Tasher Desh (2012)

Tasher Desh (2012)

Directors: Qaushiq Mukherjee, Q
Country: India
Runtime:112 min








     The story of a prince who escapes his destiny, the prison of his mind. He lands on a fascist island and incites women to revolt. A psychedelic fantasy about destiny and humanity, social control and Utopian revolution.                                                      

                                                                                    

Vivan las Antipodas! (2011)

Vivan las Antipodas! (2011)

Director:Victor Kossakovsky
Country: Germany | Argentina
Runtime: 108 min

What would be the shortest route between Entre Rios in Argentina and the Chinese metropolis Shanghai? Simply a straight line through the center of the earth, since the two places are antipodes: they are located diametrically opposite to each other on the earth's surface. During his visits to four such antipodal pairs, the award-winning documentary filmmaker Victor Kossakovsky captured images that turn our view of the world upside down. A beautiful, peaceful sunset in Entre Rios is contrasted with the bustling streets in rainy Shanghai. People who live in a wasteland are connected to people dwelling next to a volcano. Landscapes whose splendor touches the soul are juxtaposed with the clamor of a vast city. These antipodes seem mythically connected, somehow united by their oppositeness. Kossakovsky's movie is a feast for the senses, a fascinating kaleidoscope of our planet. VIVAN LAS ANTIPODAS! - Long Live The Antipodes! What is happening on the point of the earth diametrically opposite to where we are now, what awaits us there? Fascinated by this question, Victor Kossakovsky conducted an experiment, and in the course of his unique project visited four coupled antipodes - in Argentina and China, Spain and New Zealand, Chile and Russia, Botswana and Hawaii. Thanks to a keen sense of the magic of his eight locations, Kossakovsky captures unforgettable images. He follows the menacing glow of a volcano's lava, contemplates the majestic flight of a condor, documents human attempts to rescue a stranded whale. A sunset in Argentina's Entre Rios is juxtaposed with rush hour in Shanghai. Tranquil silence and amber light contrast with noisy industriousness and metallic hues. The movie approaches its subject playfully, and Kossakovsky's deployment of the camera is innovative: the earth's surface bends right in front of our eyes, images upside down.

Horses of God (2012)

Horses of God (2012)

Director: Nabil Ayouch
Country: Morocco
Runtime: 115 min

Yachine is 10 years old, he lives with his family in the slum of Sidi Moumen in Casablanca. His mother, Yemma, leads the family as best as she can. His father suffers from depression, one of his brothers is in the army, another is almost autistic and the third, Hamid, 13, is the boss of the local neighbourhood and Yachine’s protector.
When Hamid is sent to jail, Yachine takes up jobs after jobs, though empty, to get free from the doldrums of violence, misery and drugs.
Released from prison, Hamid, now an Islamic fundamentalist, persuades Yachine and his pals to join their "brothers".
The Imam, Abou Zoubeir, their spiritual leader, starts to direct their long-standing physical and mental preparation.
One day, he tells them they have been chosen to become martyrs.

V . . . . e (double) (2013)

V . . . . e (double) (2013)

Director:Jean-Marc Boulard
Runtime: 8min
Country: France

They arrived at dusk at our home. One from Hiroshima, the other from Roma... a tale of the two cities...
Another v . . . . e (visite/voyage/visage) paying tributes to Pasolini and Mizoguchi through our guests and to Japanese art seen by Eisenstein in the early 1920s...

After the Battle (2012)

After the Battle (2012)

Director: Yousry Nasrallah
Country: France | Egypt
Runtime: 116 min



Once a member of one of the notorious armed groups that were coerced by the Egyptian Government to carry out violent attacks on protestors in Tahir Square on 2nd February 2011, Mahmoud has since lost his job, been subjected to beatings and humiliating treatment, and been ostracized by his own community that live close to the Pyramids.

Mahmoud and his family are close to despair when he meets Reem, a secular young Egyptian divorcee and modern-thinker who works in advertising. Reem is a fervent ecologist who lives in a wealthy neighbourhood. Their encounter will change the course of their lives forever.

Mapa (2012)

Mapa (2012)

Director: León Siminiani
Country: Spain | India
Runtime: 85 min



Midway between documentary and fiction, this is a road-movie narrated in first person about a young filmmaker who travels to India in search of a new “map” for love, for life.

A young director is fired from his job in television. Returning to his dream of making films, he travels to India to “find” his first feature film, only to realise that his true search is not in India, but in Madrid: he was running away. But things don’t go exactly as he’d expected on his return.

My Dog Killer (2013)

My Dog Killer (2013)

Director: Mira Fornay
Country: Slovakia
Runtime: 90 min

Marek has no real friends except his guard dog and hangs out with skinheads. When his dispirited mother reappears in his life, Marek faces a horrible predicament. An authentic and hypnotic chronicle of a sluggish existence always on the verge of explosion.

A small village on the Slovak-Moravian border. Strangers are not welcome here. Locals seem to be suspicious even of each other. This is where eighteen-year-old Marek lives. His guard dog is his only true friend. Neglected by his relatives, he has found an illusory escape in the company of local skinheads. Nazi without a cause, he blindly follows them, and they train him exactly like he trains Killer, his dog. When his mother and young half-brother suddenly appear in his life, Marek faces a terrible dilemma. Either he will violently explode or he will find an inner capacity for the compassion he is so scared of.
This subtle, sensitive film is not just about racists and ethnic conflicts in contemporary Europe. First of all, it is about wrong choices that, once made, cannot be altered. It is about chances that appear, only to be missed. Mira Fornay captures this state of terrifying apathy in a series of long contemplative shots. Calm on the surface, they are full of hidden anxiety and disturbing uncertainty.
With no music, just natural sounds and real settings, Fornay makes what is almost a documentary portrait of totally lost human beings. The leading characters are very competently portrayed by native non-actors, and their huge contribution makes the film very authentic.

Priest's Children (2013)

Priest's Children (2013)

Director: Vinko Bresan
Country: Croatia
Runtime: 1 hour, 32 min.






 Don Fabijan is a young priest who comes to serve on an unnamed small island in the Adriatic. In order to help increase birth rate on the island, he decides to pierce condoms before they are sold. He therefore teams up with the newsagent Petar and the pharmacist Marin. After they abolish all forms of birth control on the entire island, the consequences become more and more complicated.

Jîn (2013)

Jîn (2013)

Director: Reha Erdem
Country: Turkey
Runtime: 122 min

Jîn is something of a Red Riding Hood, a 17-year-old girl determined to live, to participate in life no matter what it takes; and to this end she finds herself battling her way bravely through dark forests.

The film opens with Jîn fleeing an armed organization in the mountains for an unknown reason. She spends solitary days in the mountains and forests hiding both from organization members and from security forces. Her aim is to get to the big city, to achieve her dreams of new and wider worlds unknown to her until now. Armed with a small but robust body and a fresh but powerful sense of resolve, she manages to create a space for herself in the dark and forbidding wilderness. She gets caught in crossfire and courageously dodges the bullets, she knows fear and cold, she finds things to eat. The animals she closes ranks with, perhaps because they face similar threats, are her greatest source of strength and consolation. She shares a cave with a bear to escape a shelling, she finds an ally in a deer, she treats an injured donkey, she makes a pact with a savage bird whose egg she eats, shes consoled by a wildcat, alerted by a snake and protected by a horse...

Eventually, she lays her hands on some civil clothing and makes her way down from the mountains. But for Jîn, the plains are more dangerous than the mountains, more threatening and more hurtful. No matter how hard she tries, how resolutely she struggles, she cant break through the barricade closing in on her, and the world of her dreams remains elusive. She continues to take a battering both to her willowy frame and to the feelings and sensitivities inside. She returns, deeply disillusioned, to her solitary existence in the mountains and reaches out mournfully to the natural world. She finds herself caught once more between toppled trees and dismembered animals as the shells and bullets rain down. By now her sense of rebellion has turned to despair. Stuck in an impasse, Jîn has no one but the trees and animals to nurse her wounded body and soul.

Turtles do not die of old age (2010)

Turtles do not die of old age (2010)

Directors: Hind Benchekroun, Sami Mermer
Country: Canada | Morocco
Runtime: 92 min

*Turtles do not die of old age* takes a look at a vanishing generation. This film invites us to share in the lives of three elderly men from northern Morocco. Hovering around 80 years old, each of the three men: Chehma, a former master fisherman; Radi, a solitary innkeeper; and Laroussi, a street musician, still works to earn a living. The film illustrates their desire to continue living, presents their outlook in the face of an approaching death, and reveals their courage to ceaselessly work... despite their age. Chehma, Radi and Laroussi's predicament reaches beyond Morroccan geographic boundaries. It ushers us through the universality of life, old age and death. This is a documentary anchored in the men's daily rituals, enveloped with a compassionate humanity.