In the Same Garden
We all live on the same planet, under one sun which nurtures and renews our unique and common hopes for the future. No matter how much we differ from each other in color, ethnicity and belief, we all share the same source of life, united in our destinies. An omnibus film on the topic of Turkish - Armenian relations.
Alexandre Rockwell
Rolf de Heer
Sergei Bodrov
Adrian Sitaru
Gurvinder Singh
Ali Asgari
Chema García Ibarra
Roger Deutsch
Andrej Landin
Mark Playne
Gábor Holtai
Also Directed by Alexandre Rockwell
Determined to see “the river,” two young children living in Los Angeles leave home to embark on a magical urban odyssey.
A group of misfits sets out from Los Angeles for a destination they never arrive at.
A loose adaptation of German writer and revolutionary Georg Büchner's novella of the same name, which in turn chronicles the life of writer Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz (1751-92) and his gradual slide into insanity.
A comedy drama that played the festival circuit before vanishing without trace. Forsythe, Sweeney and Miranda are the trio of stepbrothers accompanying paralysed father Fuller on a jaunt to Normandy, where the old boy saw combat and romantic action during the war. Jennifer Beals, a regular in husband Rockwell's movies, plays a transvestite.
Two old pals attend an old friends funeral and find there is more to his death than him being dead.
Mercedes is a taxi dancer who wants to be an actress. She's involved with the married Harry, who considers himself a respected actor. Ernesto is in love with Mercedes, but he doesn't dance or have money.
It's Ted the Bellhop's first night on the job...and the hotel's very unusual guests are about to place him in some outrageous predicaments. It seems that this evening's room service is serving up one unbelievable happening after another.
Third-rate doo-wop singers making a comeback hook up with a campy manager who books them to perform in drag.
Can you solve the mystery of the 13 moons?
For Billie and Nico, life with their father is a roller-coaster ride of playfulness and unease. When he is in the grip of alcohol, tears flow and their apparently idyllic family life collapses. Their mostly absent and irresponsible mother is not much help either. But their friendship with Malik, a boy of Billie’s age, frees them from their shackles. Together they embark on a journey full of intense moments of freedom. The colourful, emotional world of the three young people is depicted in kaleidoscopic black and white imagery, which opens space for their own notions of childhood. Alexandre Rockwell's tale portrays a profound sense of solidarity and deep love: for cinema and Billie Holiday, and also for risk and adventure.
Also Directed by Rolf de Heer
Somewhere in Australia in the early 20th century outback, an Aboriginal man is accused of murdering a white woman. Three white men are on a mission to capture him with the help of an experienced Indigenous man.
Young John Anderson is captivated by jazz musician, Billy Cross when he performs on the remote airstrip of his Western Australian outback hometown after his plane is diverted. Years later, now a family man and making a meagre living tracking dingoes and playing trumpet in a local band, John still dreams of joining Billy on trumpet and makes a pilgrimage to Paris.
A man is forced to confront a dangerous female jaguar and his own past through the sacrificial killing of the beast he has grown to love.
A seven-year-old girl adopts a vow of silence in protest when her quarrelsome parents grow increasingly hostile to one another.
Steve is a man who has it all, a successful career, wonderful children, beautiful home and a loving wife. However, returning to his home after work on his birthday, he finds his house deserted and darkened with almost all the lightbulbs missing, all easy access outside cut off and a videotape waiting for him. Playing that tape, he watches a bizarre and grueling recording in which his wife explains her grievance with him, her reasons for disappearing with the children and her revenge for how he treated her in a way he would never forget.
A happy, unsuspecting couple, Max (Dan Wyllie) and Therese (Bojana Novakovic), buy a house in what appears to be a quiet, friendly neighbourhood. Settling in well, they make friends with a nice family on one side and soon meet a more interesting family on the other side. But interesting soon becomes loud and loud soon becomes intolerable. When the intolerable becomes violent and the police are powerless, Max and Therese attempt to take matters into their own hands.
A kid and an old man fix a broken plane and their lives are changed forever.
Blackfella Charlie is getting older, and he's out of sorts. The intervention is making life more difficult on his remote community, what with the proper policing of whitefella laws that don't generally make much sense, and Charlie's kin and ken seeming more interested in going along with things than doing anything about it. So Charlie takes off, to live the old way, but in doing so sets off a chain of events in his life that has him return to his community chastened, and somewhat the wiser.
Julia (Heather Rose) is crippled with cerebral palsy, lives in a wheelchair, waits for her carer to come and clean her, feed her, in a daily cycle. Her latest carer, Madelaine (Joey Kennedy) is a strung up and lonely young woman whose love life is in disarray. The two women are interdependent; Julia needs her carer, Madelaine needs her job. But they don’t exactly hit it off. Along comes Eddie (John Brumpton), a handsome young chap who appeals to both women. But Julia is behind the eight ball in this love battle, what with her wheelchair – she even needs a voice synthesiser to speak. Her body is small and frail and twisted …. But she is not totally helpless, as Madelaine discovers.
A story within a story within a story. In Australia's Northern Territory, an Aboriginal narrator tells a story about his ancestors on a goose hunt. A youngster on the hunt is being tempted to adultery with his elder brother's wife, so an elder tells him a story from the mythical past about how evil can slip in and cause havoc unless prevented by virtue according to customary tribal law.
Also Directed by Sergei Bodrov
Yuriko, a daughter of Yakudza boss is lost in Russia. Here she finds Alexey - a young man who is trying to help her.
Sergey Bodrov's film tells about the tour of the band "Tiger Lilies", which covers 5 countries, including Russia. We tried to show the band's impressions of our country, to tell about the musicians' love for visual effects, thanks to which cinematography and music come together. The film honestly and impartially tells about the band, about its work on stage and behind the stage, praises and recognizes the power of art.
The tale of the extraordinary life and times of Lucky, a horse that was born in captivity but achieves his dream of running free with the help of a stableboy.
White King, Red Queen is a Russian film. The composer Isaak Schwarz won a Nika Award from the Russian Academy of Cinema Arts and Sciences for the film's music.
Young Sasha is brought into a state-run children's home because his mother died early and his father spends most of his life in prison. The conditions are like in a penal institution. Sasha tries several times to escape and to search for his father.
John Gregory, who is a seventh son of a seventh son and also the local spook, has protected the country from witches, boggarts, ghouls and all manner of things that go bump in the night. However John is not young anymore, and has been seeking an apprentice to carry on his trade. Most have failed to survive. The last hope is a young farmer's son named Thomas Ward. Will he survive the training to become the spook that so many others couldn't?
20 short films about human rights.
The Nomad is a historical epic set in 18th-century Kazakhstan. The film is a fictionalised account of the youth and coming-of-age of Ablai Khan, as he grows and fights to defend the fortress at Hazrat-e Turkestan from Dzungar invaders.
The story of the first love between two eight-graders.
Also Directed by Adrian Sitaru
Neli (55) goes to Bucharest for a few days, while Dan, her 17 year old son is left home alone. On her return, her neighbor friends rush into welcoming her and delurking into the smallest detail, spicy aspects of the party that Dan organized in her absence. Soon after, Neli 's meeting with Dan creates a different perspective on what she thinks she knows about her friends from the block.
A math teacher from Bucharest and his lover go out for a picnic to relax. The film follows what happens after an accident occurs and the two characters argue about how to handle the situation. Things take a twist and as the victim becomes an part of the story.
Parents squabbling over a sick bird that was brought in by their son Alex.
“Fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth”, Camus said. But lying is the seed of abuse. We create fiction to help us upgrade our past, replace it with something worthy. What is art if not an acceptable deception?
A 14-year-old girl auditions for a film role as an abused sex worker, and the director tries to convince her mother of the artistic rationale behind the provocative part.
Counterpart follows Alex, a young estate agent who lives in a flat with his girlfriend, Lily, a former stripper. They spend most of their time sunbathing or having sex. But someone is watching them from a home across the street. The voyeur is a disabled man who helps the young couple make a life changing discovery
Although he hates dogs, Toni is engaged in finding lost animals and then sentimentally blackmails the masters in order to obtain beautiful large amounts of money. Because of an old and ugly Pekinese that Toni cannot succeed of getting rid of, feelings of affection awake in him that surprise even Toni.
A beautiful Western woman asks a Gypsy to watch her four-year-old child while she is taught how to swim by a flirtatious married man, before she disappears into the sea.
Wonderfully surreal, painfully real, this is the story of children, adults and animals who live together trying to have a better life, but sometimes death comes unexpectedly. The lives of three characters surrounded by a bunch of extraordinary, funny, absurd but quite realistic events. It is all about us, people who eat the animals that they love and the animals that love people unconditionally.
Following a TV News which announce the landing of aliens in Romania, Eugen (9) steals a camera from the shop where his father works as a guard and starts filming his everyday life and then disappears. When he is found, the little boy's footage is misinterpreted by the media.
Also Directed by Gurvinder Singh
Fear and paranoia pervade life in rural Punjab of the ’80s, before and after Operation Blue Star, as separatists clash with security forces.
A family living in a Punjab village deals with social and labor inequities until a fight breaks out during a lunar eclipse.
After 15 years in prison, for committing a murder to save his father’s honour, Modan returns to his village in Punjab. In his absence, the village’s power structure has shifted towards a landowner, to the detriment of his family. Worse still: his brother is the landowner’s lapdog.
A foul odour – maybe similar to the one that every year befell the small town in which Gabriel García Márquez’s story Sea of Lost Time is set – has wafted through the corridors of the Film and Television Institute of India in Pune since Gajēndra Cauhān was appointed head of that institution. One of the biggest scandals of his administration was the termination of a graduation film production for acting students Gurviṃdar Singh had set out to direct, based on Gabriel García Márquez’s above-mentioned story; the decision felt dubiously motivated, to say the least, as Singh was known to be a vociferous critic of Cauhān. Never one to give up, Singh looked at the materials shot so far – and found therein a moving gem of realist cinema that honours the feel and substance of lines such as: "They swim to the depth of the sea, passing various levels in time. They see the bodies of their dead floating past them."
Documentary on a Punjabi Folk Singer
This film is an account of Singh's time in the town of Bir in Himachal Pradesh taking a look at migration and reverse migration in Bir, Barot and Baragraan through the lives of real people.
Based on a newspaper story, Ghuspaithiya is the satirical tale of a pigeon that apparently crosses a national border into Punjab and is investigated by the police as a spy.
Also Directed by Ali Asgari
Soniya is going to be a first grader and she is happy for this however she faces this reality that to go to school she has to wear what she does not like.
Fatma and her mother are Kurish refugees living in Italy. One day at the hospital, Fatma learns her mother has breast cancer.
A man falls from a balcony onto the sidewalk below. A crowd gathers and an ambulance is called, but no one knows why he fell.
A man and his two children are late for their flight. While they wait for the next flight something happens that changes his point of view about being a father.
Two little brothers leave their village to find their mother in Istanbul without their father's knowledge.
A mother helps an elderly woman in a shopping mall in Tehran. A tragedy occurs, brutally confronting her with the impact of her actions.
Student Fereshteh has to hide her illegitimate baby for one night from her parents who turn up for a surprise visit. Her friend Atefeh helps her. They embark on an odyssey through Tehran during which they must carefully weigh up who their allies are.
A woman suffers complications after having sex. Her partner takes her to the hospital, but getting help proves to be difficult.
On a cold winter’s night in modern Tehran, a couple of young lovers run into a serious problem, and they have just a few hours to come up with a solution. They go from hospital to hospital in search for help, but none of the hospitals will admit the young woman and provide her with the medical attention she desperately requires. While they try hard to find a way to solve the problem, they have to hide what is happening from their parents. Moreover, their relationship is facing a crisis and will suffer dire consequences. Caught between conservative traditions and modern day desires, the couple must face their uncertain future.
Also Directed by Chema García Ibarra
Saturday, April. Nice weather. The shadow of the mountain grows as evening falls. Five boys get ready for the night: they have booze, a car and music. No matter if the disco shut down years ago.
Directed by Chema García Ibarra
Chema García Ibarra directed and wrote the script of this story about planning a question from beginning to end: how parents died José Manuel? Uranes is starring Jose Manuel Ibarra, Antonio Ibarra, José Luis Fullea, Susi Martinez, Carmina Luis Miguel Esteve and Welcome. García Ibarra us to a rural area full of secrets and family memories in which fact and fiction are mixed to dilute sometimes the boundaries that separate them.
The swimming pool has played an important role throughout film history – most often as a romping ground for the sophisticated and hedonistic Dolce Vita. But it can be so much more, even sinister, as in Sunset Boulevard. In Leyenda dorada a rather unglamorous swimming pool of diminished charm forms the focal point of the story. A lazy summer’s day in the Spanish village of Montánchez, and people of all ages enjoy themselves at the outdoor pool. It is an almost utopian depiction of community, under the lofty, watchful gaze of Our Lady of Consolation. While conflicts, aggression, rivalries and animosities have a siesta, the villagers take a well-deserved break. Formally, the film draws on the tradition of New Objectivity. But unlike Robert Siodmak’s Menschen am Sonntag (1930) and its lido sequence, this is a wee summer fairy tale.
They say that if you put your ear to the back of his neck, you can hear the Virgin talk.
Also Directed by Roger Deutsch
An American film director screening his new film in Budapest meets one of the subjects of that film. What begins as a simple chat over coffee turns into an alternately comic and suspenseful road trip.
Hour by hour the ancient face of repeated / Beings changes, and hour by hour, / Thinking, we get older. / Everything passes, unknown, and the knower / Who remains knows he knows not. / But nothing, Aware or unaware, returns. / Equals, therefore, of what isn’t our equal, / Let us preserve, in the heat we remember, / The flame of the spent hour. Ricardo Reis (Fernando Pessoa)
Short film by Roger Deutsch.
Short film by Roger Deutsch.
Roger tells a story he kept secret for a long time.
Filmed in 1974 and edited and released in 1983 (and then rereleased by its director in 2005), DEAD PEOPLE purports to document the final years of Frank Butler, a local fixture in the depressed burg of Ellicot City with a particular fondness for drink and tales of the dead. Over hazy 16mm footage two decades later, Deutsch adopted a painfully unsentimental view of his early approach, colored as it was by notions of ethnographic film and an undercurrent of fetishism for a man he considered somehow more "alive" than himself. While it chafes against notions of authenticity in documentary and incisively hints at the complicity of the subject in inventing his own history, DEAD PEOPLE simultaneously oozes nostalgia, transcending its own judgment as a gauzy memorial for the man Deutsch once called a friend.
Documentary by Roger Deutsch.
A structuralist film about narrative structure, "Intermezzo" compresses five cinematic melodramas by compiling parallel fragments through a polyphonic over-lapping of time-frames, to foreground the meta-narrative behind the genre, yet remains a melodrama at heart. The motion pictures used are (in order of appearance) Gregory Ratoff: Intermezzo (1939), Douglas Sirk: Interlude (1957), John M. Stahl: When Tomorrow Comes (1939), David Lean: Summertime (1955) and Gustav Molander: Intermezzo (1936).
Chronicling the history of his family from 1787 to now while looking for the answers to some buried secrets regarding certain relatives, Roger Deutsch (The Boy on the Train) soothingly voices over his latest effort - a poetic, travelogue-esque 30-minute documentary which takes the viewer on an engaging personal journey from Hungary to America and back via beautiful vintage photographs, grainy home videos (that often look better than professional and persistently stand the test of time), as well as his own impressionistic footage, with the unique experience enhanced by excellent musical choices. —Nikola Gocic
Also Directed by Andrej Landin
Three friends look back at their past in an attempt to hold on to their present friendship.
A social commentary on the low-income class of the U.S. seen through the eyes of an 18-year old Hispanic girl trying to keep her father on healthcare.
Alexander, a lone cosmonaut, is adrift in orbit around Earth. He has lost communications and life-support systems are dwindling fast. At the same time in Italy, a radio engineer is working the night shift. He discovers a voice amidst the empty static. It is Alexander's emergency transmission, carried across space from his dying capsule. Over one night these two men are bonded, but their new found friendship, might not last the night.
Also Directed by Mark Playne
A lonely young man's increasingly creative attempts to attract the attention of the girl of his dreams.
Also Directed by Gábor Holtai
In a world where childbirth is state-regulated, a couple applies for a license to have a child. They pass the first round of the process, but have no idea what awaits them in the second round.
A fictional character comes to life