#MYESCAPE
Regia | Director Elke Sasse
Fotografia | Photography Fariba Nilchian, Oliver Gurr, Marcel Schmitz, Frank Lehmann, Jean Schablin
Montaggio | Editing Janine Dauterich
Produzione | Production Berlin producers film GmbH & Co. KG
Germania, 2016, 90’, arabo e inglese con sot- totitoli in inglese e italiano | Arabic and English with Italian and English subtitles
The documentary film #MYESCAPE assesses the journey that refugees from Afghanistan, Syria and Eritrea chose to undergo, as the circumstances in their home-countries became increasingly unliveable. Hundreds of thousands are leaving their countries, families and old lives behind, in search of some basic safety and freedom. In most cases, the mobile phone became a quintessential tool to facilitate the organisation of ones escape and the constant companion. This has lead many to document their experiences. The director chose to use footage which has been shot by the refugees themselves in order to show first hand accounts through their own eyes and lenses. The camera was there with them as bombs hit their streets and houses were crushed to rubble, as they risked their lives to pass borders by feet, boats, trains or cars. Their memories provide an unique form of narration that allows us a very personal glimpse into their lives before, during and after their escape. It leaves us with a realistic impression.
___________________________________________________________________________
A WALNUT TREE
Regia | Director Ammar Aziz
Fotografia | Photography Danyal Rasheed
Montaggio | Editing Khushboo Agarwal
Pakistan, 2015, 81’, pashtu e urdu con sottoti- toli in inglese e italiano | Pashto e Urdu with English and Italian subtitles
An old man feels nostalgic for a distant homeland. He wants to return. Internally displaced as a result of the ongoing conflict between Pakistan’s military and the Taliban, he is forced to live in a camp. His family is caught between memories of what life was, an insecure present and a bleak future. Time and again, the question arises as to whether he’ll risk a return to his motherland.
___________________________________________________________________________
ASMARINA
Regia | Director Alan Maglio, Medhin Paolos
Fotografia | Photography Federico Giammattei, Alan Maglio
Montaggio | Editing Walter Marocchi
Produzione | Production Alan Maglio e Medhin Paolos
Italia, 2015, 68’ italiano con sottotitoli in inglese | Italian with English subtitles
There has been an Eritrean/Ethiopian community in Italy for at least half a century, integrated into the urban fabric in a socially and culturally active way. Starting from the photographic and audio-visual material present in institutional and private archives which form the collective memory of the community. Through direct accounts, the film brings together the heritage of personal stories and investigates the nuances of identity and migration. The result is a choral narration which brings to light a postcolonial heritage, scarcely investigated until today: from the stories of daily life of those who have been living in the city for years, of those who were born there, to the reception of the newly arrived refugees.
___________________________________________________________________________
DI LÀ
Regia | Director Giulio Tonincelli
Fotografia | Photography Giulio Tonincelli
Montaggio | Editing Giulio Tonincelli
Produzione | Production Giulio Tonincelli
Italia, 2015, 8’, italiano con sottotitoli in inglese | Italian with English subtitles
The film tells the story of Erminando, photographer and professor of fashion photography in a Milan academy, and raised in Brescia where he studied until graduation. In April 2014, after more than 20 years after his arrival in Italy, he decided to return to his Albania. Finding himself in places and with people of his childhood he remembers the feelings and the experience of that November night when, thanks to the courageous decision of his mother, his life radically changed.
___________________________________________________________________________
HABITAT
Regia/Director Emiliano Dante
Fotografia/Photography Emiliano Dante
Montaggio/Editing Emiliano Dante
Produzione/Production Dansacro
Italia, 2015, 55’, italiano/Italian
Habitat is a film based on personal notes about the way of living in L’Aquila after the earthquake. It’s the story of three men who shared
the same tent in one of the 2009 tent-camps. After the earthquake, Alessio becomes a squatter and then a real estate agent; Paolo, who owned
and rented apartments in the very centre of the town, now he dedicates himself to painting; Emiliano, the director of the documentary experiences the alienating reality of the C.A.S.E. settlements, the houses built by the Berlusconi Government. He faces the fact that they are “non places”, places without identity, far from the urban fabric as well from the history and the culture of the place.
___________________________________________________________________________
LA MIA CASA E I MIEI COINQUILINI
Regia | Director Marcella Piccinini
Fotografia | Photography Raoul Torresi, Gigi Martinucci, Marcella Piccinini, Marcello Dapporto
Montaggio | Editing Paolo Marzoni, Marcella Piccinini
Produzione | Production Marcella Piccinini
Italia, 2016, 57’, italiano con sottotitoli in inglese |Italian with English subtitles
When interviewing Joyce Lussu in 1994, Marco Bellocchio discusses her attitude towards a life seemingly devoid of dreams and illusions yet remaining very active – ultimately asking Joyce how it is possible to continually transmit the extraordinary things she has experienced. The interview covers minor and major details of Joyce’s life: from the straw purse that has hung on her bedroom doorway for years, to the cuckoo clock, the rocking chair, the beautiful colourful combs propped near the mirror, to the Sardinian carpets and flowers that her mother Julia always keeps on the table. Such details reveal how Joyce’s home in Fermo (near Marche) is a house that breathes an often-dramatic life, rich in poetry. The interview also discusses the Joyce’s exile period with her husband Emilio in Paris, the women’s struggles in Sardinia, and the translation of poets who wrote “useful poetry” that is able to immediately reach other realities and feelings with few words. But Joyce’s journeys are not made of words: instead they are composed of many stages from an active participation in a common struggle and a dream to realise a world undefined by gender distinctions. A dream for a fairer and more peaceful humanity.
___________________________________________________________________________
MY ENEMY, MY BROTHER
Regia | Director Ann Shin
Fotografia | Photography Brendan Uegama
Montaggio | Editing Steve Guise
Produzione | Production Nyt Opdocs & Fathom Film Group / Melanie Horkan
Canada, 2015, 17’ inglese con sottotitoli in inglese e italiano | English with Italian and English subtitles
Zahed and Najah are two former enemies from the Iran-Iraq War who become blood brothers for life. 25 years after one saves the other’s life on the battlefield, they meet again by sheer chance in Canada. Considering the recent coverage of the Middle East this emotional documentary story of Najah and Zahed is a surprising affirmation of humanity that cuts across political borders.
___________________________________________________________________________
SU CAMPI AVVERSI
Regia | Director Andrea Fenoglio, Matteo Tortone
Fotografia | Photography Matteo Tortone, Francesca Cirilli, Andrea Fenoglio
Montaggio | Editing Andrea Fenoglio, Matteo Tortone
Produzione | Production Produzione Spinosa
Italia, 2015, 63’ italiano, francese, dialetto burkinabè e dialetto piemontese sottotitoli in Italiano e inglese | Italian, French, Burkinabe and Piemontese dialect with English and Italian subtitles
Every year, hundreds of seasonal migrants from sub-Saharan regions arrive in a northern Italian city searching for work in the fruit fields. Upon arrival, they are hosted in a refugee camp that lies on an expropriated farmer’s land, who now lives in a small enclosure with his own machinery, his trailer and his dogs. This documentary tells of two defeats through the eyes of two authors – “the field” by Matteo Tortone and “the fence” by Andrea Fenoglio; two stories of disappointment, isolation and unfulfilled hopes but not yet deserted. Furthermore, they are two extreme points of view of a single reality, vividly made by the contact lines that have deep roots and that transcend spatial and social distance: facing a reality that isolates, plunders, closes, exploits and distorts the logic of production. The African workers and the farmer find themselves face to face with their most pressing needs: eating, fulfilling their own needs, searching for affection, and ultimately surviving. A man without land is only a man, at the mercy of increasingly adverse conditions. The melancholic smile of migrants turned back to a place far away is all that remains of the enthusiasm of the peasant, looking to a time that is no more, to his ancestors and to the land that exists only as memory.
___________________________________________________________________________
TIDES. A HISTORY OF LIVES AND DREAMS LOST AND FOUND (SOME BROKEN)
Regia | Director Alessandro Negrini
Fotografia | Photography OddGeir Saether
Montaggio | Editing Stuart Sloan
Produzione | Production Alessandro Negrini Film Productions, William Silke, Docucity
Irlanda, 2016, 40’, inglese con sottotitoli in italiano | English with Italian subtitles
“Imagine an island. Within this island there is another island. And within this other island there is a city; a city with two different names. Inside this city with two names, it flows a river. This is its autobiography”. Is the story of a river able to reveal the meaning of a life imprisoned by history? Despite the end of the conflict in Northern Ireland there is still a city with two different names: Derry for Catholics, Londonderry for Protestants. In the middle of the city flows a river, the Foyle, which separates them and at the same time, acts as their border.
This film, narrated from the point of view of the river itself – through dream images and archival material made by ordinary people in the 60s and 70s – invites us to discover its story: how was this liquid wall seen, heard and experienced by the lives of those it passed on its his long run to the ocean? What could it tell us? What does it know about us? Moving between past and present, the River Foyle invites us to reflect on issues that are going beyond its own borders – What is a border? Are the dreams of those who lived before the conflict different from those dreamed today? And above all, what happens to our dreams?
Trailer
____________________________________________________________