Purdah
Jeremy Guy
India, USA. 71 min.  2018

The independent-minded young women of the Mirza family have ambitious dreams for their lives and careers. Despite their earnestness, they face an uphill battle coming from a conservative Muslim family in Mumbai, India.

Kaikasha Mirza became enamored with cricket as a young woman, yet she was forbidden to play and forced to be a spectator in her burka. After months of persistence, Kaikasha eventually persuaded her father to allow her to remove her burka for the first time to become one of only a few Muslim women cricketers in all of Mumbai. Now Kaikasha is chasing her dream of playing for the prestigious Mumbai Senior Women’s Cricket Team. In the days leading up to the tryouts, Kaikasha’s parents give her the ultimatum that she will have two years to become a professional cricketer or they will arrange her marriage. Once married, her husband would likely not allow her to play, thus pinning all of Kaikasha’s hopes on the upcoming tryouts for the Mumbai team.

Kaikasha’s eldest sister, Saba, also has her own dreams for her career and yearns to become a model, yet she endures harsh criticism for wearing a niqab to interviews. Heena, the youngest sister, desires to become a fashion designer or a singer, but poverty may impede her pursuits. All three girls must contend with the wishes of their father who does not believe women should work, in addition to the whispered judgment of those in their community.

Purdah is a feature length documentary that follows each of the Mirza women as they battle through unexpected family crises, poverty, and intense societal pressure to pursue their dreams.

Jeremy Guy

Jeremy Guy is an award winning director and cinematographer based in Los Angeles. His work spans a wide variety of formats including narrative feature films, major television shows, and independent documentaries.

As a filmmaker, Jeremy has sought out films that push boundaries with challenging stories and that take risks with new visual styles. Many of these projects have played at prestigious film festivals including the Santa Barbara International Film Festival, the Palm Springs International Film Festival, and countless others around the world. Several of these films have won major awards, such as the feature documentary he recently shot, Beyond All Boundaries, which won six Best Film awards and, after its theatrical run, can now be seen on television, Netflix, and Amazon. Other award winning projects that he has shot or directed include Weak Species, that won four Best Film awards, Greatest Hits, winner of the 2Change Films filmmaking competition, and Perspectives, that the Santa Barbara Independent called “one of the best in the entire Santa Barbara International Film Festival.”

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Contact

Jeremy Guy :    jguy1128@gmail.com

Letters From Kurdistan
Reber Dosky
Iraq. 41 min.  2018

Since 2013, the Kurds have been systematically terrorised by IS, as the caliphate pushed deeper into their ancestral homeland. Letters from Kurdistan brings together three uniquely tragic perspectives on the war ravaging the Middle East. A lonely sniper is haunted by the violence he has inflicted doing what he must to defend his people; three teenage Yazidi girls remain defiant despite suffering unimaginable cruelties at the hands of their captors; and a majority female militia defy expectations by holding out against the caliphate’s siege of Kobani. A harrowingly intimate insight into the mental as well as physical toll wrought by a most violent and brutal conflict.

Reber Dosky

Reber Dosky is a Kurdish-Dutch filmmaker. Living in The Netherlands since 1998, he studied film direction at the Netherlands Film Academy and completed his studies with The Call (2013), which traced the impact of war and displacement on the relation between a father and a son and won several awards on international film festivals. With The Sniper of Kobani (2015) Dosky achieved his international breakthrough, earning awards in Canada, Brazil, The Netherlands, Egypt, Italy, Japan and Mexico among others.

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Contact

Jos de Putter :      jos@deepfocus.nl

I Am Crazy
Kudo Masaaki
Japan. 86 min.  2017

Musician Yuki is hit by a car driven by Michiko on the day of his last gig. From that day, Yuki becomes intimate with Michiko, a composer and performer. Michiko looks after her autistic child alone while her husband cheats on her. The two tell their story through music in this crazy world.

Kudo Masaaki

Kudo Masaaki is a Japanese director and script writer who was born in 1983 from Kyoto, Japan. He began his career as an assistant director at the film production company, Shochiku Ltd from 2003. In Tokyo, he also served as an assistant director to various film directors. Mainly, he served as an assistant director of Isao Yukisada. In 2016, he directed the TV dramas Series Wakako-zake.

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Contact

Tae Motoyama :    motoyama@thefool-inc.com

Light In The Room
Rahul Riji Nair
India. 102 min.  2017

Set against the backdrop of a hilltop village surrounded by dense forest and a decaying tea plantation, is the story of Sudha, an under privileged woman who reaches this village after her marriage with Chandran. They stay along with Chandran’s brother and aging mother in a confined single room house with a make shift separation to create space for the couple. The room has a strange light without a switch which changes its colors often. While Chandran calls the light his invention of a lifetime, it deprives Sudha of her privacy and begins to haunt her. Adding to her woes, Chandran engages in acts to physically exert his dominance over Sudha. Amidst deep trauma, Sudha realises that she doesn’t have any support and decides to fight for her survival and seeks revenge against Chandran. Will Sudha succeed in her fight for freedom forms the crux of this emotional thriller.

Rahul Riji Nair

Rahul Riji Nair is a State Award winning filmmaker, script writer and producer based out in Kerala, India. His debut feature film “Ottamuri Velicham” (Light in the Room) anchored on the theme of Marital Rape in India won 4 awards in Kerala State Film Awards 2017, including Best Feature Film of the year. The film had its World Premiere at the New York Indian Film Festival 2018 and won the prestigious German Star of India Award for Best Feature film at the Indian Film Festival of Stuttgart. The film had its India Premiere at the India Gold Competition Section of the prestigious Mumbai Film Festival.

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Contact

Rahul Riji Nair :      rahuljgd@gmail.com

Masala Chai
Marco Hülser
Germany. 63 min. 2017

Marco Hüsler

Marco Hülser was born 1992 in Hamburg and gained his “Abitur” in 2011. After a voluntary service in Tamil Nadu (India), Marco studied Motion Pictures at the Hochschule Darmstadt, which he completed in 2016. During this he directed the short film “Zusammen Allein” which was nominated at several festivals. Mid-2015, he started to work on his first documentary “Masala Chai”, which got premiered in Toronto 2017. Since beginning of 2018 he is working on his first feature film and other short films.

Filmographie

2019 – Wanda & Jamal – Feature Film – Director & Editor – 100 min.

2019 – Berlin To Bombay – Documentary – Director & Editor – 60min

​2018 – Alles Gut – Short Film – Director & Editor – 7min

​2017 – Mit Dir Ohne Dich – Short Film – Director & Editor – 6min.

​2017 – Masala Chai – Documentary – Director & Editor – 63min.

​​2017 – Hinter dem Meer – Feature Film – Editor – 80 min.

​2015 – Zusammen Allein – Short Film – Director & Editor – 25 min.

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CONTACT

marcohuelser@gmail.com