An unfinished Italy might be a metaphor of the state of the world. The architecture of the uncomplete makes us questioning the future. Through powerful images, Felici finds a source of creativity in a future museum of the unfinished. Without demagogy, “Un
The Club of Ugly Children tells the story of President Isimo who decides to capture all ugly children. The 11-year-old Paul is an insecure boy with big ears. After a photo shoot Paul and a few ugly classmates are sent on a ‚Äòschool trip’. In the bus, Paul soon realised that this was not just a trip, but that the children are being shipped off to a secret place. He starts to come up with a plan to escape…
Pilão Arcado was a Brazilian city. Dona Pequenita never left the place where she was born. From a past submerged by the waters of the dam what remains are words, songs, ruins loaded with memories. (M. C.)
An animation in the improbable set of a care home. A film about old age, solitude, yearning and desire. Everything mixed in a very moving way. Evelyn Verschoore designs new visual solutions all the way, using the sound and the image and she builds a humor
A son and a mother in a phase of non communicability, win two tickets for a Spa. The water is a metaphor for introversion and isolation: to where you scream, from where you emerge. With a strong narrative intention, reveled by a rigorous sense of camera a
It’s winter. At the end of a branch hangs a single leaf. A little black bird comes along to water the leaf, but it falls off. The wind lifts the leaf and dances with it through the snowy wood. The little bird joins in, delighted. But the fiery red fox behind the tree is already licking his lips.
Although he is against the death penalty, Werner Herzog is not on this side of the glass for complacency nor looking to be used as an instrument, he clarifies from the very beginning. His honesty doesn’t preclude that, from the other side, the condemned tell him the reasons why they are there, without hope of ever getting out alive from the prison they inhabit, in the states of Texas and Florida. The mini-series in four parts ‚ James Barnes, Linda Carty, Joseph Garcia and George Rivas, and Hank Skinner ‚, which was born from the previous project Into the Abyss, is an observation of the American death penalty system and of human nature, cruel in its reflection. Through interviews with the convicted, their families, lawyers involved in the cases, witnesses of the crimes and the victims’ families, Herzog offers a complete overview of each story, without judgment. A simple presentation of the facts and the narration of the stories with a scary naturalism gives rise to an inevitable and profound analysis of human behavior. (M. M.)
Jean is an Haitian middle age professor desperately looking for work in the Dominican Republic and for a reason to live. When he looses hope he also looses himself in the island that surrounds him. An outstanding film by its extraordinary simplicity and t
New York is invaded by a digital monster that transforms all the elements around him into pixels. The city is changing its aspect little by little. Amazing and full of references to video games, this animation film surprises us with its creativity. (M.C.)
Before the assault, feel the weight of the body. (Sandro Aguilar)
It’s not abandon, deterioration or destruction. It’s a territory conflict between Man and Nature, in which he takes possession of pieces of land to build his spaces. But when man ceases to preserve its space, Nature comes back with all forces to recover a territory that has never ceased to belong to her, slowly creating human ruins.
The last man on earth is black. His name is Léopold and he lives in France. He tries to survive in a society that has lost the meaning of generosity. The only possibility to escape lies out there, high on a building or high on the branches of a tree. But
Seven young adults friends spent a week of August in the suburbs of Paris where they grew up. Some of them because they are visiting their families, the others because they still live there. Director of the awarded Primrose Hill” (IndieLisboa 2008), Mik
It is the dawn of a morning. Tiago returns home but not alone – he brings a stranger with him, still intoxicated after a night out discovery the bars of the town he is visiting. He has a plane to catch in a few hours.
Life on one of the borders of Europe, as seen by three different points of view. The director intertwine old family images with the reality of present day Ceuta and the life in the woods of African immigrants trying to enter Europe. A story made of steel fences where each and everyone is now locked in and locked out. (K. S.)
“Sex is a thing inside me, moving in and out like a piston” says Marina, a 23 year-old girl living with her architect father, hanging out with her sexually advanced friend Bella, listening to Alan Vega’s Suicide and watching Sir David Attenborough’s natur
Yoli lives with his mother, and time passes as if life was getting slower in an exasperating backwardness. She sells ashtrays but we only see her smoking by the end expecting a possible encounter. When she releases the smoke, a new kind of respiration ove
A man walks with his shade, while his mind wanders. This thinking man according to Rousseau needs the movement of his legs, needs energy to think, energy to create. Schwizgebel shows us, once again, through his lively painting, why he is one of the best animation filmmakers around the world. (M. V.)