Nine years ago in Before Sunrise, Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Céline (Julie Delpy) two 23-year old travellers in Viena, met, fell in love and parted 24 hours later, promising to meet again in six months. Jesse is now in Paris promoting his novel that focuses on the encounter. Céline comes along to a reading. Afterwards, in the hour or so he has to spare before heading to the airport, they wander trough a sunlit and impossibly romantic Paris, talking. Both wer obviously deeply affected by their earlier encounter, and now, given a second chance, they both have to decide what to do next.
When an ambulatory TV news unit live broadcasts the embarrassing defeat of a police battalion by five bank robbers in a ballistic showdown, the credibility of the police force drops to a nadir. Vowing to capture the robbers at all cost, the policemen in the whole city, some thirty thousand of them, are mobilized to patrol every possible exit route and city border. While on a separate investigation in a run-down building. While on a separate investigation on a run-down buiding, detective Cheung of the Organized Crime and Triad Bureau accidentally discovers the hideout of the robbers. Led by the ultra-cool Yuen, the five-man gang soon find the building besieged by thousands of policemen. Cheung and his men have also entered the building, getting ready to take their foes out any minute. Meanwhile, in order to beat the media at its own game, Inspector Rebecca decides to turn the stakeout into a breaking news show. Entering the building accompanied by officers with wireless cameras atop their helmets, she promises to feed live footages of their operation to the media. The whole of Hong kong is glued to their TV sets, eager to devour the latest action in real time. Oblivious to them all, the building is occupied by yet another gang. Attacked from both sides, Cheung’s team suffers from serious casualities but Rebecca doctors her footage, reporting nothing but good news. Only when Yuen has taken some residents hostage and releases the close-circuit TV footage to the news stations is she forced to release the true footage to the public in all its gory details.
No one in the world chooses a place to be born. Some frontiers can be crossed just by stretching an arm. What’s the use of a frontier? The European Union is growing, but can a group of countries grow by shutting itself from other geographically contiguous countries? This film is made of pictures that we see daily on television, passing in front of our eyes like a formula 1 car, they were worked over, reframed, and tha action was slowed down.
Starting from the end, we gradually get to find out what has happened to Eva, her husband and her daughter in a story about taking the consequences of our choices.
A curious and remote coastal research site becomes a vibrant and graphic testament to impermanence.
Cooperation and conflict between classic and computor animation. There are two different animation techniques, two worlds, two persons. Who will win?
Desde la Memoria are recollections of Spanish Civil War and the Franco dictatorship. Excerpts from interviews with contemporary witnesses, alienated archive material and pictures of today’s Spanish day-today life have been merged into an experimental montage. Picture and sound fragments are associatively related, evoking – like a collective stream of memories – the misery in times of war and oppression.
TOBIS Award for Best Portuguese Film
Every morning millions of battles are being fought in front of the bathroom mirrors across the planet. Smooth skin, white teeth, perfect proportions. We are all trying to beat nature forces and look better. For our hero, it’s usually an easy conquest, but one day something is different and he encounters unexpected problems with a stubborn hair.
Within a winding Edinburgh stairwell, a frail old man struggles to make his way up the many flights of stairs to reach the summit.
A stranger on a bicycle is roaming the empty countryside. He is trying to find a solitary house – his family inheritance. The locals are suspicious of each other and every stranger that enters their world. They ostracise everybody who defies their unwritten laws. This is what happens to a fifteen-year old girl who is brutally murdered on that day.
After witnessing the deaths of his mother and sister as a child, Sang-hoon grew up with rage and hatred towards his father who was responsible for their deaths. The shadow of his past overrules his present. One day, he meets a high school girl, Yeon-hee, who is also having a tough life after her mother’s death four years ago. Without realizing how their lives may be connected, Sang-hoon and Yeon-hee share some moments of relief and escape from brutal physical and emotional abuse and pain they face everyday.
Painting is movement. Mid flight between the tool and the canvas. Oïo unconvers the driving forces of nature and reivents the world in the flow of the paint: This short film is an experience bringing together abstract painting and the cinematographic form into moveable work of art: a cinepainting. “
Love, treason, revenge and… Zombies!
Ilegal Kick Boxing match for gambling is about to start at a nightclub. A Yazuka not only loses his money but also his temper. He goes rampage and fires his gun randomly. When the police crack down is imminent, the people in the nightclub have to run for their own personal reasons.
Told with rod-manipulated puppets, this simple story takes place in the interior world of an old woman after her death, and follows her granddaughter’s journey to understanding her unfulfilled dreams.
The travelogue as a seismograph of the state of the nation: Niki Lerch’s One Year Later – Interviews und Radio follows a simple experiment to investigate the traumatization of the American public after the terrorist attacks of 11th September 2001. One year after the catastrophe, the director travelled up the west coast of the US and took random samples, sounding out the after-effects which 9/11 left behind.
Jed and Chloe are in their early twenties, in love – and mentally handicapped. When Jed accidentally causes the death of Chloe’s cat, which she loves almost asmuch as Jed, Chloe retreats into silence and loses her will to live. Convinced that there must be something else in life to give it meaning, Jed sets out to find it. Led to believe that a dealer, Max, knows the precious answer, a bond of friendship develops between them. Jed realizes that he, he himself, knows what he’s been looking for. Now he must hurry to tell Chloe. But she is in coma and when he arrives at the hospital, her bed is empty…
