Waiting for Kalki
Nimay Goswami
India, UK. 2022. 14 min

Waiting for Kalki is a story about a day in the life of Vishnu, a daily wage leather tannery worker, stuck in the monotonous loop of poverty. He is waiting to welcome a mysterious guest to his home, who is believed to have the ability to transform human lives.

NIMAY GOSWAMI

Nimay Goswami is a Filmmaker from India. He made several independent films after his undergrad in Journalism and found solace in Writing and Directing. Telling stories through this beautiful medium gave him the means to explore his inner journey and experiences as an artist and he moved to London to develop on them. He loves music and has experience in Film Editing and sound. He is a recent graduate at London film School with an MA in Filmmaking. Observing people around him, inspires him to explore the depths and extent of their behaviour and sensibilities in various contemporary situations. This became the subject of his craft as a filmmaker and helped him develop his own style over the years.
Through experimentations and innovations, he has tried to evolve an idiom which plays with the philosophical and mythological elements. This is reflected through the life of a normal human being in the contemporary society.

DIRECTOR’S NOTE

Coming from a religious background, the spirituality and philosophy of Hindu mythology always intrigued me. I wondered how it would be to view this from a realistic perspective – through the eyes of a common man stuck in the monotonous loop of poverty, and struggling in the modern world.

When everything else fails, the only hope that remains for him is to rely on the supernatural. The film Waiting For Kalki challenges the mythological idea of the supernatural as a saviour, or last resort in one’s life. It also explores the feeling of stillness that comes with the waiting, through the use of static shots and wide frames.

POSTER

CONTACT

nimay.goswami@lfs.org.uk

Neighbouring Sounds
Ali Kivanc Guldurur
Turkey, UK. 2022. 18 min

Bilal and Aylin, a young married couple, overhear a domestic battery in their neighborhood late at night. Despite his initial disregard for the situation, Bilal works up a curiosity which paves the way for an unwanted exposure.

ALI KIVANC GULDURUR

Ali Kıvanç Güldürür was born in Izmir, Turkey in 1991. After completing his studies at Bilkent University’s Department of American Culture and Literature in Ankara, he enrolled at the London Film School to study filmmaking where he has worked on numerous projects as a writer, director, editor and sound recordist. Neighbouring Sounds is his graduation film from the London Film School.

DIRECTOR’S NOTE

I value stories and the kind of filmmaking that reflect upon behaviours, reflexes and anxieties of the times that they’re being made in. The story of “Neighbouring Sounds” derives from the actuality of everyday life in contemporary Turkey where violence is rampant, its perpetrators untouchable and our sense of security is nothing but a mere illusion.
It is a reflection on human behaviour; how it takes form within a reality that grinds even the slightest tenacity to ‘do the right thing’. It exhibits the ways in which the ‘outside’ creeps into the ‘private’, although both notions seem separable at first glance.

POSTER

CONTACT

alikivanch@gmail.com

Herbert and Humphrey
Siddarth Joshi
India. 2022. 21 min

Herbert & Humphrey is a short mockumentary about an ordinary man living in a house with an extraordinary ghost. Humphrey is a confident (and slightly mean) ghost haunting Herbert’s house. Humphrey believes that to survive as a ghost, he must kill Herbert. Although they both constantly try to kill each other, this constant Tom & Jerry relationship hides a deeper friendship.

SIDDARTH JOSHI

Sid is an aspiring Producer/Director from India who left his first creative home in the advertising industry to pursue an education in filmmaking in London. Before joining the film school, Sid worked as an assistant director for tv commercials, digital content and all things corporate. More recently he has worked as a HOD for TV shows with BBC, Paramount+ Netflix and more. Sid aspires to hone his skills in the comedy genre and aims to write & direct a mockumentary series in the near future.

DIRECTOR’S NOTE

Movies like What We Do In The Shadows & The Exorcist and TV shows like The Office & People Just Do Nothing have been a huge inspiration in deciding the style and pace of the film. Emotional, Cinematic and Rooted in character, Herbert & Humphrey is a love letter to the golden age of mockumentaries. It’s not just a comedy about ghosts but also a story about friendship and emotions disguised as humour.

POSTER

CONTACT

joshisiddharth.work@gmail.com

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

Andaja
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.

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CONTACT

thrstv11@gmail.com

The Cranes are Flying
Mikhail Kalatozov
Russia. 1957. 96 min

This landmark film by the virtuosic Mikhail Kalatozov was heralded as a revelation in the post-Stalin Soviet Union and the international cinema community alike. It tells the story of Veronica (Tatiana Samoilova) and Boris (Alexei Batalov), a couple who are blissfully in love until World War II tears them apart. With Boris at the front, Veronica must try to ward off spiritual numbness and defend herself from the increasingly forceful advances of her beau’s draft-dodging cousin. Winner of the Palme d’Or at the 1958 Cannes Film Festival, The Cranes Are Flying is a superbly crafted drama with impassioned performances and viscerally emotional, gravity-defying cinematography by Kalatozov’s regular collaborator Sergei Urusevsky.

MIKHAIL KALATOZOV

Mikhail Kalatozov was born on December 28, 1903 in Tiflis, Russian Empire [now Tbilisi, Republic of Georgia. He was a director and cinematographer, known for Vernye druz’ya (1954) and Zagovor obrechyonnykh (1950). He died on March 27, 1973 in Moscow.
In 1934-1936 was a general director of film concern Sakhkinmretsvi. In 1936 left Georgia.
Born in the same town as the genius Sergei Parajanov.
Was appointed Deputy Minister for Film in the 1950s.
Was censured by the Soviet government for ‘negativism’ and forced to do administrative work for seven years (1932-1939), before being allowed to resume his directing career.
In the Georgian film industry as actor, cameraman and editor from 1923, graduating to directing in 1928.
Spent eighteen months in Los Angeles during World War II on a diplomatic assignment. This allowed him to watch Hollywood films unavailable in the USSR.

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Kargo
T.M Malones
Philippines. 2022. 80 min

A woman relieves the heavy burden from her past when she finally exacts revenge on the man who murdered her entire family.
When her entire family perished in a motorcycle accident at a rough highway in Maasin, Iloilo, Sara crashed into a deep depression, which was gradually replaced with an overpowering need to avenge them. Believing that her husband and daughter were murdered, she searches for the man who killed her entire family to find some closure. But at the end of her journey, she untangles something she did not quite expect – a discovery that could profoundly change her entire life.

T. M MALONES

TM MALONES finished his Diploma degree in Filmmaking at the International Academy of Film and Television (IAFT) in Cebu.

His film SALVI: Ang Pagpadayon debuted in the New Breed Category in the 2013 Sineng Pambansa National Film Festival: All-Masters Edition. For the film Baconaua (directed by Joseph Israel Laban), he received Best in Cinematography from the Young Critics Circle in the Circle Citations (2017) and the Cinemalaya Film Festival (2017).

He also received nominations for Baconaua in the Asean International Film Festival (2019); and garnered the Outstanding Achievement in Cinematography at the 66th FAMAS (2018) and at the 41st Gawad Urian (2018). His short film Bawod won Best Screenplay at the Cinemalaya (2017), and was nominated for Best Short Film in 41st Gawad Urian.

DIRECTOR,S NOTE

Being present in a tragic accident involving a person’s life made me think how fragile our existence can be. In a single moment, everything could end and be lost forever. And all the people involved, whether the victim or culprit, face a complete turning point in their lives.
The film revolves around this inevitable point, tied by a single event, two people standing on both ends of a spectrum, the unsuspecting culprit and the unforgiving victim in the search for their own kind of retribution.
Born out of a short film concept confronting a past traumatic experience, Kargo became a feature film about living and redemption. This film is a story of one of countless fellow Filipinos that I would like to tell. As someone from a small town in a region far from the capital, I wanted to show these stories born from our place.

PRESS KIT

POSTER

CONTACT

ignatiusfilms@yahoo.ca

The Golden Wings of Watercocks
Muhammad Quayum
Bangladesh. 2022. 117 min

Bangladesh lies in a floodplain crisscrossed with numerous rivers and canals as well as hundreds of naturally occurring marshlands, known locally as haor and baor. Over 20 million people live in the haor region spreading across 7 districts of north-east Bangladesh. In monsoon, flash flood from upstream hills rushes on to overflow rivers and creeks to create a vast stretch of turbulent water. This extensive water body dries up slowly in 7 months after the monsoon and the land becomes cultivable when only a single crop of paddy can be harvested. There begins the race against time to bag this harvest before the monsoon submerges the land again.

Continue reading The Golden Wings of Watercocks (Muhammad Quayum) Bangladesh. →

Boy,s Things
Raquel Colera
Spain. 2022. 14 min

The 90’s. Summer begins in a rural town. Marta, a happy and innocent 12-year-old girl, enjoys playing football with her friends, riding a bike and building the same hut every year. Everything in her world is perfect, but Marta is different from the other girls in the village: besides being the leader of her gang of friends, she is the only girl in the group. Although gender has never been an obstacle in their friendship, this is about to change: Loren, a 16-year-old boy, arrives in town and approaches Marta’s friends, changing their gaze towards her. Loren has come to stay, and with him puberty and gender roles. Will Marta lose her innocence and accept the rules of her new world?

RAQUEL COLERA

Raquel Colera has a degree in Audiovisual Communication. She has worked in the film industry as a Producer and Production Manager for almost 20 years. Throughout her professional career, she has collaborated with directors such as Rodrigo Rodero (El idioma imposible), Ramón Salazar (10,000 Nights Nowhere) or Inés París (Manzanas, pollos y quimeras).
She has recently redirected her career towards screenwriting and directing: during 2021 she co-directed the fiction short film “Medina Querida”, which was awarded Best Short Film at the 16th EIMA Marathon of the Medina del Campo Film Festival and selected at FICAB 2021 in Argentina. She has also written and directed this fiction short film “Boys’ things” (2022). At the same time, she is developing the feature film of the same name, her first fiction project as screenwriter and director.

POSTER

CONTACT

distribucion@ecam.es

Other Ray
Jaydip Mukherjee
India. 2022. 34 min

OTHER RAY documents the amazing ability of Satyajit Ray to communicate through an array of artistic platforms like a polyglot. Beside his acclaimed stature as a Filmmaker, he had been an Illustrator, a Calligrapher, a Musician and an Author of extraordinary capacity rendering his films a feast of diverse art forms, seamlessly merging to embellish the stories that he narrated. Like every ace narrator, he spoke his own story through his variegated works spread over a bewildering variety of media. Yet the narrations were inevitably illuminated by his interpretation of colliding values without blurring his own sympathy and ethical coordinate. Much of his moral landscape had been inherited from his ancestors who had had seminal contributions in the reimagining of middle class Bengali identity through the lens of humanists. He had picked up the rest from a variety of cultural ambiance and people whom he met in his formative age.
OTHER RAY deals with both the incubation as well as the splendid flowering of Satyajit Ray not merely as a Filmmaker ranking among the immortals of world cinema but all the other notes as well that had blended in him to create an aesthetic symphony, with few peers, if any.

JAYDIP MUKHERJEE

JAYDIP MUKKHERJEE is a renowned filmmaker, have been making documentaries and other genres of films for the last 35 years. His films have been selected thrice in the Indian Panorama in IFFIs, won UN-FAO Awards including his films’ participations in many important foreign film festivals over the years. His retrospective of films was organized at the White Chapel Art Gallery in London and by the Films Division, Ministry of I & B, Government of India at Nandan, Kolkata. His impotant documentaries include GAGANENDRANATH, STRINGS OF MELODIES : Ustad Ali Akbar Khan, PATHER PANCHALI: A LIVING RESONANCE, MILES TO GO (on marginalized child labourers) (for PSBT), BEGUMA PARVEEN SULTANA : The Queen of Melody (for Films Division), THOSE VILLAGES BREATHE HOCKEY (On Tribal hockey in India) (For Films Division), COLOURS OF DREAMS ( On Tagore’s Paintings), JAMINI RAY (For DDII, International Chanel), ART & ARTISTS OF SANTINIKETAN ( for DD BHARATI- 5 episodes), NABANEETA DEV SEN (For Sahitya Akademi), SHALOM : The Peace (On the Jewish Community of Kolkata) , OTHER RAY : Art of Satyajit Ray and so on. He has made films for Ministry of External Affairs, Ministry of I & B, Ministry of Culture, Ministry of HRD, Ministry of Panchayati Raj, Doordarshan National and DD Bharti, UGC-EMRC St. Xaviers’ College, Vidyasagar University etc. He is the media consultant to Uttar Banga Krishi Vishwavidyalaya (North Bengal Agricultural University) and a Guest Faculty in the Department of Journalism & Mass Communication, SRCMU, Jhargram. He is a regular article contributor on Cinema in leading Bengali dailies and periodicals. His publications include FILM-er PATHHSHALA : PRAK-CINEMAY SATYAJIT & CINEMANAMA (both in Bengali).

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CONTACT

jaydip63@gmail.com