OFFICIAL SELECTION 2019

INTERNATIONAL PANORAMA

The Smell of Petrol

Director: Branko Tomovic
Run Time: 0:12:00
Country: United Kingdom
Type: Short

Single mom Jackie works as a human trafficker for illegal immigrants. She faces an unbearable task when she is confronted with a refugee baby.

Infill & Full set

Director: Hai Duc Dao
Run Time: 0:14:23
Country: Viet Nam
Type: Short

Infill and Full set was staged in London, telling a story of an illegally immigrating heavily pregnant woman who was stuck between the ethical boundary of being honest and being dishonest. On the one hand, she was running away from being hunted by the UK immigration authorities, and the other, ceaselessly searching for employment as a nail technician of Vietnamese owned nail salons in order to support her living. In these contretemps, unexpected challenges and complications continuously occur as if tried to severely trial the resilience of the expectant.

Gorkhey Jeep

Director: Phurba Tshering Lama
Run Time: 0:10:41
Country: India
Type: Short

Chyangba is a cart puller in Darjeeling town. He lives a life consumed by hand to mouth existence.  One day he returns home empty handed to find some solace in the company of his two children. However, some pending news awaits him.

Not an Isolated Story

Director: Marta Pinheiro
Run Time: 0:20:00
Country: Brazil
Type: Documentary, Short

Violence against women is more usual than people think. The film is developed in four stories of violence, suffered by four different women, who complement each other. The first woman is stalked and death threatened, the second is held in false imprisonment, the third woman undergoes an abortion because of physical violence and the fourth story is based on the testimony of a woman who has a relative who murdered the wife in front of the couple’s baby son. Among the scenes, clippings of reports of several other abused women. All the stories and testimonies are real facts, but they are not isolated stories.

A Night With No Dawn

Director: Sara Bozakov
Run Time: 0:21:15
Country: Israel
Type: Short

Five men from Darfur walk towards the Holot detention center in Southern Israel after receiving an official letter requiring their admission into the facility. Upon arrival they discover they missed their chance of entering the area, since the gates have already been closed for the night and will open again only in the morning. They decide to make a small camp outside and wait near the fence. Abam is the most worried among them, especially since his sister Miriam has not contacted him for a few days and he fears the worst. When the darkness of the night surrounds them, the landscapes of the desert and the sky become mirrors of their soul, accompanying them on a spiritual journey in search for answers.

Magic Alps

Directors: Andrea Brusa, Marco Scotuzzi
Run Time: 0:14:45
Country: Italy
Type: Short

An Afghani refugee arrives in Italy with his goat and seeks political asylum for both of them.

Girl

Director: Lowri Roberts
Run Time: 0:04:55
Country: United Kingdom
Type: Short

A young migrant gets her period whilst on the move.

Ordinary Everyday 

Director: Noriko Yuasa
Run Time: 0:30:00
Country: Japan
Type: Short

Mr Tsuda handsome teacher who is coaching a dance club. Concerned about one injured member, Ami, he visits her home in the middle of Tokyo. What he finds is a bright and bubbly schoolgirl with a seemingly perfect family living an idealized ordinary everyday life. She lives in a well-furnished home with Kanako, her lovely- looking mother, and Sho, her cute brother. Amias father is missing but nobody talks about him. Everyone has smiles on their faces. Tsuda finds the mothers smile is especially inviting and pretty soon his thoughts start straying to parent-teacher relations. What he doesn’t realize is that this is a two-faced family who lead anything but a very ordinary life. This psycho-suspense drama is shot and edited with such skill and given a potent soundscape that creates a weird atmosphere that what viewers will get is a high tension .I âm which will suck them in for a number of surprises.

The March of Hope

Directors: Jim Kroft & Bastian Fischer
Run Time: 1:29:15
Country: Germany
Type: Documentary

A road movie on Human Rights…. Inverting the parameters of what a road movie should be, The March of Hope, tackles the plight of refugees from the most unlikely perspective: a little yellow van.Two friends set out in the hope of learning first-hand about the lives of refugees in Europe. During filming the Refugee Crisis would reach its apotheosis as the EU-Turkey Pact is agreed and the Balkan Route is closed. The documentary is a deeply personal perspective on the subject of human rights, and challenges the thresholds of how a humanitarian crisis can be tackled in film. The March of Hope is a celebration of everything which makes us a human, and a stinging rebuke in film to the xenophobia growing in Europe.

Syria’s Tent Cities

Director: Mira Hamour
Run Time:0:30:00
Country: United States
Type: Documentary

Many Syrian refugee children around the world don’t have access to a basic education, and this becomes a barrier to them growing up to be literate, self-sufficient, contributing members of their society.
Some refugees are living illegally in neighboring countries, while others have been resettled permanently halfway across the world in Canada. This film examines the lives of the Syrian refugees on both sides of the globe, as they slowly improve their situation through the efforts of two individuals who have dedicated their lives to making education and inclusive a right for all Syrian children.

Pinky Gurung

Director: Gopal Shivakoti
Run Time:0:13:00
Country: Nepal
Type: Documentary/Short

Members of Nepal’s LGBTI community were once openly derided as social pollutants, but now enjoy social and political rights including legal recognition of a third gender, that put the country leagues ahead of much of the rest of the world. The past decade has proved critical in that evolution, as LGBTI activists won significant victories in Nepal’s courts.

With the second phase of elections to the House of Representatives and State Assemblies just around the corner, Pinky Gurung (a trans woman) is busy in a door-to-door campaign. She is a candidate under Proportional Representation (PR) category from one of the political party. Gurung is of the view that there is a need for representation of transgender in the new parliament to raise the voices of gender and sexual minority. Gurung hopes that people who love transgender will vote her which will be instrumental in her victory. She is encouraged to receive support from voters. Members of gender and sexual minority are campaigning in favor of Gurung.

ALARGA

Director: Soner Sert
Run Time:0:09:08
Country: Turkey
Type: Short

Jay Jay is a defector living in Turkey. He looks at the dogs of rich families to get a residence permit. A thief steals a dog that Jay Jay looks at. Jay Jay needs another dog that looks very similar to the dog he lost to get a residence permit. Jay Jay dog decides to steal.

Land

Director: Samiramis Kia
Run Time: 0:10:56
Country: Canada
Type: Short

Land tells the story of an Afghan man’s search for integration resulted in a connection in the most unexpected way.
In the world’s current situation, where politicians deprive their nations’ empathy by imposing the idea of “Us and Other”, it is important to show the necessity for human connection. We must know that the “other” is just a human being as we are.

A Doll’s House

Director: Santosh Lamsal
Run Time: 0:11:11
Country: United States
Type: Short

Aarati sacrificed herself by marrying an American national for the citizenship hoping to give a better life, someday, to her daughter and real husband, back in her native country.  However, now she cannot get rid of her new husband.

Nuclear Shadows

Director: Marek Leszczewski
Run Time: 0:15:00
Country: Poland
Type: Short

A lone boy wanders the desolate wastes that once were his homeland. A catastrophic event scorched the surface of Earth and took everything from him, everything except his dignity. He wants to find a place for a proper burial of his younger brother he carries on his back.

The Mandarin Tree

Director: Cengiz Akaygün
Run Time: 0:17:58
Country: Germany
Type: Short

After her father is arrested for political reasons by the Turkish government, little Sirin is finally allowed to visit him in prison for the first time. When a prison official interprets her painting of a bird as an anarchistic symbol and confiscates it, the girl is devastated, but her father encourages her to believe in the freedom of thought. For her second visit, she paints a harmless mandarin tree. Will her hidden message be discovered?

Birth Permit

Director: Zhang Yu
Run Time: 0:17:00
Country: China
Type: Short

He Zhen, a female public officer, doesn’t want to get rid of an unborn baby. Neither Chinese one-child policy, nor her husband as convictions can stop her fight for a new life. She decides to marry a stranger to officially register a first-born child in a new family. To get through all the red tape, there are more difficulties.

298-C

Director: Nida Mehboob
Run Time: 0:15:00
Country: Pakistan
Type: Documentary

A family from a persecuted minority sect discusses the discrimination they faced over a family get-together when one family return to Pakistan after 8 years.

Borders

Director: Engin Can Yağcı
Run Time: 0:05:17
Country: Turkey
Type: Short

Our short movie “Borders” is about the limits that metaphorically imprison people. The movie questions the institutional and patriarchal boundaries.

Exiles

Directors: Bernadette Weber, Julia Reiter
Run Time: 1:15:00
Country: Austria
Type: Documentary

Faruk does not like to speak about his past. Why should he? What counts now is to look forward and to think of a plan for the new life. Mohadese, who is the same age, is torn, like many young people, between what she would like to do and actual possibilities, between her old and her new identity, as well as between the image that she represents for others and the image in which she recognizes herself. Omar often thinks about his old homeland, about his family, about the revolution for which he, like many others, had risked his life, but above all, about the long desired freedom: a freedom, which he mainly finds in his poems. The meaning of the the exile is determined by the person, who lives it. Today as well as yesterday.
If you cannot go back to your homeland, the only way is to build yourself a new home. If you have lost everything else, the only thing left is not to lose yourself.

Alganesh

Directors: Lia Beltrami, Marianna Beltrami
Run Time: 1:00:00
Country: Italy
Type: Documentary

‘I didn’t believe it until I saw it’. A sign on a wall says this, as a hundred Eritrean refugees arrive in Endabaguna collection centre in the Tigray region in Ethiopia, after traveling in an airless truck for four days. Why do people run away? What happens before the infamous images we are shown in the West of refugees crossing the sea? An intense journey through four refugee camps for Eritreans in Ethiopia, amongst unaccompanied children, persecuted Kunamas, people who have been there for as long as 17 years. This journey will follow Dr Alganesh Fessah’s work, and her commitment in securing refugee’s rights and liberating kidnapped and tortured prisoners in the Sinai desert. Three protagonists: refugees; Ethiopia, a welcoming land; and Alganesh who, among despair, will tell us her hopes on the horizon.

3 Stolen Cameras

Directors: RÃ¥FILM  , Equipe Media
Run Time: 0:17:15
Country: Sweden
Type: Documentary

The members of video activist group Equipe Media, from occupied Western Sahara, fight to keep their cameras. This is a story about breaking an absolute censorship with unique footage from an area where the Moroccan authorities have managed to implement a near total media blockade.

The Born Free Generation

Director: Paul Cooke
Run Time: 0:20:00
Country: United Kingdom
Type: Documentary

Meet Phendulani: an extraordinary kid who survived the streets of a South African township living in a car. What can we learn from the way he sees the world?

Amina, my Sister

Director: Patrick Bodenham
Run Time: 0:18:30
Country: United Kingdom
Type: Documentary

The personal story of a family of Rohingya refugees from persecution in Myanmar into the world’s newest and largest refugee camp.

The European Dream

Director: JAIME ALEKOS
Run Time: 0:19:23
Country: Spain
Type: Documentary/short

The European Dream: Serbia is an investigative documentary by journalist Jaime Alekos about the tortures of Hungarian police to the refugees and migrants they catch trying to cross their border and the harsh living conditions in which they survive in Serbia awaiting an opportunity to enter the EU.

Soul&Seoul

Director: Xu Ying
Run Time: 0:22:39
Country: Republic of Korea
Type: Short

A strange city, two strangers…heart to heart

Leprosy

Director: Alimohammad Eghbaldar
Run Time: 0:14:32
Country: Iran
Type: Short

On his wedding night, and with his honor at stake, the groom drags her bride to hospital to figure out, through medical diagnosis, the thing that is usually supposed to happen on such a night, BUT DOESN’T

Home: Entwined stories of human resilience

Director:Alex SardÃ
Run Time: 0:07:57
Country: Spain
Type: Documentary/Short

Since the Dalai Lama left Tibet in 1959, the Pokhara refugee camp (Nepal) shelters a big Tibetan community, fighting every day to preserve its culture. At the present time, about 150.000 Tibetans live in exile. The 2001 earthquake in Guyarat region (India) took 20.000 lives, left 167.000 wounded and destroyed about 400.000 homes. In just few seconds, a whole community was impelled to take action for survival and to collectively deal with an unexpected change. A dialogue between two anonymous voices, two survivors who face life and memory for a better future for their community.

Nadya

Directors: Abraham Joseph, Monty Majeed
Run Time: 0:09:54
Country: Czech Republic
Type: Documentary/Short

Nadya tells the story of a 6-year-old Roma girl who sets out to strike an unlikely deal with Jesus on her birthday.

Bordered

Director: Anaà sa Visser
Run Time: 0:15:09
Country: Canada
Type: Short

An American border patrol officer is forced to choose between duty and compassion when he apprehends two refugees fleeing the US into Canada.

NOWHERE

Director: Natalie Halla
Run Time: 1:00:00
Country: Austria
Type: Documentary

When fleeing from the war with the Red Khmer, eight years old Ngoc manages to survive alone a three weeks boat odyssey. Thanks to the humanity of an Austrian family,he gets integrated into the Austrian society and becomes a renown TCM doctor. Forty years later he decides to give medical aid to arriving boat refugees on Lesbos island. There he realises that his own destiny gets repeated in the faith of this new generation of refugees and old wounds burst open. In an intent to find peace again he starts with his family a difficult search for his own past.

MAMA

Director: EDUARDO VIEITEZ
Run Time: 0:09:00
Country: Spain
Type: Short

A Syrian refugee girl trying to stay alive and make her way out finding a new home in a massive exodus under the Syrian civil war.

But I Came By Land

Director: Oguz Cicek
Run Time: 0:19:30
Country: Turkey
Type: Short

A Syrian refugee boy comes to Rasim’s textile workshop and says he wants to work. Rasim hires him illegally. But that day, the kid suddenly falls to the ground. Rasim doesn’t allow workers to take him to the hospital, because he is afraid of an investigation about illegal employees. Therefore they move the kid to the office. Rasim waits for the kid to heal but it wouldn’t be. Finally decides to take the kid to the hospital.  He tells to his employees that he gets the kid to the hospital. He carries and puts him in his car.  At a very short distance to the hospital, he realizes that the kid is dead. He learned from the foreman that the child has no relatives. He doesn’t know what to do. Hides him in the back of the vehicle.  He decides to leave the boy somewhere and run away.
He looks for a place to leave him. But he wouldn’t dare leave it for fear of appearing to others. Then a place comes to his mind. This is a small bay where people don’t visit, only a few fishermen leave their boats here. He puts the boy on one of the shore boats and pushes the boat into the sea. He thinks finally got rid from the kid. But his conscience will play a game to him. Like a murderer, when he comes back to little bay as a crime scene, he sees that  the kid’s boat still stands close to the shore but it is not lonely no more.

Boys Who Like Girls

Director: Inka Achte
Run Time: 1:08:00
Country: Finland
Type: Documentary/Feature

Teenager Ved comes from a violent home in the Mumbai slums. When he joins a project aiming to foster healthy masculinity, he begins to realise there may be a brighter path for his future than the one paved by his abusive, controlling father. One of Ved’s mentors is Harish, a gentle man in his 50s who has dedicated his life to abolishing toxic masculinity. Through the support Ved gets, he takes his first wobbly steps into adult life while developing an unlikely new passion: dancing. Boys Who Like Girls is a coming of age story set in the aftermath of the infamous 2012 Delhi gang rape and the rise of the #MeToo movement. The world is in the midst of furious discussion about gendered violence and what it means to be a man. Will Ved’s generation of boys be the first that actually likes girls?

Cargo

Director: Karim Rahbani
Run Time: 0:20:00
Country: France
Type: Short

I am not a beggar.
Lost in the middle of the Bekaa valley after fleeing the Syrian war, little Abed and his sick grandfather find their way into the city of Beirut, only to face a ruthless fate.

Raphael

Director: Aner tausig
Run Time: 0:08:48
Country: Israel
Type: Short

Raphael (28), newly engaged to be married, takes a job as an emissary for the Jewish rabbinate, whose job it is to threaten, intimidate and even assault recalcitrant husbands who will not give their wives a Gett (bill of divorce). But when he meets Oded (37), Rapahel is having trouble deciding what to do.

   Sisters for Sale

Director: Ben Randall
Run Time: 1:27:00
Country: Australia
Type: Documentary/Feature

‘Sisters For Sale’ is a powerful and very personal glimpse into the complex realities of human trafficking. Young Hmong women on the border between Vietnam and China find themselves caught between a violent custom and a vicious criminal underworld. Betrayed, stolen, and sold across the border into forced marriage with strange men, two young friends are forced to make the heartbreaking choice between their baby girls and their own freedom.

Daughter

Director: Tribeny Rai
Run Time: 0:10:00
Country: India
Type: Short

a daughter’s tale

Courage – Journalism is not a crime

Director: Tom Heinemann
Run Time: 0:43:00
Country: Denmark
Type: Documentary

They are devoted to journalism but are under an immense pressure by governments, companies and criminals. They use freedom of expression to fight corruption and injustices. They reveal what those in power wants to hide.
They face torture, jail and even death, but still they keep on fighting. From three different countries – on different continents with one thing in common: They have Courage because Journalism is not a crime.

Silence Please

Director: Parikshit Bickram Rana
Run Time: 0:02:57
Country: Nepal
Type: Short

A girl is molested in a library and her reaction. Library here has been used as a metaphor and librarian too as a symbol of patriarchal society.

Ales

Director: Faical Ben
Run Time: 0:15:27
Country: Morocco
Type: Short

Today, Ales is ready. She returns to the terrace she once lived on with her mother, to finally free herself from the traumatic memory of this human being who stole her innocence forever. If her silence has never allowed her to exorcise this wound, her inner strength has guided her to this day of redemption and will allow her to regain peace.

Sand Girl

Director: Mark Michel
Run Time: 1:24:00
Country: Germany
Type: Documentary/Feature

A young author who can neither walk nor speak invites us into her unique world. A world of poetry and subtlety. A documentary essay about freedom and perception.

The Island

Director:Adam Weingrod
Run Time: 0:59:00
Country: Israel
Type: Documentary

An intimate glimpse into the rich human mosaic of the St. Louis French Hospital- a Hospice for terminally ill patients, situated on the tense border between East and West Jerusalem across from the walls of the Old City. For two years the Director accompanied patients and caregivers each one and his own story. In the film moments of humor and sadness from life itself between the hospital walls.

Don’t Leave me

Directors: Brigitte Fassler, William Bejedi
Run Time: 0:08:55
Country: Switzerland
Type: Short

Ne me quitte pas deals with the topic of domestic violence in a very emotional and direct way that is difficult to escape. The film tells of love and hate, power, submission, addiction, injuries, fear, perpetrators and victims as well as of victims who become perpetrators. Of spatial and mental walls and boundaries. It is the story of a couple whose relationship takes violent and destructive forms and whose protagonists are trapped in a spiral of power and impotence. The story is told without words, but with an even more expressive choreography, oppressive soundscape and scenography. The film is based on the choreography of the dancer duo Dakota Simao and Nadia Laderias, with whom they became world champions at World of Dance 2018 in L.A. and participated in “Got Talent France 2018 “. The performance has been seen in the aggregate over 120 million times in social media and has triggered many online and offline discussions on the subject. The performance and the film “Ne me quitte pas” are part of cubique, a project that addresses socially relevant issues and translates them into performance and film.

The Story of a Panty

Directors: Stefanne Prijot
Run Time: 1:00:00
Country: Belgium
Type: Documentary

The Story of a Panty, and of Those Who Make It is the story of a panty, so innocuous, that protects what is most intimate. A garment which, when one traces its manufacturing process, can symbolize on its own the mechanisms of our globalized world. This film connects five women: a farmer in the cotton fields of Uzbekistan, a spinner and a dyer in India, an activist for the rights of women workers in Indonesia, and finally my mother working in her shop in Belgium where I grew up. She used to sell clothes which were made 100% in Belgium. But since the relocation of factories 30 years ago, this is something she cannot offer anymore today. Step by step, from one stage to another of its manufacture process, from one country to another, the story of this panty brings us close in the intimacy of these five women, each of them like a chain link of globalized production.

Making a Change

Directors: Oliver Paulus
Run Time: 0:57:00
Country: Switzerland
Type: Documentary

10 people – 10 visions – Millions of lives changed
Ten individual stories told along a childs developmental journey from early childhood over primary and secondary school until entering the job market.
A journey around the world facing a lot of abuse and deficiency “and discovering ten passionate people dedicating their lives to give children and youth in underprivileged societies an opportunity to life their potential.
Narrated by Bob Geldof.

Brotherhood

Director: Meryam Joobeur
Run Time:0:24:57
Country: Canada
Type: Documentary/short

Mohamed is a hardened shepherd living in rural Tunisia with his wife and two sons. Mohamed is deeply shaken when his oldest son Malik returns home after a long journey with a mysterious new wife. Tension between father and son rises over three days until reaching a breaking point.

Fatimah

Director: Omar Rammal
Run Time: 0:10:25
Country: Jordan
Type: Documentary/short

This documentary depicts the life of a young girl out in random Syrian refugee camp around the borders of Jordan, Fatima unknown age, living her life in the camp among those who escaped from her family and neighbors and how it affects her maturity and identity.

Newcomers

Director: Maan Mouslli
Run Time: 1:03:12
Country: Germany
Type: Documentary/Feature

Newcomers is a documentary in which refugees tell their personnel stories. Young people and old people, humans of different religions and believes, different sexes and sexual orientation; People with and without disability. Humans from eight different countries.

Guillermo on the Roof

Director: Miguel Lafuente
Run Time:00:16:00
Country: Spain
Type: Short

While Guillermo tries to fix his romantic life making a film with it, he will discover another reality through Samir, a Syrian refugee who will make him think that all his issues are superficial.

Ferry to Homo sapiens

Director: Rupesh Kumar Prasad
Run Time: 00:26:02
Country: India
Type: Documentary

The story depicts how the third gender community struggles to get absorbed in Police department, in one of the most affected Naxalite (Extremists) State of India.

 NIMA

Director: Yangchen Thapa
Run Time: 00:03:30
Country: India
Type: Animation/Short

Nima is an 11 year old loses her joyful character when she goes through a transitional part of her life and becomes emotionally uncomfortable with herself and her mother to express her problem which creates a fantasy world where she is not able to cope up with situation but at the end she expresses it to her mother.

Short Wave

Director: Mohamad Esmaaeeli
Run Time: 00:15:00
Country: Iran
Type: Short

Early in the morning, a worker, tired of night work, comes back home. The speech of a dictator from a loudspeaker in the street disturbs his rest. He decides to stifle the annoying noise as best he can, but on this path, he loses himself.

Ashmina

Director: Dekel Berenson
Run Time: 00:15:00
Country: United Kingdom
Type: Short

Nestled between a beautiful lake and the Himalayas, Ashmina, 13, lives with her family at the outskirts of Pokhara Nepal, paragliding capital of the world. The remote and traditional town is also a busy tourist destination where the locals are profoundly affected by the swarms of tourists who visit it daily. Forced to skip school, Ashmina helps her family make ends meet by working at the landing field, packing the parachutes of foreign pilots in return of small change.

Prison Prayer

Director: Milan Gogic
Run Time: 00:19:00
Country: Serbia
Type: Short

The film speaks about people, faith and repentance. Prison story about people. They call themselves “tattoo maestros”, who painted the walls in the church inside of the prison wall. During the seven years it took to complete the church, it was certainly worked on by more than 400 convicts.

Selfie With the Prime Minister

Directors: Nor Arlene Tan & Grace Cho Hee Won
Run Time: 00:22:00
Country: Malaysia
Type: Short

Ziaur Rahman, like any other millennial in Malaysia, loves to take selfie and is active on social media. However, he is no ordinary youth. He is a Rohingya refugee who grew up in a refugee camp and was trafficked seven times by human traffickers. In the quest for freedom of his people, he turns to activism. Despite having no rights as a refugee living in Malaysia, he finds an unlikely ally for his cause, the Prime Minister of Malaysia.

The Next Guardian

Directors: Dorottya Zurbo, Arun Bhattarai
Run Time: 1:14:00
Country: Bhutan
Type: Documentary

In a remote village in Bhutan, 16 year-old Gyembo and his younger sister sister Tashi roam aimlessly, while their father meticulously polishes the ancient relics inside the altar of their private monastery, which has been the family’s inheritance for generations. But unlike their father, whose life revolves around the monastery, Gyembo and Tashi dream of going beyond its confines. Gyembo wants to become a footballer. He is also the only confidante for Tashi, who is transgender. The father believes that the only way for Gyembo to accumulate good karma – and carry on the family tradition – is to leave school and practice religion. The film is a bittersweet story of the contrasting dreams of a family caught in a generation and culture clash. The Next Guardian was shot in Bhutan, premiered at IDFA in the First Appearance Competition and has been screened in other international festivals as well.

Marceline. A Woman. A Century

Directors: Cordelia Dvorák
Run Time: 00:58:52
Country: France/Netherlands
Type: Documentary

MARCELINE A woman. A century is an encounter with the remarkable French film director Marceline Loridan-Ivens, a radical chronicler, Jean Rouch’s actress, Holocaust survivor and long-standing companion of the Dutch legendary film pioneer Joris Ivens. MARCELINE A woman. A century is also a film about a unique love and partnership in filmmaking, about surviving the Holocaust by film-making and about an unimpeachable witness of the 20th century.

Children Gone Poland

Directors: Choo Sang-mi
Run Time: 1:30:00
Country: Republic of Korea
Type: Documentary

After the Korean War, the total number of war orphans in South and North Korea equaled 100,000. While South Korean war orphans were adopted into free Western countries such as the United States, North Korean war orphans were scattered across fellow Socialist countries like the Soviet Union, where they spent their adolescent years receiving foster education. Despite having many of their own war orphans after the harsh Second World War, Poland received around 1,500 North Korean war orphans in 1951 as a result of   Kim Il-Sung’s request to train and nurture an elite orphan troop armed with ideology under Stalin’s motto that all Socialist countries are brothers.

My Body, A Sin

Director: Ulasha Gurung
Run Time: 00:17:00
Country: Philippines
Type: Short

My Body, A Sin is a short documentary film that primarily addresses the issues of agency through the lens of much debated issue of back alley abortions in the Philippines. With the help of two main female characters who have gone through abortions in the past, the film sheds lights on different ways in which experiences and social standings help shape peoples beliefs and choices. The film attempts to constantly draw on the multiplicity and contradictions of a life as a whole.

A Woman Without A Name

Directors: Farzad Khoshdast
Run Time: 1:20:00
Country: Iran
Type: Documentary

Behind the solid concrete walls of the women’s prison Gharchak in Iran’s capital, Tehran, four young women open the door to their lives and innermost thoughts. They reveal their downfall into substance abuse and violent crime, which led to a life behind bars. All four are sentenced to several years of imprisonment for assault and murder. Their children play on the grey stone floor in the prison, where the women’s only contact to the outside world is through a pay phone. Violence, coercion, abuse and sexual assaults were the recurring reasons why the young women broke with the outside world’s expectations of proper female behaviour – and sacrificed their lives in the process. Farzad Khoshdast’s paradoxically poetic ‘A Woman Without a Name’ is rich in both shades and contrasts. With the prison as a final destination and a symbolic backdrop, the film also addresses the structural causes for the young women’s downfall – which in their own words was a desperate attempt to get away from a tough reality.

NATIONAL PANORAMA

Mother (Maa)

Director: Parichhed Sen
Run Time: 00:25:00
Country: Nepal
Type: Short

The elder mother need a pair of Slipper after Pairs is ruined. The sin needs pair of new shoes that wound hid new suit for his friend’s wedding. The interrelationship between mother necessity and son’s happiness is the core of this film.

Shelter (Tahara)

Director: Deepak Tolange
Run Time: 00:27:00
Country: Nepal
Type: Documentary/Short

A challenging journey of a mother and her young daughter living in a slum during the turmoil of squatter and slum movement in Kathmandu.

Gemini

Directors: Nabin Bhatt and Aabha Sharma
Run Time: 00:04:59
Country: Nepal
Type: Short

This Film represents the inner desire of a man who is born in the wrong body with women soul. The film shows inner conflict between his own soul and heart. However the curiosity leads towards the suffocation and suppression towards society.

Tirkha

Director: Bhabasagar Ghimire
Run Time: 00:05:19
Country: Nepal
Type: Short

A young girl thirsts for knowledge but struggles to be on time at school.

Chahana

Director: Aashuka Aryal
Run Time: 00:14:14
Country: Nepal
Type: Short

An isolated couple; can’t have their own child, take extreme choice which stakes their relationship.

About a Girl

Director: Manish Niraula
Run Time: 00:07:00
Country: Nepal
Type: Short

A high school girl goes through a traumatic experience of being harassed on a bus as she return home from school. She struggles to talk to her parents about the experience.

 4 Hours

Director: Ashma Pokharel
Run Time: 00:15:00
Country: Nepal
Type: Documentary

This documentary is a brief insight into the life of the Kidney patients we’ve chosen as subjects. We’ve tried to gain access over the physical, mental and economic status of victims of this horrible disease and show how grim can the picture truly be. Yes we did ache when we were face to face with the harsh reality that a family can choose to give up on a loved one because there is normally no way out. We also wanted our viewers to see how the limited access to health services is an issue to be discussed in a policy making level.

Super monk

Director: Shenang Gyamjo Tamang
Run Time: 00:18:12
Country: Nepal
Type: Documentary

During the people’s war in Nepal, an 11-year-old action film enthusiast monk Tashi, encounters a rebel child soldier hiding in his monastery. An unexpected friendship blossoms when Tashi helps the scared child soldier evade capture from armed forces. The boys then travel the same path Tashi usually takes to watch films and successfully escape chance encounters with government forces, strict monk disciplinarians and rebel forces. A touching adventure between two children who form an unlikely bond based on compassion and innocence.

 Rubina By Night

Director: Mirinda Morton Yap
Run Time: 00:13:04
Country: Nepal
Type: Documentary

A young transgender woman, Rubina, shares her story as well as her hopes and dreams while transforming herself from boy to girl in her daily metamorphosis to make a living as a sex worker in Kathmandu.

Dolpa Diary

Directors: Prasuna Dongol
Run Time: 00:24:00
Country: Nepal
Type: Documentary

Dolpo Diary follows a 27-year-old Nepali woman who sets out on a 23 day solo trek to Upper Dolpa in western Nepal, right on the border with Tibet. The adventure pushes her to her limits as she is faced with loneliness, fear and doubt.

Tattini (The Moon is Bright Tonight)

Directors: Abinash Bikram Shah
Run Time: 00:17:00
Country: Nepal/Myanmar
Type: Short Film

A dead body of a migrant worker arrives in a remote village of Nepal. Tattini, now a widow, plans to start a new life with her dead husband’s life insurance money, away from the shackles of the conservative society she lives in. But her lonely father-in-law, determined to stop her, claims that the money belongs to the village and demands a traditional ritual called darrkhana.

Banthi

Director: Bindu Majhi
Run Time: 00:28:00
Country: Nepal
Type: Short

The story is about the little girl named Banthi. She lived with her grandfather. One day Banthi was playing with her friend by wearing grandfather’s glass which suddenly fall and breaks. This is the story about Banthi struggle for repairing the glass.

Ek Din Buwa Sanga

Director: Bhima Mainali
Run Time: 00:19:00
Country: Nepal
Type: Short

The movie, a real story of a cancer patient narrates the last days of a middle-aged man Balaram Mainali. His normal lifestyle is changed as a dependent person. This was one real story of my own late father and could be called biographical.

A Line (Dharko)

Director: Pabitra Khadka
Run Time: 00:07:00
Country: Nepal
Type: Short/ Fiction

This is the story of a family living in Dhading, a district in Nepal. Just like 4 million other Nepalese,a mother also had gone abroad for employment for the economic upliiftment of her family but through illegal pathways. Her daughter Tara has been counting the days to her return by scribbling lines for every passing month on the wall but will she ever see her mother again?