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90 SECONDS IN NORTH KOREA
Netherlands, Croatia 2018 15'
Directed by: Ranko Paukovic
A pair of lovers riding on a bicycle through the forest, school children crossing the street, men playing football on the beach, women playing with inflatable toys in the shallows, a father carrying his young child in the park. This is the other side of life in North Korea, a world away from army parades, speeches from the leader, oppression, and fear. This is a poetic, observational documentary about ‘normal life’ in the world’s most secretive state, revealing a human facet of the country that we are not allowed to see.
2018 Monday, November 5th, La Compagnia, 5:30pm -
ACID FOREST
Lithuania 2018 60'
Directed by: Rugilė Barzdžiukaitė
The Acid Forest is one of the oldest and most beautiful natural reserves in Lithuania. It has become homeland to thousands of cormorants, after just a few specimens arrived there once for reproduction, now grown in surplus enough to become a menace. The story of the forest becomes a particular one, that has to do with the balance of power between birds, trees, and humans.
2018 Tuesday, November 6th, La Compagnia, 4:45pm -
ANGKAR
France 2018 71'
Directed by: Neary Adeline Hay
Khonsaly Hay is from Cambodia. He was a pharmacist when the Red Khmers’ nihilist revolution broke out in the second half of the Seventies. Like many other victims of the horrors of history, Khonsaly has tried to forget over thirty, long years. In the film, he meets his former persecutors in the closed atmosphere of his village. They have lived in the same neighbourhood for years. We follow him over his personal journey through time, on the tracks of his painful, dark memories. He establishes a dialogue filled with obstacles with his daughter, the film-maker, handing down his memory – a passage that is as necessary as it is intimate.
2018 Friday, November 9th, La Compagnia, 5:00pm -
APRÈS LE SILENCE
AFTER THE SILENCEBelgium 2018 23'
Directed by: Sonam Larcin
Having fled his country, David had to leave behind the man he loves. He remembers him, their life together, the society that forced them to lead a clandestine life. In order to obtain refugee status, he will now have to speak for the first time about his secrete life he has always kept hidden in himself.
2018 Tuesday, November 6th, La Compagnia, 6:45pm -
AŽ PŘIJDE VÁLKA
WHEN THE WAR COMESCzech Republic, Croatia 2018 73'
Directed by: Jan Gebert
At a first glance, Peter lives the life of a typical European teenager: he lives with his parents, has a girlfriend, goes to college. However, his life is elsewhere – as the head of a paramilitary group that recruits hundreds of Slovak teenagers with the silent approval of the authorities. The group’s goal is simple – to prepare for war time and create a model community based on military drill, obedience and fear. Peter dreams that one day he will be able to convince the entire society – as a great politician.
2018 Wednesday November 7th, La Compagnia, 7:00pm -
CHACO
Argentina, Italy, Switzerland 2018 104'
Directed by: Daniele Incalcaterra, Fausta Quattrini
A single, stubborn, and determined man has been fighting for years to preserve a portion of Chaco, the vast Paraguayan forest that is constantly attacked by deforestation, which would leave room to industrial farming of transgenic meat and soya. That man is Daniele Incalcaterra, a film-maker, and this battle is also his film project. Chaco records the different phases of a process where the logics of red tape and financial interests are opposed to an inalienable sense of Justice.
2018 Wednesday November 7th, La Compagnia, 9:00pm -
GAME GIRLS
France, Germany 2018 86'
Directed by: Alina Skrzeszewska
Game Girls follows Teri and her girlfriend Tiahna as they navigate their relationship through the chaotic world of Los Angeles’ Skid Row, aka the “homeless capital of the U.S.” A dilemma fuels the tension between the two women: while Tiahna seems comfortable being a player in the underground economy of Skid Row, Teri is driven by a powerful desire to get out. Together with other women from the neighborhood, they attend a weekly Expressive Arts workshop where they are looking to reflect, dream, and heal. Can their love survive the violence of their past and their current environment?
2018 Monday, November 5th, La Compagnia, 7:30pm -
I SIGNED THE PETITION
UK, Germany, Switzerland 2018 10'
Directed by: Mahdi Fleifel
Immediately after a Palestinian man signs an online petition to ask the Radiohead to cancel their concert in Tel Aviv, he is thrown into a panic-inducing spiral of self-doubt. Over the course of a conversation with an understanding friend, he analyses, deconstructs and interprets the meaning of his choice to publicly support the cultural boycott of Israel.
2018 Friday, November 9th, La Compagnia, 7:00pm -
LAS NUBES
USA, Mexico 2018 20'
Directed by: Juan Pablo González
In the town of Las Nubes in Mexico, an anonymous rancher tells how since he stopped measuring time his memory has clouded almost completely. What he does remember with exact precision is the last night he saw his daughter...
2018 Tuesday, November 6th, La Compagnia, 3:00pm -
LIFE IS BUT A DREAM
Italy, Palestine 2018 72'
Directed by: Margherita Pescetti
The colonization of Palestinian territories on the part of Israel has gone on for 50 years thanks to the deployment of a ‘human avant-garde’ that is in charge of the self-management of the illegal outposts until the State arrives as a full-fledged owner of the new colony. Gedalia and Shira moved with their six children to Mitzpe Agit, an outpost on the semi-desert hills descending toward the Jordan Valley. Now they are part of this avant-garde. They chose to live a life on the frontier for convenience, comfort, and because it fascinated them. Their dream to live a simple life, in harmony with God, outside the laws and musts of society, comes into conflict with being in one of the most disputed and controversial places on the planet.
2018 Friday, November 9th, La Compagnia, 7:00 pm -
M
Mexico 2018 52'
Directed by: Eva Villaseñor
Miguel Villaseñor is a very famous young Mexican rapper, known as Tankeone; Eva is his sister and she is also the director of the film. Miguel is a musician, but above all he is a person who has experienced troubled times and who is still looking for an inner balance in a complex and conflictual environment. Eva is doing a portrait of him but, at the same time, she tries to know him more deeply. Miguel lives in many different environments and through him we discover an urban Mexico, violent, sometimes desperate, but also vital.
2018 Thursday, November 8th, La Compagnia, 4:30pm -
MINATOMACHI
INLAND SEAJapan, USA 2018 122'
Directed by: Kazuhiro Soda
Observational Film #7: Wai-chan is one of the last fishermen in Ushimado, a small village in Seto Inland Sea, Japan. At the age of 86, he still fishes alone on a small boat to make a living, dreaming about retirement. Kumi-san is an 84-year-old villager who wanders around the shore everyday. She believes a social welfare facility ‘kidnapped’ her disabled son to receive subsidy from the government. Koso-san runs a small seafood store inherited by her deceased husband. Forsaken by the era of modernization of post-war Japan, Ushimado is rapidly aging and declining. Its rich, ancient culture and the tight-knit community are also on the verge of disappearing. Portrayed in black and white photography, in his 7th “Observational Film” Kazuhiro Soda poetically depicts the twilight days of a village and its people.
2018 Wednesday November 7th, La Compagnia, 3:00 pm -
MORIVIVÍ
Colombia, Cuba 2018 36'
Directed by: David Aguilera Cogollo
Brayan and Kiki are the third and fourth generations of their Cuban household. Situations of violence are the daily bread. Sometimes they have to take the role of the adults to avoid problems between real adults. In the middle of the countryside where the children live, they entertain a close relationship with nature. They breed animals that serve not only as food or pets, but also for the Santeria rituals they practice regularly.
2018 Monday, November 5th, La Compagnia, 3:30pm -
NO OBVIOUS SIGNS
Ukraine 2018 60'
Directed by: Alina Gorlova
“No obvious signs” are the words Ukrainian soldiers hear in hospitals where they go with physiological traumas, needing help. But until their bodies have no injuries, not only doctors, but even society don’t notice their problems. This is the story of the woman who returns from war and that tries hard to get back to normal life. What lies behind the heroic deeds of warriors in Ukraine? What do they have to face, one on one, in their life in peace? And where does war stop?
2018 Tuesday, November 6th, La Compagnia, 3:00pm -
ROMAN NATIONAL
NATIONAL NARRATIVEFrance 2018 60'
Directed by: Grégoire Beil
On the video chat “Periscope” the exchange of images can be enriched with text messages and/or a flow of hearts allowing people who are streaming their video live to see strangers’ comments on their appearance or their conversations. Made only of these exchanges, this film probes the exhibitionist norm of the enhanced selfie. Far from inciting derision, this montage instead highlights the users’ self-derision and the paradoxical coyness of a space where people claim to show everything, from breasts to vomit. How does the immediacy of a chat between strangers integrate the incommensurable horror when a tragic event intervenes into its playful and intentionally exaggerated daily dimension? Is reality definitively condemned to remain off screen?
2018 Monday, November 5th, La Compagnia, 5:30pm -
SEC ROUGE
Germany 2018 27'
Directed by: Kate Tessa Lee, Tom Schön
For centuries, generations of fisherwomen from Rodrigues Island have practiced the traditional octopus spearing, which used to be a warrant of self-sufficiency, emancipation, and social prestige. With the advent of major economic and climatic changes, this job, alongside its stoical self-reliant way of life, is nowadays at stake. Sec Rouge, a creole term for an optimal dry tide to fish octopus, was an omen of prosperous catch for the elders. Today a ‘dry-red’ tide is a rarity; a mirage-image of precarious times for the few remaining fisherwomen who are still struggling to do their job.
2018 Tuesday, November 6th, La Compagnia, 4:45pm -
SIOSTRY
SISTERSPoland 2018 20'
Directed by: Michal Hytros
Behind the mighty eighteenth-century wall of the oldest enclosed convent in Poland – a Benedictine convent in Staniatki- the life of twelve nuns in their 70s goes on. Despite their age and the rapidly-changing world, they try to comply with the rule set over ten centuries ago ‘Ora et labora’ every day. Nuns Anuncjata and Benedykta introduce us to the world behind the wall and show it in true colours, without stereotypes, often touching and amusing at the same time.
2018 Friday, November 9th, La Compagnia, 5:00pm -
SRBENKA
Croatia 2018 72'
Directed by: Nebojsa Slijepcevic
In the early 90’s, the new-born state of Croatia was involved in a military conflict with neighbouring Serbia. Criminals used the chaos of war to harass and rob Serbian civilians living in Croatia. One of the innocent victims was a girl living in Zagreb, Aleksandra Zec, brutally murdered, alongside her family who were of Serbian descent. A quarter of century later, controversial theatre director Oliver Frljic is working on a stage play about the case. The work on the plays brings out hidden traumas, rehearsals become a collective psychotherapy where the 12-year-old Nina feels like that the war she didn’t experienced was never over.
2018 Sunday, November 4th, La Compagnia, 5:00pm -
THE MIGRATING IMAGE
Denmark 2018 28'
Directed by: Stefan Kruse
Pictures do not document reality. They create it. Departing from this principle, with a brilliant, sharp approach, The Migrating Image proposes an intriguing journey among images of migrants: never-seen ones, too much seen ones, military recordings, drone photos, a 360° photo camera, and satellite pictures, all taken on the wake of a question: how are these migrating images transforming the world and our relationship with it?
2018 Thursday, November 8th, La Compagnia, 4:30pm -
TIRSS, RIHLAT AL SOU’OUD ILA AL MAR’I
ERASED, ASCENT OF THE INVISIBLELebanon 2018 76'
Directed by: Ghassan Halwani
“In Lebanon, a complete crime was committed in two acts: I, the act of killing; II, the act of concealing act I.” Over 17,000 people disappeared in Lebanon during the 1975-1990 civil war. Their life stories remained unfinished, and are still shrouded in mystery. Desperately seeking justice, the film-maker tries, through a strenuous artistic work, to shed light on these forsaken lives to return their dignities and names.
2018 Tuesday, November 6th, La Compagnia, 6:45pm -
VER A UNA MUJER
TO SEE A WOMANSpain 2018 60'
Directed by: Mònica Rovira
When you see someone and he or she dazzles you, you are suddenly filled with the other and no longer see anything. You just feel intensely every moment as it fades away. From the uncertainty, you, vulnerable, look persistently for any hint of reality. Trying to see Sarai, her first girlfriend, becomes the film that Mònica Rovira wants to make. A film that shows what emerges at the threshold of her gaze.
2018 Monday, November 5th, La Compagnia, 3:30pm