Contemporary World Cinema at EnergaCAMERIMAGE 2023

Thursday October 26th, 2023

We announce the line-up of the Contemporary World Cinema section of the 31^st edition of EnergaCAMERIMAGE Film Festival.

ALMA & OSKAR

Alma & Oskar explores the passionate and tumultuous three-year relationship between the Grand Dame of Viennese society Alma Mahler (1879-1964) and the Austrian artist and enfant terrible Oskar Kokoschka (1886-1980). In the early 1900s, Kokoschka was an up-and-coming painter, influenced by the work of Gustav Klimt yet with his own distinctive expressionist style. Considered one of the greatest expressionist artists of the 20th century, Kokoschka created his most famous work using Alma as a model, and the years of their relationship marked the most prodigious period in his life.

Director: Dieter Berner
Cinematographer: Jakub Bejnarowicz
Produced by: Dawson Films, Film AG Produktions, Turnus Film, Wüste Film Ost
Country and year: Austria, Germany, Switzerland, Czech Republic, 2022

AMERIKATSI

In 1947, Charlie repatriates back to Armenia only to be greeted by the harsh reality of Soviet Communism. The soul of Armenia has been suffocated beneath the Iron Curtain. Almost immediately Charlie is arrested for the absurd crime of wearing a tie by a jealous Russian Commander whose wife has taken a liking to him. To further ensure that Charlie does not influence any of the other prisoners with his “cosmopolitan” ways, he is placed in solitary confinement.

Director: Michael A. Goorijan
Cinematographer: Ghasem Ebrahimian
Produced by: People of Ar
Country and year: Armenia, 2022

BEYOND THE WALL

©Ali Jalilvand

Ali, a blind man, is attempting to commit suicide when he is interrupted by the concierge of his building. He is informed that the police is in search of a woman who has escaped and hidden somewhere in the building. Little by little, Ali finds out that the fugitive woman, Leila, is inside his apartment. After participating in a workers’ protest that led to chaos, she is distraught about her four-year-old son who was lost when she was taken in a police van. Gradually, Ali becomes emotionally attached to her.

Original title: Shab, Dakheli, Divar.
Director: Vahid Jalilvand
Cinematographer: Adib Sobhani
Produced by: Mehr Taha Studio
Country and year: Iran, 2022

CARAVAGGIO'S SHADOW

Italy 1610. Caravaggio is both one of the most brilliant painters of his time and a rebel against Church rulings that dictate how religious subjects are represented. Having been informed that he depicts prostitutes, thieves and vagabonds in his work, Pope Paul V orders the Vatican secret service to investigate, to decide whether to grant the clemency for which the painter has petitioned since being sentenced to death for the murder of a rival in love.

Original title: L'ombra di Caravaggio
Director: Michele Placido
Cinematographer: Michele D'Attanasio
Produced by: Charlot, Goldenart Production, Le Pacte, MACT Productions, RAI Cinema
Country and year: Italy, 2022

HITLER'S WITCH

Gretel, the daughter of a Nazi leader, gives herself up to the secret perversion of her father. Hans, learns through suffering and violence to become a good man. Emma, the youngest, experiences in her own body the suffocation of silence. Frida dares to reject her father's mandate and surrenders to a forbidden love, even if the price is to suffer firsthand the darkest of the human condition. The film is a fable inspired by real characters and events, where the Nazi horrors that inhabit these characters still persist to the present.

Original title: La bruja de Hitler
Directors: Ernesto Ardito, Virna Molina
Cinematographer: Fernando Molina
Produced by: Virna Y Ernesto
Country and year: Argentina, 2022

LIGHT FALLS

Clara, a Georgian model based in Los Angeles, has a job in Greece and takes her girlfriend Ella along for an island holiday. Altin, Veton and Eddy are young Albanian illegals, part of a shadow society of labourers living in an abandoned seaside hotel. Clara and Ella explore the site when an accident occurs. The Albanians don’t speak a word of English. Different worlds collide and misunderstandings lead to the situation spiralling into violence and revenge.

Director: Phedon Papamichael
Cinematographers: Akis Konstantakopoulos, Phedon Papamichael
Produced by: Enkeny Films, Pallas Film, Ska-Ndal Productions, Topcut Modiano
Country and year: Albania, Georgia, Greece, Germany 2023

MONSTER

A suburban town with a large lake. A single mother who loves her son, a schoolteacher who cares about her students, and innocent children who lead a peaceful life. One day, a fight breaks out at the school. It looked like just a commonplace fight between children, but their accounts differed, and it gradually developed into a big deal involving society and the media. Then one stormy morning, the children suddenly disappear.

Original title: Kaibutsu
Director: Kore-Eda Hirokazu
Cinematographer: Ryûto Kondô
Produced by: Aoi Promotion, Bun-Buku, Fuji Television Network, GAGA, Toho Company
Polish distribution: Best Film CO Sp. z o.o.
Country and year: Japan, 2023

ONLY THE RIVER FLOWS

©Lian Ray Pictures

1990s, Banpo Town, rural China. A woman’s body is found by the river. Ma Zhe, Chief of the Criminal Police, heads up the murder investigation that quickly leads to an obvious arrest. As his superiors are keen to communicate their success, several clues push Ma Zhe to delve deeper into the hidden behaviour of his fellow citizens.

Original title: 河边的错误
Director: Shujun Wei
Cinematographer: Zhiyuan Chengma
Produced by: Hangzhou Dangdang Film, KXKH FILM
Country and year: China, 2023

A RESPECTABLE WOMAN

Trois-Rivières, (Québec), 1930s. A woman separated from her husband for eleven years takes him back into her home after the death of his concubine. He brings with him the three little girls he had from his second relationship.

Original title: Une femme respectable
Director: Bernard Émond
Cinematographer: Nicolas Canniccioni
Produced by: Association Coopérative des Productions Audio-Visuelles
Country and year: Canada, 2023

SHTTL

SHTTL is a Yiddish fairy tale set in a Jewish village in the Ukraine in 1941. This parable of tradition and modernity will be disrupted by the incursion of Nazi soldiers who exterminate all the inhabitants and then raze the village to the ground. It is also an allegory of a life that changes overnight from joy to nothing.

Director: Ady Walter
Cinematographer: Volodymyr Ivanov
Produced by: Forecast Pictures, UPHub, Wild Tribe Films
Country and year: Ukraine, France, 2022

SORCERY

On the remote island of Chiloé in the late 19th century, an Indigenous girl named Rosa lives and works with her father on a farm. When the foreman brutally turns on Rosa’s father, she sets out for justice, seeking help from the king of a powerful organization of sorcerers.

Director: Christopher Murray
Cinematographer: María Secco
Produced by: Fabula, Match Factory Productions, Pimienta Films
Country and year: Mexico, Germany, Chile, 2023

STONE TURTLE

Zahara, a stateless refugee, lives on a small remote island in Malaysia, where she makes a living selling turtle eggs. One day, Samad, claiming to be a university researcher, visits the island, wanting to employ Zahara to show him around. As the day goes on, Zahara and Samad become entangled in a dangerous dance of duplicity and deception.

Director: Ming Jin Woo
Cinematographer: Kong Pahurak
Produced by: Greenlight Pictures, KawanKawan Film
Country and year: Malaysia, Indonesia, 2022

WINTER BOY

Lucas is 17 when his teenage world is suddenly shattered. He views his life as a wild animal in need of taming. Between a brother settled in Paris and a mother with whom he now lives alone, Lucas will have to fight to rediscover hope and love.

Original title: Le lycéen
Director: Christophe Honoré
Cinematographer: Rémy Chevrin
Produced by: Auvergne Rhône-Alpes Cinéma, Les Films Pelléas
Country and year: France, 2022

WORLD WAR III

Shakib is a homeless day laborer who never got over the loss of his wife and son in an earthquake years ago. Over the last couple of years, he has developed a relationship with a deaf and mute woman, Ladan. The construction site on which he works today turns out to be the set of a film about the atrocities committed by Hitler during WWII. Against all odds, he is given a movie role, a house and a chance at being somebody.

Original title: Jang-e Jahani Sevom
Director: Houman Seyedi
Cinematographer: Payman Shadmanfar
Produced by: Houman Seyedi
Country and year: Iran, 2022