Mom
Xun Sero
Mexico. 2022. 80 min
As a Mexican Tzotzil I grew up between the sacrality both of Guadalupe Virgin and Mother Earth. As a son, I grew up among the derision of not having a father and blaming my mother for it. ‘Mom’ is a dialogue between mother and son exploring their contradictions, knowing and recognizing each other, and reflecting on naturalized violence and its reproduction.
Continue reading Mom (Xun Sero) MexicoRK/Rkay
Rajat Kapoor
India. 2022. 95 min
RK is a filmmaker, making a new film, in which he also plays the lead character of Mahboob. It,s a quaint film, like a tribute to the cinema of the sixties. People close to him are not really sure why RK wants to make this film.
Edit begins and RK has a sinking feeling that this film is not going to come together, that this time he has really screwed up. His nightmares warn him of an impending disaster. Sure enough, one afternoon RK gets a call from the edit room- something terrible has happened. Mahboob has run away, run out of the film.
Nobody can really understand why would he leave, where would he go. But he is not there anymore in the rushes- missing from the film negative as well.
VHS
Alexander Markin
Russia. 2022. 12 min
End of summer 1991. USSR. Yura works at a factory and dreams of escaping to America. His son’s dream is the whole family to be together at nights. Both desires can come true if a VHS appears in the family.
ALEXANDER MARKIN
Journalist and director. Has been working in a video production teams, and also in social projects organizing art festivals and events in support of charitable foundations. In 2022 he graduated from the Moscow Film School, directing department (workshop of Alexey Popogrebsky and Pavel Bardin). VHS is his graduation film.
POSTER
CONTACT
yulia@festagent.com
Cockroach
Anna Melnikova
Russia. 2022. 15 min
A young girl wanders around the apartments, running away from insects and her problems. After moving to a communal apartment, the main character found herself bringing a huge Cockroach with her in suitcase.
Continue reading Cockroach (Anna Melnikova) RussiaAndaja
Tharindu Ramanayaka
Sri Lanka. 2022. 40 min
After the civil war in Sri Lanka, an ex Sinhalese soldier returns home with a Tamil guerrilla woman who was gang raped by him and his mates. The traumatized girl finds different ways to take revenge but things get brutal when she gets pregnant.
THARINDU RAMANAYAKA
Tharindu Ramanayaka, an independent filmmaker, writer and an actor from Colombo, Sri Lanka. Although he is from Sri Lanka, He moved to India to study Drama and Theater for his graduation. From childhood, he had the desire to tell stories to people and this drove him to pursue theater. But soon he realized films were a better medium to express himself. After securing a scholarship, he stayed back in India to pursue Film Direction and Screenplay writing at the reputed Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute. He started watching more films and learning the history of film and started experimenting with the form, especially with surrealistic images. soon realized that he had found ultimate medium to talk about stories that he has always wanted to tell, derived from the folk tales and Buddhist tales from his region.
Tharindu has more than 8 years of experience in the world of films. He has made short films, documentaries and music videos. Some of them are “MANDALA”, “KRIMIKOSH”, “ANDAJA” and “WEEPING ANGEL.” His films have been screened at many film festivals across the world & Won Several Awards too.
DIRECTOR,S NOTE
The film is based in rural Sri Lanka with the recently finished ethnic war in the backdrop which had started in the early 80s. The Tamil people who were the minority experienced suppression by the Singhalese. In 2009, the war ended after around 25 years, causing huge casualties to both the communities and major destruction of the country’s environment and well being. In 71, Sri Lanka saw the JVP insurrection. In 83, the ethnic war kicked off between the Tamils and the Sinhalese people. In 87-89, there was a second JVP insurrection. In 2004, Tsunami lashed the shores of the eastern coastline, causing massive destruction of lives and property. Quite recently, an explosion rocked a Catholic church on Easter morning claiming the lives of around 300 people.
The people live in uncertainty. They don’t know when it would be their turn to go. Their lives are comparable to those of chickens, who only live till they are chopped down for food. Such continuous acts of disaster, man-made or natural, had broken the people and had traumatized them for life. Their moral beliefs have changed. Continued exposure to violence had turned them violent. This change in mindset has affected the society at large. This story is a depiction of how that violence creeps into the family and destroys it bit by bit, devastating it’s members and their relationships with each other.
POSTER
CONTACT
thrstv11@gmail.com
Go, Friend, Go
Gabriele Licchelli, Francesco Lorusso, Andrea Settembrini
Italy. 2023. 68 min
Every year thousands of people try to reach Europe by land, journeying on foot across the mountains, rivers and fields of the Balkan route connecting Asia to Europe. They face “the game”: attempting repeatedly to cross borders trying to avoid being arrested and pushed back by border police.
Go, friend, go spans across the ports of Patras in Greece, the forests by the border town of Šid in Serbia, the abandoned factories in the Bosnian Una Sana canton, and the arrival point in Trieste’s public squares, all peripheral hotspots of migrant lives in transit.
In bringing together different stories employing several narrative techniques, the film is an experiential journey made of observation, found footage and animation, and it aims to draw the viewer to feel the contrasting experience of resilience and resourceful hope that can be found in a context of destitution and violence.
To Kill a Tiger
Nisha Pahuja
Canada. 2022. 125 min
On the night of a family wedding in a village in India, Ranjit’s 13-year-old daughter is dragged into the woods and gang raped by three men. Ranjit takes on the fight of his life when he demands the accused be brought to justice. With tremendous access to all facets of the story, To Kill a Tiger charts the emotional journey of an ordinary man thrown into extraordinary circumstances—a father whose love for his daughter forces a social reckoning that will reverberate for years to come.
Continue reading To Kill a Tiger (Nisha Pahuja) CanadaThe Sunlit Place
Zhang Qin
China. 2022. 25 min
A female journalist who is obsessed with “the truth” finally learns to accept her weakness after experiencing a career downfall and a fight with her mom.
ZHANG QIN
Zhang Qin, writer and director, was born in 1998 and is now a graduate student in Film (screenwriting/directing) at Columbia University in the City of New York. The Sunlit Place is her debut short film as writer and director.
DIRECTOR,S NOTE
The mother-daughter relationship is too close to bear any secrets. When daughter comes back to live with her mother after so many years away from home, they test and hurt each other when they attempt to probe into each other’s unspeakable secrets. I intended to record this period of life in this house to present their conflicts and intimacy, dwelling on women’s duty and nature of life.
POSTER
CONTACT
cinefun@163.com
Graveyard of Horses
Xiaoxuan Jiang
China, USA. 2022. 17 min
A frigid winter on the Mongolian steppe, an untimely snowstorm aggravated the lives of a pregnant herder and her 8-year-old daughter: the missing flock of sheep, the unborn child, the absent husband, traces of wolves…… everything led the mother and daughter to places they’ve never been.
Continue reading Graveyard of Horses (Xiaoxuan Jiang) ChinaTogether, Alone
Kasim Ordek
Turkey. 2022. 20 min
Young couple, Sevgi and Doğan, who make a living by stealing cars in the ghettos of Istanbul, steal a car with foreign license plates during the most tense period of their relationship. However, “this”stolen car will take The events revolving around lies and fear force them to face some truths about their love, their values, or lack of, and their choices.
Continue reading Together, Alone (Kasim Ordek) Turkey
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