pingyao Int’l Film Festival 2021, and was selected for the Un Certain Regard section at the Cannes Film Festival.

DIRECTOR,S NOTE

This is a story about “struggle”. The film adopts a polarising approach with sudden stops and starts that create the audiovisual experience. What blossoms at night, appears to wither in the daytime. The forgotten corners of the city become the focus of the camera’s lens. The green hills and the river on the one hand, and the streetscapes on the other, are the two most important settings in this film, and it is in these two environments that the characters in the story eat, talk, wander, struggle and coexist with one another.

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dorian@cercamon.biz