Boluomi
Vera Chen,  Kek Huat Lau
Malaysia, Taiwan.  2019.  108 min

Laila is a young Filipina mother working in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, as a cleaner at a massage parlour. She gets by in a grey-market job speaking very little Chinese. Yi-fan is a Chinese Malaysian, the son of underground communists, who, denied university in Malaysia, has come to Taiwan to study. But he finds that his foreign status and his quick temper quickly drive him away from his dorm to low-wage service jobs. These two marginalized people, meeting first by chance, then through Yi-fan’s persistent though gentle courting of Laila (who, married, is not at all looking for that kind of companionship), gradually forge a unique kind of relationship while speaking rather limited English to each other. At the same time, Yi-fan experiences powerfully moving memories of his traumatic childhood, wracked with violence, which took him from a hideout in the Malaysian jungle to a border prison camp.

VERA CHEN

Vera Chen is an actress and director, known for Boluomi (2019), Ten Years Taiwan (2018) and Lou xia de fang ke (2016).

LAU KEK HUAT

Kek Huat Lau was born in 1979 in Sitiawan, Perak, Malaysia. He is a director and writer, known for Nia’s Door (2015),  Absent Without Leave (2016) and Boluomi (2019).

A graduate of National Taiwan University of Arts, he won the Best Short Film Award in 2009 as well as in 2013, and Best Director Award in 2009 at the Taiwan Golden Harvest Festival.

INTERVIEW TO LAU KEK HUAT – VERA CHEN

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Mike Chi :    mike.mxx21@gmail.com

Summer Survivors
Marija Kavtaradze
Lithuania.  2019.  90 min

Ambitious twenty-something research psychologist Indrė (Indrė Patkauskaitė) has recently joined the team of a major clinic in Vilnius.  A young patient, Paulius (Paulius Markevičius), who is suffering from bipolar disorder, needs to be transported to another facility in the seaside town of Palanga. Indrė is ordered to drive him there, and she reluctantly agrees on condition that she will gain more privileges.  She has also been asked to take Justė (Gelminė Glemžaitė) along, a young woman who is being treated after a suicide attempt, as well as the clinic’s head nurse, Danguolė (Vilija Grigaitytė). Forming an unconventional group, they will embark on an unexpected road trip that, over and above the actual journey to the sea, will be a reason for them to reveal their own inner battles and their struggles for survival.

Kavtaradzė delivers an exceptionally sensitive and heart-warming film. While it deals with an extremely tough issue, the different aspects of mental disorders, it manages to retain its humour and carefree nature,  offering a never-before-seen take on a world that is usually depicted in a more obscure fashion. Summer Survivors is not just another bleak drama about patients’ struggles, but rather portrays their courage and their determination to live a life that is not governed by their illnesses. The director brings the viewer extremely close to the heroes, so their invisible mental battles are still present, but they no longer seem so distant. They are just another element of each person’s personality.

MARIJA  KAVTARADZÉ

Born in 1991, film director and screenwriter Marija Kavtaradzė graduated from the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theater’s Film Directing program in 2014. Her short film I’m Twenty Something (2014) was named Best Student Film at the Lithuanian Film Academy’s Silver Crane Awards in 2015.  She co-wrote the feature film The Saint (2016), directed by Andrius Blaževičius, which premiered internationally and had a very successful box office run in Lithuania. Considered to be among the most talented up-and-coming filmmakers in Lithuania today, Marija Kavtaradzė received funding from the Lithuanian Film Center for her debut feature film Summer Survivors.

INTERVIEW TO MARIJA KAVTARADZÉ

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Christina Liapi :    christina@heretic.gr

Aga,s House
Lendita Zeqiraj
Kosovo.  2019.  107 min

A nine-year-old boy raised in a house full of women is determined to find his missing father, a man who he believes vanished after the Kosovo War. The five women he shares a home with meanwhile carry the burdens of their own wartime traumas, finding common ground in the stories, songs and jokes they share. But even in a house bursting with life and laughter, the country’s dark history of ethnic tension and violence threatens to rise to the surface — bringing with it painful memories and secrets long buried in the past.

“Aga’s House” is the feature film debut of Kosovo’s Lendita Zeqiraj, whose critically acclaimed short “Balcony” world premiered at the Venice film festival. Starring Arti Lokaj as Aga, along with a powerful ensemble cast including Rozafa Celaj, Adriana Matoshi, Basri Lushtaku, Shengyl Ismaili, Melihate Qena, and Rebeka Qena, the film opens the East of the West competition at the past year’s Karlovy Vary Intl. Film Festival. It’s produced by Pristina-based N’Art Films, in co-production with Woof Films (Croatia), Sacrebleu Productions (France), Ska-ndal and SY13 Films (Albania)

LENDITA  ZEQIRAJ

Lendita Zeqiraj is born in Pristina, Kosovo in 1972.  As a filmmaker and visual artist, Lendita has studied extensively in both arts in Kosovo and France.  She graduates and postgraduates on visual arts at the Academy of Arts in Prishtina, Kosovo and followed post-master Film Aesthetics studies in Paris, France.

She wrote and direct films which have participated at many International Film Festivals around the world. Her last film ‘Balcony’ is presented in over 100 International Film Festivals, including the Official Selection of festivals such as: Venice Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Palm Springs Short Fest, Hamptons Film Festival, Warsaw International Film Festival, Leeds Film Festival, Busan International Film Festival etc, and won many awards, including the Special Jury Prize at AFI FEST in Los Angeles.

In 2014 she was declared ‘National Filmmaker of the Year 2014’, and wins The Annual Film Excellence Award for Cinematic Achievements by the Kosovo Ministry of Culture.

INTERVIEW TO LENDITA ZEQIRAJ

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Ninanana :    info@ninanana.me

A Dark Dark Man
Adilkhan Yerzhanov
Kazakhstan.  2019.  86 min

A boy is murdered in a Kazakh village. Detective Bekzat wants to wrap up the inquiries quickly: after all, the perpetrator has already been found by local police officers. But when a journalist arrives from the city, everything falls to pieces. For the first time in his career, Bekzat must conduct a real investigation according to procedure.

ADILKHAN  YERZHANOV

Adilkhan Yerzhanov (Djezkazgan, Kazakhstan. 1982) directed his first feature film, Rieltor (Realtor) in 2001, followed by Stroiteli (Constructors, 2013), Ukkili kamshat (The Owners, 2014), presented out of competition at the Cannes Festival, Chuma v aule Karatas (The Plague at the Karatas Village, 2016), screened at the Rotterdam Festival, Nochnoy Bog (Night God, 2018), released at the Moscow Festival, and Laskovoe bezrazlichie mira (The Gentle Indifference of the World, 2018), which participated in Un Certain Regard at the Cannes Festival.

INTERVIEW TO ADILKHAN YERZHANOV

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Olga Khlasheva :    olga.khlasheva@gmail.com

Castle of Dreams
Reza Mirkarimi
Iran.  2019.  86 min

Newly released from prison,  Jalal is a cruel and combative man who’s still apparently involved in shady dealings that threaten him at every turn.  He hasn’t seen his seriously ill wife or their two children for three years, and when he finally reappears, it’s only to make a grab for her assets; he has no intention of returning to the family.

But his sister-in-law insists that she can no longer care for adorable, pigtailed moppet Sara or the serious, silent Ali, so the reluctant father embarks on a road trip of sorts through the mountainous Iranian countryside with his children and his girlfriend, who somehow manages to put up with his constant rebukes and insults. And ever so slowly, the reasons Jalal is the way he is come into focus.

Iranian filmmaker Reza Mirkarimi’s subtly rendered, moving drama about the obligations and emotional burdens of fatherhood took home awards for best film, director, and actor at this year’s Shanghai International Film Festival.

REZA  MIRKARIMI

Reza Mirkarimi (born 27 January 1967) is an Iranian film writer and director.  He graduated from Fine Arts University in graphic arts in Tehran. His cinema activities started from 1987 with a short film named For Him and with a series of shorts followed by two TV series aimed at young people.  His 1999 first feature, The Child and The Soldier, has won several national and international awards, including the ”Golden Butterfly” at the 1999 Isfahan International Children and Youth Film Festival, Iran and the “Montgolfiere d’Argent” at the Festival of 3 Continents, Nantes, France.   In 2000, his second feature, Under the Moonlight, dealing with social and religious issues won the Best Feature Award at the 40th Critics’ Week at the 2001 Cannes International Film Festival. The film also won the Best Director’s Award as well as the Special Jury Prize at the Tokyo IFF in 2001, and the Golden Peacock Award at the International Film Festival of India.

INTERVIEW TO REZA MIRKARIMI

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Kamyar Mohsenin :    kamyar@irimageco.com

Kadakh
Rajat Kapoor
India.  2018.  96 min

Sunil is home alone when the doorbell rings. The stranger at the door introduces himself as the husband of Chhaya – a woman that Sunil is having an affair with.  The guest immediately asks many uncomfortable questions about their affair, becoming more and more intrusive. The situation is already incredibly tense and then the man pulls out a gun from his bag and aims it straight at Sunil. Pretty soon a shot rings out and the wall is splattered with blood. And that is just the beginning.

In a few minutes Sunil’s wife will be home as well as a number of family and friends, all there to celebrate the biggest festival of the year in India – Diwali, a festival of light.

Celebrated Indian director Rajat Kapoor, who also wrote the script and appears in a guest role, delivers a fast-paced dark comedy lead by a strong ensemble.  Every character here is memorable and fascinating, and the dialogue shines.

“Kadakh” is about relationships, about marriage and all the secrets we keep from each other.  How well do we know the people closest to us?  Would we even want to know everything?  And once we do, can we live with that knowledge?

RAJAT  KAPOOR

Rajat Kapoor  is an Indian actor, writer and director born in 1961. Kapoor was born in Delhi, India. As a teenager he would watch films with his family and decided to become a filmmaker at the age of 14. He mainly focused on acting at first.  In 1983 he joined the theatre group Chingari in Delhi, later moving to Pune to attend the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII).

INTERVIEW TO RAJAT KAPOOR

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Shaikh Sameer :    rezaan31@gmail.com

Sir
Rohena Gera
India.  2018.  96 min

Such a touching eyeopener!   Sir entails a social-cultural topic; that of segregation and class difference, but most importantly that of a particular kind of love that crosses boundaries.

Sir  follows the story of Ratna (Tillotama Shome) who works as a servant of Ashwin (Vivek Gomber) who is the son of a rich contractors family in Mumbai, India.  At first, Ashwin’s life seems perfect to Ratna. He is rich, he lives in luxury, he enjoys status within their society, has traveled and he has a good job at his father’s company. He has all the things that Ratna could only dream off, which is why she is desperately trying to learn how to make clothes because she secretly wishes to become a designer of clothes. But it doesn’t take long before Ratna sees that Ashwin isn’t happy and that he seems to have given up on his dreams.  Ratna attempts to be more than a servant. She tries to cheer him up, be thoughtful and she tries to take great care of him. Eventually, it brings the two closer together. A fire is ignited that makes Ashwin like Ratna more than just being a friend. But their class differences make it virtually impossible to be together within the society that they live in. Where will this lead them?  What will people say?  How will this end?

ROHENA  GERA

Rohena Gera studied at Stanford University and Sarah Lawrence College.  She works as a scriptwriter for Indian cinema. She also engages in non-profit campaigns to defend peace and equality.

Rohena Gera wrote and directed her first documentary What’s Love Got to Do with It?  The film shows a funny representation of urban and privileged Indians who reconcile with expectations about love, marriage, happiness and tradition.  The story mixes the stories of eight unlikely candidates who are each in line for an arranged marriage, playing with the rules that often reinforce the status quo of class, caste and gender. The director takes an intimate look at the human quest for love and happiness, capturing social obligations or pressures within the Indian family.

In 2018 Rohena Gera presented her film Sir during the Cannes Film Festival, in the selection of La Semaine de la Critique.

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Surtsey Films :    surtsey.programacion@gmail.com

Biriyaani
Sajin Babu
India. 2019. 92 min

The movie chronicles the life of Khadeeja, a married muslim woman confined within the four walls of the household, forced to conceal her desires in the name of religious and societal norms.  When fate brings her to an abandoned life, she chooses a different way of financially and sexually liberating herself– to be a sex worker;  soon to realize that her soul is still dissatisfied. Finding a new way of hope, she decides to give back to the forces that pushed her to live an orphaned life of humiliation and misery.
Shot in various regions spread across Kerala and Tamil Nadu, the movie captures the essence of life from a conservative, religious and rural background.  While these places are representative of areas where such stories might still exist, the movie does not push the audience to see it as a regular event in these places.

The film was selected at “Film Bazaar Recommends” section in Goa and it’s world premiere was in Oct in Italy at 20th Asiatica film festival where it won NETPAC Award for best film and also won Jury Price in 12th BIFFES.

SAJIN  BABU

Sajin Babu is a film maker from Kerala, India.  His inclination towards cinema began at a very early age.  When he joined college, he began making campus films followed by docu-fiction, documentary, short films.
His debut feature film titled “Unto the Dusk” made in 2014 won him numerous accolades including the Silver Pheasant, certificate of merit to promote at National & International Market at the 19th International Film festival of Kerala 2014, best feature film at Bangalore International Film Festival 2014 etc.  The film was also screened at various film festivals across the country.
His second feature “Man with a coffin” was made and released across Kerala in 2017.

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Sajin Babu :    ta.sajin@yahoo.co.in

Shindisi
Dito Tsintsadze
Georgia.  2019.  108 min

Georgia’s Oscar submission tells a harrowing true story taken from the Russo-Georgian War of 2008.

Panic sweeps over a pretty rural village as word spreads that the Russians are coming. Everybody grabs what they can and hurries out of town by oxcart or on foot, knowing they may never see their homes again.  Only two families stay behind: stoic old Badri (Goga Pipinashvili) with his sick wife Khatia (Tamar Abshilava); and the burly drunk Vazja (Dato Bakhtadze), still grieving for his dead wife, with his teenage daughter Mariam (Mariam Jibladze), who seems to be in a world of her own.  Khatia is recognizably Ossetian, an ethnicity closely allied to the Russians, so she and Badri have some smattering of protection. Vazja has the courage of his angry grief, and one presumes that only the thought of leaving Mariam alone restrains him from shooting a Russian.

At the same time, a local sapper unit of some 20 lightly armed combat engineers learns that a cease-fire has been declared and peace talks are underway.  They are to be evacuated from the combat zone without harm.

DITO  TSINTSADZE

Dito Tsintsadze (born 2 March 1957) is a Georgian film director and screenwriter.  He has directed thirteen films since 1988. His film Lost Killers was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival.  In 2007 he was a member of the jury at the 29th Moscow International Film Festival. Starting from the year 1996 he lives and works in Berlin.

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Maria Iakobidzi :    mari_7iak@yahoo.com

King of Beasts
Tomer Almagor, Nadav Harel
USA.  2018.  86 min

The directors are careful to be even-handed in their portrayal of their main protagonist Aaron Neilson, a burly thirtysomething dude with bulging tattooed muscles and what he himself describes as an “A-type personality.” Working as a hunting guide in Colorado,  Neilson — whose living room she shares with several stuffed big cats, diorama-style — clearly lives for his trips to Tanzania, where he goes after his prey with steely determination and considerable patience.

Indeed, the actual moments of violent death in King of Beasts are few and far between: First to bite the dust is a buffalo, just before the half-hour mark, whose carcass provides dinner for Neilson, his safari companeros and their entourage of paid native servants, and also serves as bait for the crew’s bigger targets. A hippo is also slain for the latter purpose, setting us up for the climactic encounter with the king of the jungle, an “old lion” who shows up just after the hour mark, and whom Neilson goes after using the old-school method of bow and arrow.

As well as shedding light on the mechanics of safari hunting — which involves a lot of patience, waiting and downtime — King of Beasts illuminates as an exploration of masculine self-image (Neilson evidently sees himself as heroic and Hemingway-esque) and of how macho hombres engage with each other in close-quarters situations. One of Neilson’s party is a greenhorned younger fellow mainly employed to flatteringly record Neilson’s exploits for posterity via video in a series of carefully staged tableaux.

TOMER ALMAGOR

Award-winning filmmaker Tomer Almagor wrote and directed the critically acclaimed 9 FULL MOONS starring Amy Seimetz, Bret Roberts, Donal Logue & Harry Dean Stanton. His recent work includes directing the documentary KING OF BEASTS, and producing YOU ARE HERE starring Billy Baldwin and Lea Thompson, HAPPY TIMES starring Michael Aloni & Stefi Celma and TIGER WITHIN starring Ed Asner. His work screened at Sundance, Slamdance, SXSW & Rotterdam film festival, found critical acclaim and sold for distribution worldwide. Tomer is a partner and the creative director at URBAN TALES PRODUCTIONS, where he and his partner are producing a slate of films, including Tomer’s new film project RECIPROCAL BEAT.

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Tomer Almagor :    tomeralmagor@urbantalesproductions.com