Paangshu (Earth)
Visakesa Chandrasekaram
Sri Lanka.  85 min.  2018

Paangshu revolves around Babanorna (Nita Fernando), a launderer belonged to one of the lowest castes in Sri Lanka. Babanorna is summoned to an identification parade where she identifies Lionel as one of the paramilitary men who abducted her son during the 1988/89 insurgency. While Indika (Jagath Manuwarna), the young public prosecutor shows little or no interest in helping Babanorna finding her missing son, Namalee (Nadie kammallaweera), the pregnant wife of the paramilitary man seeks forgiveness from the launderer. As the prolonging hearings in the dilapidated courthouse continues for months, shameful secrets are gradually unearthed by the defeated rebels, victorious soldiers and those who were crushed in between.

VISAKESA CHANDRASEKARAM

Visakesa Chandrasekaram’s debut film Sayapethi Kusuma (Frangipani) was officially selected to more than 25 international film festivals winning several awards including the Best Foreign Film at 2015 Rio LGBT Film Festival and Dr Lester James Peris Award at 2016 Sarasaviya Film Festival. His second film Paangshu (Earth) was premiered at 2018 Montreal World Film Festival. Visakesa has worked in Sri Lanka as a human rights lawyer and in Australia as a consultant for the NSW Government. He has received a doctorate from the Australian National University for his research on the use of confessionary evidence under counter-terrorism laws. He currently works as a senior lecturer in the Faculty of Law in University of Colombo.

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Visakesa  Chandrasekaram :    visakesa@hotmail.com

Side A Side B
Rahat Kazmi
India.  115 min. 2018

A comedy about Kashmir? Probably not. Well, not at all. The latest film by director and co-writer Rahat Kazmi is a delightful, charming and poignant drama about growing up in a conflict zone. Between the bombs and the bullets, a group of college friends are trying to get the most out of their lives but they need their downtime… like anyone in that situation. Focusing on an intrepid group of four friends (following the style of “Inbetweeners”), are bond by the love of cinema, they get together to buy VHS Bollywood movies but when the prohibition of TV and movies appears (as happened in 1994), the four friends are not to be defeated. What happens then is fun, totally believable and very entertaining. It ends perhaps on a more tense posture. But as Kazmi said at Mantostaan’s presentation at last year’s festival, “it’s a beautiful place with intelligent, cultured and educated people. They deserve the best. And this movie is a love letter for the people of Kashmir, and one that will touch a lot of people”.

RAHAT  KAZMI

Rahat Kazmi is an internationally acclaimed director known for his hard hiting films like Mantostaan and Identity Card. Rahat has won many international awards for his film including Best Director at London Asian Film Festival 2017 for Mantostaan, Best Director and Best film at San Francisco Global Movie Festival 2014 and also Rahat’s feature Identity Card’s scenes were shown at Europian Parliament as a reference for debate on Kashmir conflict.

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Rahat Kazmi :   rahatkazmifilms@gmail.com

Unwanted
Edon Rizvanolli
Kosova/Holland.  85 min.  2017

Teenager Alban lives in Amsterdam with his mother Zana, who left Kosovo during the war in the Balkans. When he starts going out with the sensitive Ana, neither of them has any idea that unresolved injustices and shadows from the past will make their way to the surface. This insightful, mature debut by a Kosovan director reminds us how difficult forgiveness and reconciliation can be.

Unwanted (Albanian: T’padashtun) is a 2017 Kosovan drama film directed by Edon Rizvanolli.  It was selected as the Kosovan entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 90th Academy Awards.

EDON RIZVANOLLI

Born and raised in Prishtina, he was forced to leave for Austria in the early 90’s, after the wars in former Yugoslavia broke out. He started his acting carrier in 1993 as Romeo in an amateur Theatre Group in Salzburg, Austria. This was followed with a contract in a professional ensemble where he went on to act for the next 3 years. In 1996 he moved to NYC and studied at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute, for the next two years. After returning to Austria in 1998, he continued working as a stage actor in Vienna. During this period he got interested in the other aspects of filmmaking and made his first short film Blownaway. Since 2007 he lives in Amsterdam where he works mainly as an actor. His debut feature “T’padashtun” premiered at the prestigious Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in 2017 and was selected as Kosovo’s entry for the 2018 Best Foreign Film Academy Award. He is a member of the European Film Academy since 2017.

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Edon Rizvanolli :  info@asfaltfilms.com

On The Edge
Aldiyar Bairakimov
Kazakhstan.  62 min.  2018

Life is an eternal clash of destinies. The lack of friendly support and family warmth, the conflicts with society are pushing the underage heroes of this story to a dangerous edge.

The film tells the story of two teenagers who come from two opposite worlds. These worlds unexpectedly collide forcing both teens to the dangerous edge.

Aldiyar Bairakimov

Aldiyar Bairakimov was born in 1991 in Almaty city, Kazakhstan.

From 2009 till 2014 has studied in The Kazakh National Academy of arts named after T.Zhurgenov, specializing in “Director, Producer of Cinema and TV”.

From 2014 to 2016 studied at the magistracy of the Kazakh National Academy of Arts named after T. Zhurgenov in the specialty “Directing the author’s documentary film”.

Between 2011 and 2018 Aldiyar created fourteen short movies and documentaries. He was a participant and laureate of many republican and international competitions and film festivals

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Aigerim Ramazanova :   ramazan.work@gmail.com

Lima
Harvan Agustriansyah, Lola Amaria, Adriyanto Dewo,
Tika Pramesti, Shalahuddin Siregar, Agha Fahriansyah
Indonesia. 110 min.  2018

Fara, Aryo and Adi recently lost their mother, Maryam. How Maryam was buried provoked a debate among her three kids since Maryam is a Muslim. Although it seems that the conflict has been solved, there are some things that are still a problem. Fara, who is a swimming coach, always chooses which athletes should be sent to the national trainings. However, he cannot do it without facing the challenges from the club owner. Despite the students never questioned him because of his skin color, Adi, who is usually harassed by his classmates, sees an inhuman event. Ayro, must deal with the inheritance issues since he is the firstborn and Jjah is obligated to come back home to require justice.

Harvan Agustriansyah

Harvan Agustriansyah graduated from the Arts Institute of Jakarta and he did his debut in 2006 with the short film “Sepeda” which was nominated as Best Short Indonesian Film in the Film Festival of 2007 and elected as Best Fiction Short Film in the Film ITB Festival of Ganesha 2008. He participated in the horror film Hi5teria: five stories of five directors, which was projected in the Korean Festival of Puncheon of 2012. In 2016, he wrote, directed and produced “Pangreh”, which was nominated in more than 30 cinema festivals locally and internationally. The next year he got Best Short Film Award at the 4th International Festival of Short Films of Chennai (India), in the International Shared View Short Film Festival (Romania) and in the Peace Film Festival of Asia 2017 (Islamabad, Pakistan).

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Harvan Agustriansyah :    harvankoh@gmail.com

Unsaid
Arjun Dutta
India. 85 min.  2018

Abyakto is a poignant tale of a mother and son. The story encapsulates an unusual journey of Indra right from his childhood, adolescence to being a grown man. A series of unexplained events which turn him into a man he never ought to be. And these unexplained and unusual series of events are come upon by the film’s three most integral pillars, Indra’s mother Sathi, his father Kaushik and his father’s friend and his favorite kaku, Rudra.

The film travels through various time lapses and captures the stirring and unexplainable situations and turmoil’s the trio goes through. The story zooms into the intricacies and complexities of various relationships. It is a humble attempt to explore love, regret, loneliness, sadness, the search of identity and various other emotions through the principal characters in the film.

Arjun Dutta

He was born and raised in Kolkata. Finished schooling from the Assembly of God Church school. Completed graduation in Sociology from Maulana Azad College, and Masters from Presidency College. He never went to a film school, nor did he has any film-related background in his family. He has not even assisted any filmmaker. Whatever he has learnt of filmmaking, learnt himself – by doing and making mistakes.

He has done 2 short films and Unsaid is his first feature.

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Arjun Dutta :    duttaarjun86@gmail.com

Life of an Outcast
Pawan K. Shrivastava
India. 81 min. 2018

Film about caste oppression and religious intolerance in India.

“Father, what is our caste?”
“Son, there is not caste for the poor…”

In an article published on Youth Ki Awaaz, Indian director Pawan K Srivastava starts with the phrase “We become what we read and watch”. The phrase, to him, sums up quite fittingly the kind of influence modern media has on the individual, the advantages as well as the negative aspects of this development.

Pawan K. Shrivastava

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Pawan K. Shrivastava :    pawan.taurus@gmail.com

Disparo a un caballo
Pablo Fuentes Fernández
España.  41 min.  2018

María has returned to the house where she grew up after twelve years without going. There she can get a lot of material for her new photography exhibition. Everything is perfect until one night, a noise coming from the floor below catches Maria’s attention. She feels that all the people of that village hide something, including Luis, her only friend and with whom she shares a small story of summer love. Every day that passes everything is stranger and the noises coming from the floor below are stronger every night.

Pablo Fuentes Fernández

Pablo Fuentes Fernández was born in León in 1997. Since childhood he was fascinated by the world of cinema and made a multitude of tests with his camera. Before starting college he studied an artistic secondary where he finally decided that he would dedicate himself professionally to the cinema. In 2016 he began his training in Master of Cinematography and Audiovisual Arts, which he is still studying. In 2017 premiered his first short film called “ZOC”, as the final student film. And in 2018 he has just presented his latest short film called “Shooting a Dark Horse”.

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Pablo Fuentes :    pablo_fuentes_97@hotmail.com

The Way
Olesya Shigina/Veronica Ponomareva
France/Russia. 87 min. 2018

The Trans-Siberian Railway, boundless Russia … Two friends set off to find answers to simple and complicated questions talking to different people. They stay overnight with strangers and their families, visit monasteries, strike up conversations with fellow travelers on the train. What makes Russia tick? What are the main concerns of common people? How do dwellers of this huge country perceive its past and present? What or who will save Russia? What is the secret of the Russian soul? Should you listen to splashes of the Baikal waves to crack it? Or to the bells chiming? Or join the drinking song? If you follow your heart and trust your hunches, you won’t doubt the answer… It’s a long way from Moscow to Russky Island… Will you ever hit a boundary?

Olesya Shigina

Olesya Shigina is a poet and a filmmaker. She was born in Chelyabinsk. She graduated from South Ural State University. Now she lives and works in France and Russia. In 2017 she graduated from High Courses for Directors at Lenfilm (course of Makarov). Olesya Shigina is an author of the play “Sisters” and the collection of poems “To write about rain”. “The Way” is the debut film.

Veronica Ponomareva

Veronica Ponomareva is an artist, a poet and a film director. She graduated from Moscow Academy of Painting in 2005, the course of monumental painting. In 2016 she entered the High Courses for Directors (course of Khotinenko). Veronica is a founder of Russian Art Union. She worked as a costume designer on the film “The Attraction” by Fyodor Bondarchuk. “The Way” is the debut film.

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rusakovich@festagent.com