Nermin moves to Germany with her 3 daughters in 1963. She works as a tailor in factories and a chief cook for years. Despite the difficulties of a single mother and an immigrant she struggles to exist and build a future for her daughters. Her biggest daughter Sevim has been chosen as Miss. Turkey in a beauty competition and settles in Istanbul. Her middle daughter Serap works as an accountant in big fruit market leaving two sons behind after her death due to cancer. Her little daughter Sevtap lives alone in Stuttgart. She sees a long-lasting psychological treatment because of depression.
This film is about the story of a female filmmaker who lives and works in her mother’s greenhouse. After her film gets selected in a reputable film festival abroad, she is faced with problems to leave the country. She is on the verge of divorce from her husband but realizes she,s pregnant and can not divorce until the baby is born.
In a Syrian border village in the early 80’s, little Sero attends school for the first time. A new teacher has arrived with the goal of making strapping Panarabic comrades out of the Kurdish children. To enable paradise to come to earth, he uses the rod to forbid the Kurdish language, orders the veneration of Assad and preaches hate of the “Zionist enemy”- the Jews. The lessons upset and confuse Sero because his long-time neighbors are a lovable Jewish family. With a fine sense of humor and satire, the Film depicts a childhood which manages to find light moments between dictatorship and dark drama. Little Sero gets involved in dangerous pranks with his friends, and dreams of having atelevision so he can finally watch cartoons. But he also experiences how the adults around him are increasingly crushed by the despotism, violence and nationalism which surround them. The film was inspired by the director’s personal experiences, and so his bitter-sweet memories connect the Syrian tragedy to the present.
MANO KHALIL
Mano Khalil was born in Kurdistan – Syria. 1981-1986 Studied history and law at Damascus University in Syria. 1987-1994 Studied fiction film direction in the former Czechoslovakia. 1990-1995 Worked as independent film director for Czechoslovakian and later for the Slovakian Television. Since 1996 lives in Switzerland, working as independent film director and producer. 2012 grounded the production film company Frame Film.
FILMOGRAPHY
2021 Neighbours – Fiction 124 Min 2018 Hafis & Mara – documentary 88 Min 2016 The Swallow – Fiction 102 Min 2013 The Beekeeper – documentary 107 Min 2010 Our garden of Eden. Documentary 97min 2009 My Prison, my Home. Documentary 33 Min. 2007 David the Tolhildan, Documentary, 54 Min 2005 Al-Anfal, in the name of Allah, Baath and Saddam Documentary. 2003 Colorful dreams. Fiction 52 Min 1999 Triumph of Iron. Fic-Doc. 1995 Kino-ocko (Kino eye) Doc.16mm, 20Min 1992 The place where god sleeps. doc.16mm, 30Min
Alborada ( The Dawning of the Day ) is a fictionalized account of famous Chilean poet and activist Pablo Neruda’s time in Sri Lanka from 1929-1931 (British Ceylon at time) as an ambassador: his memoires from his time in Ceylon include a harrowing confession to raping a low-caste Tamil woman, tasked with cleaning his outhouse each dawn.
Although there are many accounts of his life portrayed in fiction and film, this part of the story is often carefully left out. Though his poems about love outwardly sound romantic, they hide within them the exoticization and objectification of women and particularly, women of color. The depiction of a Burmese woman Josie Bliss (widely regarded as a figment of the poet’s imagination) as a “perceived threat, desire and barbarity” in his poem Widower’s Tango, combined with his confession show Neruda’s complicated relationship with women and race.
Alborada is an elaboration of the incident, beginning with Pablo’s first arrival in Sri Lanka. It explores the psychological and the emotional factors behind Pablo’s attraction to a woman bound by her caste: an innocent woman who, unbeknownst to her, played a part in a bizarre fantasy that ended in a sexual assault.
Alborada( The Dawning of the Day ) was shot during the pandemic in Sri Lanka. It held its World Premiere at the Tokyo International Film Festival 2021 ( In Competition ) and well received there. Was screened in International Film Festival in Kerala ( IFFK ) under World Cinema.
ASOKA HANDAGAMA
Asoka Handagama is considered as a leader of the third generation of Sri Lankan cinema. Studied Mathematics at the University of Kelaniya. He obtained his MSc in Development Economics at Warwick University in 1995. He is also the Assistant Governor of the Sri Lankan Central Bank. His films such as This is MyMoon(2000), Flying with One Wing (2002) always tend to explore new forms and narratives. Amiens International Film Festival, paid tribute to Asoka Handagama for his contribution to development of independent cinema in Asia, at its 33rd edition. His latest film LetHer Cry is his eight full-length feature.
Fascinating what you say about the film and its analysis of the toxicity of patriarchy, which is now finally being challenged. The ultimate goal of feminism is to replace patriarchy with a more just, egalitarian and kinder civilisation. I think it’s important to take the idols down from their pedestals, because they are flawed people, as we all are, but you can’t cancel their work. If we are going to destroy the work of poets, because they were sinners, we should also destroy the work of scientists, politicians, generals, inventors, musicians and so on. There would be nothing left.” ISABEL ALLENDE.
The script is a fiction that is structured from Neruda’s own memories in “I confess that I have lived” (1974) in the chapter “The Luminous Solitude”, where he describes in seven lines about how one day he sexually forces himself on a Tamil girl, who came from the lowest caste of the Sakkili, who were considered “untouchables”.
Asoka Handagama, an admirer of Neruda’s work, was stunned to read this paragraph of the memoir and for more than ten years entertained the idea of making a film about the incident. But it was not until 2021, in the midst of the COVID 19 pandemic, that this dream would be realized with the filming of “Alborada”. The title was inspired by the name Neruda had given to his Ceylonese friend Lionel Wendt’s house built in the elegant Cinnamon Gardens neighborhood of Colombo. Wendt was a musician, photographer, filmmaker and promoter of the arts in his country.
February, 1st Leila Macaire, Mo Mo France, Burma. 2021. 12 min
Mo woke up on February 1st 2021 and learnt that she had lost her freedom. The army had just taken control of her country, Myanmar, yet again. A year earlier, to the exact day, Leïla had travelled there for the first time as a French tourist, and found in this country a breath of freedom which she had never known before.
What kind of story did you want to tell when you start to write The Coffin Painter?
Film is like a mirror, it can reflect the reality of our life, and through this mirror we can see the phenomena that we have ignored. There is a consensus nowadays, the indifference of human feelings, which is there for all to see. People are realistic and everything is about the money. We don’t talk about the human kindness anymore. At first, I wanted to tell a story about neighbors. What kind of relationship between them? I wanted to have this contrast, and I came up with the story of a young girl and an old man. The young girl in the film is constantly being bullied, and bullying has been social issue in recent years. Our story is about a young girl who is being bullied and her mother who is under constant pressure from life (loan sharks), and the old man stands up to protect them both. The reality is a lead and that is how this story came out.
Middle-aged Old Jia and teenage girl Seven came to the town and became neighbors under different circumstances. From indifference to being attached, they look for a new life from each other.
In his second feature film The Coffin Painter, Da Fei tells a warm story of the cross-generational friendship between two strangers: Jia, an older man who has lost his son, and Seven, a middle school girl who runs from debt with her mother. As a coffin painter, the traditional Chinese craftsman who draws religious symbols on coffins, Jia witnesses people’s different attitudes towards their families living and dead. As time passes by, the three characters with distinct personalities drift closer and bring company and warmth to each other. By depicting the mundane daily life in the remote town, Da Fei embodies people’s loneliness in an indifferent world. The sincere and gloomy tone of the film drives us to feel the characters’ burdens and sorrow. As Jia and Seven understand and heal each other with their kindness, their life’s reverse point eventually comes…
DA FEI
Da Fei, a Chinese film writer and director, graduated from Shanxi Media College in 2007. In 2018, Silent Winter was produced. It was selected in the First Time Filmmaker Section of the 42nd Montreal International Film Festival. It won more than 20 nominations and awards including Best Film, Best Screenwriter at South Africa Independent Film Festival, and Best Original Screenplay at the London International Film Festival in 2019.
FILMOGRAPHY
2006 Short film Free Flight 2018 Feature film Silent Winter 2021 Feature Film The Coffin Painter
2000 Songs of Farida Yolkin Tuychiev Uzbekistan. 2020. 110 min
At the beginning of the twentieth century, there is civil war in CentralAsia. The Emirate and khanates are about to collapse. The civilians live in the deepest fear of their uncertain future and of the imminent arrival of significant numbers of Bolsheviks. But that doesn’t seem to bother Kamil. This old renegade lives far away from … everything: his times, worldly concerns, society, the values of the rich and the poor. He wants something different. He wishes for something else. His only hope is tohave a descendant. But time is a relentless persecutor. He brings a new young wife home as his other wives were unable to give him an heir. Tension inevitably appears.
“This film is neither a historical epic (…) nor a foray into my ethnic background, but the exploration of real life, real people, their reality, dignity and truth. That truth seems to flow out through time, grows and goes beyond the borders of history, mentality, nationality and race in order to reach a real sense of humanity. And as for me – the art of motion pictures is the best way to remember, comprehend and hope that we all are human beings in the flow of time.” Yolkin Tuychiev.
YOLKIN TUYCHIEV
Yolkin Tuychiev was born in 1977. He is graduated from the Art Institute of Tashkent and from School of Directing of Moscow. En 2004, he co-directed The Tulip in the Snow with A. Chakhobiddinov, presented at the Cannes International Film Festival. In Vesoul, The Source won the Jury’s Special Mention in 2007, and P.S. the Golden Cyclo in 2011.
Filmography
1999 : February 2003 : Tulip in the snow 2004 : Adolescent 2006 : The Source 2008 : Silence 2012 : Afg’on 2012 : Dunyo 2015 : House of mermaids 2016 : Ma’suma 2020 : 2000 Songs of Farida
Breaking The Silence Isabelle Vang, Pawel Lisiak France. 2020. 65 min
When I was a teenager, I would ask my parents questions about their past. “Why did you run away from Laos? Why did you choose France?” Silence. “That’s the past. We have to forget it,” my father would answer. I was helpless as his reply was like a slap in the face. I was an adult when I discovered I had an elder sister while flipping through a photograph album. It was the face of a child. She had died during the turmoil of the Vietnam War. Nobody had ever spoken to me about her. After this revelation, I decided to go and pick up the lost threads of the history of my parents and that of thousands of other Hmong immigrants. I invited my father to come on a journey to Laos. He accepted to follow me and go back to the country he left 40 years ago. Today, at last, my father feels ready to talk.
imagineindiafestival.com 