A Dead Sea
Nahd Bashier
Israel. 2022. 12 min

Kamel, a Palestinian man in his 50s, suffers from autism and travels with his paralyzed sister to the Dead Sea to receive medical treatment in seawater in the hope that it will help him treat psoriasis that has spread through his body. At the beach, he finds himself in an unpleasant situation. A little girl stole his rubber ball and Kamel tried to return it, the crowd gathers and he has a hard time explaining himself, especially since he does not understand Hebrew and the Jew does not understand Arabic. The masses suspect that this is a terrorist who kidnaps a girl and in the end a tragedy that seems to stem from a true story that took place in Jerusalem.

NAHD BASHIER

Present: Chairman of the Arab Culture Committee
CEO of N.B Oreem Production
CEO of Collage Association
Until 2021: CEO and Owner of Wow Surprise
2013 – 2018: Member of the High Public Committee of the Ministry of Culture and the Arts.
2006 – 2011: Artistic Director of the Kafron Theater.
2014: Member of the Fringe Theater Committee in the Ministry of Culture.

• Bachelor’s degree, B.A. specialization in acting and directing in the Department of Theater at the University of Haifa.
• Theatre Teaching at the University of Haifa.
• Group Facilitators Course for Resolving National Conflicts – (Children of Peace).
• Master’s degree. M.A studies in film culture, University of Haifa.
• Marketing and digital marketing – HackerU.
• 2021 – Master’s degree student in Law Studies – The Academic Center for Law and Business.

POSTER

CONTACT

nahdtop@gmail.com

Crescent 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.

PRESS KIT

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

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