The Egyptian Revolution has been an ongoing rollercoaster over the past two and a half years. Through the news, we only get a glimpse of what is really happening. At the beginning of July 2013, we witnessed the second president deposed within the space of three years. THE SQUARE is an immersive experience, transporting the viewer deeply into the intense emotional drama and personal stories. It is the inspirational story of young people claiming their rights, struggling through multiple forces, in the fight to create a society of conscience.
Shot on four continents, FIRE IN THE BLOOD tells the story of the clash between the big pharmaceutical companies and Third World pacients diagnosed with AIDS, an economic war that caused huge human losses, waged at the end of the ’90s and the beginning of the new century. Patents and the right of the corporations to set their own prices amount to nothing less than a death sentence. Forbidding the import of generic medicine lead to the demise of over ten million people between the years of 1996, when the first anti-retroviral drugs were released, and 2003, when a trans-continental coalition of activists, former statesmen and producers of generic medicine succeeded in putting an end to the genocide. But for how long?
During the mid-to-late sixties, twin sisters Olanna (BAFTA Award winning actress Thandie Newton) and Kainene decide to return to Nigeria after their education in England. Olanna moves in with her lover, the “revolutionary professor” Odenigbo (Academy Award nominated Chiwetel Ejiofor), while Kainene takes over the family businesses. As the Igbo people struggle to establish Biafra as an independent republic, the sisters become caught up in the shocking violence of the Nigerian Civil War and a betrayal that threatens their family forever.
The year is 1979. Because Jérome is in love with Carole, his cousin, because she wants to support the cause of the Jews in the Soviet Union, but especially because both of them are aged 20, the two embark on an adventure behind the Iron Curtain. In Odessa, they act as tourists during the day, and meet Jews who want to emigrate from USSR and are harassed by the Soviet authorities during the night. All changes when Viktor asks Jérome for a favor, and the latter has to choose between law and morals.
Life in an exclusive neighborhood in the Brazilian town of Recife follows its own steady course: Bia suffers from severe insomnia caused by her neighbors’ dog, and tries to silence it by any means possible, João falls in love with a girl he knows nothing about, while Dinho is the scare of all the other residents’ cars, and their respective CD players. Above all, the fatherly figure of Claudio, the master without a crown of the neighborhood. The relative equilibrium of it all is blown into pieces when the employees of a private security firm offer their services. Little by little, secrets old and new are revealed. The sins of post-colonial Brazil are finally accounted for, which is by no means one and the same thing with justice being made. Brazil’s official proposal for the Best Foreign Language Film category at the 2014 Academy Awards.
We encounter the controversial Croatian film director Lordan Zafranović in his voluntary exile in Prague. The film follows his rise from a talented outsider to the celebrated Yugoslav director of the acclaimed war film AN OCCUPATION IN 26 PICTURES, presented at Cannes Competition in 1979. His life story is an unconventional depiction of a rise and fall that reveals compromises made in order to survive artistically during communism, as well as the missed opportunities and miscalculations that led to his inability to adapt in later years.
In 1960, Soviet Armenian film director Serghei Paradjanov’s never ending feast of a life is twice changed: he is to become the father of a boy and of a movie. A hit in Europe, SHADOWS OF FORGOTTEN ANCESTORS receives a cold welcome in the USSR. He leaves Ukraine for Armenia, where his bohemian lifestyle is unchanged and where he shoots SAYAT NOVA. Little does he know his every step is closely watched by the KGB. Arrested on suspicion of sodomy, Paradjanov spends five long years in prison, where he finds salvation in art. Upon his release, he returns to Georgia, where he directs THE LEGEND OF SURAM FORTRESS, a new frowned upon title back at home, a new masterpiece of world cinema. PARADJANOV was Ukraine’s official proposal for the Best Foreign Language Film category at the 2014 Academy Awards.
In 1960’s Patagonia, a German doctor and an Argentinian family’s paths intersect. A guest in Eva (Natalia Oreiro) and Enzo’s (Diego Peretti) hotel, the stranger quickly becomes fascinated by Lilith (Florencia Bado), the couple’s little girl. Aged 12, she looks more like a 9 year old child, which makes the perfection obsessed doctor take it upon himself to help the girl mature at all costs. His charisma, and also his money-upfront politic, ease her parents’ acceptance of him. In the end, they realize Lilith was the subject of a genetic experiment, and the German doctor was no other than one of the most ruthless criminals in history.
