GUINEA BISSAU • 93′ a film by SANA NA N’HADA Xime, 1962. Iala is confronted with losing the authority over his two sons. Raul, the elder son, had been sent to the seminary. In fact, he joined the liberation movement against the Portuguese colonial regime. Bedan, the younger son, remaining behind the village, is in[…]
SPAIN/FRANCE • 126′ a film by MARC RECHA The story could be told from several points of view. There’s Perroquet, a pesky parrot who witnessed the premature demise of his owner, Madame Catherine, due to her excessive lifestyle. The bird was also around to see Eric, the mechanic, bury her on the sly. The trains that[…]
FRANCE • 90′ a film by PENGAU NENGO “Papa”, one of the chiefs of a tribe in the highlands, is taxi driver of a ” Tinpis”, a collective bush-taxi (a sardine tin in Pidgin). Saved from an ac cident by Naaki, a young man from the city, he offers him his daughter in thanks. Joanna and[…]
BELGIUM • 97′ a film by PIERRE PAUL RENDERS Thomas, 32, suffers from acute agoraphobia. For eight years, he’s lived a reclusive life that no one is allowed to enter. He only communicates with the outside world via his computer screen. The management of his life has been entrusted to Globale, an insurance company who[…]
MOZAMBIQUE • 86′ a movie by LICINIO AZEVEDO Mozambique, 1975. After 500 years of Portuguese colonization, Mozambicans hoist their flag for the first time. Those who fought for independence are in power and apply their revolutionary ideals. Prostitutes must be “reeducated” and transformed into “new women” to serve revolution. Hundred of women, prostitutes or presumed prostitutes,[…]
ALGERIA • 91′ a film by MERZAK ALLOUACHE Algiers. An overcrowded city, with its endless traffic jams, its chaotic crowd, its rundown buildings, its old apartments piled up with families trying to survive… In this suffocating city, the terraces, progressively transformed into living spaces, they too, over time, become effervescent spaces where smiles cross the[…]
ALGERIA • 84′ a film by MERZAK ALLOUACHE Algeria region of the high flatlands. As Islamist groups continue to spread terror, Rashid, a young Jihadist, leaves the mountains to return to his village. In keeping with the law « of pardon and national harmony », he has to surrender to the police and give up his weapon.[…]
PORTUGAL • 114′ a film by TERESA VILLAVERDE Andrea, Pedro and Ricardo refuse to accept the world as it is. They don’t seem to fit anywhere. But they don’t give up, they go on looking, projecting a palpable force that spreads everywhere, threatens to explode. They’re bursting with the energy and determination to change things, to[…]
TAÏWAN • 138′ a film by MING-LIANG TSAï There is no story to tell. Hsiao-Kang is a good for nothing who holds signboards for a living. He smokes and pisses in the streets that are ever flowing with vehicles and pedestrians. The only people in his life are his two children. They eat together, brush their teeth[…]
PALESTINE/FRANCE • 105′ a film by ANNEMARIE JACIR Soraya, 28, born and raised in Brooklyn, decides to return to live in Palestine, the country her family was exiled from in 1948. On arriving in Ramallah, Soraya tries to recover her grandparent’s money, frozen in an account in Jaffa, but is refused by the bank. She meets[…]