Finalist films 2021 – Season 3

Horizon

In the borderlands, crossed by climate refugees looking for safety, men face their primordial nature, in a bleak reality where the law of the strongest rules the world. Hidden in an underground shelter and resigned to his fate, the main character observes the definitive decline of society as it surrender to the evil nature of men, until a special encounter, interpreted as a divine sign of light, turns on his faith and hope for the future of humanity.

MÉBÉT

14 year old Njillan, one of the top students in her class, has just been awarded a government scholarship to pursue her secondary education. Excited to share this achievement with
her family, she is welcomed with bad news: Her father has given her away in marriage to Sengan, despite the protests from her mother.

Njillan is forced to let go of her dreams and fulfil her marital duties. She falls pregnant and faces complications while giving birth to her son, Modi. She doesn’t survive. Modi grows up and
is initiated into manhood by his grandfather, Njillan’s father. Now a man, he has the opportunity to carry forward the culture of child marriage or reverse the trends and protect his future daughters. He has an encounter with the spirit of his mother, telling her story and pleading him to break the cycle.

MÉBÉT tells the story of one girl’s attempt to turn the tragedies of the past into lessons for the future. It is a conversation across generations to deliver positive change. The film showcases
aspects of West-African culture to counter the negative narratives about the continent, and portray the reality of our journeys through stories of resilience and hope.

Director Biography – Ousman Jarju

EXIT PACKAGE

A black comedy, quarantine era murder mystery – a ZOOM meeting for a corrupt investment company goes horribly wrong. Made completely through ZOOM, with all of the actors working from home.

Indebted To All Women

Abortion in El Salvador is punished with 20-40 years in prison. Indebted to All Women wants to give voice to those women suffering and struggling to change one of the most restrictive law in the world for sexual & reproductive rights.

Outcry

A visual poem about anxieties of the moment: fires, climate change–living with the scattered sense of civilization breaking apart while the needs of humanity still remain the same–desire for love, peace and a harmony within a more natural world.

Escape

A dull couple goes on another holiday in their own country and finds out that holiday farm ‘Berg en Dal’ provides an excellent (two-way) escape.

The Loss of Innocence

This film tells the story of a girl who wants to claim her place in the world, same as a man, but certain men are preventing her. They tell her that the space she is trying to claim has always belonged to them, and that they’re not ready to share it. Not to mention the fact that, if they so wish, she will also belong to them and not have a say in it. She becomes a monster just like her predator, and there’s no turning back.
This film is a revenge tale, where characters are archetypes and actions are symbolic. The hero goes through a journey of light and darkness, death and rebirth, helped by those who give her the tools to navigate in this violent world. She loses her innocence and understands that she needs to embrace her own darkness to be free again.

Goodbye Home

On a hot summer day, a young boy lounges in a tyre swing hanging from the big branch of an old ghost gum. He peers through binoculars to catch glimpses of a baby koala and its parents living at the top of the gum’s mighty trunk. The surrounding bush vibrates with native animal life. In the distance, plumes of grey smoke rise above the coastal landscape, showering the horizon with ash.
As the boy helps his parents prepare their home for an evacuation, so too do the animals prepare their homes: a wombat clears his burrow of debris, a finch tidies her nest; flocks of birds begin their migrations to safer skies. The boy and his kelpie sit on the porch, watching on with trepidation.
The sun grows a burnt orange; a dusty hue befalls the landscape. A tiny ember drifts in the wind like an orange snowflake. The baby koala sticks its head out from the gumtree for a closer look. He winces and scratches at his nose, burnt by the ember’s seductive glow. Then the wind changes.
The sky turns an ominous black, then a blazing red as the fires race towards the coastal bushland community. A mob of kangaroos bound over fallen branches. The boy’s parents load their car with memories and keepsakes. The boy and his kelpie jump in but the kelpie whines and barks at the commotion outside. Through the smoke, the boy can see the family of koalas trapped between fallen branches. He rushes to their aid. Behind him, his parents approach with boxes.
“A line of cars follow the only road out of town. The boy watches through a rear window as the glowing town becomes distant. He turns forward and takes his seat. His kelpie lays on the floor at his feet. Something shifts inside a box beside him.”
The boy and his parents have brought the koala family in the car with them. Guided by rural firemen, the two families journey to safety. Though they share the same experience of loss, it is their bushland home that unites them.
And home is where they will return, when the bushfires are over.

Straight Into The Ocean

Straight Into The Ocean – A Music Video by Allen Ling
Nov 19, 2020

This visual and audio work is about heartbreak, closure, friendship and tragedy. We follow the journey of lovers, and witness two very different outcomes.

Completed in 2020, the original song and visual story is loosely based on real life events.

Starring Aramis Knight, Beteal Sharon Mahari, Annie Malev, Emma Kenney and Allen Ling.

Directed by Carolyn Laws, filmed and edited By Zachary Perlow, colorized by Roy Sun, executive produced by Allen Ling

Filmed on location in Kauai, HI and Talmage, CA.

STRAIGHT INTO THE OCEAN Lyrics and Music by Allen Ling © 2018

Mama’s Ashes

Under pressure of his stepfather Estevan, Jurriën travels to Spain to disperse his recently deceased mother. The rebellious teenager has a different wish, but how far does he have to go to bring his mother’s ashes safely back home?

Who the f… is Roger Rossmeisl

A 90′- documentary about Roger Raymond Rossmeisl (1927-1979), the most overlooked great guitar maker of all time. Roger’s voice is spoken by Bruno Ganz

TAMBARORO

Ancient knowledge, modern media, vitalizing an endangered oral language and culture, the film is a discovery journey of a well-educated man returning to his village roots for wisdom and identity. In a remote Indonesian pearl diving community, elders share ancient self-governance teachings despite centuries of colonialism. Tambaroro Laut, an all-night festival of spiritual ecology, launches the pearl oyster and sea cucumber harvest in the Aru Islands. TAMBARORO introduces Gwatle language and culture to the world celebrating human diversity.

From the Ground Up

In the semi-arid village of Malolo in Singida, Tanzania, Adija and her surrounding community rely on one water source, a single hole in the ground no larger than the size of an average puddle. From the Ground Up takes a look into Adija’s daily routine and provides a powerful understanding of the localized impact of the increasingly dire global water crisis.

The Common Ground

After losing both his parents of HIV/AIDS at the age of 10, Ugandan Joseph Rutaraka is sponsored by Compassion International up to graduation and founds The Rakai Orphans Hope Project (ROHP), a registered Ugandan non-profit NGO to help children infected or affected by HIV/ AIDS.

About Her

ABOUT HER deals with a sad and unfortunate issue: domestic violence against women. It is the story of a relationship marked by inequality and violence in which the male partner abusive behavior grows daily. Besides physical and psychological aggressions imposed on women, death could be one of the outcomes. At the end of the day, these abusive men frequently become killers in their own homes. Due to the alarming numbers of feminicide worldwide, it is urgent: we must talk about it.

Touiza

Karim Bengana began his career as assistant to French director Claude Miller. The latter co-produced his second documentary – portrait of a humanitarian doctor in Mali.
During 10 years, he works as a screenwriter for French television. In 2011, he directed Yasmine, a short film, selected among others at the festival of Clermont-Ferrand film festival and Melbourne film festival. Touiza is his second short fiction film. Since 2016, he has been developing several fiction projects for Bang Bang.

Monkey Beach

Lisa Hill has powers. She can foretell death, She sees mythical creatures. She talks with the dead. She has harrowing visions. She left Kitamaat, her ocean-side village, hoping if she partied hard enough in Vancouver, her visions and the grief they inflicted would disappear. But when a warning from her dead cousin sends her racing back home, Lisa realizes the partying didn’t work. Her visions are back – with a vengeance. Her childhood visions of her younger brother Jimmy have returned. In them, Jimmy drowns.
Growing up, Lisa’s visions made her feel like she had to protect Jimmy. But no one would believer her – except for her grandmother, Mama-oo. Back home, Jimmy reassures Lisa that he’s good, he’s safe. But one morning he heads out with Uncle Josh on his fishing boat. When the Coast Guard calls to say the boat has disappeared, Lisa feels hopeless. Jimmy had insisted on fishing with Josh, but Lisa soon learns he wasn’t interested in fishing. He was intent on ridding the village of Josh, a sexual predator who has abused many young women, including Karaoke, Jimmy’s fiancé.
In a desperate quest to save Jimmy, Lisa sets out on a journey by boat to Monkey Beach, a powerful place where she believes she will find Jimmy – and where she will face the hardest journey of all, to the Land of the Dead. In her quest Lisa discovers the true meaning of her visions: But are they blessings in disguise or agents of dark forces?

Tequila Acid Party

A group of bored roommates are drawn towards a wild acid techno party across the street. The lines between peer pressure and cautionary advice keep getting blurrier with every shot of tequila.

This music video follows the logic of being at a wacky party. Meeting all the other freaks and losing track of time and space, and how many glasses you’ve had, as the night turns into morning. Someone in the back is drinking from a clog? This guy here is randomly sprinkling the floor with salt. That person over there scares me, but there’s no denying they do have some great moves.

Suddenly we’re inside the stomach, which looks like a sort of nuclear reactor about to go into meltdown. Or is that where we have been all along?

Director – Liesbeth Eeckman, Joel Rabijns

Rann

Over the span of a winter day, Rann quietly observes an intricate network of people, plants and animals, challenging our notion that deserts are empty barren expanses of nothingness.

Here in the Little Rann of Kutchh, endangered species like wild ass (Equus hemionus khur) compete with domestic cattle from bordering villages. Invasive mesquite threatens to choke the desert but also provides food, shade and firewood. The ubiquitous beat of the borewell pump reminds us that here in the middle of ‘nowhere’ there is the life and labour of Agariyas who pan salt in the harshest of conditions. The desert is never empty.

Rann simultaneously reinforces the spectacular beauty of the earth’s natural landscapes while reminding us how profoundly it has been shaped by human and animal activity.

FEAR

“Face everything and rise”
A music video to a song by Ksenia Parkhatskaya about fear with its many faces and its destructive power. The film presents this struggle between ego and fear, and asks us at the end to recognise and rise above it. For when life is ruled by fear, there are no winners, we all lose.

On / Off

Endless distractions threaten to destroy creativity.

The System

The system works non-stop, and when one day it destroys all natural resources, it’s time to turn.

Home

A black comedy about Dirk, a man who lives with his dog and buys gadgets to fill up his boring single life. On a typical Thursday evening, he finds out that the relationship of trust with his AI device, named Atlas, is not as reliable as he thought. Can he fix his rapidly deteriorating situation? Or has he already exposed too much of himself to Atlas.

Freedom Farm Sanctuary

The relationships between ‘imperfect’ farm animals to special volunteers, some with their own ‘imperfections’

Kanda Bode (Don’t Get Whipped)

This documentary focuses on the Hamar Tribe, a semi nomadic and rural people who live along the Omo River in Southwestern Ethiopia. Preserving the traditions of their ancestors is essential to defining Hamar life. One of the most venerated of the Hamar’s ancient traditions involves the transition of the Hamar male into an adult. Today, however there is a new awareness that aspects of this tradition are harmful to the health and well being of many who participate. The Hamar people are beginning to consider how their tradition can evolve.

“Kanda Bode…Don’t Get Whipped.”

Wall #4

When a cinema audience starts mocking the film they’re watching, the events in the theater take an unexpected turn.

Bibi’s Breakfast

A family drama at the kitchen table. About a father and his daughter and their inability to reach out to each other.

A typical weekday. At first sight a typical home. Ben has had his daughter stay overnight. He’s up early to be ready to leave for work and drop her off at the station, when he is hearing the familiar music of an old cassette coming from the kitchen. He enters and sees his daughter Bibi still in her dressing gown. She has prepared a surprise breakfast for him and wants to stay. Just like before.

Bibi starts to look for her father’s old mug, explains why a warm tea cosy on your head helps you to get in touch with your feelings and tells him about eating a bee.
Ben can’t bear to listen to her and ignores the childhood game with a hollowed out boiled egg she wants to play. Breakfast turns into a painful tussle. In his efforts to alleviate the situation, Ben shuts his eyes to Bibi’s real need: a true connection and acknowledgement of her struggle in life. It pushes her to the borders of her pain and she becomes a threat to herself. Ben has to set aside his own fear and step into Bibi’s world in order to reach her and give her the one thing she needs: her father’s love and security.
It’s a bitter and dangerous dance of illness, fear, denial, guilt and unconditional love.

Together we cycle

The film Together we cycle investigates the critical events that has led to the revival of the Dutch cycling culture. For most people, cycling in the Netherlands, appears like a natural phenomenon. However, until the 1970s the development of mobility in the Netherlands followed trends across the globe. The bicycle had had its day, and the future belonged to the car. The only thing that had to be done was to adapt cities to the influx of cars.

Then Dutch society took a different turn. Against all odds people kept on cycling. The answer to the question why this happened in the Netherlands, is not straight forward. There are many factors, events and circumstances that worked together, both socially and policy-wise. In Together we cycle, key players tell the story of the bumpy road which led to the current state. Where cycling is an obvious choice for most citizens.

Still A Revolutionary – Albert Einstein

He was not the remote genius of present day myth. Still A Revolutionary – Albert Einstein, tells the real story of his life long firebrand activism.

People Talking (S2)

Gente Hablando (People Talking) is an award winning anthology series that explores human contradictions in a naturalistic style through seemingly mundane conversation and situations. The show features a strong script paired with great performances by some of spanish top actors.

Utopia Of The Outraged

Chile woke up on October 18th, 2019.
The streets are flooded with people demanding to be heard, the main demand is “until dignity becomes a habit.”
While some people demonstrate peacefully, others: “the first line”, confronts the police to guarantee the safety of the protesters.
All this is represented in a metaphorical and poetic way through the voice of the reading of Eduardo Galeano’s poetry “the right of deliriuous”.

From Durban to Tomorrow

Logline:
Five frontline health advocates from different parts of the world work through victories and defeats plotting a path toward a meaningful, universal human right to health.

Synopsis:
With the inequities of global health more evident and stark today than at any point in history, FROM DURBAN TO TOMORROW recalls the mass protests led by people living with HIV in Durban, South Africa, which radically transformed the global landscape for human rights in health some two decades ago. These events in the year 2000 gave rise to a series of major advances in public health for marginalised people the world over, yet recent years have seen many of these hard-won gains severely eroded, putting tens of millions of lives at risk and compounding the threat posed by a deadly global pandemic. In FROM DURBAN TO TOMORROW, the stories of five frontline health advocates from different parts of the world underscore this rapidly worsening crisis and herald the impending battle for a meaningful, universal human right to health.

Wake up

On a regular morning, Maya – a girl obsessed with conspiracy theories and who finds it hard to believe mainstream media – wakes up from a strange nightmare. Shortly she realizes it was just a dream and she starts to follow her daily morning routine. It is already 502 days since Maya is locked up in quarantine after a global virus outbreak. She believes the world has been shut down to prevent further spread. Nobody is allowed to go out of the house and she really has a hard time dealing with that situation. Maya has not seen her friends every since. During her work-out, strange things are starting to happen. Without having ordered anything a package is delivered at her door. Wondering and intrigued she takes it inside and starts to investigate the contents. Bit by bit she tries to figure out what it is about. Until she discovers a shocking truth.

GUESTS

Paradoxical things happen in a guesthouse that are difficult to explain. As in the world.

The Third Harmony: Nonviolence and the New Story of Human Nature

A healing force is rising in the world — and you can be part of it.

The Third Harmony is a documentary film that is part of our fourfold effort to bring the ancient art of nonviolence into the mainstream of public consciousness. The film will be accompanied by a companion book of the same title, a cooperative board game for adults that serves as a mini-training in nonviolence, and a multi-year, cross media impact campaign.

The Third Harmony is based on 30+ hours of interviews with prominent nonviolent activists and scholars, scientists, teachers, practitioners of restorative justice, and others, such as Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal, Bernard Lafayette Jr., Ph.D, and Erica Chenoweth, Ph.D. It tells the story of nonviolence, the greatest overlooked resource in human experience.

Act One: What is Nonviolence? Through the testimony of seasoned activists, including the highly dramatic story of how women and children were recently saved from death by unarmed international actors, part of a new institution in civilian protection, we get a glimpse of the power of the force that Gandhi called nonviolence, and its implications for a whole new “story” of what it means to be a human being.

Act Two: How Does It Work? Introduction to the hard science that explains something of the power of nonviolence and how activists are using training and strategy to bring it out in the social field. Again, we hear dramatic stories from participants themselves that start to fill in this inspiring picture. We also learn the eye-opening statistics, never before examined, of the great success of nonviolent campaigns over the last century: What if people were as well trained in waging peace as soldiers are in waging war?

Act Three: What Can I do? The payoff: Five tools by which any one of us can better prepare ourselves to be a part of this unfolding story; how it is emerging in everything from street protests, schools, to the U.S. government. And the final question: What are we waiting for?

The Storykeeper

A B-17 soars over a Paris neighborhood in 1944 and crashes in an explosion that reverberates inside a 7-year-old Rene Psarolis. What happened? Did they all die or did some survive? Rene is haunted by questions. He seeks answers. He spend years piecing it all together. He is the Storykeeper.

Letters to Zohra

Letters to Zohra is a documentary on the life of anti-apartheid activist Ahmed Kathrada, born of Indian parentage.

On 12 June 1964 at the notorious Rivonia trial, Ahmed Kathrada, Nelson Mandela and several other activists were found guilty of preparing an armed uprising against the apartheid regime.

Nelson Mandela’s story is known to all; ‘Kathy’ Kathrada far less so. Mandela once wrote that Kathrada, ‘was part of my life for so long and our stories were so interwoven, that there is no other option but to tell them together.’

In this documentary, we highlight Kathrada’s role using extracts from some of the more than 900 letters he succeeded in having smuggled out of prison during his quarter century of internment. Kathrada’s most important contact in the outside world – his eyes and ears in ‘ordinary life’ – was his niece Zohra.

What effect did his imprisonment have on his family and 26 years of prison have on Kathrada?

Kathrada was elected as a member of parliament for the ANC in the new democratic South Africa in 1994 and became Mandela’s political advisor.

Ahmed Kathrada passed away in 2017.

Tilted

Does the present generation see things differently than their older generation? Is what they see the same as what they visualize? So the basic question comes down to, is SIGHT=VISION? Different people see the same thing from different angles. It is not the question of right or wrong, but more about your perspective. Ultimately it all depends on your vision !!

Tomorrow, an animated film about climate change (English version)

(The film was originally released on Dec 21, 2019, in Bangla. We re-released it as an international version in English on May 17, 2021. This version is available online)
Ratul, a young boy in Bangladesh, is magically shown two very different visions of the future. In the first scenario, Bangladesh has been inundated by rising sea levels, causing great suffering; in the second scenario, fossil fuels have been replaced by renewable energy, and Bangladesh is prosperous.

The purpose of this film is to teach children about fossil fuels and climate change.

Crossroads Life

Crossroads Life depicts that part of life that cinema forgot: corporate work. Movies typically use it only as a plot backdrop; we never know what that “important presentation” really was about, nor what is at stake in managers’ struggles. Based on real events, Crossroads Life is as much about the contents of management work itself as about the humans engaging in it.
Clara, a CFO (Chief Financial Officer) for the Romanian subsidiary of a large life insurance corporation, is promoted to regional CFO. She expatriates to Amsterdam and quickly finds out that the methods she used before, and who she was before, do not work in the new context. She persists, working harder and harder, but sinking more and more. The solution takes an unexpected shape, prompting Clara to question the very core of who she thought she was. See the trailer on

Amazon Queen

A dream vacation of a lifetime quickly turns into a hijacking, endangering passengers and crew, on a boat journey down the Amazon River and into the Brazilian rainforest. Desperate criminals storm aboard, pursuing a lost fortune in the jungle. Now under threat, and with food and fuel running low, the once idealistic tourists – now hostages – must use all their ingenuity as their Amazon cruise becomes a descent into a desperate struggle for survival.
Written by Marlin Darrah

DA YIE

A foreigner in Ghana gets an assignment from his gang to find kids for a risky job that will take place later that evening. While spending the day with two energetic children, Prince and Matilda, he starts to question his decision and how it will affect their lives.

THE LAST DAY OF PATRIARCHY

POPS

How would you react if your father’s last wish was to send his ashes to a – very – eccentric place? For siblings Roz and Elli, there is no consensus on the answer.

THE RIGHT WORDS

Kenza, 15, and her little brother Madhi, 13, regularly humiliate one another on social media. On the bus, Kenza puts her naive and romantic little brother to the test: to profess his love for Jada; a girl that Madhi loves but who does not know him.