Allo La France
In so-called "peripheral" France, where public services are disappearing or being dematerialised according to a purely utilitarian logic, I use the disappearance of the public telephone as a symbol. This road-movie in search of these twentieth-century ruins is built around telephone conversations, archives and chance encounters. It's also a journey through time. I'm looking for traces of abandoned collective projects, displaced political horizons and unfulfilled promises of emancipation. From the disappearance of the telephone booth to the advent of the "medical booth", I question what we call "progress".
"a charming and thought-provoking investigation into the inevitability of progress and the complexities of globalization" - True/False
Life is Beautiful
Life is Beautiful tells the story of how director Mohamed Jabaly fought for his rights as a Palestinian and a filmmaker, when stranded in Norway due to circumstances beyond his control. Through his personal archive and video calls, he shares his love and longing for his hometown, friends and family, as he tries to make a new life for himself in the arctic. The film is a love letter to Gaza, to his adopted hometown in Tromsø, and to the empowering force of storytelling.
“A timely cinematic expression of the universal need to be recognised in our full humanity. A compelling indictment of the bureaucratic and political structures that deny that. A directorial tone that, almost impossibly, manages to find hope and humour amid unimaginable pain. An urgent call for freedom, freedom of movement, freedom of opportunity and the freedom to pursue our dreams.” *Winner*, IDFA Award for the Best Directing in the International Competition, 2023
*not available Canada, USA, Norway
The Zola Experience
Anne is a theatre director. She has separated from her husband and is moving house. She is dull, without desires. She meets Ben, a helpful neighbour and jobless actor. He looks at her with passionate eyes; she never wants to tie herself to a man again. But when she decides to stage Zola's “L'assommoir”, it is to him that she proposes the role of Coupeau, casting herself in the one of Gervaise. As the story unfolds, the boundary between real life and the play becomes increasingly blurred; Between readings and rehearsals, between research and study, reality fades into fiction, and the two seem to retrace exactly all the steps of Coupeau and Gervaise's story, all the way to ruin.
"Art and life fuse deliriously.....It is as if the border between performance and life has entirely collapsed." - Guardian
Le Spectre de Boko Harem
The Far North Region of Cameroon, bordering Nigeria, lives under military protection, threatened by murderous terrorist incursions. In the village of Kolofata, Mohamed, Ibrahim and Falta — indirect victims of Boko Haram — attempt to create a new future for themselves. Cyrielle Raingou’s camera captures the unfailing vitality of these children as they go to school and look after their herds.
"a distinct and profound study of the contrasts of a war zone: hope and despair, innocence and terrorism, the present and future, western influence and traditional culture." - Int. Film Fest. Rotterdam
Avant-Drag!
Avant-Drag! offers an exhilarating look at ten Athenian drag performers who deconstruct gender, nationalism, belonging, identity, while facing police brutality, transphobia and racism. As entertaining as it is thought-provoking, Avant-Drag! challenges societal norms and reshapes perceptions about LGBTQ+ culture by capturing the intimate lives of a tightly-knit group of drag performers, proving that being othered never felt so familiar.
"a profound and moving celebration of queerness and the art of drag" - International Cinephile Society