Kamel Abdeli
Four first short films by young filmmakers. An initiative by director Houda Benyamina, produced by her association "1000 visages" (1000 faces).
In a surreal world, Lili, a 14-year-old albino, lives alone with her mother CLAUDIE (50) who over-protects her from the outside world. Obsessed with her own appearance; Claudie regularly replaces aging parts of her face, alone in her operating lab while Lili dreams of Lyesse, her 16 year-old handsome neighbor. Scared by so much love, Lyesse rejects Lili. Devastated, she decides to take his heart out to understand why he doesn't love her...
At the death of their father, Hassan and Djslil discover an old container in his house. It contains many memories: Old papers, news paper cuttings, and an old rock'n'roll album by a certain Slim the Man.
"It's a simple subject. A married woman and a single man meet. They love each other, fight, blows rain down. A dog wanders between town and countryside. Seasons pass. The man and woman get back together. The dog comes between them. The other is in one of them. One of them is in the other. And then there are three people. The ex-husband makes everything explode. A second film begins. The same as the first. And yet, not. From the human species, we move on to metaphor. It will end in barking. And a baby's cries." JLG
A hard-hitting French drama detailing the intersecting destinies of five characters whose lives cross over the current war in Iraq: three young French Arabs who each for a different reason joins a jihadi group to fight against the Americans; a 40-something French woman running an NGO in Baghdad at the outbreak of the war who gets kidnapped and held by the jihadi insurgents; and a mid-level French diplomat who uncovers the corruption of the UN Oil for Food program while gathering evidence to support the French effort to prevent the war.
Since he first saw Christina, his grandmother’s nurse, Ildutt has set out on a desperate and pointless quest to become normal. Since returning from a fishing trip in Scotland that sent him off the deep end, Ildutt has hidden out in the highlands in a crazy state. Now he wants to get well. He’s prepared to do anything to win Christina over. He’ll start seeing his psychiatrist again and clean up his act. But he’s also ready to follow a weird guru’s teachings that risk turning his world upside down again. Sometimes Christina seems real, sometimes she seems like something out of a fairy story and sometimes she’s like a ghost. She intermittently reappears in Ildutt’s life, and slowly becomes more real to him. Ildutt is no longer lost in the cosmos; he’s firmly on earth, beside the slopes of the Lorient river. He has a cousin, a grandmother, a few friends, an old Mercedes convertible – and a bass guitar that he’ll eventually start playing again.
In a French prison, three men are coming to terms with the emotional and physical torment which their incarceration brings them. Arnaud is serving a six-month sentence for drug smuggling; he protests his innocence and will do anything to secure an early release. Francky is a hardened criminal who has all but lost his wife and family and who seeks comfort in self-inflicted abuse. Kader is in prison for theft; he is the most philosophical of the three men, he is growing accustomed to prison life and seems to prefer it to the world outside.
