In A MAGICAL SUBSTANCE FLOWS INTO ME Jumana Manna traces the past and present of musical variety in the region of Palestine. In his feature film AKHER AYAM EL MADINA(In the Last Days of the City), Tamer El Said has his alter ego Khalid wander through his home town of Cairo during an uprising. In MAKHDOUMIN (A Maid for Each), Maher Abi Samra documents the ubiquitous Lebanese phenomenon of employing maids from the countries of the global South, who are and are supposed to remain invisible. BARAKAH YOQABIL BARAKAH (Barakah Meets Barakah) by Mahmoud Sabbagh depicts a Saudi Arabian love story in remarkably frank terms, contrasting the adversities that the couple faces with plenty of humor. However, the program also features armed conflicts. In MANAZIL BELA ABWAB (Houses without Doors), the Syrian filmmaker Avo Kaprealian films the civil war on the streets of Aleppo from the window of his apartment block over a period of several years. He juxtaposes the portrait of his predominantly Armenian neighborhood with footage from feature and documentary films about the Armenian genocide. Civil wars, forced migration and the impact of exploitative labor conditions also provide subject matter in other regions, but filmmakers depict them using very different cinematic forms. The documentary TA'ANG by the Chinese director Wang Bing depicts everyday life against the backdrop of a relatively unknown conflict. While some of the Ta'ang (also known as the Palaung) ethnic minority is fighting for independence against the Myanmar army on the Sino-Burmese border, women and children have to live in makeshift tents in the valleys of the border region. Not far away, Midi Z in FUI CUI ZHI CHENG (City of Jade) follows his brother into the eponymous City of Jade where there are ongoing hostilities between the Burmese army and the Kachin Independence Army. Because the mining companies have fled the violence, young men seek their fortune on their own account in the mines. Opium makes it easier to cope with the risky work. What leads people to carry out such dangerous work in the mines? That's what ELDORADO XXI by the Portuguese filmmaker Salomé Lamas asks. In La Rinconada, Peru - at a height of 5100 meters on the edge of a goldmine - exists a dystopian world that does not seem to be part of the 21st century. In a formally radical montage of images and sound footage, the film reveals the magnitude of the mine landscape and physical exertion. Philip Scheffner also carries out a formal experiment in HAVARIE, which is about the experience of having to flee and about making that experience tangible. A three-minute video clip of a tiny dinghy in the Mediterranean filmed by an Irish tourist on a cruise is expanded into a feature-length film. While off camera the occupants of the boat, coastguard members and amateur filmmaker speak about their experiences, the documentary questions the conventional visual depictions of crisis situations. A second contribution by Scheffner is about the representation of people who are often refused this. The German director gave his camera to Colorado Velcu, who is Romani, so that he could record his new life in Berlin with his family. AND-EK GHES… is the portrait of a new beginning in which Velcu defines his own representation with a great deal of humor. Nicolás Pereda and Andrea Bussmann's TALES OF TWO WHO DREAMT, which is set in a Toronto apartment building, is also about depictions by others or by oneself. A family, which is also Romani, rehearses stories about their past ahead of a hearing on their residence status. The boundaries between fiction and reality, acted and recorded become increasingly blurred the more the happenings in the apartment building become legends. In his new film, Guillaume Nicloux sends Gérard Depardieu, who plays a lonely hunter, into the woods. In DANS LES BOIS (The Wandering) the hunter first loses his dog and then his way. A calm summer's walk transforms gradually into a fantastical wandering from whose clutches he can no longer escape. Another French production, Eugène Green's eloquent LE FILS DE JOSEPH(The Son of Joseph), is also about a search. Vincent, who is brought up by his single mother, wants to find out who his father is. In his latest film, Nikolaus Geyrhalter turns away from individuals to examine humanity as a whole. In an empty world once made by humans but re-conquered by nature, an uncomfortable scenario emerges: HOMO SAPIENS is at once sci-fi, documentary, post-apocalypse and present. A retrospective of 8 mm films made in Japan between 1977 and 1990 rounds up this year's program. Many now famous Japanese directors experimented with the medium, often making feature-length films as well as shorts. In a program entitled "Hachimiri Madness", the Forum is screening digitalized versions of early works by Shinya Tsukamoto, Sion Sono, Masashi Yamamoto, Nobuhiro Suwa, Shinobu Yaguchi and others - they breathe the rebellious punk spirit of the time and most are totally unknown outside of Japan.
46. Forum
Films from the Arab world provide one regional focus of this year's program. From Egypt to Saudi Arabia, frequently young directors examine the state of their home countries.
