WED. 2ND DEC. - ODEON
10:00 am - International Competition
LAS LETRAS
The Letters
by Pablo Chavarría Gutiérrez
Mexico, 2015, 72’
June 2000, Simojovel municipality, in the North of Chiapas. A few policemen are killed in an ambush. Alberto Patishtan, a native from the tzotzil ethnic group, is charged with the murders and condemned to 60 years in jail. Departing from the re-evocation and re-enactment of events that upset the entire community, this film resorts to expres- sionistic, experimental, and evocative devices to immerse in the crime scene and the colours, atmospheres, and ghosts of a faraway rural community of Chiapas.
11:30 am - International Competition
RAZGOVOR
The Conversation
by Anastasia Novikova
Russia, 2015, 21’
Valentin Stepanovich is the one and only inhabitant of a forsaken place. The City is a metallic sound from the radio. In the solitude of such a remote place, Valentin can only keep on dialling the same phone number and wait for the only healing voice, i.e. the voice of his beloved. Until when, suddenly, his own phone rings, breaking the silence.
11:30 am - International Competition
ČAKÁREŇ
Waiting Room
by Palo Korec
Slovak Republic, 2015, 73’
By way of a series of ingenious and unpredictable ‘variations on the theme,’ the film demolishes the cliché according to which waiting is an empty moment, deeply boring and basically useless. On the contrary, the sharp gaze of cinema unravels how waiting condenses in itself intense emotions, subtle transformations of one’s state of mind, and silences filled with meaning.
3:00 pm - International Competition
DES HOMMES DEBOUT
Standing Men
di|by Maya Abdul-Malak
Francia, Libano, 2015, 55’
A microcosm becomes a universe. In a little Internet café, a meeting place of immigrants, located in Belleville, the Parisian district, the camera watches the trac- es of a man’s life. Moustafa has been away from his native country for many years. The words and gestures of his daily life disclose the complexity of a displaced existence with great sensitivity.
4:00 pm - International Competition
LA FAMILIA CHECHENA
The Chechen Family
by Martín Solá
Argentine, 2015, 60’
This film is a sensory experience where image and sound meet. Its inner rhythm produces a resonance in those who watch it. La familia chechena encourages the audience to enter in the innermost peculiarity of a mystical experience, such as the one performed by Sufi Muslims in Chechnya. The dances, the religious- mystical rituals become a form of cinema, pure immersion in a spiritual gaze onto the world.
5:30 pm - International Competition
UNE PARTIE DE NOUS S’EST ENDORMIE
Sound Asleep
by Marie Moreau
France, 2015, 50’
Djilali, a Moroccan migrated in France who spent nearly eleven years in prison, is a homeless man struggling to find his identity among those used and stolen dur- ing his incredible life and he introduces himself as Alias, giving account of those “One, No One and One Hundred Thousand” composing his ego. As Virgil in the Inferno, Djilali will guide Marie Moreau through the labyrinths of the old town of Avignon as in the labyrinths of his existence, telling another face of our era.
7:00 pm - International Competition
A FESTA E OS CÃES
The Party and the Barking
by Leonardo Mouramateus
Brasil, 2015, 25’
Leonardo Mouramateus looks at some pictures taken with an analogue photo camera. Each one of them brings back a memory, a conversation and a story related to it. However, A Festa e os Cães does much more than merely describe the memories of the typical parties, hangovers, and friendships of adolescence, wandering about the streets of Fortaleza in the company of stray dogs. It also brings us back to the doubts, hopes, and lightness of those years.
7:00 pm - International Competition
BABOR CASANOVA
by Karim Sayad
Switzerland, 2015, 35’
Adlan and Terroriste are two street urchins in Algiers. Their life is made of expedients to earn some dinars, their common passion is the Mouloudia football team, and their only perspective is to sail towards France or Italy. Filmmaker Karim Sayad follows these boys as brother who doesn’t judge, giving us a delicate and merciless film at the same tame.
9:00 pm - The Correspondent
THE SNIPER OF KOBANI
by Reber Dosky
Netherlands, 2015,12’
Kurdish filmmaker Reber Dosky travelled through Kurdistan and visited the town of Kobani in Syria, close to the Turkish border. In Kobani, the fighting between Kurdish resistance and Islamic State has been particularly fierce. Today, Kobani is completely in ruins. The film portrays the Kurdish fighter Haron. Haron is a sniper by profession. In the midst of the ruins, he shows his hide-out and reflects on his profession, his dreams as well as his nightmares in this unique portrait of the ongoing battle against Islamic State.
9:00 - Special Events
THE BLACK FLAG
by Majed Neisi
Iran, 2015, 62’
We are in Jorf al-Sakhar, 60 km south of Baghdad. Seyyed Ahmad commands a regiment of volunteers who left their jobs and families to fight against the advance of DA’ESH (ISIS). Everything, from equipment to food, uniforms to weapons, is provided thanks to donations of private citizens. On the day of the battle, Majed Neisi, the author of this war documentary, films the patrol of sappers who – un- der the enemy’s fire – are supposed to open a passage towards the outpost from where an IS group launch their attacks.
10:30 pm - Sui generis
LA MONTAGNE MAGIQUE
The Magic Mountain
by Anca Damian
Romania/Francia/Polonia, 2015, 87'
The biography of Adan Jacek Winkler, a Polish refugee in Paris retraces half a century of history in the form of an animation documentary. Jacek leaves France in the Eighties as a romantic hero who gives a sense to his own life to fight the Soviet army in Afghanistan with Commander Massoud. He will soon discover a deep bond with those places and he will become “Adam Khan”...