”I’m about to show you the real Harry Potter, Cuban Style!” Best friends Keyler, Michael and Yanjaira transform the sleepy Cuban town of San Antonio de los Baños into the magical universe of Harry Potter.… >>>
A journey between hope and dystopia in a hypnotizing Kinshasa, ZOMBIES takes us from the culture of the hair salon to a futuristic clubbing scenario, from the urban parade to the glory of a despotic politician. In his self-directed, chaotic mise-en-scène, the Congolese-Belgian musician Baloji interrogates the almost carnal relationship we have with our smartphones: outgrowths of the hand giving us the doubtful talent of digital ubiquity...… >>>
After three years in the US, the filmmaker and Harvard graduate returns to his hometown of Chengdu, China. Through his stay abroad, he now notices things that have been an unnoticed part of his everyday life for eighteen years. Has the smog always been so thick? What has changed since he left, what has remained the same? Casually, the camera takes us to his parents' apartment, his former room, his old school. Sometimes he just observes, other times he talks in a calm voice of incidents in his school days, youth and childhood. But also from his early love of cinema, which enabled him to travel when he could not leave his city yet. Thoughtful and roughly sketched, the short film casts a glimpse back into a period of life.… >>>
Eating, waiting, haircutting, cleaning, telephone- and bedtime. The perennial daily routine of a juvenile detention center brings about a clotting of time. Bodies are transformed into vehicles, lethargically moved from workshops to single-person cells, down hallways into outdoor areas, from armchair to couch. Nothing makes a difference. Breathing, walking, sitting, lying down again. Existence in a comatose state. The film observes this heterotopic cosmos, picturing a perpetual dissolution. It tells a story of bodies left behind, of an undefined longing. A longing for something different. For an outside so yonder that even the dreamers do not know any longer, if it has even ever existed as such.… >>>
The movie TOKYO KURDS takes us to Japan, to Ozan. He is 18 years old and lives in a region near Tokyo. Ozan is a Turkish Kurd. Brought along with his family by his father from Turkey when he was 6 to escape prejudice and persecution in Turkey. However, Japan does not grant Kurdish refugees the status of recognized asylum seekers. So Ozan has to work illegally, lives since his arrival with his family as in illegal immigrant in Japan. We meet him when he starts a new job in the summer of 2018, hoping that his secret dream will come true, even though his strangeness in Japanese society is a daily challenge for him.… >>>