Bouma
Debatma Mandal
India. 2019. 14 min
Bouma, set in the 1960s, follows the life of a lady living with her always complaining, always bickering, and always demanding husband Gobindo. However, he soon dies due to cancer. His widowed wife donates his body to a scientist and researcher, and when she visits the scientist to check on his husband’s organs, things take a dark (but hilarious) twist.
DEBATMA MANDAL
POSTER
CONTACT
Bandita Shome : bandita.shome@viacom18.com
Kilkis, the Town of Owls
Azlarabe Alaoui
Morocco. 2018. 97 min
The Town of Owls is an isolated residential community situated in the High Atlas Mountains. It is inhabited by families and guards of a secret political prison camp, which remained out of history for a long time until the early 1990s. Guards spend their long days back and forth between the secret prison and the village, through a suspension bridge built upon a deep valley that connects the village with the fortress prison. The story is about people from different places with dissimilar destinies, yet coalesced together by a common fate that makes them realise that the Town of Owls is in fact a titanic prison in which everyone, including guards and residents, are held detainees.
AZLARABE ALAOUI
Azlarabe Alaoui is Moroccan script writer, producer, and film director. He has a Ph.D. in visual writing. He is a professor of film directing in many academic institutions and is the president of the Centre of Film Studies and Research in Cinema in Morocco. He is also the director of two feature films Androman. Blood and Coal (2012) and Kilikis. The City of Owls (2018). He has produced 50 documentaries since 1998 including more than 20 documentaries for Al-Jazeera Documentary channel and a lot of television films and documentaries for the Moroccan television. His films won a myriad of national and international awards. He wrote a variety of critical articles and his book Critical Approach to the Visual Discourse in Morocco was published in 2017. Furthermore, he gives several professional workshops on film directing and documentary making in Morocco and abroad.
POSTER
CONTACT
Mountain River Films : festival@mountainriverfilms.com
Asandhimitta
Asoka Handagama
Srilanka. 2018. 98 min
A renowned filmmaker receives a mysterious call from an old college mate in the middle of the night. Asandhimitta, whom he recalls as a large and voluptuous woman, asks him to make a film based on her life. She then confesses that she was recently involved in a triple homicide of three women and is taken into custody shortly afterwards. Intrigued, the filmmaker attempts to piece together her fragmented story for a film while Asandhimitta herself awaits her fate in a local prison.
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 My Moon(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 Let Her Cry is his eight full-length feature.
POSTER
CONTACT
Asoka Handagama : ahandagama@yahoo.com
Guardian of the Light
Yermek Tursunov
Kazakhstan. 2019. 90 min
After the end of the World War II, Soviet soldiers come to a small town in Germany. A lot of buildings are ruined and there are still sounds of bomb explosions and whistling bullets. Young Kazakh soldier saves an old civil German man from death and helps him to hide in a safe place. The old man gives him a bag with the most valuable thing that he has–a portable projector and some films. Thirty years later, the former soldier becomes a legendary figure. He travels to small distant villages and pastures to show films. He spends his life travelling from one village to another, from house to house. The children call him Tarzan, because of the film TARZAN that they like so much. But professional cinema theaters come to big and small cities replacing our Tarzan who moves to more remote villages.
YERMEK TURSUNOV
Yermek Tursunov is a Kazakh novelist and award-winning filmmaker. His debut feature as writer and director, The Daughter-in-law (2009), premiered at the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival. His 2012 feature The Old Man (2012) was Kazakhstan’s submission for the Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film and was nominated for a Russian Academy Award. It received two APSA nominations in 2013, for Best Cinematography and Best Actor. His other films as writer/director are Seven Days in May (2012), Kempyr (2014) and Kenzhe (2015). Tursunov has written many other feature films including Who are you, Mr Ka? (2010) and Late Love (2010). Famous for the many novels he has written, Tursunov has also translated many works of Kazakh literature.
POSTER
CONTACT
Mountain River Films : festival@mountainriverfilms.com
Julie and the Demon of the Night
Jan Vondrácek
Czech Republic. 2019. 20 min
One day before meeting her father that she has never met, a half sleeping young woman leaves her apartment against her brother’s wishes. During the eclipse of the moon, she meets juvenile figures of her own unconsciousness and descends slowly into her fear of an unknown.
JAN VONDRÁCEK
During 2007 to 2011, he received several awards for amateur and independent films in both domestic and international competitions. It was significantly influenced by his work for the Czech National Film Archive Cinema. In 2012, started studying Prague’s FAMU. His first year’s film was scheduled to premiere at the BFI London festival.
CONTACT
FAMU : alexandra.hroncova@famu.cz
Still Rolling: The DDLJ Story
Natashja Rathore
Great Britain. 2016. 35 min
What makes a film do a record-breaking run of over 1000 weeks at the box office? A filmmaker takes a journey from London to Switzerland, to India to rediscover the magic of Bollywood’s longest running film ‘Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge’.
NATASHJA RATHORE
As a Filmmaker, Natashja has crewed on Feature Films, TV Shows and has directed and produced a number of Short Films and Documentaries that have travelled to festivals – including ‘Still Rolling’ the documentary on the popular Bollywood sensation ‘Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge’. Natashja has consulted and created content for notable Brands such as Roseate Hotels & Resorts, Belvedere, Kotak, Hero etc. and her work has been seen on platforms such as BBC Asian Network, Mediacorp, National Geographic and Condé Nast.
CONTACT
Caitlin Quinlan : c.quinlan@lfs.org.uk
The Binoculars
Rahul Sharma
Great Britain. 2019. 15 min
Cadence runs away during an unwanted road trip with her mother. Looking through her binoculars leads her to an unexpected meeting with two refugees.
RAHUL SHARMA
Hailing from a small town in Northern India-Kanpur, Rahul moved to Mumbai, a metropolis, at an early age and inculcated a best of both world. Interested in cinema from an early age, his influences include Satyajit Ray, Akira Kurosawa, Abbas Kiarostami, François Truffaut and Bahman Ghobadi. Centred on younger protagonists, his short-form work includes Story of a Lonely Goldfish and The Binoculars, the latter being his graduation film for the London Film School where he recently obtained an MA in Filmmaking. Currently, his feature-length documentary Three Losses shot over three countries is in post-production.
POSTER
CONTACT
Caitlin Quinlan : c.quinlan@lfs.org.uk
10 x 10 Feet
Dhruv Tripathi
Great Britain. 2018. 18 min
More than 60% of the people in Bombay actually reside in houses of 10×10 feet or worse. ’10x10ft’ revolves around a newly married couple, who is frustrated, as they have to share a one room house with the groom’s parents. This frustration is further increased by the fact that getting a bigger space is a leisure that they can’t afford. In this city of crowded homes and cramped desires, where does one find the space to make love?
DHRUV TRIPATHI
Currently working on Graduation Film for the 3 year MA Filmmaking course at London Film School.
POSTER
CONTACT
Caitlin Quinlan : c.quinlan@lfs.org.uk
Holy Family
Margarida Lucas
Portugal. 2019. 20 min
Holy Family is dark humor comedy that tells the story of a family of 5 brothers, a single mother and a grandmother who live tight on a small apartment in Benfica. The mother (Bela), permanently unemployed, has the fantasy to enrich herself. Liliana, 19, is an addict and struggles in school. Zé, 21, works at the grocery store. Artur, 11, speaks little but is still the quietly responsible figure of this family, taking care of his younger twin brothers, Gil and Ricardo. Finally, Dona Laura, is an eccentric old lady obsessed with football. Everything is complicated on the day that the emblematic Sardoal FC mascot escapes and the club is at risk of losing the championship.
MARGARIDA LUCAS
Born in Lisbon, 1983. Margarida moved to London when she was 18 to study Media at UWL. She did an MA in Cinematography at ESCAC, Barcelona. In 2009 she moved to New York where she currently lives and works as a film editor.
CONTACT
Emanuel Oliveira : emanuel@curtas.pt
Look no Further
André Marques
Portugal. 2019. 25 min
Elsie wakes Löic from a hidden grave in the forest. He does not remember anything, just what they are: vampires. With his memory slowly returning, Elsie fears that the love she feels for Loïc may not be enough to keep him by her side.
ANDRÉ MARQUES
André Marques (1984, Setúbal, Portugal) studied cinema at Escola Superior de Teatro e Cinema and he is an awarded Portuguese writer/director. His work has been developed through various genres – fiction, experimental, documentary – with films and projects selected in several internationally renowned festivals such as Berlin Film Festival, Venice Film Festival, Palm Springs, Leeds, Vila do Conde, Gijón, Doclisboa, among others. Marques has been the subject of six retrospectives: by the Bucharest Cinematheque (Romania) in 2015, by the TV channels TVCINE (Portugal) and FicBueu Film Festival (Spain) in 2016, by the Burgas Film Festival (Bulgaria), Ymotion Festival (Portugal) and Fundação Gulbenkian (Portugal) in 2017. He was one of the selected filmmakers for the Berlinale Talents 2016.
POSTER
CONTACT
Emanuel Oliveira : emanuel@curtas.pt
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