Contemporary World Cinema at EnergaCAMERIMAGE 2018

Tuesday October 30th, 2018

We announce the line-up of the Contemporary World Cinema section of the 26th edition of EnergaCAMERIMAGE Film Festival.

55 Steps

Eleonor Riese is an eccentric inpatient at a psychiatric hospital who goes to court to fight for the right to refuse some of the anti-psychotic medications that she feels worsen her mental health day after day. Colette Hughes is a former nurse and a lawyer who will accompany the brave woman in her near-impossible quest. Trying to change the fate of a person she has met only recently, the workaholic Colette realises that she has not done a good job with her life up to that point. She also earns a dear and loyal friend whose spontaneity and lack of regard for the rules of mainstream society make Colette appreciate what is around her.

Director: Bille August
Cinematographer: Filip Zumbrunn
Produced by: elsani film, Aloe Entertainment, ChickFlicks Productions, Mass Hysteria Entertainment, Potemkino Port
Country and year: Belgium, Germany, 2018

Birds of Passage

The film is set in 1970s Colombia, and drug lords and their henchmen will soon start to tear the country apart. For the Native American Wayuu people, who have lived in the northern part of the country for hundreds of years, life goes on as usual. Teenage Zaida goes through a rite of passage after which she will be declared a young woman looking for a suitable husband. Nevertheless, tribal loyalty and the traditions of the past will soon give way to greed, and the once peaceful community will implode. Throughout all of this, the American planes flying back and forth in the Colombian sky do not care about the tragedy unfolding beneath.

Original title: Pájaros de verano
Polish title: Sny wędrownych ptaków
Directors: Cristina Gallego, Ciro Guerra
Cinematographer: David Gallego
Produced by: Bord Cadre films, Pimienta Films, Snowglobe Films, Films Boutique, Ciudad Lunar,Blond Indian Films
Polish distributor: Against Gravity Sp. z o.o.
Country and year: Colombia, Denmark, Mexico, 2018

Burning

Jong-su is a plain young man with big dreams, but he lacks the audacity and assertiveness to pursue any of them. He falls in love with Haemi, a beautiful girl with a lust for life and a desire to travel the world, experience new things, and meet interesting people. She returns from one of these adventures, from distant Africa, with a boyfriend. Ben is a wealthy, golden-tongued man of action who seems to be the personification of a life well lived. Needless to say, Haemi’s delight is Jong-su’s tragedy; however, cruel fate will cause all three protagonists to revalue their lives and make many tough decisions.

Original title: Beoning
Polish title: Płomienie
Director: Chang-dong Lee
Cinematographer: Kyung-Pyo Hong
Produced by: NHK, Pine House Film, Now Films
Polish distributor: Aurora Films
Country and year: South Korea, 2018

Colette

Paris at the turn of the 20th century was a city of beauty and limitless possibilities, though not for the women who lived under the many restrictions at that time – so many it was difficult to remember them all. Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette was lucky to be a great writer, but unfortunately, the person who made it possible for her talent to bloom, her husband Henry Gauthier-Villars, published her first couple of books with his name only. The film tells the story of their troubled, often toxic, relationship, while simultaneously revealing that the real villain was society – imposing its will on everything and everyone.

Director: Wash Westmoreland
Cinematographer: Giles Nuttgens
Produced by: Killer Films, Number 9 Films, BFI Film Fund
Bold Films
Polish distributor: Monolith Films Sp. z o.o.
Country and year: UK, USA, 2018

Eternal Winter

The Second World War is coming to an end, but that does not mean everyone is willing to cease the hostilities that broke Europe apart. At the end of 1944, hundreds of thousands of Hungarian women and men are displaced from their homes and sent to Soviet labour camps, in most cases never to return. Irén finds herself in a remote Donetsk coal mine where she works like a horse with countless other women, but never stops believing that the suffering she is experiencing will end one day. In this world of eternal winter, the woman tries to maintain her dignity, but at the same time learns that to survive one has to sacrifice almost everything.

Original title: Örök tél
Director: Attila Szász
Cinematographer: András Nagy
Produced by: Szupermodern Stúdió
Country and year: Hungary, 2018

Hereditary

While the Grahams mourn the death of a senior member of their family, they experience some strange occurrences that suggest they might be dealing with supernatural forces. At first, Annie and Steve treat such events with disregard, knowing that every family needs time to heal after losing a close relative. However, when tragedy strikes one of their children, their life begins to collapse. While Steve tries to rationalise what has happened to his loved ones, starts to explore possibilities she has never considered before. Which one of them is right?

Polish title: Dziedzictwo. Hereditary
Director: Ari Aster
Cinematographer: Pawel Pogorzelski
Produced by: PalmStar Media
Polish distributor: Monolith Films Sp. z o.o.
Country and year: USA, 2018

Journey, The

This is a film about the tragedy of Iraq as seen through the eyes of a woman in an explosive belt who intends to blow herself up in the middle of the central station in Baghdad, which is being reopened after years of restoration. It is 2006 and the woman, Sara, wants to send a bloody message to all Americans and other westerners who have gradually destroyed her country, but ending her life together with hundreds of other innocent ones is not as easy as she thought it would be. Sara meets many different people, including a con artist, a woman in a wedding dress, and an abandoned infant. Will she decide to continue with the planned act of destruction?

Director: Mohamed Al-Daradji
Cinematographers: Saef Alden, Duraid Munajim
Produced by: Lionceau Films, Human Film
Country and year: Iraq, UK, France, Qatar, Netherlands, Canada, 2018

Lizzie

Lizzie Borden’s standing in the history of mass culture is that of a mentally unstable murderer who chopped her father and stepmother to pieces back in 1892. The film, however, tells the story of a relatively well-off young woman who finds herself surprisingly enamoured by her household maid and simultaneously passes the point of no return. This is the story of how Borden cracks under the pressure of the surrounding male aggression, arrogance and different forms of manipulation, of how she ineffectively tries to escape from the trap she was born into and grew up in, and how she makes a conscious decision to challenge her fate.

Director: Craig MacNeill
Cinematographer: Noah Greenberg
Produced by: Artina Films, Destro Films, Powder Hound Pictures
Country and year: USA, 2018

Operation Finale

The story is set in Israel, fifteen years after the Second World War. Part of the nation wants to forget about what happened, but there are still some who demand retribution for all the Jewish suffering. When Mossad receives proof that Adolf Eichmann, a Nazi war criminal and one of the chief architects of the Holocaust, is living happily in Argentina, there’s a growing desire to capture him and bring him to face trial. Will the brave team led by Peter Malkin succeed in kidnapping the monster who escaped to the other side of the world? And if yes, what will they be willing to sacrifice to do so?

Polish title: Ostateczna operacja
Director: Chris Weitz
Cinematographer: Javier Aguirresarobe
Produced by: Automatik, Metro Goldwyn Mayer (MGM)
Polish distributor: Netflix
Country and year: USA, 2018

Photon

Photon was partly inspired by The Beginning of Infinity, a bestseller by quantum physicist David Deutsch. It is a creative summary of our knowledge on the subject of life and evolution. Unusual, amazing and touching, the film illustrates what we currently know about the history of the Universe. The first twenty minutes of the film deal with the origins of matter, stars and planets (“The Beginning”). Then the narration smoothly moves to part two (“Life”). What do we know (and what don’t we know) about the origins of life? How were complex molecular systems formed? What about people? Thanks to several eloquent examples from the daily life of an average family of older people, we learn about the biological background to phenomena such as violence and alcoholism.

Director: Norman Leto
Cinematographer: Norman Leto, Michał Marczak
Produced by: Lightcraft Advertising Sp. z o.o.
Polish distributor: Alter Ego Pictures Sp. z o.o.
Country and year: Poland, 2017

Wildlife

The film is set in 1960s Montana, USA. The Brinsons are one of thousands of similar families born out of the glamorous promises of the previous decade and who now rent a house and continue to live from one month to the next. When Jerry gets unfairly sacked and spirals into emotional apathy, Jeanette is thrown off balance, her safe and predictable world crumbling at its core. Their poignant struggle with the reality of their lives and their reminiscences of the people they used to be is observed and analysed by their fourteen-year-old son, Joe, who tries to understand the different ways of becoming an adult.

Polish title: Kraina wielkiego nieba
Director: Paul Dano
Cinematographer: Diego García
Produced by: June Pictures, Nine Stories Productions, Sight Unseen Pictures
Country and year: USA, 2018

Woman at War

Halla leads a double life. On the one hand, she is the respectable head of the local choir, a woman known for her warmth and generosity. On the other hand, however, Halla is a hardened activist fighting against the growing industrialisation of the Icelandic landscape and is not afraid to use methods that are mostly associated with ecoterrorism. The woman pays no attention to the consequences of her actions; for her, what matters is the preservation of the country’s natural beauty. Everything changes when one day she finds out that her adoption application has finally been approved. Halla stands at a crossroads in her life, not knowing which path to choose.

Original title: Kona fer í stríð
Polish title: Kobieta idzie na wojnę
Director: Benedikt Erlingsson
Cinematographer: Bergsteinn Björgúlfsson
Produced by: Köggull Filmworks, Slot Machine, Vintage Pictures, Gulldrengurinn
Polish distributor: M2Films
Country and year: Iceland, France, Ukraine, 2018