Have a Nice Day Forever
Tatiana Delaunay
Norway. 2021. 20 min
Two witty, sweet and confused men become friends because they don’t have anything better to do. Their day oscillates between small talk, existential crisis and dubious male rites of passage, whilst wandering the woods surrounding Oslo, in search of a suitable place to camp in the middle of winter.
Continue reading Have a Nice Day Forever (Tatiana Delaunay) NorwayCrescent Night
Gurvinder Singh
India. 2022. 109 min
Modan returns home after spending some years of the prime of his life in prison for a murder committed to avenge his father’s humiliation over land disputes. Acrimony with his brothers who have prospered in his absence, forces Modan to rebuild his life with his mother by shifting to the dilapidated ancestral home and by bringing home a wife who’s already a mother to an infant. Inspite of Modan’s honest attempts to forget the insults of the past, suppressed anger manifests itself in renewed violence.
GURVINDER SINGH
Gurvinder Singh is an Indian film director. He is best known for his Punjabi language films Anhe Ghore Da Daan, and Chauthi Koot (The Fourth Direction) which premiered at Venice and Cannes Film Festival respectively. Gurvinder is an alumnus of the prestigious Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), Pune from where he studied film-making and graduated in 2001. He travelled extensively through Punjab between 2002 and 2006, living and traveling with folk itinerants, documenting folk ballads and oral narratives. It led to his first documentary ‘Pala’. He continued to make short experimental works and documenting arts/artists for the next few years. In 2005 he was invited by avant-garde Indian filmmaker Mani Kaul to be his teaching assistant for a master-class at FTII, which led to a close association with the filmmaker who became his mentor. He translated and published a book of conversations of Udayan Vajpeyi with Mani Kaul, titled ‘Uncloven Space’. His latest film is ‘Infiltrator’ starring Veer Rajwant Singh which is a 15-minute short story in an international omnibus called ‘In the same garden’.
DIRECTOR,S NOTE
Crescent Night is about a sadness on the verge of implosion that engulfs a silent agrarian land. Here is an unwritten violence, simmering under the surface, in which the margins are pushed afar into a breakdown of basic human relations. It is a violence that scripts the alienation of the being from its own selfhood. It is also about the last ditch resistance of the oppressed. Cinematically, for me, its the culmination of a journey that started with ‘Anhey Ghorhey Da Daan’, the tropes pared down to the bare essential, interiorised and a self-reflective form.
POSTER
CONTACT
gurvindarsingh@gmail.com
Yanagawa
Lu Zhang
China. 2021. 112 min
Yanagawa is a film about two very different brothers who travel from Beijing to Yanagawa, Japan. They meet a girl who they both were in love with in their youth. One day she had disappeared without goodbyes. Wistful undertone is given by the fact that the film starts with one of the brothers getting diagnosed with cancer. The young man wishes to depart without leaving much behind, but without knowing it, he leaves so much in other people’s hearts. The story takes a look at the individuals’ memories and helps to make sense of the seemingly small events that sometimes play a decisive role in the course of a life. Zhang Lu precisely directs this organic and vital film, which takes the viewer to drift on the Yanagawa Canal in the light of a full moon peeking between the clouds.
LU ZHANG
Korean-Chinese filmmaker ZHANG Lu started out as a novelist before turning to filmmaking. Renowned for his artful portrayals of idyllic scenes, Zhang has received awards from the Cannes, Locarno and Berlin film festivals over the last two decades. Yanagawa is his thirteenth film and his first feature film directed in China.
He does not need too much introduction among filmlovers. His films have gained success in different international film festivals such as 2007’s “Desert Dream,” 2010’s “Dooman River” and last year’s “Fukuoka” at Berlin; 2001’s “Grain in Ear” at Cannes; and “Gyeongju” at Locarno. His film A Quiet Dream had it’s international premiere at Tallinn. He has a long history as a writer and his films are imbued with poetry of life.
POSTER
CONTACT
liu.qianmeng@hishow.net
On The Second Floor
Marco Araujo
Spain. 2022. 19 min
Aurora is an elderly woman who lives alone in a small apartment in Madrid. She lives a simple, monotonous life, so any change in her routine is something eventful. Since her husband passed away, and most of her friends, her only visitor is a small bird that comes to her window every morning. She feels alone and neglected as she looks melancholically at all the things surrounding her… constantly reminding her of her past.
MARCO ARAUJO
Marco Araujo Dolado, born in Madrid, began his interest in cinema at a young age and directed his first short films when he was 11 and 12 years old. His first serious short film, made alone in 2018 at the age of 13, is called “Cooking”. In the spring of 2019, he shoots his second short film “The Piano Room”. Already in 2020 and 2021 his two main short films are selected at various festivals, along with his third short, “No Abras esa Naranja”. It is in the summer of 2021 when he manages to make the short film in which he has been working for a year and a half and which stars the actress María Galiana.
POSTER
CONTACT
marco.clod.ad@gmail.com
The Heiresses
Charlotte Diament
Belgium. 2021. 56 min
In Brussels in the 1990s, people still dreamed of utopias and brotherhood between peoples. The school is a champion of multiculturalism, progress and equality. Four young girls from different backgrounds grow up in this context and project themselves into a happy society.
Thirty years later, they gather around one of them, who has become a filmmaker, to try to grasp the political and social tipping points between the dream world of childhood and the turmoil of contemporary life.
Reconstruction of Occupation
Jan Sikl
Czech Republic. 2021. 100 min
Documentary filmmaker Jan Šikl has spent many years seeking out and collecting private film archives. Faded footage of family lives, celluloid echoes of celebrations and everyday moments. Through his work, Šikl came across several hours of footage showing the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia. These unique images long remained unseen – until August 21, 2021, when historical memory awakened from a long slumber. Reconstruction of Occupation is a cinematic adventure of a truly archeological nature in which anonymous faces are transformed into living witnesses of the days that sent Czechoslovakia into two more decades of bondage.
JAN SIKL
Born in 1957, Prague. Graduated from FAMU in 1982. From 1984 to 1990 he was employed as a director at Krátký film Praha. In 1991 he founded his own production company, Pragafilm. He is a collector of amateur family archives that he works with also in his films, especially in his documentary series Private Century (2004-2007) that was awarded in Czech republic and abroad (Best Czech documentary at Jihlava IDFF, Pavel Koutecký’s award, Trilobit award, Elsa TV award and others).
Selected filmography:
Private Century – TV series:
The King of Velichovky (2002, TV doc. film)
A Stroke of Butterfly Wings (2005, TV doc. film)
A Low-Level Flight (2006, doc.)
See You in Denver (2006, TV doc. film)
Small Russian Clouds of Smoke (2007, TV doc. film)
Reconstruction of the Occupation (2021, doc.)
POSTER
CONTACT
tabery.alice@gmail.com
Maestro A Portrait
Supriya Suri
India. 2021. 52 min
The film explores a cinematic portrait of the Maestro – Buddhadeb Dasgupta. It tries to capture the essence of the film maker by reflecting his life, spaces in Kolkata, poetry and paintings that are an integral part of his life.
Continue reading Maestro-A Portrait (Supriya Suri) IndiaDonkeyhead
Agam Darshi
Canada. 2022. 106 min
Mona Ghuman (37) was always the outlier of the family. When her unhealthy and rebellious life comes crashing down by a serious car accident, Mona moves back into her traditional South Asian father’s house. What was meant to be a few months of rent-free sobriety turns into seven isolated years caring for her cancer-stricken father. When her father suffers a severe stroke Mona’s three successful siblings, (Rup, Sandy and Mona’s twin brother Parm) return back to the family home with a mission to fix and to help, causing Mona’s insecurities about her own unfulfilled life to deepen.
Continue reading Donkeyhead (Agam Darshi) Canada. Official SectionAruna Vasudev: Mother of Asian Cinema
Supriya Suri
India. 2021. 65 min
Aruna Vasudev, Founder of Netpac, Cinemaya & Cinefan Film festival has touched the lives of many in the world of Cinema. This documentary traces her roots from her humble origins in an undivided British India, to corridors of cinematic universe. It brings together her journey as a lm critic, cinema activist and an impresario, weaving a tapestry that connects the dots that make the large canvas that we know as Asian Cinema Renaissance. This film explores her dynamism painted through a narrative unfolding lives of critics, filmmakers, curators and programmers – who are hidden maestros that largely make the cinephilia culture and by large remain unsung in histories of Cinema.
Continue reading Aruna Vasudev: Mother of Asian Cinema (Supriya Suri) IndiaIncomplete Sentences
Adar Bozbay
Turkey. 2022. 58 min
Aslı Erdoğan, worldwide known author, activist, columnist have hit silence after she fled to Germany. Incomplete Sentences is a feature documentary on Erdoğan’s literature and life story that lead to a life in exile. She left Turkey after being unlawfully detained as a result of current government’s increasing pressure on writers, journalist, academics etc. Now, in Frankfurt, she is struggling while everybody is waiting for her to write again. Aslı starts telling her story just after getting out of prison. Aslı together with the director, Adar, wondering in streets of İstanbul, talks about herself. Sometimes streets, sometimes an apartment building invokes stories and sometimes it’s her books. She reads parts from her books and explains the stories behind.
Aslı then goes to Germany to receive the Erich Maria Remarque Award and yet, she doesn’t return. That’s how her exile life in Frankfurt starts; which she likens to a semi-open prison. This situation gradually disrupts her health and keeps her away from writing. I feel like I’ve been exiled from my mother tongue, it’s very strange, like my relation to it is wounded.
The director develops a different kind of relation with Aslı; as a helping friend, taking care of Aslı’s house, watering her flowers, delivering books and notes to Frankfurt, while she witnesses Aslı’s trauma first hand. There is a lot of support for Aslı, she goes from one country to another, attending audience solidarity events, receiving awards. The documentary will follow the steps of Aslı in different places around the world and with an attempt to hear her silence.
Continue reading Incomplete Sentences (Adar Bozbay) Turkey
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