CONTEMPORARY WORLD CINEMA AT EnergaCAMERIMAGE 2020

Thursday October 29th, 2020

We announce the line-up of the Contemporary World Cinema section of the 28th edition of EnergaCAMERIMAGE Film Festival.

CLEO

Cleo is a teenager who was miraculously saved from drowning after a horrific car accident, during which both of her parents died. Some time has passed, but the girl is unable to cope with the trauma. She wanders senselessly through the world and the house of her grandmother, who took care of her and her brother after the accident. Cleo lives and breathes but also feels that she is irrecoverably damaged. Something happens when she meets the handsome Leos, who is ten years older than her. Cleo feels like she could reinvent herself with this man, and she starts doing just that, but it quickly turns out that Leos has a secret of his own.

Director: Eva-Maria Cools
Cinematographer: Brecht Goyvaerts
Produced by: Lum.Invest, Lunanime
Country and year: Belgium, 2019

ESAU

Esau is forty years old when he returns to his native Israel after more than two decades away. He left his family and a certain future as a teenager suffering from a painful heartbreak. The problem is, the beautiful girl he fell in love with back then married his twin brother, Jacob, and the brotherly resentment was never fully healed. Thus, after spending half of his life abroad, Esau comes back because he needs to understand who he was and what made him choose the life he did. When in Israel, he finds more problems than he can bear, and the man starts to wonder if life was really so unfair to him.

Director: Pavel Lungin
Cinematographer: Fred Kelemen
Produced by: 2-Team Productions
Country and year: Israel, Russia, 2020

GARDEN OF EVENING MISTS, THE

During the Second World War, Japanese-occupied Malaysia witnessed so much terror that the country needed many decades to stand on its feet again. Sisters Yun Ling and Yun Hong were detained in a Japanese concentration camp, hidden deep in the jungle, where they suffered tortures and traumas. This included Yun Hong’s death: she was burnt alive when the Japanese soldiers evacuated the camp. Several years after the war, Yun Ling begins her journey to fulfil her sister’s dream of having a beautiful Japanese-style garden. To achieve this, she seeks out a former Imperial landscaper, but then she develops strong feelings for him that will jeopardise her future.

Director: Tom Shu-Yu Lin
Cinematographer: Kartik Vijay
Produced by: Astro Shaw
Country and year: Malaysia, 2019

LA LLORONA

Guatemalan military general Enrique Monteverde is put on trial for ordering the genocide of the country’s native people. However, through sheer luck, he evades any kind of punishment. In the aftermath, he shuts down with his family in his mansion, surrounded by an increasing number of furious citizens who demand justice to be served. Despite the fact that his wife and daughter are not dealing well with the situation, the general is confident of his future. One night, he hears a woman’s lament, but he is not able to find her, which drives him madder and madder. The servants leave the mansion as a result. Is this a real threat, or maybe it’s a delayed feeling of remorse?

Director: Jayro Bustamante
Cinematographer: Nicolás Wong
Produced by: El Ministerio de Cultura Y Deportes de Guatamala, La Casa de Production, Les Films du Volcan
Country and year: Guatemala, France, 2019

MONEYCHANGER, THE

Humberto Brause is obsessed with anything and everything money-related. He enjoys spending it on pretty things, cherishes buying pretty girls with it, fancies using it to fly all over the world, but above all, he loves to deal with it. It does not matter to Humberto if he is in contact with corrupt politicians who need to launder their dirty money or if he “cleans” the cash for anonymous violent criminals. Humberto prides himself on being a professional for hire who can work miracles. However, with each passing year, he loses himself in morally dubious actions while we observe his gradual fall over two decades, from the mid-1950s to the mid-1970s.

Original title: Así habló el cambista
Director: Federico Veiroj
Cinematographer: Arauco Hernández Holz
Produced by: Oriental Features, Rizoma Films
Country and year: Uruguay, Argentina, 2019

MY HEART CAN'T BEAT UNLESS YOU TELL IT TO

The only family Dwight has is his sister Jessie and brother Thomas. He loves them and despises them at the same time, as they make him do terrible things. The problem is that Thomas suffers from a strange illness that can only be hampered by giving him fresh blood. Thus, Dwight wanders through the streets every night in search of homeless people who would not be missed by anyone. He murders them and delivers the bodies to Jessie, who drains them of their blood. Dwight would like to be proud of what he does for his brother, but each subsequent crime leaves more doubts in both his heart and mind. Is this what his life is supposed to look like?

Director: Jonathan Cuartas
Cinematographer: Michael Cuartas
Produced by: Dualist
Country and year: USA, 2020

ÖNDÖG

The naked and completely frozen body of a murdered woman is found on a distant Mongolian steppe. However, when the Police finally get there, they are not sufficiently equipped to take the body to the morgue. Veteran officers shrug their arms and leave the crime scene to return for the corpse in the early morning, and they leave their teenage rookie friend to guard the remains. His only task will be not to freeze to death and to protect the body from the hungry wolves. He will be helped by an armed local herdswoman, but this night, the Mongolian steppe will witness things that no one expected: death and rebirth.

Director: Quan'an Wang
Cinematographer: Aymerick Pilarski
Produced by: Star Light Film
Country and year: Mongolia, 2019

ONE-WAY TO MOSCOW

It is 1989, and Europe is on the verge of change. Viktor Schuler is a Swiss police officer who loves his work, even if it means keeping the citizens suspected of leftist sympathies under surveillance. For Viktor, what is on the left, cannot be on the right, and the right is what he is wholeheartedly dedicated to. One day, he is assigned to invigilate a group of theatre actors. Undercover, of course. Because actors mean anarchy and a bohemian lifestyle, it almost sounds like an invitation for communists to come from Moscow and get comfortable in righteous Switzerland. The thing is, Viktor Schuler falls in love with this lifestyle – and one of the actresses. How to invigilate, then?

Original title: Moskau Einfach!
Director: Micha Lewinsky
Cinematographer: Tobias Dengler
Produced by: Lang Film
Country and year: Switzerland, 2020

OUT IN THE OPEN

It is 1946, and seven years have passed since the economically and ideologically devastating Spanish Civil War. While the big cities try to get up from their knees, the country’s poor provinces and badlands are still ruled by force and fear. In Andalusia, a desperate twelve-year-old boy escapes from servitude in one of the estates. Beaten and humiliated daily by the estate’s reprehensible landlord and dreaming of a better and brighter future, the poor boy risks travelling through a desolate land. His chances of leaving his life behind get smaller when the evil landlord goes after him with a group of his brutal followers. Will the boy find help?

Original title: Intemperie
Director: Benito Zambrano
Cinematographer: Pau Esteve Birba
Produced by: Morena Films
Country and year: Spain, 2019

SPIDER

In the 1970s, Inés, Justo, and Gerardo were members of a radical Chilean right-wing organisation and used to spend their days eliminating everything that was politically “on the left,” which included planning a coup d’etat on the then-president, Salvador Allende. They did terrible things in their youth but never regretted them, all being emotionally involved with one another. Forty years later, Inés and Justo live in a completely different world, separated from the country’s problems by money and alcohol. However, Gerardo still fights for the right-wing cause, and one day he does something that will make his and his former friends’ future all the more bleaker.

Original title: Araña
Director: Andrés Wood
Cinematographer: Miguel Ioan Littin-Menz
Produced by: Wood Producciones
Country and year: Chile, Argentina, Brazil, 2019

UNDER THE TURQUOISE SKY

Takeshi is a hedonist who spends the days and nights partying and sleeping with beautiful women as well as spending his grandfather’s money. He does not worry about the future and does not want to think about the past – if he did, he would have to reminisce about his deceased parents and reflect upon his empty lifestyle. Takeshi’s grandfather, though, reminisces about the mistakes he made, including fathering a child with a Mongolian girl when he had worked in a camp during the Second World War. Hoping that the challenge of finding his aunt will change his grandson’s attitude, he sends him to Mongolia, along with… a horse thief he accidentally encountered. Will the journey change Takeshi?

Director: KENTARO
Cinematographer: Ivan Kovac
Produced by: Magnetize, IFI Productions, Ktrfilms
Country and year: Mongolia, Japan, France, USA, 2020