Kiyoshi Kurosawa's To the Ends of the Earth
The lineup for the 2019 festival has been revealed, including new films by Pedro Costa, Ulrich Köhler, Anocha Suwichakornpong, Yorgos Lanthimos and others, alongside retrospectives and tributes, and much more.
PIAZZA GRANDE
7500 (Patrick Vollrath): A pilot's aircraft is hi-jacked at 30,000 feet by terrorists.
Adoration (Fabrice Du Welz): the story of Paul, a 14 years old lonely boy. His mother is a maid at the mental hospital. His father abandoned them, a long time ago. A new patient arrived. Her name is Gloria, a young teenage girl of the same age, strange and fascinating. Paul will fall deeply in love with her. So much in love that he will run away with her, far form the adults world, to Gloria’s safe haven, her grandfather’s house in Brittany on the “pink granite coast”. Teenagers on the run, from a world which scares them, taking comfort from the sweet moves of the river, they are now on a trip towards an unreachable country…
Camille (Boris Lojkine)
Days of the Bagnold Summer (Simon Bird): Sue (52), works in a library. Daniel (15), eats crisps and listens to Metallica. This was the summer Daniel was due to spend with his father and his father’s new wife in Florida. But when they cancel his trip at the last minute, Sue and Daniel suddenly face the prospect of six long weeks together. Over the course of one long summer, an epic war of wills rages in the unassuming battleground of their suburban home as Sue and Daniel reckon with private tragedies – and pursue their personal passions.
Diego Maradona (Asif Kapadia): Constructed from over 500 hours of never-before-seen footage, this documentary centers on the career of celebrated football player Diego Armando Maradona, who played for S.S.C. Napoli in the 1980s.
Instinct (Halina Reijn): Nicoline, an experienced psychologist, starts a new job at a penal institution. She meets Idris, a sex offender who committed a series of grave crimes. After five years of treatment, he is about to go on his first unaccompanied probation. His team of practitioners are enthusiastic about his development but newcomer Nicoline does not trust him and tries to push his probation. Idris tries his hardest to convince Nicoline of his good intentions, but slowly but surely, he transforms into the manipulative man she saw in him from the beginning. A power play emerges between the two and Nicoline, in spite of her knowledge and experience, lets herself be trapped completely.
The Girl with a Bracelet (Stéphane Demoustier): 18 years-old Lise is accused of murdering her best friend. Her parents stand by her as naturally expected. But once in court, her secret life begins to unfold and the plot thickens. Who is Lise really? Do we really know the ones we love?
Lettre à Freddy Buache (Jean-Luc Godard)
Magari (If Only) (Ginevra Elkann): Alma, Jean and Sebastian. As children, they live in Paris with their orthodox catholic mother in a bizarre yet reassuring of the upper-class environment, but soon they have to leave in order to join Carlo, their absent Italian father.
New Acid (Basim Magdy)
Notre Dame (Valérie Donzelli): Maud Crayon, architect and single mother of two, can’t find the right balance between her career and sentimental life thanks to a weak ex-husband who’s still in the picture. When she’s miraculously chosen to lead the restoration of the esplanade of Notre-Dame de Paris, which should make her the rising star of the architectural scene, nothing go as planned. Not only the journalist in charge of following her happens to be this intimidating ex-boyfriend, but the project she‘d envisioned becomes a public fisco. To survive the shame, she must count on the help of her family and friends to finally impose her views.
Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood (Quentin Tarantino): A faded television actor and his stunt double strive to achieve fame and success in the film industry during the final years of Hollywood's Golden Age in 1969 Los Angeles.
To the Ends of the Earth (Kiyoshi Kurosawa): A young Japanese woman named Yoko finds her cautious and insular nature tested when she travels to Uzbekistan to shoot the latest episode of her travel variety show.
Do the Right Thing (Spike Lee): On the hottest day of the year on a street in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, everyone's hate and bigotry smolders and builds until it explodes into violence.
Cecil B. Demented (John Waters): An insane independent film director and his renegade group of teenage filmmakers kidnap an A-list Hollywood actress and force her to star in their underground film.
Coffy (Jack Hill): A black nurse takes vigilante justice against inner-city drug dealers after her sister becomes their latest victim.
Vagenda Stories (Natascha Beller): When Leila discovers at her sister Amanda’s wedding that the latter is pregnant, she promptly reveals the carefully guarded secret. While the guests are happy, Amanda worries about her career and Leila about her fertility. Panic-stricken, Leila sets herself a goal: get pregnant!
Greener Grass (Jocelyn DeBoer , Dawn Luebbe): A deliciously twisted comedy set in a demented, timeless suburbia where every adult wears braces on their straight teeth, couples coordinate meticulously pressed outfits, and coveted family members are swapped in more ways than one in this competition for acceptance.
Memories of Murder (Bong Joon-ho): Based on an actual crime case, Memories of Murdertakes place in 1986 South Korea as two small town cops and a special detective from Seoul try to solve a string of serial murders and rapes in the province of Gyunggi.
THE NEST (Roberto de Feo): Samuel is a paraplegic boy living with his mother in Lake Manor, an isolated mansion. He is prohibited from walking away from the mansion. When Denise, a young maid, arrives, Samuel finally finds the strength to oppose his mother’s restraints and to open himself up to a new world.
The Bears' Famous Invasion of Sicily (Lorenzo Mattotti): To find his long lost son and food to survive the winter, the great bear king leads his clan down from the mountains and into the world of men. After escaping terrible monsters and defeating an evil duke, the bears and men live together in peace – for a time.
CONCORSO INTERNAZIONALE
The Fever (Maya Da-Rin): Stuck between the city, where he never quite fits in, and his village, from where he left over 20 years ago, Justino finds himself condemned to an existence without place.
Echo (Rúnar Rúnarsson): Iceland, Christmas time. As everyone prepares for the holidays, a peculiar atmosphere falls upon the country revealing emotions of both excitement and concern. In the middle of the countryside, an abandoned farm is burning. In a school, a children’s choir is singing Christmas carols. In a slaughterhouse, chickens are parading along a rail. In a museum, a mother is arguing with her ex-husband on the phone. In a living room, a young girl is making her grandmother try on her new virtual reality headset... Through 56 scenes, Echo draws a portrait, both biting and tender, of modern society.
Cat in the Wall (Mina Mileva, Vesela Kazakova): Cat in the Wall tackles the relationship between migrants and locals in London.
A Voluntary Year (Ulrich Köhler, Henner Winckler)
Douze Mille (Nadège Trebal): While he loses his clandestine work, and because he believes that Maroussia will no longer not be able to love him as well, Frank leaves to win as much as she: twelve thousand, just what it takes to have a year before them. No more no less. In the course of his proletarian odyssey, he becomes the hero he dreamed of being. But there is a price to pay.
During Revolution (Maya Khoury)
The Science of Fictions (Yosep Anggi Noen)
Maternal (Maura Delpero): “Maternal” begins with Sister Paola arriving from Italy to take her final vows at “Hogar,” a convent for single teen mothers in Buenos Aires. She begins to experience a maternal instinct caring for Nina, a little girl, after her flighty mother Lu takes off to live with her boyfriend. Sister Paola cannot repress her joy at a sense of maternity, nor Lu her sexual longing. The center is only really a satisfactory home to a third young woman, Fatima, who, coming from a violent hime where she may well have been raped by her mother’s boyfriend, gives birth to her second child there.
Isadora's Children (Damien Manivel): Following the death of her two children in April 1913, the legendary dancer, Isadora Duncan, created a solo entitled "Mother" in which, in a moment of extreme tenderness, a mother cradles her child one last time before letting him go. A century later, four women encounter the heartrending dance.
Endless Night (Eloy Enciso)
O Fim do Mundo (Basil Da Cunha): After eight years in a correctional school, Spira returns to Reboleira, a slum which is being demolished in the Lisbon suburbs. While he goes back to his friends and family, Kikas, one of the neighbourhood's old drug dealers, makes it clear that he is not welcome.
Height of the Wave (Park Jung-bum): Police Officer Yeon-soo is dispatched to an island with her daughter after her divorce. She witnesses the strange relationship between orphan Ye-eun and the island workers. Everyone tries to settle the issue rapidly as they are busy getting ready for the national development project.
Technoboss (João Nicolau): Already in his sixties, Luís Rovisco is still roaming the country by himself, carrying out his tasks – increasingly less real – as sales director for the company SegurVale. Sadness, resignation? Not with the songs Luís makes up behind the wheel, and that take over this film from start to finish.
South Terminal (Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche): In a Mediterranean country descending into insecurity and armed conflict, a doctor strives to do his duty against all the odds, until one day when his life is turned upside down.
The Last Black Man in San Francisco (Joe Talbot): A young man searches for home in the changing city that seems to have left him behind.
Vitalina Varela (Pedro Costa): Three sisters come from Cape Verde to visit their family in Fontaínhas after many years, but when they arrive, they discover Fontaínhas no longer exists.
A Girl Missing (Koji Fukada): Ichiko works as a private nurse for a family she has almost became a part of. While Ichiko cares for the grandmother, she is also a confidant to Motoko, the eldest sister. But one day, Motoko’s younger sister disappears. And the media soon reveal the kidnapper to be Ichiko’s own nephew...
CONCORSO CINEASTI DEL PRESENTE
143 sahara street (Hassen Ferhani): In her little restaurant in the middle of the Algerian desert, a woman writes her history. There she welcomes truckers, wanderers and dreamers for a cigarette, a coffee or eggs. Her name is Malika.
Nafi's Father (Mamadou Dia): A fight between an Imam and his powerful brother over their children’s marriage. At stake: how a small community slowly drifts towards extremism.
Ham on Rye (Tyler Taormina): A bizarre rite of passage at the local deli determines the fate of a generation of teenagers, leading some to escape their suburban town and dooming others to remain.
Here for Life (Andrea Luka Zimmerman, Adrian Jackson): An uncommon story told on common ground by 10 Londoners. Their loves and their losses; living lyrically between fiction and fact. What does it cost to exist? We are all here for life; here for now.
Ivana the Terrible (Ivana Mladenović): Serbian actress Ivana works and lives in Romania, but after a series of health problems she decides to spend the summer on the other bank of the Danube in Kladovo, her home town, surrounded by family. A story about a woman who can not find herself on any of the two banks of the Danube.
The Young Observant (Davide Maldi): The story of the first year of training in the art of serving of young Luca and his classmates at a prestigious hotel institute through the complex fabric of rules and discipline imposed by the profession and the future life that awaits them.
Bird Island (Maya Kosa, Sergio da Costa): After a long period of isolation, Antonin, a young man suffering from persisting exhaustion, rediscovers the world at a rehabilitation center for birds. In this strange place wounded birds and lost souls cohabit, lulled by the ubiquitous sounds of airplanes.
The Dove and the Wolf (Carlos Lenin): Displaced by the violence that devastated their town, Paloma and Lobo survive trying to love each other. Between thirst, fear and nostalgia, Paloma wishes to return home but Lobo lives tied to a memory that prevents her from returning.
The Cold Raising The Cold (Rong Guang Rong)
Love Me Tender (Klaudia Reynicke): Seconda, 32 years old, is ready for anything to gain her freedom. Suffering from agoraphobia, she is incapable of leaving her home, but when she finally succeeds, she must face new challenges that push her limits even further. This assertive and tough anti-super heroine will do it in her own way.
Mariam (Sharipa Urazbayeva)
Wonders in the Suburbs (Jeanne Balibar): Joëlle and Kamel are key members of the staff of Montfermeil's new mayor. The whole team works together on the implementation of a wacky new policy for this sensitive urban zone. The policy is a great success in revitalizing the town but life no less complicated for the mayor's staff. Joëlle and Kamel are in the process of divorcing and at war with each other, and each in love with mysterious blind dates. The mayor is headed for a nervous breakdown; her secretary exhausts herself learning Malian Mandinka out of love. What's more, shadowy traitors in the administration seek to sabotage the mayor’s good work. Suspicions fall on Kamel...
The Tree House (Minh Quý Trương)
Oroslan (Matjaž Ivanišin): Rites are those that make us people; We are a community with rituals, without rites we are a herd. Oroslan’s story of two brothers is narrated from three different perspectives.
Overseas (Yoon Sung-a): In The Philippines, women get deployed abroad to work as domestic workers or nannies. In a learning center dedicated to the domestic work, several candidates prepare themselves for homesickness and for the abuses that they will possibly endure.
Space Dogs (Elsa Kremser, Levin Peter): Laika, a stray dog, was the first living being to be sent into space and thus to a certain death. According to a legend, she returned to Earth as a ghost and has roamed the streets of Moscow ever since. Following her trace, and filmed from a dog’s perspective, SPACE DOGS accompanies the adventures of her descendants: two street dogs living in today’s Moscow. Their story is one of intimate fellowship but also relentless brutality, and is interwoven with unseen archive material from the Soviet cosmic era. A magical tale of voyagers scouting for unknown spaces.
MOVING AHEAD
(tourism studies) (Joshua Gen Solondz): Shot in Tokyo, Baghdad, Amsterdam, Brussels, Golan Heights, Livingston, Baltimore, and Los Angeles over a ten year period, this project’s intent is release, not identity.
A Topography of Memory (Burak Çevik)
Black Hole (Emmanuel Grimaud, Arnaud Deshayes): Black Hole follows ghost hunters in Calcutta who conduct their investigation in haunted houses, looking for presences with which they attempt to establish communication via magnetic devices.
Color-blind (Ben Russell)
Distancing (Miko Revereza)
In Memoriam (Jean-Claude Rousseau)
Kasiterit (Riar Rizaldi)
Krabi, 2562 (Ben Rivers, Anocha Suwichakornpong): In the town of Krabi, a popular tourist destination in southern Thailand, the pre-historic, the recent past and the contemporary capitalist world awkwardly collide. The town’s local folklore and histories are promoted as attractions to foreigners, while the town’s traditional labour force is muted and hidden from the tourists’ eyes. A nameless character, whose identity continually changes, takes us around town to explore various sites that capture Krabi in its current state. These sites uniquely illustrate how Krabi’s folklore are propagated and commodified to fill the need of tourism industry.
Lore (Sky Hopinka): Images of landscapes are cut and fragmented, as hands guide their shape and construction. The voice tells a story about a not too distant past, and elements of nostalgia are assembled in terms of lore; knowledge and memory passed down and shared not out of wistful loss, but through a pastiche of rumination and reproduction.
Ralf's Colors (Lukas Marxt): Ralfs Farben is an experimental portrait of a schizophrenic person living in Lanzarote (Canary islands), whom Lukas Marxt accompanied for over 5 years. The film shows the struggle of his inner life in contrast to the deserted volcanic surroundings.
Osmosis (Zhou Tao)
Swinguerra (Bárbara Wagner, Benjamin de Burca)
The Giverny Document (Single Channel) (Ja'Tovia M. Gary): This filmic collage, shot on location in Claude Monet's garden in Giverny, France, aims to examine the precarious nature of Black women’s bodily integrity, the ethics of care as resistance work, and how class position shapes the contours of violence. Set against the backdrop of the West's continued global imperialist campaigns and its historical artistic canon, this experimental video features a mélange of HD video, archival footage, and analog animation to assert an oppositional gaze in the re-telling of modern history.
The Invisible Hand (Omer Fast): Originated from a Jewish medieval fairy-tale, the story itinerates into a contemporary urban fable narrated by an 8-year old Chinese girl, where the invisible hand of a ghost granted the family’s material prosperity but eventually caused an ethical and social breakdown.
Those That, at a Distance, Resemble Another (Jessica Sarah Rinland): With an elephant's ivory tusk as the protagonist, Those That, at a Distance, Resemble Another meditates upon the endless tactility of museological and ecological conservation, inviting reflection upon forms of representation, replicas, and embodiments of various materials, disciplines, and institutions.
Un film dramatique (Éric Baudelaire)
FUORI CONCORSO (OUT OF COMPETITION)
Arguments (Olivier Zabat): Many people throughout the world are subjected on a daily basis to insistent, aggressive, hostile voices which are inaudible to the rest of us. Arguments is a rigorous and sensitive exploration which maps out the perceptions of “voice hearers”, and their projection of the intimate onto the outside.
Baghdad in my Shadow (Samir): “Abu Nawas” is a trendy café and popular hangout for artists, communists and gay Iraqi exiles in London, it’s close to the Salafist Mosque. When Nasseer, a fanatic religious youth and nephew of poet Taufiq, attacks his uncle’s friends he sets into action a course of events.
Felix in Wonderland (Marie Losier): Fall into the world of Felix Kubin’s experimentation and creation of music sound and his mastering of his instrument of predilection, the KORG MS20. A portrait of a great artist who never stops living with music in his head.
Giraffe (Anna Sofie Hartmann): A Danish summer: long days turn into blue nights. A tunnel is being built to connect Denmark and Germany. Three people meet and part ways again.
The Holy Family (Louis-Do de Lencquesaing): A famous anthropologist finds himself Minister of the Family, even though he is lost in the events that shake his.
The Prince's Voyage (Jean-François Laguionie, Xavier Picard)
Not a Dream (Giovanni Cioni): A film project born from the Nuvole Laboratory , started in October 2016 at the Capanne prison (Perugia) inspired by Pier Paolo Pasolini’s The Clouds and La Vita is Pedro Calderòn de Barca’s dream.
A Pleasure, Comrades! (José Filipe Costa): A Pleasure, Comrades! takes place after April 25, 1974, at a time when many foreigners came to Portugal to help with farm work, medical appointments and family planning classes.
Under the God (Students Workshop Béla Tarr)
Wilcox (Denis Côté)
Parents (Eric Bergkraut, Ruth Schweikert): An enlightened couple in Zurich thinks everything is right, but the two 19 year olds. Sons paralyze the life of the parents. Finally, the exasperated parents flee from the family apartment.
Being Jerôme Bel (Sima Khatami, Aldo Lee): In 2015, we obtained carte blanche to film the choreographer Jérôme Bel at work. During this long-distance shoot, we waited for an unexpected event, an event that pushed Jérôme Bel out of the character we were building. The event took place. We seized it.
SHORTS
De una isla (José Luis Guerin)
Lonely Rivers (Mauro Herce)
My Skin, Luminous (Nicolás Pereda, Gabino Rodríguez)
Nimic (Yorgos Lanthimos)
San Vittore (Yuri Ancarani): Having already visited the San Vittore prison over the years, Ancarani proposes to make a new video installation from inside this legendary prison, focusing on the peculiar architecture of incarceration and in particular on the wing for female inmates and their children.
Sapphire Crystal (Virgil Vernier)
PARDI DI DOMANI: CONSORSO INTERNAZIOLE
16 December (Álvaro Gago)
Companions of the Cave (Fakhri El Ghezal)
All Come From Dust (Younes Ben Slimane)
All the Fires the Fire (Efthimis Kosemund Sanidis)
Flesh (Camila Kater)
A Street Under (Tomás von der Osten)
Dossier of the Dossier (Sorayos Prapapan)
Douma Underground (Tim Alsiofi)
The Furniture Maker (David Avilés)
Eyes on the Road (Stefanie Kolk)
Shiver of Love (Maxence Stamatiadis)
How to Tell a True Immigrant Story (Aggie Ebrahimi Bazaz)
In Vitro (Larissa Sansour, Søren Lind)
Unfinished (Samira Guadagnuolo , Tiziano Doria)
Tide (Manon Coubia)
Mom's Movie (Stella Kyriakopoulos)
Sheep, Wolf and a Cup of Tea... (Marion Lacourt)
Mthunzi (Tebogo Malebogo)
Our Territory (Mathieu Volpe)
Leave of Absence (Anton Sazonov)
The Last Image of Father (Stefan Djordjevic)
Cobalt Blue (Aung Phyoe)
Enduring Body (Ukrit Sa-nguanhai)
Black Sun (Arda Çiltepe)
The Animal (Amiran Dolidze)
Umbilical (Danski Tang)
Father (Isabel Lamberti)
Volcano: What Does a Lake Dream? (Diana Vidrascu)
White Afro (Akosua Adoma Owusu)
PARDI DI DOMANI: CONSORSO NAZIOLE
Aline (Simon Guélat)
Life is One of the Simplest (Marion Nyffenegger)
Azure Memories (Enea Zucchetti)
Mama Rosa (Dejan Barac)
All Cats Are Grey in the Dark (Lasse Linder)
Sas (Léa Célestine Bernasconi)
Still Working (Julietta Korbel)
Silent Storm (Anaïs Moog)
Terminal (Kim Allamand)
A Summer Morning (Patrick Muroni)
At the Pool (Consuelo Frauenfelder, Stefan Lauper)
HISTOIRE(S) DU CINÉMA
Pardo d'onore Manor John Waters
A Dirty Shame (John Waters): When an accidental concussion awakens the carnal urges of Sylvia Stickles (Tracey Ullman), the people of Pinewood become pitted against each other in an epic battle of decency (“Neuters”) versus depravity (“Sex Addicts”).
Female Trouble (John Waters): A spoiled schoolgirl runs away from home, gets pregnant while hitchhiking, and ends up as a fashion model for a pair of beauticians who like to photograph women committing crimes.
Pink Flamingos (John Waters): Renegade bad taste aficionado John Waters exploded into international infamy with this perverse comic where underground transvestite star Divine stars as Babs Johnson a woman competing with sleazy married couple Connie & Raymond Marble for the title of “Filthiest Person Alive”.
Polyester (John Waters): For a “good Christian woman”, the money to support her lifestyle comes from her husband’s porno theater, the neighbors are protesting, her son is the notorious “Baltimore Stomper,” her daughter is knocked up by a local hoodlum, and her husband is having an affair with his secretary.
Serial Mom (John Waters): John Waters puts a twist on the everyday mediocrity of suburban life in the hilarious satire Serial Mom. See Kathleen Turner like never before as Beverly Sutphin, the “perfect homemaker” who stops at nothing to rid the neighborhood of anyone failing to live up to her moral code.
Show People (King Vidor): A young lady from Georgia goes to Hollywood in the hopes of becoming an actress.
Virtual Reality: Gender Bender
A Room With Four Views (Maria Guta)
Domestika (Jacolby Satterwhite)
Gender Swap (BeAnotherLab.org)
haus of haraway (Séamus Gallagher)
Miyubi(Felix Lajeunesse , Paul Raphaël): Puts you in the body and mind of a Japanese toy robot that is gifted to a young boy on his birthday in 1982 suburban America.
Studio Visit 360 (Theo Triantafyllidis)
The Bridge (Nikita Shalenny)
Viens! (Michel Reilhac)
Excellence Award Song Kang-ho
The Foul King (Kim Jee-woon): Dae-Ho is a timid, unproductive, constantly harassed bank clerk. He starts secretly wrestling and adopts the persona of the cheating villain wrestler “The Foul King”. He starts to stand up for himself but things soon start to get out of hand.
Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (Park Chan-wook): The first film in Park’s Vengeance Trilogy, Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance trails a punky deaf-mute who desperately attempts to secure money for a kidney transplant his ailing sister badly needs, leading ultimately to a series of events that spiral rapidly into a bloody cycle of violence and revenge.
Parasite (Bong Joon-ho): All unemployed, Ki-taek’s family takes peculiar interest in the wealthy and glamorous Parks for their livelihood until they get entangled in an unexpected incident.
Premio Raimondo Rezzonico Komplizen Film
The Forest for the Trees (Maren Ade): As an awkward idealistic high school teacher begins her first job in the city, things turn out to be much tougher than she had imagined.
Western (Valeska Grisebach): A group of German construction workers start a tough job at a remote site in the Bulgarian countryside. The foreign land awakens the men’s sense of adventure, but they are also confronted with their own prejudice and mistrust due to the language barrier and cultural differences.
Premio Utopia enrico ghezzi
La macchina dello spazio
Pardo alla carriera Fredi M. Murer
Alpine Fire (Fredi M. Murer): A deaf mute boy comes of age in this simultaneously constrictive and untamed environment, developing a forbidden relationship with his sister.
We Who Dwell in the Mountains Cannot Be Blamed For Being There (Fredi M. Murer): Lives of mountain village dwellers, enacted by the people themselves and illustrating the social pattern of an underdeveloped region.
Unknown Pleasures – The Cinémathèque suisse presents
Charles, Dead or Alive (Alain Tanner): On the 100th anniversary of the founding of a watchmaking company in Geneva, its owner Charles Dé gives his family the slip and moves in with a young couple he meets by chance, doing the cooking, reading, drinking, and engaging in philosophical discussions with them.
Zones (Fredi M. Murer): Alfred and Julia have been married for 8 years, are childless, and live on the 16th floor of a new building. Thanks to their various crises, they have got to know each other somewhat better, but their most outstanding characteristic remains their mediocrity.
The Big Night (Francis Reusser)
Unknown Pleasures – Tribute Bruno Ganz
Eternity and a Day (Theo Angelopoulos): Before checking himself into a hospital for treatment of a terminal illness from which he may never recover, celebrated writer Alexandre spends one last day wandering about town and reminiscing about his past, trying to capture one perfect moment of happiness from his memories.
Unknown Pleasures
Sátántangó (Béla Tarr): Internationally acclaimed filmmaker Béla Tarr’s epic rendering of László Krasznahorkai’s novel about the decline of Communism in Eastern Europe is a unique and visionary masterpiece that defies classification and transcends genre.
Premio Cinema Ticino Fulvio Bernasconi
Out Of Bounds (Fulvio Bernasconi)
Leopard Club Award Hilary Swank
Boys Don't Cry (Kimberly Peirce): Based on a true story, Brandon Teena is the popular new ‘guy’ in a tiny Nebraska town where he falls in love with local girl Lana. When it is revealed that Brandon was born biologically female, a rough group of men put Brandon’s life in jeopardy.
Million Dollar Baby (Clint Eastwood): Oscar-winning saga about a down-on-her-luck waitress who convinces a hardened boxing trainer with no interest in training a woman to help her become a professional boxer.
Vision Award Ticinomoda Claire Atherton
All The Children But One (Andreas Bolm , Noëlle Pujol)
From the East (Chantal Akerman): In this quasi-fictional documentary, Chantal Akerman travels—during the late summer to midwinter—from East Germany to Moscow, delivering an impressionistic chronicle of the changing reality of Eastern Europe.
Life is on the other side (Elsa Quinette): Happiness seems perfect in the 1943 images shot by my grandmother and her relatives. As if being playful and laughing at death were the only way to exorcise the phantom. It is this obsession that I brought with me to Benares, in India, where the living and the dead share the same territory. (E.Q.)
RETROSPETTIVA
Abolition (Zózimo Bulbul): Zózimo Bulbul’s historical analysis on ‘race’ and racism in Brazil in the context of the celebration of the centenary of the abolition of slavery in 1988.
Amor Maldito (Adélia Sampaio): Two young women with different social backgrounds have a lesbian relationship. The real problems begin when one of them also gets involved with a man, a journalist.
Notes for an African Oresteia (Pier Paolo Pasolini): The director presents takes and scenes filmed on location in Africa for a film-that-never-was, a black Oresteia.
Babylon (Franco Rosso): Babylon follows a young dancehall DJ in Thatcher-era South London as he pursues his musical ambitions, battling against the racism and xenophobia of employers, neighbours, police, and the National Front, set to a blistering reggae, dub, and lovers rock soundtrack anchored by Dennis Bovell.
Baldwin’s Nigger (Horace Ové): Documentary of a lecture by eminent American author and political commentator James Baldwin, accompanied by comedian and author Dick Gregory.
Borderline (Kenneth Macpherson)
Boyz n the Hood (John Singleton): Follows the lives of three young males living in the Crenshaw ghetto of Los Angeles, dissecting questions of race, relationships, violence and future prospects.
Classified People (Yolande Zauberman): Through a family that consists of people of various racial classifications Zauberman shows how apartheid, in utter absurdity, (de)forms life.
Daughters of the Dust (Julie Dash): Set in the early 1900s, the Pazants family prepares to migrate from their Sea Island home to the mainland, leaving their land and legacy behind. Daughters of the Dust was the first dramatic feature film to explore the traditions of the Gullah.
Daïnah la métisse (Jean Grémillon): After three weeks and a long, hot voyage across the Pacific, an ocean liner finally arrives at its destination, Ecuador. That evening, the event is marked by a masked ball and a magic show.
One Way or Another (Sara Gómez): Yolanda, a female teacher, cannot find the best methods to teach the marginalized children of the slums because of their different origin. Mario, a worker in a bus factory and a typical macho man, is confronted by Yolanda’s instinct for emancipation.
Deep Cover (Bill Duke): A black uniformed policeman is recruited by a devious drug enforcement agent to infiltrate a smuggling organization seeking to expand into designer drugs. This ‘ugly side of the war on drugs’ explores the context of race, identity, and hypocrisy within a brutal and alienating investigation.
Drylongso (Cauleen Smith): Dramatic story of a young African American woman who makes discoveries about herself and her community while documenting the lives of young African American men.
Eve’s Bayou (Kasi Lemmons): Over the course of a long, hot Louisiana summer, 10-year-old Eve discovers that her family’s affluent existence is merely a facade. The philandering of her suave doctor father creates a rift, throwing Eve’s mother and teenage sister into emotional turmoil.
Frantz Fanon: Black Skin, White Mask (Isaac Julien , Mark Nash): Interviews, reconstructions and archive footage tell the story of the life and work of the influential anti-colonialist writer Frantz Fanon, author of Black Skin, White Maskand The Wretched of the Earth and his professional life as a psychiatric in Algeria during its war of independence.
Ganja & Hess (Bill Gunn): Dr. Hess Green is stabbed by his intelligent but unstable assistant with an ancient cursed dagger. Hess wakes up to find that his wounds have healed, but he now has an insatiable thirst for blood. And when the assistant’s widow shows up, the two fall for each other…
Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (Jim Jarmusch): When his recent hit for the mob doesn’t go according to plan, an African American assassin, who lives by the code of the samurai, finds himself on the mafia’s own hit list.
Handsworth Songs (John Akomfrah): An experimental film essay on race and disorder in Britain, filmed in Handsworth and London during the riots of 1985 and incorporating newsreel and archival material.
Jackie Brown (Quentin Tarantino): Based on the 1992 novel Rum Punch by Elmore Leonard, middle-aged stewardess Jackie Brown joins forces with a burnt out bail bondsman to double-cross a criminal arms dealer.
Juice (Ernest R. Dickerson): 4 inner-city teens get caught up in the pursuit of power and happiness, which they refer to as ‘the juice’.
Killer of Sheep (Charles Burnett): Killer of Sheep examines the black Los Angeles ghetto of Watts in the mid-1970s through the eyes of Stan, a sensitive dreamer who is growing detached and numb from the psychic toll of working at a slaughterhouse.
Black Girl (Ousmane Sembène): A Senegalese woman is eager to find a better life abroad. She takes a job as a governess for a French family, but finds her duties reduced to those of a maid after the family moves to the south of France. In her new country, she is constantly made aware of her race and mistreated by her employers.
The Story of a Three-Day Pass (Melvin Van Peebles): Turner, a black American G.I. stationed in France, finds trouble from place to place as he vacations with a Frenchwoman.
Losing Ground (Kathleen Collins): The story of a marriage of two remarkable people, both at a crossroads in their lives. Sara Rogers, a black professor of philosophy, is embarking on an intellectual quest to understand ecstasy just as her painter husband Victor sets off on a more earthy exploration of joy.
No Way Out (Joseph L. Mankiewicz): The Biddle brothers, shot while robbing a gas station, are taken to the prison ward of the County Hospital; Ray Biddle, a rabid racist, wants no treatment from black resident Dr. Luther Brooks. When brother John dies while Luther tries to save him, Ray is certain it’s murder and wants revenge.
Odds Against Tomorrow (Robert Wise): Dave Burke is looking to hire two men to assist him in a bank raid. Both are reluctant; but Burke arranges for Ingram’s creditors to put pressure on him, while Slater feels humiliated by his failure to provide for his girlfriend; they eventually accept. But tensions in the gang rapidly mount.
Black Orpheus (Marcel Camus): 1960 Academy Award Winner and winner of the Palme d’Or at the 1959 Cannes Film Festival, Marcel Camus’ Black Orpheus retells the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice against the madness of Carnival in Rio de Janeiro.
Little By Little (Jean Rouch): Inverting the familiar narrative of a Frenchman traveling to Africa, Little by Little instead finds a Nigerian visiting Paris as research to build a grand building in his home village.
Putney Swope (Robert Downey Sr.): The most popular film by Downey is this offbeat classic about the antics that ensue after Putney Swope (Arnold Johnson, dubbed by Downey), the token black man on the board of a Madison Avenue advertising agency, is inadvertently elected chairman, and proceeds to wreak politically incorrect havoc.
RUDE (Clement Virgo): Filmmaker Clément Virgo’s award-winning drama follows a trio of inner-city African Americans who struggle with parenthood, romance and homophobia. A recently released convict attempts to reunite with an old flame — and the son he never really knew.
Sugar Cane Alley (Euzhan Palcy): 1930, on a sugar cane plantation in Martinique live José, a bright, mischievous 11-year-old, and his grandmother, a tough, wise woman determined to save him from the hard life she has known.
She’s Gotta Have It (Spike Lee): When it comes to love, Nola Darling has got a problem: she’s just gotta have “it.” And she’s having a hard time deciding who’ll give “it” the best, choosing between a romantic-but-possessive nice guy, a flashy-but-vain fashion model, and a fast-riding but faster-talking bicyclist…
still/here (Christopher Harris): A meditation on the vast landscape of ruins and vacant lots that constitute the north side of St. Louis, an area populated almost exclusively by working class and working poor African Americans. Union Docs.
Stir Crazy (Sidney Poitier): Skip and Harry are framed for a bank robery and end up in a western prison.
Super Fly (Gordon Parks Jr.): The daily routine of cocaine dealer Priest who wants to score one more super deal and retire.
Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song (Melvin Van Peebles): After saving a Black Panther from some racist cops, a black prostitute goes on the run from “the man” with the help of the ghetto community and some disillusioned Hells Angels.
Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One (William Greaves): In his one-of-a-kind fiction/documentary hybrid ‘Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One’, director William Greaves presides over a beleaguered film crew in New York’s Central Park, leaving them to try to figure out what kind of movie they’re making.
The Blood of Jesus (Spencer Williams): An atheist accidentally shoots his Baptist wife. She dies and goes to a crossroads, where the devil tries to lead her astray.
The Cool World (Shirley Clarke): A powerful and stark semi-documentary look at the horrors of Harlem ghetto slum life filled with drugs, violence, human misery, and a sense of despair due to the racial prejudices of American society.
The Harder They Come (Perry Henzell): Reggae superstar Jimmy Cliff is Ivan, a rural Jamaican musician who journeys to the city of Kingston in search of fame and fortune in The Harder They Come, which brought the catchy and subversive rhythms of the rastas to the U.S. in the early 1970s.
Tongues Untied (Marlon T. Riggs): Marlon Riggs, with assistance from other gay Black men, especially poet Essex Hemphill, celebrates Black men loving Black men as a revolutionary act.
Uptight (Jules Dassin): In this remake of the 1935 film The Informer, unemployed and desperate Tank bungles his role in a Cleveland robbery, leading his best friend and accomplice, Johnny, to kill a guard during his getaway — and then everything heads downhill.
West Indies (Med Hondo): West Indies is a revolutionary musical in both senses of the word. This witty, scathing production offers an angry view of West Indian history, using imaginative staging and a fluid visual style. The film’s single set is an enormous slave ship.
White Dog (Samuel Fuller): Kristy McNichol stars as a young actress who adopts a lost German shepherd, only to discover through a series of horrifying incidents that the dog has been trained to attack black people. White Dog is Samuel Fuller’s throat-grabbing exposé on American racism.
Within Our Gates (Oscar Micheaux): Abandoned by her fiancé, an educated negro woman with a shocking past dedicates herself to helping a near bankrupt school for impoverished negro youths.