Juice
Neeraj Ghaywan
India. 2017. 14 min

Brijesh Singh is having a house party to which his colleagues have been invited. Only big boys are aboard this ship, filled to the deck with loud laughter and casual sexism. Brijesh’s wife Manju (a superb Shefali Shah) is the captain elsewhere – in the kitchen. Manju and the wives of Brijesh’s colleagues are hard at work cooking goodies to go with the drinks. The men gossip about their disapproval of a new female colleague. One suggests that she should not have been hired in the first place and then apologises to Manju. She gives the faintest hint of a smile and leaves.

In the kitchen, the women discuss the pros and cons of marriage, bringing a child into the world, and balancing domestic duties with careers. Both genders have made their peace in their respective worlds, or so it seems.

Frodo García-Conde was born in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. Currently lives in Madrid. His training covers different artistic disciplines, ranging from painting, illustration and photography to film direction. He studied at the faculty of fine arts in Madrid. At the same time he develops his learning in cinema, in Séptima Ars school, with a camera and lighting course and expands his knowledge in workshops of Jorgen Leth, Patricio Guzmán, Victor Erice and Abbas Kiarostami relevant in his development.

He was founding partner of the producing company Dedo Gordo, in which he develops his role as cinematographer, filming several documentaries, in countries such as Salvador, Guatemala, Israel, Palestine, Senegal, Guinea Bissao. He debuted as a director making short films with Luis Mesonero. His last personal project is shot in the workshop of Abbas Kiarostami and thanks to him he is invited to participate in the tribute that former students give to the director at the 33 th Film Festival of Tehran, Iran.

He was born in Murcia in 1963 although he grew up in Madrid since he was 3 years old. Film director and screenwriter.  A great lover of cinema and with clear references such as Quentin Tarantino or Billy Wilder. At the time of accessing the university, he chose to study Information Sciences at the UCM.

From the early works until he makes his first film, he goes through many phases: he is part of the management team under Juan Antonio Bardem in the TVE series Lorca, death of a poet (1987). He also works in audiovisual production for Publicidad en Contrapunto, Madrid (1987-1988). He works on documentary series such as Central America, Chain in Action (1990) (produced by Johns Hopkins University, winner of the Population Institute Award, Best Media Award) in Central America, where he spends three years working for foundations and creating teaching videos .

He is also the director and scriptwriter of the telefilm “The Girl Who Saw the World from Above” (1991), shot in Mexico and Guatemala and produced by the Mac Arthur Foundation. It is worth mentioning his work as a screenwriter for both his own films and for others (Nine Muses by Regina Álvarez). In 1996 he joins David Menkes and Miguel Bardem with whom he founded Frenéticas Movies.

Graduated in Law. Professional photographer and writer, specialized in Narrative Photography and New Journalisms by Univ. Rey Juan Carlos, Menéndez Pelayo University, and NODE CENTER Berlin.

Royal Madrid Photographic Society Directive since 2015. Community Manager of the NGO Redmamsa (Saharawi Women’s Network Madrid) since 2017.

Literature awards in 2004 (City of Jaén), 2013 (Spanish Association of Neuropsychiatry) and 2015 (ACEN). Photography exhibitions at CEV High School (2016), and Cambiodeismo, CC. Galileo (2017). Fairs “Contemporary Art” of Malaga and “We art fair” C.C. Conde Duque Madrid (2017).
Curator and author in the narrative project “Constellations” (in preparation, January 2018).

Song of Hands
Hamze Zarei
Iran. 2017. 19 min

Song of the Hands is The story is narrated by a kid (hiwa) who is fascinated by music, and accompany other children in this passion. But under the pressure of the traditional and religious environment his father breaks his musical instrument , Hiwa is hugging the pieces of the instrument, and toward to …

HAMZE ZAREI

Hamze is born in 1986 in Iran’ Kurdish area in Kermanshah .He study Directory and Dramatic Literature in art collage in Tehran .
In his films, he tries to narrate the story of the children of his land and the rights of all human beings.

CONTACT

Hamze Zarei

zarei.hamze64@gmail.com

The Sound of Silence
Bina Paul
India. 2017. 51 min

One of the most telling testimonials in The Sound of Silence, Bina Paul’s documentary on how gender issues play out in Kerala’s colleges, is by Dinu, a student in Kozhikode.

In 2015, Dinu was suspended for breaking one of the rules stipulated by his college: “Girls and boys must sit separately in a classroom.” When Dinu tried to question the rule, he and his friends were asked to leave the classroom. The situation worsened when the principal ruled that Dinu and his classmates could enter the classroom only after they brought their parents to college.

A stay order from the local court finally got Dinu back into the classroom.

“How does sitting together on a bench become a disciplinary issue?” he poignantly asks in Paul’s compelling documentary. “It was nothing but moral policing.”

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Ek Inquilab Aur Aaya                                                                                                          Uma Chakravarti                                                                                                                  India. 2017. 66 min

“Ek Inquilab Aur Aaya” is a documentary which explores the frustrations, ambitions and struggles of women who lived in an orthodox Islamic household in Lucknow in the first half of the 20th century. The lives of two women, Sughra Fatema and her niece Khadija Ansari, residents of the Farangi Mahal are traced. The family which resided there was at the centre of learning in Lucknow from 1695 onwards.

Despite being at the centre of scholarship in Lucknow, the family refused to break the shackles of patriarchy which existed in the corridors of the Firangi Mahal. The women had to live their lives within the strict confinement of the purdah, the practice of confining women within the household, away from the eyes of men.

Director Uma Chakravarti tells us why the story needed to be told: “Because Muslim women are being flattened into a mass with no variations in their multiple histories which was rich and distinctive as the histories of women in other communities, classes and castes; today the only way to portray a Muslim woman is to put her into a hijab and hide, literally hide, everything else about her. All we now hear is triple talaq and the need to rescue them from their miseries as if Hindu women have got emancipation! We know nothing of their political participation in movements in the past and in the present; their participation in the left movement is particularly unknown. So for me as a historian turned filmmaker this was a story that was waiting to be told.”

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El gran líbano                                                                                                                           Mounia Akl / Neto Villalobos                                                                                      Lebanon-France. 2017.  16 min

When hungover Bassem wakes up by the lake shore among his
dead fishes, his sister Youmna, who he hasn’t seen for 12 years,
is there, with a coffin.

MOUNIA AKL

Mounia Akl is a director and writer from Lebanon living between Beirut and New York. She holds a bachelor’s degree in architecture from ALBA and an MFA in Directing from Columbia University. Apart from directing,
Mounia has taught film directing at the NHSI film summer institute at Northwestern University, Chicago and was a preceptor in Screenwriting at Columbia University, New York. Her previous work includes four short films, two web series and recently Lights, an omnibus feature film made of 6 chapters directed by 6 directors, including herself, from Breaking Wave Pictures, a collective she co-founded in New York. Her short film, Submarine, was in the official selection of the 69th Cannes Film Festival in the Cinefondation category. It had its North American premiere at the Toronto (TIFF) and its MENA one at Dubai (DIFF) where it won the Muhr Jury Prize. Submarine was awarded the James Bridges production grant and the Kodak Motion Picture Product Grant.

She is currently writing her feature film The Most Beautiful Place In The World with Spanish co-writer Clara Roquet.

NETO VILLALOBOS

Neto Villalobos was born in San José, Costa Rica. He graduated with
a degree in Sociology and later majored in Film Direction in Barcelona.
Besides his short films and videoclips he has participated in workshops such as “How to Tell a Story?” by Gabriel García Márquez, Rotterdam Lab and Berlinale and Buenos Aires Talent Campus. His first feature film Por las Plumas (All About the Feathers) was premiered in Toronto IFF and San Sebastian IFF and traveled around the world. Neto is currently working on two projects: producing an experimental documentary supported by
Tribeca Film Institute, Jamón, and post producing his 2nd feature film Cascos Indomables (Untamed Helmets) which was developed at Cannes Cinéfondation Residency, 3 Puertos Cine, Paris Coproduction Village, Locarno Filmmakers Academy, Produire aud Sud and 27th Rencontres de Toulouse where it won the Cinéma Développement – BrLab Award.

CONTACT

Badih Massaad
Festivals Coordinator
badih@abboutproductions.com

ABBOUT Productions