The Song of the Auricanturi

Colombia, Karlovy Vary Proxima competition 2023

Camila Rodriguez Triana

Synopsis

Rocío returns to her home town to reunite with her mother Alba, from whom she was separated as a child. The only thing from her mother that Rocío had kept is a cassette recording of her voice singing her a song in a language that they invented to communicate with each other. Alba has stopped talking as a reaction to trauma from the war that their territory endured. This forces Rocío to find other ways to communicate with her mother and tell her that she is pregnant. Continuer la lecture →

Agra

India, Cannes Director’s Fortnight 2023

Kanu Behl

Synopsis

Guru, a young man in his twenties, works in a call center in Agra. In love with Mala, a work colleague, he stills lives with his parents, whose house is divided in two parts. Guru lives on the ground floor with his mother while his father is upstairs with his mistress. when Guru announces that he wants to marry Mala, and make the terrace of the house his future bedroom, nothing goes as planned. Frustrations, faults and family hatreds come to light, symptoms of an Indian patriarchal society with many taboos. Continuer la lecture →

Le Spectre de Boko Haram

Cameroon, Rotterdam Tiger award 2023, FESPACO Paul Robeson award

Cyrielle Raingou

Synopsis

A group of children forge their own world amid the dangers of armed conflict. We meet Falta, studious and hardworking, who is struggling to come to terms with the death of her father in a terrorist attack. Her classmate, Ibrahim, and older brother, Mohamad, struggle to balance their childlike energy with a traumatic past that takes them away from the innocence of their eight and eleven years. Continuer la lecture →

La Bonga

Colombia, Paris Cinema du Reel, NY MoMA Doc Fortnight, True False 2023

Sebastian Pinzon Silva & Canela Reyes

Synopsis

Two decades after a death threat from right-wing paramilitaries caused the maroon community of La Bonga to flee, the townspeople embark on a symbolic journey through the jungles of the Colombian Caribbean to resurrect a home that exists only in their memories.  Continuer la lecture →

There is a Stone

Japan, Tokyo Filmex 2022, Berlinale Forum 2023, Jeonju Grand Prize

Feature Film by Tatsunari Ota

Synopsis

Yoshikawa, who works for a travel agency, is visiting a town in the suburbs to do research for a new tour project. However, Yamakita, which used to be a prosperous « railway town », is no sign of life in front of the station and the shopping street is almost closed. Halfway through her research, she walks along a nearby riverbed and discovers a man, Doi, who is diligently skimming stones.

Continuer la lecture →

Geographies of Solitude

Canada, Berlinale Forum 2022 -Ecumenical Award, Arthouse Cinema Award, Caligari Film Prize-, Jeonju Grand Prize, Hot Docs Best Film & Best Emerging Director, Las Palmas Best Film

Documentary by Jacquelyn Mills

Synopsis

Geographies of Solitude is an immersion into the rich landscapes of Sable Island and the life of Zoe Lucas, a naturalist and environmentalist who has lived over 40 years on this remote strip of land. Continuer la lecture →

The River is not a Border

France, Locarno Critic’s Week 2022, IDFA

Documentary by Alassane Diago

Synopsis

Forty protagonists, witnesses and victims, look back at the 1989 massacres on both sides of the Senegal River, the border between Mauritania and Senegal, in order to understand what really happened, and try to take a step towards reconciliation together. Continuer la lecture →

The Plains

Australia, Rotterdam Tiger competition 2022, Bildrausch Film Basel Best Film

First docu-fiction by David Easteal

Synopsis

Every evening a man in his late 50s commutes home at the end of the working day in the outer suburbs of Melbourne. As the seasons pass in gentle rhythm we observe dramatic events of his life as well as mundane quotidian details, and learn more about the man, his inner conflicts and the relationships in his life—with his wife, his mother, deceased sister, and a younger co-worker whom he occasionally drives home. Within the microcosm of the car the film ultimately becomes a meditation on the passage of time, memory, work, and how love and the relationships in our life sustain us. Continuer la lecture →

Veins of the Amazon

Peru, DOK Leipzig competition 2021

Documentary by Álvaro Sarmiento, Diego Sarmiento, Terje Toomistu

Synopsis

In the Peruvian Amazon, the main means of transport for goods and people since the times of the rubber boom and the infamous adventures of Fitzcarraldo are the ferries navigating the majestic Amazon River. Continuer la lecture →

Vedette

France- Cannes ACID selection 2021, IDFA international competition 2021

Documentary by Claudine Bories & Patrice Chagnard

Synopsis

Vedette is a cow. Vedette is a queen. In fact, she once was the queen of the queens of the Alpine pastures. But Vedette is old now, and in order to avoid her the humiliation of being dethroned by younger rivals, our neighbours asked us to take her with us for a whole summer. It was at this time that we discovered that every cow is unique.  Continuer la lecture →