World Cinema Fund
Production Funding

Uruguay 2012
Director: Pablo Stoll
Producers: ControlZ (Uruguay), Pandora Film (Germany), Rizoma (Argentina)
German WCF partner: Pandora Films

Funded in the WCF jury meeting in June 2009
Funding amount: 40,000 €

Synopsis
Rodolfo is almost 50. He is an odontologist and likes to play soccer, something he does very well. For the past 10 years he has lived with his second wife in a nice apartment. Rodolfo has a daughter from his first marriage, Ana, who has just turned 16. Ana lives with her mother, Graciela, who is in her forties, in a small old apartment.
The film begins on the day of Ana’s sixteenth birthday. Rodolfo calls his daughter, like every other year. It is a cold conversation, more awkward than loving. That day Rodolfo returns to his apartment and goes to play soccer with his stepson. After the game, sweating and dressed in his soccer garments, Rodolfo decides to visit his daughter. This is his first contact with Ana and Graciela in quite a long time and it marks his return to their lives.
Little by little we will start finding out that Rodolfo is a stranger in his own house and feels that no one needs him there anymore. The idea of approaching Ana and Graciela, as if these last ten years were just a simple holiday, seduces him. This is the small, tragicomic story of three characters. A strange yet ordinary group. Rodolfo, Graciela and Ana: a family.

Director’s note
It all started after a dream I had: what would happen if I woke up one day only to see my parents together telling me they had never broken up and that my whole life, determined by their divorce, had only been a dream. That is how Rodolfo’s story began; finding himself empty and deciding to go back in time to the house he had moved out of 10 years before. There he finds the family he had left behind: a now adolescent daughter in the midst of a crisis and his ex-wife facing death and loneliness.
Three is a film about selfishness and the pursuit of redemption. It is about growing up and about those moments in which, although unnoticed, our personality takes a specific shape. It is a story about second chances and the fear they awake, the fear of failure. The family of Three suggests an unlikely but possible balance, a place that might be phoney but is safe.
Just as in our other movies there is humour and discomfort faced with daily absurdity. The unsaid can be heard between the lines of everyday small talk. There is music, and this time, a little dance.

Uzbekistan 2012
Director: Saodat Ismailova
Producers: Rohfilm (Germany), Petit Films (France), Volya Films (The Netherlands)

Funded in the WCF Jury meeting in November 2009
Funding amount: 70,000 €

Synopsis
Bibicha, a young woman, suddenly refuses to speak. The reason for her vow of silence is mysterious: will she get to the end of her pledge? What would be the compromise between her wish and the family pressure? What will be the reward for the challenging silence?

Director’s note
Chilla is a sacred ritual performed in the key moments of life: birth, marriage, death, spiritual growth and is a vow for a crucially wished desire. Following the idea of Chilla, and inspired by the stories which are drawn from people close to me, the four characters were shaped to present my vision of Uzbek women from past to present.
Bibicha, the main character, is the silent mirror that reflects and exhorts other female stories to come out.
Aside from women’s issues, I want to explore the ideas of identity loss, deep human revaluation and transformation in a society deeply rooted in Islam, a society that was reshaped by communism and has recently become independent. How all of these changes are reflected in female destinies, in their souls. This film intends to unveil and present an intimate portrait of four women from four different generations, with different visions yet with the same problems.

Brazil 2006
Director: Kiko Goifman
Producer: Paleo TV / Plateau Produções (Brazil), Cachoeira Films / Mil Colores Media (Germany)
German WCF partner: Cachoeira / Mil Colores Media
World Sales: Paleo TV (Brazil)

Funded in WCF jury session in June 2005
Funding amount: 25,000 €

Synopsis
Atos dos homens should have been a film about the daily lives of massacre survivors in Brazil. Shooting was scheduled to start in April 2005. But reality did not wait. On the last day of March things changed: A terrible massacre took place in Baixada Fluminense, near the city of Rio de Janeiro. Twenty-nine people were killed by a death squad, the largest massacre in the history of Rio de Janeiro. The killers are extermination groups made up of policemen who work in the area, and who are involved in extortions, kidnapping, drug dealing and homicide. This has been going on since the 1950s, but it has never been as extreme as it is today.
The film is organised in four parts: “Daily Life in Baixada Fluminense” shows footage of residents of the town that suggests it was shot before the massacre; in reality, it was shot afterwards. “The Massacre” describes the carnage and the feelings it provoked. “Death Squads” deals with the killing commandos in the area and includes an interview with a professional assassin. “Daily Life 2” shows the people in Baixada Fluminense and their attempts to process what they have experienced.

World premiere
Berlin International Film Festival 2006, Forum

Award
Golden Montgolfier for the Best Documentary (ex aequo), Festival of the 3 Continents, Nantes 2006

Other festivals (selection)
“It's all true” - Documentary Film Festival São Paulo / Rio de Janeiro 2006
Festival Internacional de Cine Guadalajara 2006
BAFICI - International Film Festival of Independent Films Buenos Aires 2006
Festival Cinematográfico Internacional del Uruguay Montevideo 2006
Festival do Cinema Latino Americano São Paulo 2006
Festival Cinematográfico Internacional del Uruguay 2006

Israel/Palestine 2009
Directors: Yaron Shani & Scandar Copti
Producer: Inosan Ltd. (Israel), Twenty Twenty Vision (Germany)
German WCF Partner: Twenty Twenty Vision
World sales: The Match Factory (Germany)
German distributor: Neue Visionen

Funded in the WCF jury meetings in October 2005 and in November 2009
Production funding: 65,000 €
Distribution funding: 10,000 €

Synopsis
Ajami is the untold story of the walled in city of Jaffa, on the outskirts of the Palestinian – Israeli conflict, where violence and hatred are a daily reality. The characters in this high-paced film live in a violent reality where enemies live as neighbours. It is a meeting of conflicting views – Jews and Arabs, Christians and Moslems, fathers and sons, cops and robbers. As the films jolts from one point of view to the other it creates an alternative truth, a new surprising expression of the human experience. Shuttling back and forth through time, we witness the events over and over again through the eyes of a different character, and every time our perception of “what is right” changes, triggering opposing emotional reactions. We are forced to ask ourselves the eternal question: how do people with the same basic values and moral conscience become blood enemies?

Director's Note
“Ajami tells stories that are taken from our actual life experience, each one of us from his own perspective (Scandar, a Palestinian brought up in Arab Jaffa, and Yaron, an Israeli Jew, brought up in the Western Zionistic Israel). In a unique narrative technique, the viewer experiences Ajami’s world again and again. Every time, going back in time to observe the same reality from a different point of view. The essence of conflict is not good versus evil, or right versus wrong, only different points of view. Only by looking through the eyes of our enemies can we see their humanity.”

World premiere
Cannes International Film Festival 2009, Quinzaine des Réalisateurs

Key festivals and awards
Camera d’Or Special Distinction
Cannes International Film Festival 2009
Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Editing and Best Composer, Ophir Israeli Film and Television Academy Award 2009
Nomination Academy Awards USA for Best Foreign Language Film of the year 2010

Theatrical release in Germany
May 22, 2010

Egypt 2008
Director: Yousry Nasrallah
Producer: MISR International Films (Egypt), Archipel 33 (France), Pandora Film (Germany)
World sales: MISR International Films (Egypt)

Funded in the WCF jury session in June 2006
Funding amount: 100,000 €

Synopsis
It all takes place in Cairo, today. The action takes place over 48 hours. Laila is 32 and works as a radio-presentator. People call her on her show “Night Secrets” to reveal their innermost secrets. She plays squash; she swims; sometimes she writes stories for children and she sometimes goes out with her friend to discos. She lives with her mother and her brother. Youssef is an anaesthetist. He is about 35. In the morning he works in a perfectly respectable private hospital. At night he works in an illegal abortion clinic. His father is dying of cancer. Youssef likes to hear his patients’ delirium, just before they go into deep anesthesia. When they wake up, he tells them everything they have said. He also likes to listen to Laila’s radio-programme. Sometimes, he spends part of his nights with a woman he likes, but he doesn’t love her enough to spend the whole night with her. He lives in his car. Two characters, who don’t know each other and who will meet. Their lives will not change drastically. They will just realise how lonely they are.

Director's Note
“Aquarium tells the story of two well-off characters who hide their inner lives and who like to hear the secrets of others. At the end of the 48 hours that the action covers, they will realise their inner misery. It is also a portrait of modern Cairo, a brain-like labyrinth which destroys itself and never allows people to express their innermost feelings except when they are delirious or when they speak in conditions of anonymity. A city where lovers have to hide in dark streets to exchange furtive caresses.”

World premiere
Berlin International Film Festival 2008, Panorama

Awards
Best Actor, Arab Film Festival Rotterdam 2008
Best Script, Wahran Film Festival 2008
Best Supporting Actor, Alexandria International Film Festival 2008
Best Director, Alexandria International Film Festival 2008

Festivals
Berlin International Film Festival 2008
Festival de Granada – Cines del Sur 2008
Alexandria International Film Festival 2008
Golden Apricot Film Festival Yerevan 2008
Tribeca Film Festival 2008
Wahran Film Festival 2008
Arab Film Festival Rotterdam 2008

Turkey 2012
Director: Yesim Ustaoglu (Turkey)
Producer: Ustaoglu Film Production (Turkey), CDP (France), The Match Factory (Germany)
German partner: The Match Factory. Feature film.

Funded in the WCF Jury meeting in November 2010
Funding: 30,000 €

Synopsis
Araf – Somewhere in Between is the story of the lives of two young people caught in a vacuum, Zehra (18) and Olgun (18). They both work 24-hour shifts in a big service station situated by a motorway. The place which they inhabit and work is a place of throw-away culture, constant change, and they themselves wait for the chance to change and escape from their empty, monotonous lives.
One day, Zehra falls passionately in love with a lorry driver, Mahur (38), who arrives at the petrol station one winter, and the pairs’ lives are turned upside down because of it. Zehra discovers her own body, sexual powers and self-confidence through this affair. Olgun notices this change in Zehra and is affected by it, he starts to try more outlandish stunts inspired by those he has seen on TV, to make himself a local hero, attract her attention and win her back.
When Zehra learns that she is pregnant she tries to protect her unborn child in a very conservative society and she learns that only she can take responsibility for this life and decide on its direction. Olgun’s violent reaction instigated by his incredible disappointment and wounded pride at this news causes him to end up in prison. After some time though, he learns the meaning of true love and selflessness.

Director’s note
Araf – Somewhere in Between reflects the world of today. A world where people live in a kind of vacuum. It is as if we have come to the end of a world that we are “familiar” with and stand on the edge of the “unknown”. We are not quite sure how to enter this “unknown” or of our feelings towards it. The system that we live in is sending out signals of alarm, yet we do not perceive them.
Araf – Somewhere in Between is played out on a global perspective but on a micro scale reflecting those features particular to Turkey. The film portrays this concept by entering the lives of those who live in very average lives caught in both in nations cultural and their own personal: Araf – Somewhere in Between.
For this reason the setting of the film in a roadside service station is strongly metaphoric reflecting the transitory and constantly changing nature of this cultural period. Similarly the principal characters are in a pupal stage of transition exsisting in the unknown within this world of shadowy, constantly fluid realities.

Peru 2011
Director: Rosario Garcia-Montero
Producers: Garmont Films (Peru), Stephen Akerman (Argentina), Barry Films (Germany)
German WCF partner: Barry Films
World sales: Daniel Marquet (France)

Funded in the WCF Jury meeting in June 2009
Funding amount: 50,000 €

Synopsis

Peru in 1980, Cayetana, who is nine, lives in a rich family in Lima where governesses are responsible for her education. Cayetana’s mother is studying abroad for several months, accompanied by her step-father. When the couple returns from their trip Cayetana learns that her mother is pregnant.
Alone and lonely, the little girl has created a whole fantasy world in her imagination. She is convinced that she will die on the day her little brother is born. Cayetana withdraws into her fantasy world, which is populated by all the country’s national heroes she has learned about in her history lessons. If she must die, then she’ll go out like one of these heroes!
Meanwhile, everyone in the family is very busy preparing for the upcoming Christmas celebrations. Nobody seems particularly bothered by the recent terror attacks that have been taking place in the country. Cayetana is the only one who cannot share the general bonhomie. She is desperate to be noticed by the others – especially by her mother. But then, when her grandmother takes the little girl and her girl cousin to the beach one day, things begin to look up.

Director’s note
I grew up in Peru in the 1980s, a turbulent decade of social transformations and crises, punctuated by the terrorist attacks of the Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso).
While as a child I didn’t grasp the full significance of what was going on, I was nonetheless absorbing this feeling of uncertainty through osmosis, by observing the behaviour of my parents, my relatives, my friends. It was when I realised this that the initial idea for The Bad Intentions was born. It is a drama that seems completely aloof in its absurdist tendencies, but is actually deeply rooted in precisely that period of my country’s history. With all of this in mind, I created the character of Cayetana, a dark young girl with a vivid imagination. Convinced that he will die the day her brother is born, she engages in a desperate fight to not become invisible. The closer her brother’s birth comes, the more attention she needs and the more she stands out against all the people frozen apathetically in fear around her. She is an outsider who feels marginalised – whether she is or not is irrelevant. Cayetana is not a classic heroine, full of virtue, but is a mixture of innocence wickedness. She is at once good and bad, a totally volatile and unpredictable character who generates a sense of empathy and rejection. I combined her solitude and sadness with absurd situations, in order to give the story a distinct deadpan humour. In the end, the idea is to convey to the audience the feeling of an emotionally charged and turbulent time in an objective and straightforward way.
Above all, Cayetana is human and filled with contradictory characteristics and motivations and it is through her raw perspective that the story of 1980s Peru can be felt – not told.

World premiere
Berlin International Film Festival 2011, Official Programme, Generation

Key festivals and awards
Los Angeles Film Festival 2011
Best Peruvian Film, Lima Film Festival 2011
Jury Prize, Granada Film Festival 2011
Best Latin American Feature, Mar del Plata International Film Festival 2011

Vietnam 2010
Director: Phan Dang Di
Producers: Acrobates Film (France), Arte France Cinema (France), Vietnam Media Corp & Vietnam Studio (Vietnam), Sudest-Dongnam (Vietnam), Vblock Media Joint Stock Company (Vietnam), TR9 Film (Germany)
World sales: Acrobates Film (France)
German WCF Partner: TR9 Film

Funded in the WCF Jury meeting in October 2008
Funding amount: 50,000 €

Synopsis
It’s a stifling summer in the life of Bi, a 6-year-old boy. He lives with his parents, an aunt with unfulfilled physical longings, and a maid in an old house in the antique quarter of Hanoi, and seems to have a normal life. But his parents’ relationship is deteriorating. Bi’s father is often drunk, finds solace with a masseuse and violently lusts after her. His wife knows about his desire, but endures the situation silently. Bi is often left alone with just the maid to watch over him. Whenever possible, he escapes to his favourite spot, an ice cube factory. Bi’s grandfather, a diplomat, has just returned home with a serious disease after many years abroad. His children are worried but don’t know how to handle him.
At first, Bi is frightened by the unfamiliar grandpa. However, soon he is overcome by curiosity and gradually gets closer to him. One sultry night, Bi’s father complains about the heat, and jokes that if his father dies, they may have to put him in ice cubes. Bi overhears him, and imagines that his grandpa is encased in a big ice block that’s rolling on the assembly line in the factory. He can touch the ice, but not his grandpa…

Director’s Note
Imagine relaxing and watching a fish tank. Big and small fish live together in a narrow tank. They are full of desire for food and reproduction. They themselves can’t recognize that they are burdened with desires.
Imagine there is a saint living in a different time and space who is watching human life, just like we watch the fish. Does the saint also bear the burden of desire in his own life?
People have to face their desires every day. Desire Integrates into single details of life; it leads to actions, creates consequences and affects both feelings and thoughts. That is the film Bi, Don't Be Afraid.

World premiere
Cannes International Film Festival 2010, Semaine de la Critique

Key festivals and awards
SACD Prize, ACID / CCAS Support, Cannes International Film Festival 2010
Grand Prix du Jury, Angers Premiers Plans 2011
Best First Feature, Best Cinematography, Stockholm International Film Festival 2010

Uganda, South Africa
Director: Donald Mugisha
Producers: Switch Films (South Africa), Deddac Films (Uganda) Hot Sun Films (Kenya)
World Sales: Switch Films

Funded in the WCF jury session in November 2011
Funding: 60,000 €

Synopsis
In Kampala, Uganda, the city streets are always congested with traffic and the fastest way to travel is on motorbike taxis we call “boda bodas.” The men who drive these boda bodas have a reputation as tough hustlers. You have to be sharp to survive Kampala traffic.
City life has been unkind to Goodman, Rosa and their teenage son Abel. They stake everything on a joint venture whereby Abel will become a boda boda man in order to support the family.
Disaster strikes however, when the motorbike is stolen on Abel’s first day at work. Determined not to give up, Goodman and Abel set off into the city in search of the stolen boda boda.

Director’s Note
We follow father and son on their quest through the city and in the process gain an insider’s view of Kampala, its underworld and the generation gap that defines contemporary Africa.
The greatest migration in human history is happening right now in sub-Saharan Africa. People are leaving the land and villages in a mass exodus to stream into the cities. Their numbers swell the burgeoning ghettos that surround the urban centers. They come in search of a better life. Sometimes they find it, more often they don’t. Our story deals with this huge issue from the perspective of one small family trying to make it in the city.

Chile 2011
Director: Alejandro Fernández Almendras (Chile)
Producer: El Remanso Cine (Chile), Pandora Film (Germany)
German partner: Pandora Film

Funded in the WCF Jury meeting in November 2010
Funding: 50,000 €

Synopsis
On four different days, in four different seasons, a man would give four different gifts to his dying wife. They live in a small house in the south of Chile. They are middle-aged and have no family, no kids. They are in charge of taking care of an abandoned country club, miles away from the landowner´s house.

Director’s note
This film evolved slowly. It took many years to be written and in that long process allowed me to develop an idea that has always intrigued me. The film deals with love and with how that love can be tainted with “impurities” but still remain being love, and even more so, a big and endurable love. By the Fire tells the story of a man whose wife is slowly and painfully dying. Her death leaves him deeply affected, lost and sad. Starting from that idea, based on a true story told by a local peasant during the research before the shooting of my first feature film, Huacho, and from my closeness to life in the countryside since my childhood, I started to imagine this story, the story of the last months of the woman’s life and the desperate attempts of the man to fight death.
The film is first and foremost a love story, but not in the classic sense, since it doesn’t deal with the highs and lows, or the beginning or end of a relationship. It’s a love story because it tells the story of how a man tries in vain to fight death, and how simple, everyday acts can be touched by the will to defeat the inevitable.
Sentados Frente al Fuego takes its name from a poem by southern Chilean poet Jorge Teillier. The image of the poet is that of an old couple seated beside the fire, seeing each other and remembering the bygone years.

World premiere
San Sebastian Film Festival 2011, Zabaltegui Nuevos Directores

Key festivals and awards
San Sebastian Film Festival 2011
Valdivia Film Festival 2011
Abu Dhabi Film Festival 2011
Palm Spring International Film Festival 2012
BAFICI 2012
Work In Progress Award, SANFIC 2011

Chile
Director: Fernando Guzzoni
Producers: CENECA Producciones (Chile), Hanfgarn & Ufer (Germany), JBA Producions (France)
German Producer: Gunter Hanfgarn

Funded in the WCF Jury meeting in November 2011
Funding amount: 40,000€

Synopsis
Alejandro is in a very difficult moment of his life. A lonesome and unpredictable man who carries the enormous weight of his past as a torturer during the Pinochet-regime. When his taxicab breaks down this totally disrupts the laboriously maintained rhythm of his life. On his quest for a new identity Alejandro gets lost between the ghosts of earlier times and the obsessive attempt at coping with his situation. A man has started to dissolve, his view of reality is increasingly distorted, and he is being cannibalized by his own past. Desperately he tries to re-interpret his life and find a new direction for his existence. Following an emotional and physical breakdown he flees into the community of a strange evangelical sect which saturates his need for closeness and hierarchical order. However, a person like Alejandro does remain a social risk after all – unpredictable like a volcano at rest. The events back then are a distant past now. They have become all but strange to us. Still we have the desire to talk about the past with people like Alejandro. Yet in Chile the heyday of such talk is long over. There many people today live like Alejandro – broken souls suffering from their inner conflicts - as well on the side of the perpetrators. Carne de Perro approaches this peculiar kind of fringe character in Chilean society, one which is easily ignored in times of economic growth and of a self-image of a modern nation.

Lebanon 2009
Director: Dima El-Horr
Producers: Ciné-Sud Promotion (France), Orjouane Productions (Lebanon), Nikovantastic Film (Germany)
World sales: uMedia (France)
German WCF partner: Nikovantastic Film

Funded in the WCF Jury meeting in June 2008
Funding amount: 50,000 €

Synopsis
Beirut, Lebanon. Three women who do not know each other are on the same bus headed for the same place: a male prison in the heart of the Hermel desert.
Against her parents’ wishes, Tamara is going to visit her husband, who was incarcerated on their wedding day. Lina is determined to get her husband, whose sentence is long, to sign the divorce papers which will finally set her free. Hala travels with a secret knot of fear in her stomach: hidden in her suitcase, she carries the weapon forgotten by her husband, a prison guard.
After a few humorous turns at the beginning of the journey, a fatal incident changes the tone and sets everything adrift. Contrary to their intentions, the women are left to their fates and find themselves lost in the middle of an arid landscape. They continue along their road, plunging deeper into what proves to be an internal journey. Like Lebanon seeking to reclaim its own freedom, the voyage of these three women becomes no less than a quest for their own independence.

Director’s Note
"I live in the Middle East, a region seething with perpetually renewed wars, where we are incapable of playing any constructive part in a failing political life. This is our story in as much as it is the story of three women lost in a vast unknown terrain, a land menaced by the threat of a colossal bomb with the power to wipe us all out.
Despite the end of the Civil War in 1990, the withdrawal of the Israeli army from Lebanese territory in 2000, the withdrawal of the Syrian army in 2005 and the war between the Hebrew State and the Hezbollah during the summer of 2006, nothing has really changed in Lebanon. Yet one thing is obvious to us: we are frozen in a stagnant political state that leads us nowhere. The heroines of this movie are stuck in this tense social and political context where nothing moves – nothing dares to move – for fear of an imminent catastrophe."

World premiere
Toronto International Film Festival 2009

Key festivals and awards
Toronto International Film Festival 2009
Rome International Film Festival 2009
Dubai International Film Festival 2009
Black Nights Film Festival Tallinn 2009
International Film Festival Rotterdam 2010
Seattle International Film Festival 2010

Armenia
Director: Aram Shahbazyan
Producer: Armna LLC (Armenia), Zero Fiction Film (Germany), Ventura Film (Switzerland), Isabella Films (The Netherlands)
German WCF partner: Zero Fiction Film

Funded in the WCF Jury meeting in November 2007
Funding amount: 50,000 €

Synopsis
Chnchik is the nickname of a 24-year-old lame, hunchbacked girl, a name that means something puny and insignificant. In her village, no one can even remember her real name. The girl is constantly teased and excluded from village activities. One day, Chnchik tumbles down a slope with a milkjug on her back. Saro, a young villager of 19, under the pretence of help, rapes her. Lusik is the only one that notices Chnchik’s physical und emotional suffering. The lonesome Lusik is pregnant out of wedlock, a village taboo. One day her fence is marked with a black stain and she is forced to flee. After Lusik escapes, the villagers throw stones at her house and kill her cow.
Chnchik is sheperding goats in the mountain far from the village when she meets a soldier, who is doing his army drills. He captures the girl’s heart with his human compassion. For the first time she experiences what it is to fall in love and gives the soldier all her devotion and passion. Their moment of love is brief: a helicopter takes the soldier away to an unknown destination.
It’s winter and the all-knowing village healer is the first to discover that the girl is pregnant. Soon Chnchik’s parents and the entire village find out. At night, the village healer and Chnchik’s mother Maret attempt in vain to induce an abortion. At dawn, in a blizzard, Chnchik escapes to the mountains, taking a cow with her. A few days later, the villagers bring the exhausted girl back to the village by force. A black stain is now marked on Chnchik’s gate, demanding that the situation be resolved. Chnchik’s mortified mother confines herself to a room and refuses to come out. Meanwhile, Chnchik’s father executes her death sentence, using the same pick that he used to kill Lusik’s cow. In this sleepy village, everyone pretends that nothing ever happened.

Bolivia 2011
Director: Diego Mondaca
Producers: Manosudaca Videofilmes (Bolivia), Pucara Films (Bolivia), Blinker Filmproduktion (Germany)
German WCF partner: Blinker Filmproduktion

Funded in the WCF Jury meeting in November 2009
Funding amount: 30,000 €

Synopsis
In the San Pedro male prison of La Paz, Bolivia, 1.500 prisoners coexist in a space originally designed for only 300 nuns.
There aren´t isolation cells. It is an open space inside, where one circulates as if it were a small city.
The businesses and services abound. The prisoners make their living inside the enclosure as they would outside. There is a strong self-organisation that plans everybody’s lives. As if that weren’t enough, there are hundreds of women, wives of the inmates, and almost 300 children, who choose to share captivity. They are non-convicted beings that consented to live behind bars for the sole purpose of preserving a united family. For two years, a cell of three by three is the home of a prisoner, his wife, and five of his eight children. Abraham (41), as soon as he realised that there were women living in the prison of San Pedro, called his wife Angélica (39), and his smallest children to endure confinement together. The documentary will show the life of a family inside the jail of La Paz. The ambiguity of women and children, who can go out of the jail in which they live, will be shown completely. It will dilute the borders between the penitentiary interior and the life outside.

Director’s note
Citadel captures, through a technique of apparent explosive disorder, the disturbing and mysterious place of the male prison in La Paz, Bolivia. The film attempts to expose life inside the detention facility which does not adhere to the traditional icons of prison as some inmates’ wives and children live alongside the prisoners.
Despite physical marginalization and the punitive prejudice that hovers over the inmates and their families, this unique coexistence alongside the tenement architecture constructs an unexpected community.

World premiere
International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam 2011

Key festivals and awards
International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam 2011

Morocco 2011
Director: Faouzi Bensaïdi
Producers: Agora Film (Morocco), Entre Chien et Loup (Belgium), Heimatfilm (Germany)
German WCF partner: Heimatfilm

Funded in the WCF Jury meeting in July 2010
Funding Amount: 30,000 €

Synopsis
Tetouan, a city wedged between a hill and an imposing mountain. Malik, Allal and Soufiane are three friends who live off small crimes. One day, they decide to change their lives and their destinies. They are going to rob a large Jewelry store in the city.
But soon, it turns out that their motivations for the robbery diverge and set them against each other. Malik (26) unemployed, is madly in love with Dounia, prostitute in the nightclub. If he agrees to take part in the robbery, it’s surely to save her. Allal (30) is a tough guy, tall and strong. He doesn’t understand how or why his best friend, Malik, is in love with Dounia. If he wants to rob the jewellery store, it’s to have the capital to become a major drug boss. To become one of the new powers in the city. Soufiane (18) is a high-school student who skips all classes except for sports. Agile, fast, solid and a bon vivant, his life changes radically one day. If he decides to take part in the robbery, it’s to kill the store’s owner. A city constantly under the weight of a low, heavy sky, three losers, a woman, a jewellery store, dreams of more …

Director’s note
After www – what a wonderful world , a light-hearted film that teased and toyed with the codes and conventions of genre cinema, changing scales within the film itself in an attempt to bring film noir closer to farce, romantic comedy, musical comedy, comic books and the pixelised images of the net, I wanted to continue my exploration of genre in Death for Sale , by focusing on characters and atmosphere, by moving towards classicism, a pure linear narrative, fully assumed, simple and direct, without any twists and turns … But is genre, with its codes and characters, impervious to a deeper reality, a constantly changing present, a world in transformation? Wouldn’t it be enough to add to the plot characters in streets teeming with social tension, a loss of bearings, a shift in identity, a threatening extremism, a survival instinct that mutes into selfishness and overpowering individualism until the situation blows up, the codes become corrupt and the genre becomes “contaminated”. Happily, yes.
Three losers, three small-time crooks, dreaming of a better life, of a future filled with freedom, love, money, belief and belonging, see this future tragically and inescapably disappear before their eyes, revealing to all the cowardly acts, the betrayals and the pettiness of the human soul. They will realise, far too late, that they aren’t strong enough to live out their dreams, that they don’t have the dimensions of the people they dreamed of becoming and that they will pay a heavy price in their fight against the powerful forces of money, greed, destiny, blind love and the manipulation of faith …

World premiere
Toronto International Film Festival 2011, Contemporary World Cinema section

Key festivals and awards
Abu Dhabi Film Festival 2011
Marrakech International Film Festival 2011
Berlin International Film Festival 2012

Uruguay - Germany 2012
Director: Alicia Cano
Producers: Filmproduktion Thomas Mauch (Germany), Alicia Cano Films (Uruguay), MJ Producciones (Uruguay)
German Producer: Thomas Mauch

Funded in the WCF Jury meeting in November 2011
Funding amount: 30,000 €

Synopsis
El Bella Vista is the story of a house started as a football club, becoming a successful transvestite brothel and changes at last to a Catholic Chapel, all in a small conservative village in Uruguay. Two transvestites, one brothel’s Madam, a gaucho football player, and a charming old lady will bring to life this battle for control of a single physical space, driven by the same motivation: passion.

Director’s Note
I discovered this story reading a newspaper, and I found it so closed to my memories that I decided to go to the place and meet the protagonists. This playful documentary film is the result of my research and therefore a portrait of the villages where I come from.

Mali 2007
Director: Salif Traoré
Producer: Sarama Films (Mali), P. A.V. Communication (France), Boréal Films (Canada), Bärbel Mauch Film (Germany)
German WCF partner: Bärbel Mauch Film
World sales: Wide Management (France)

Funded in the WCF jury session in October 2005
Funding amount: 60,000 €

Synopsis
Zanga, a child born out of wedlock, is driven from his village. He returns after many years to find out who his father is. At the moment of his arrival, something happens that the villagers interpret as the river spirit Faro’s angry reaction to Zanga’s coming. The film uses this fateful moment in the history of a village to bring us closer to the changing rural regions of Africa: suddenly, oppressed people are making demands and the local authorities are underpressure. Tradition has to find compromises with modernity so that life can go on.

World premiere
Berlin International Film Festival 2007, Official Programme, Forum

Awards
Winner of Bayard d’Or – Best First Feature Festival International du Film Francophone de Namur 2007

Festivals (selection)
Berlin International Film Festival 2007
Festival Panafricain du Cinéma et de la Télévision de Ouagadougou (FESPACO) 2007
Toronto International Film Festival 2007
Contemporary World Cinema 2007
Jerusalem International Film Festival 2007
Edinburgh International Film Festival 2007
Santiago International Film Festival 2007
Festival International du Film Francophone de Namur 2007
Vancouver Film Festival 2007
Chicago International Film Festival 2007
AFI – Los Angeles International Film Festival 2007
Jakarta Film Festival 2007
Festival du Film Francophone de Tübingen 2007
Dubai International Film Festival 2007
Festival del Cinema Africano, Asia e America Latina, Milano 2007
Göteborg Film Festival 2008

Brazil 2008
Director: Kiko Goifman
Producers: PaleoTV / Plateau Produções (Brazil), Autentika Films (Germany)
German WCF partner: Autentika Films

Funded in the WCF jury meeting in June 2008
Funding amount: 25,000 €

Synopsis
Jean-Claude Bernardet (one of Brazil’s prominent film critics) plays the director of a documentary that was never completed. Filmphobia is a making-of of a fictitious documentary film, which is about fear in contemporary society. The main belief of the documentary director – Jean-Claude – is that the only image that is authentic, real and truthful is that of a human being challenged by his or her phobia. The crew of the documentary explore the limits of the psyche, exposing phobic people to emotionally violent situations, dealing with different kinds of phobias: airplane phobia, ocean phobia, snake phobia, blood phobia and so on. Filmphobia provokes the question: Why was the film never finished? Is the director of the documentary – 71 years old – starting to go blind? Is the director’s condition as an HIV-carrier getting worse? Did the situation result in trauma when he dealt with blood phobia?

World premiere
Locarno International Film Festival 2008, Filmmakers of a Present Competition

Awards
Best Film (Official Jury, Critique Jury), Best Actor, Best Art Direction, Best Editing, Festival de Brasília do Cinema Brasileiro 2008
Honourable Mention by the Jury, Festival Internacional Del Nuevo Cine Latinoamericano, Havana 2008

Rights sold to
Brazil

Festivals
Locarno International Film Festival 2008
Saravejo International Film Festival 2008
Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival 2008
Festival de Brasília do Cinema Brasileiro 2008
Festival Internacional Del Nuevo Cine Latinoamericano Havana 2008
Rotterdam International Film Festival 2009

Vietnam
Director: Nguyen Hoàng ĐDiep
Producers: VBLOCK Media (Vietnam), Filmallee (Germany), Ciné-Sud Promotion (France), Films Farms (Norway)
German WCF partner: Filmallee
World sales: tbc

Funded in the WCF Jury meeting in November 2012
Funding amount: 50,000 €

Synopsis
Hanoi, Vietnam. Naive Huyên (17) is living a normal life in rhythm with her times. Huyên is in love with her boyfriend Tùng, a never-do-well boy just slightly older than her. She gets pregnant, and both she and Tùng want an abortion, rather casually and calmly. Huyên finds a way to make money for the abortion by meeting a rich man who has a fetish for her swelling stomach and pays well for her company. When her boyfriend runs away with the money and Huyên’s feelings move slowly but steadily toward the rich man and her unborn child, it becomes more and more a matter of urgency that she has to make a decision – but she hesitates.

Director’s note
This hesitancy of a young and lonely pregnant woman, this feeling of juvenile naivety and disorientation when meeting the difficult decision for or against an unborn life is the red line of the film.

Brazil 2011
Director: Helvecio Marins Jr., Clarissa Campolina
Producers: Teia Produções (Brazil), Dezenove Som e Imagem (Brazil), Eddie Saeta (Spain)
German Producer: Autentika Films
World sales: Urban Distribution International

Funded in the WCF Jury meeting in July 2011
Funding amount: 30,000 €

Synopsis
In the backlands of Minas Gerais, where time seems to pass at the river’s pace, two elderly women keep the whirlwind of life in full swirl. Bastú has just lost her husband, but tearlessly seeks comfort in daily life and memory. But it is in the freedom of dreams and the freshness brought by her grandchildren that she manages to work her own transformation. Helping her through it is Maria, whose drum pounds with all the joy and power of her people, beating out the sounds of other places and resounding with a presence that can never die. In this world, where tradition is ambushed by novelty and reality by invention, small shifts steep the flow of life in fantasy.

Director’s Note
After the death of her husband, the blacksmith Feliciano, Bastú looks to everyday life and her own memories for the elements that will help her through this upheaval. Accompanying her feelings, her way of seeing the world and of reinventing life, the film follows her transformation in the company of her grandchildren and her friend Maria do Boi, a strong elder whose drum keeps the beat of her people’s traditions.
Though centered on the predicament of its main character, the film incessantly strays into other stories unfolding in São Romão, a sleepy little town on the banks of the São Francisco River. A place of searing sun, gnarled tree trunks and stark shadows, the endlessly running waters of the river, the red earth and wasteland feel of the landscape create a setting of arid beauty.
Stories, perceptions, beliefs and novelties reveal the transformations of time and the world, allowing the film to roam with all the freedom of a dream, flitting between the reality and the rich oneiric tapestry of the backlands of Minas Gerais.
Like Bastú herself, Girimunho is in search of the joyful levity of life. It is a film built of little stories and small shifts capable of steeping the everyday in fantasy

World premiere
Venice Film Festival 2011, Orizzonti

Festivals & Awards (selection)
Venice Film Festival (Interfilm Award)
Toronto International Film Festival
San Sebastian International Film Festival
Rio de Janeiro International Film Festival
Valdivia International Film Festival

Peru 2008
Director: Josué Méndez
Producers: Chullachaki Producciones (Peru), Mil Colores Media / Cachoeira Films (Germany), Lagarto Cine (Argentina), TS Productions (France)
German WCF Partner: Mil Colores Media / Cachoeira Films

Funded in the WCF Jury meeting in November 2006
Funding amount: 55,000 €

Synopsis
Diego and Andrea are about eighteen, they are beautiful, rich and bright. They live in the most beautiful house by the beach, on the most beautiful beach in Peru, with their rich and successful father. This is a world where there are no problems, no material needs; a world of forms and beauty, an artificial world, a world of appearances. Gods is about a family where apparently nothing is wrong, but after scratching the surface a little, a cruel way of life, a world of unbreakable and inflexible social customs, is revealed. Gods is the story of this family, its decadence, its rigid mechanisms when it comes to social involvement, and its efforts to conceal any interior ugliness under a beautiful cover.

World premiere
Locarno International Film Festival 2008, Official Competition

Awards
Best Peruvian Film, Audience Award, Lima Film Festival 2008
Best Film, Biarritz Film Festival 2008
Best Sound, Festival International del Nuevo Cine Latinoamericano Havana 2008

Rights sold to
Argentina, Peru

Festivals
Locarno International Film Festival 2008
Lima Film Festival 2008
Toronto International Film Festival 2008
San Sebastián Film Festival 2008
Festival International del Nuevo Cine Latinoamericano Havana 2008
Festival Filmar en América Latina 2008

Turkey
Director: Kutlug Ataman
Producers: Kutlug Ataman (Turkey), Detailfilm (Germany)
German WCF partner: Detailfilm
World sales: tbc

Funded in the WCF Jury meeting in November 2012
Funding amount: 30,000 €

Synopsis
The wife of the village’s poorest family, Medine, wishes to make her mark in the community by throwing a feast for the circumcision of her 5-year-old son, Ismail. Her insistence that there should be seven roasted lambs worries her 30-yearold unemployed husband Ibrahim. Medine invites everyone to the circumcision feast. Luckily the Muhtar finds a job for Ibrahim at the slaughterhouse, but Ibrahim faints at the sight of blood. Medine ask for help from all the people in the village who support Ibrahim unconditionally, but they continue to isolate her. Medine’s disappointment gradually increases. The Feast day comes. Medine serves meat to the Guests. They ask where Ismail is. Medine declares to the guests that she has served them her little lamb, Ismail. The guests are terrified at what Medine has told them. They have been tricked by a madwoman. They have become cannibals. They consider calling the Gendarmes but decide not to because they are afraid of being labelled as cannibals. They prefer to keep what has happened as a secret between them. Medine Escapes. One day, Medine returns to the village with her children Ismail and Vicdan. Daily life looks normal. However, nothing in the village is ever the same.

Paraguay 2006
Director: Paz Encina
Producers: Slot Machine (France), Fortuna Films (The Netherlands), 4L (Argentina), Black Forest Films (Germany)
German WCF Partner: Black Forest Films
World Sales: Scalpel Films (France)

Funded in the WCF jury session in June 2005
Funding amount: 30,000 €

Synopsis
It’s already autumn and it’s still hot – the heat never goes away. In a remote place in Paraguay, an elderly peasant couple Candida and Ramon are waiting for their son who left to fight the Chaco War. They are also waiting for the rain to come, it keeps announcing its arrival but it doesn’t come; and for the wind that never comes either; and for the heat to go away but it never does in spite of the season; and for the dog to stop barking, but it will never stop and, all in all, they are waiting for better times to come.
The instant of the eternal waiting is found between the “before” and the “after” of time. The couple faces these waiting moments with different attitudes: Ramon, a farmer, waits with optimism; Candida, a mother and a washerwoman, believes her son is already dead, therefore it makes no sense to keep waiting. These roles go back and forth while the couple sit, and after the death and in between, they wait eternally for the passing of time.

World premiere
Festival de Cannes 2006, Un Certain Regard

Other Festivals
Toronto International Film Festival 2006
Pusan International Film Festival 2006
Rotterdam International Film Festival 2007
Jerusalem International Film Festival 2006
Melbourne International Film Festival 2006
Sarajevo International Film Festival 2006
Vancouver International Film Festival 2006
Hamburg International Film Festival 2006
São Paulo International Film Festival 2006
Warsaw International Film Festival 2006
Taipei Golden Horse International Film Festival 2006
Tokyo Filmex International Film Festival 2006
Bratislava International Film Festival 2006
Habana International Film Festival 2006
New Crowned Hope Festival, Vienna 2006
Gothenburg International Film Festival 2007
Black Movie, Geneve International Film Festival 2007
Belgrade International Film Festival 2007
Mexico FICO International Film Festival 2007
Miami International Film Festival 2007
Cleveland International Film Festival 2007
Cinema Novo Film Festival 2007
Istanbul International Film Festival 2007
Lisbon International Film Festival 2007

Awards
Winner of the FIPRESCI Award, Cannes International Film Festival 2006
Critics Award, São Paulo International Film Festival 2006
Special Grand Jury Mention, Miami International Film Festival 2007

Rights sold to
Argentina, France, Spain, The Netherlands

Argentina
Director: Benjamin Naishtat
Producers: Rei Cine (Argentina), Ecce Films (France), Mutante Cine (Uruguay), Vitakuben (Germany)
German WCF partner: Vitakuben
World sales: tbc

Funded in the WCF Jury meeting in November 2012
Funding amount: 30,000 €

Synopsis
Through the fence, we can see them. They’re far away, in the middle of a giant wasteland, and it’s hard to tell how many are there, whether it’s mostly children or adults. When the sun falls, they blend with the darkness and we can barely guess their presence. Christian spends his days cutting grass at a gated community in the suburbs of Buenos Aires. Everyday he sees how they build up their rudimentary houses. Christian knows that insecurity and tension will take over the community. Another year is coming to an end, under the heat of December; they organize a large gathering to celebrate. Midnight comes and they launch some major fireworks. Everybody is drunk. There’s a power blackout. In the darkness they keep laughing, they keep dancing. After a while, some people start feeling insecure, mostly the women. The men curse at each other. In the darkness they have become nothing but voices.

Director’s note
Fear. The idea is that at first, it works in a cerebral way: fear emerges from context and works through the logical understanding by the audience of the situations that the characters face. But as the film unravels, it shall become more and more intuitive, physical, almost epidermic.

Iran 2010
Director: Sepideh Farsi
Producers: Rêves d'Eau Productions (France), Neshaneh Films (Iran), Sweet Water Pictures (Netherlands), Pola Pandora Film (Germany)
German WCF Partner: Pola Pandora Film

Funded in WCF jury session in June 2007
Funding amount: 30,000 €

Synopsis
Two teenagers, Morteza and Taher, are involved in the accidental drowning of Taher's younger brother. With this, an indelible seal has marked their destiny, linking them forever.
Thirty years later, Morteza is just coming out of jail, having been suspected of murdering a child. Taher, who is now a police officer, first thinks he is guilty, like all the others, but then finds out that he's wrong and decides to prove Morteza's innocence.

Director’s note
The screenplay is an adaptation from several of Bijan Najdi’s novels, whose universe is stamped with a magical yet poetically tinged reality. A universe where a couple can adopt a dead child to fulfil its desire of never having had one. And where a boot found under water is enough for a man to mourn his lost son who never had a sepulchre. Characters in shades of grey, in a country where things are too often black and white.

World premiere
Dubai International Film Festival 2010

Key festivals and awards
Dubai International Film Festival 2010
Moscow International Film Festival 2011

Chile 2009
Director: Alejandro Fernández Almendras
Producer: Jirafa Films (Chile), Charivari Films (France), Pandora Film (Germany)
German WCF partner: Pandora Film
German distributor: Kairos Filmverleih
World sales: Films Distribution

Funded in the WCF jury meetings in November 2006 and in January 2011
Production funding: 50,000 €
Distribution funding: 5,000 €

Synopsis
On a long and eventful day, four members of a southern Chilean peasant family (Pedro and his wife Olga, their daughter Marta and their grandson Rodrigo) struggle to adapt to the changing world in which they live in; a world where a Gameboy or a new dress can be as precious as a litre of milk or a glass of wine; where the boundaries between tradition and modernity are quickly disappearing.

Director's Note
“With a mix of candor, empathy and simplicity, Huacho depicts a day in the life of four members of a peasant family who live on the outskirts of the city of Chillán, in the south of Chile, dealing with the many transformations of the life of the peasantry at the turn of the century.”

World premiere
Cannes International Film Festival 2009, Semaine de la Critique

Key festivals and awards
Munich International Film Festival 2009
Jerusalem International Film Festival 2009
Toronto International Film Festival 2009
San Sebastian International Film Festival 2009
Best Film, Viña del Mar International Film Festival 2009
Best First Film, Havana International Film Festival 2009

Theatrical release in Germany
Mai 19, 2011

Iran 2010
Director: Rafi Pitts
Producers: AFTAB Negaran Film Production Institute (Iran), Twenty Twenty Vision (Germany)
German WCF partner: Twenty Twenty Vision
German Distributor: Neue Visionen
World Sales: The Match Factory (Germany)

Funded in the WCF jury meetings in November 2007 and in March 2010
Production funding: 50,000 €
Distribution funding: 10,000 €

Synopsis
Ali, a young mechanic, likes to go hunting. He works hard, stays out late, yet cares for his beautiful wife, Sara, and his daughter, Lilly. He tries to keep them happy, even though life is a struggle.
One day after work Ali returns home, only to find out that his wife and daughter have gone missing. He goes to a police station, and after a long period of waiting and frustration amidst chaos, he is told that in a local police shootout Sara was accidentally killed, and Lilly is still missing.
The search for Lilly sends Ali into the depths of despair, ending in more horror when her dead body is discovered.In an act of vengeance, Ali randomly kills two police officers on a highway. He becomes a fugitive. Ali flees towards the northern forest. On the highway a police patrol car follows him. There is pursuit. There is a chase. Ali’s car crashes. He runs into the forest for refuge.
Ali is captured by two officers, Hassan and Nazem. The two police officers guard him closely. Now that he is caught, Ali is resigned to his fate and walks without concern. The three men are surrounded by trees, the woods. They lose their way, and spend the night in a small cabin. It becomes clear to Ali that Hassan and Nazem loathe each other. Hassan then makes Ali a proposal: if he kills Nazem, he can walk free. In the desolate landscape, the boundaries between the hunter and the hunted are difficult to perceive.

World Premiere
Berlin International Film Festival 2010, Competition

Theatrical release in Germany
April 8, 2010

Festivals
Berlin International Film Festival 2010
Hong Kong International Film Festival 2010
Melbourne International Film Festival 2010
Toronto International Film Festival 2010
Viennale 2010

Armenia
Director: Maria Saakyan
Producers: Anniko Films (Armenia), Oscar Film (Denmark), Flying Moon Filmproduktion (Germany)
German WCF partner: Flying Moon Filmproduktion

Funded in the WCF Jury meeting in July 2010
Funding Amount: 50,000 €

Synopsis
A neglected teenager struggles with her blossoming sexuality and suicidal thoughts while searching for the father she has never known.
Evridika will be 14 soon. Her mother Sona (36), is an attractive director of a 13-man choir performing Armenian sacred music.
They live in a small Armenian town next to a railway, but Evridika’s horizon is the fan site of a book, Coin Locker Babies by Murakami, where she’s registered as “Anniko” and posts animations and poetry that she dedicates to her future prince.
When Pyotr (47), a man from Sona’s past, drives back into her life in a red BMW, passion erupts again, and Evridika feels completely estranged from her mother. She is going to change her name as soon as she turns 14.

Director’s note
This is a film about the feelings of a 14-year old girl. Maybe not a film in traditional terms, but a kind of poem or song, words and images that her mind is full of. Main heroes of this poem are body and soul, music and chaos, a river and old factories, a girl and mother and also love and desire like 14-year old Evridika understands it.
The place that we selected as a shooting location is a forgotten and very poor town. Alaverdy is situated in Armenia near the Georgian border. We found this place during pre-production of Mayak (my first feature) and could not seem to forget about it.
In Alaverdy, you can find a very big factory, railways, a river, mountains and a funicular, which is Evridika’s favourite place to observe her town. In Soviet times, it was a huge factory, producing aluminium for the whole country and the town was rich and abundant. Now it’s nowhere, for no one. Factories were destroyed and became a home for the ghosts, or a “gate to another world” (this is the way Evridika explains it to herself).
There are still some inhabitants: some policemen, two schools, a theatre, a hospital. That ’s all. We add one choir and it seems it could be true.
In our film, there will be a lot of music and noises and sounds; it could even be like a cacophony at times. But at the same time there will be the highest harmony in the final concert sequence where Sona’s choir is performing a sacred liturgy by Komitas.
We are going to shoot the film with a lot of outdoor shootings and natural light. I want this film to be a song about the time when you first discover yourself as a human being that has a body, that will, some day, die.

Philippines 2009
Director: Raya Martin
Producers: Cinematografica (Philippines), Atopic (France), Razor Film (Germany)
German WCF partner: Razor Film

Funded in the WCF jury meeting in October 2008
Funding amount: 50,000 €

Synopsis
In the early 20th century, at the beginning of the American rule in the Philippines, a mother and her son run off to the mountains with the hopes of a quiet life. After settling far from town, deep in the woods, the two have managed to live in peaceful isolation despite growing unrest in the towns.
While hunting in the woods, the son mysteriously stumbles upon a wounded woman. He takes her home and cares for her despite the silent objection of his mother. Upon learning that the woman is pregnant, the mother increasingly fears for all their lives and distances herself from them. Finally, the son develops a relationship with the woman. The mother grows weak and ill, and eventually dies. Soon after, the woman gives birth to a son.
Years later, the family continues to live in isolation away from the struggle and chaos rampant in their country. One evening, the child goes missing in the woods. Once found, the child speaks of a man cloaked in light. Believing it is a sign of the coming saviour, the father and his son set out in search of an amulet that will save their lives. As the monsoon rains threaten the landscape, all three find themselves battling for survival.

Director’s Note
"The Philippine-American War resulted in many disappearances. Undocumented deaths occurred regularly in the many villages invaded by American troops. The mysterious disappearances of Filipinos, both voluntary and involuntary, have affected many lives, leaving a void of emotions and affection for the missing and suspended feelings for people’s loved ones. The bigger picture reveals an absence of identity and true freedom.
The film aims to portray an alternative resistance of the times, one that moves away from a history of armed struggle and delves deeper into the opposition of forces, the survival of human existence, and the liberation of the true Filipino identity."

World premiere
Cannes International Film Festival 2009, Un Certain Regard

Key festivals and awards
Toronto International Film Festival 2009
Thessaloniki IFF 2009
Pusan IFF 2009
Golden Kinnaree, Bangkok International Film Festival 2009
Grand Jury Prize 2009, Cinemanila International Film Festival 2009; Critics Award

Malaysia
Director: Liew Seng Tat
Producers: Everything Films (Malaysia), Volya Films (Netherlands), Mandra Films (France), Flying Moon Productions (Germany)
German Producer: Flying Moon Productions

Funded in the WCF Jury meeting in July 2011
Funding amount: 50,000 €

Synopsis:
Pak Awang's only child is getting married and he wishes to give her a house as a wedding gift. Unable to afford a brand new house, he comes up with a brilliant idea to relocate and restore an abandoned house near the village. Despite rumours of the house being haunted, he manages to convince his fellow villagers to help him move the house, by carrying it physically back to the village.
Solomon is a Nigerian immigrant working illegally as a street peddler, trying very hard to adjust to life in the city of Kuala Lumpur. Refusing to participate in con-businesses and black money laundering like some of his countrymen, he opts to run a small business of his own. Down on his luck, Solomon runs into trouble with the police and has to run away. He jumps onto the back of a moving truck and ends up in the village. While wandering around, he finds the house that was being moved and decides to hide in it.
The same evening, a villager is passing by the house when he notices a black shadow (Solomon) inside. He freaks out and returns to the village to tell everyone. Nobody actually sees Solomon in person and this creates rumours that the relocation of the house has disturbed some spirits. This causes disruption in the village and the relocation comes to a halt.
Pak Awang tries to reason with the villagers not to be superstitious, but his efforts fall on deaf ears. While Pak Awang becomes more and more a stranger to his own people for not having the same beliefs, Solomon is happy with his new found 'home' and becomes a permanent tenant of the house. The question is, for how long?

Director’s Note
My great grandfather came from the southern part of China back in the early twentieth century. He left his family in the village and came with nothing but a pair of bare hands and a strong will to work, hoping that one day he’d seek enough fortune to go back to China, to live a better life. Somehow, things didn’t go as planned. He fell in love with the country Malaya(Malaysia), decided to settle down and called it home. He was an alien, and I’m a Malaysian.
My country is full of immigrants. They come from Indonesia, Myanmar, Cambodia, Philippines, China, India, Bangladesh, Nepal, and recently, Africa. They are ill-treated by my countrymen. Yes, I am from a racist country. And we do it openly here. Once I was travelling in a bus, an African took the seat next to a man and the man stood up immediately and chose another seat, away from him.
I knew an African by the name of Solomon. He peddled watches and handbags in the streets of Kuala Lumpur. Once, he was trying to sell his goods to a woman. Upon seeing him approaching, she grabbed her cell-phone and purse on the table, fearing that he would rob her. Even the authorities were harassing him. They didn’t just extort money from him, they sometimes confiscated his goods, brought it home to their wives and children. He told me, Malaysia is not a country for ‘people’ like him. He wants to move to Europe. I do not see him around anymore. I wonder where he is now.
It’s ironic how we discriminate immigrants while in fact almost all Malaysians were once immigrants, who at some point in history, came to this country. It’s even more ironic that we harbour racist feelings against the Africans particularly, while our ancestors were believed to migrate from Africa some 50,000 years ago.
These thoughts and questions about home and identity serve as the main inspiration behind In What City Does It Live?, a story about aliens, about those who do not fit into the society that they belong or do not belong to, about the irony of the multi cultural society that we live in, where prejudice, ignorance, cynicism & racism live with us, in harmony.

Dominican Republic 2010
Director: Laura Amelia Guzmán
Producers: Aurora Dominicana (Dominican Republic), Canana Films (Mexico), Bärbel Mauch Films (Germany)
German WCF partner: Bärbel Mauch Film

Funded in the WCF Jury meeting in June 2009
Funding amount: 40,000 €

Synopsis
The Haitian professor Jean Remy Genty is always on the move, looking for work. A graceful figure, he stands out in the crowd: a model Christian. On his journeys we see the changing scenario of the city, its excessive development. Although a job on a building site is a possible option for the unemployed Haitian, Jean does not feel up to it, feeling old and weak. He is looking for something more suited to the intellectual he considers himself to be. And so he spends years looking for employment worthy of himself and his education. Jean starts to give up hope; he feels the natural need to grow, to have a home, a wife. His desires and thoughts become confused. Bad feelings start to grow within him, distorting his perception of everyday life …

Director’s note
Everyday more Haitians arrive in the Dominican Republic to find jobs. In the past, they mostly worked in the sugar cane fields, but more recently they have started to work closer to the cities where there is great need of labour force for construction. The city is growing surprisingly fast and most of the houses are being torn down and replaced by huge apartment buildings. For a man like Jean Gentil, this is no help since he’s been searching the past years for a job worthy of his studies. We want to give time and space to the character, so that in Jean’s transit, we are able to recognise the changing scenery as a character and the narrative conductor of the story; to sense the contrast between a growing city and the “tranquillity” of the countryside and coasts that is about to disappear, and sense man in his actions of construction and destruction, human development against the personal development of many like Jean Gentil.

World Premiere
Venice International Film Festival 2010, Orizzonti

Awards
Jury’s Special Mention, Venice Film Festival 2010

Festivals (selection)
Venice International Film Festival 2010
Thessaloniki International Film Festival 2010
Rotterdam International Film Festival 2010
Viennale 2010
Sao Paulo International Film Festival 2010
Cairo International Film Festival 2010
BAFICI, Buenos Aires International Film Festival 2010
Festival Internacional de Cine de Valdivia 2010

Indonesia 2008
Director: Ravi Bharwani
Producer: ECCO Films Indonesia (Indonesia), RTC Media (Germany)
German WCF partner: RTC Media

Funded in the WCF Jury meeting of November 2007
Funding amount: 55,000 €

Synopsis
After his mother’s death, Jaya (12) is sent to his father, Johar, who works as a supervisor on a jermal (a fishing platform perched insecurely on log stilts in the middle of the sea). Never having known that he had a son, Johar is shocked and rejects the boy as his kid. Fully aware that he can’t bring Jaya back to land due to dark past, Johar is forced to accept the boy as a worker on the site.
Faced with constant rejection from his father and relentless bullying by the other boys who work on the jermal, Jaya decides to take fate into his own hands. He gives up the hope of being accepted and learns the skills and attitude he needs to survive on the jermal. Jaya increasingly becomes like the other boys: tough, rough – a survivor, while Johar is gradually forced to face and accept his past. Eventually, both Johar and Jaya learn that they are bound by their past, united by the space in which they move, and connected by the inescapable truth. In the beginning, they meet as strangers, in the end, they leave as father and son.

World premiere
Pusan International Film Festival 2008, A Window on Asian Cinema

Festivals
Pusan International Film Festival 2008
Rotterdam International Film Festival 2009

Israel 2011
Director: Ra’anan Alexandrowicz
Producer: Liran Atzmor (Israel), Zero Fiction Film (Germany)
German WCF partner: Zero Fiction Film
World sales: Ro*Co Films International (USA)

Funded in the WCF jury session in June 2007
Funding amount: 40,000 €

Synopsis
Justice Must Be Seen is constructed from ten to twenty chronological episodes based on cases that were tried in military courts between 1967 and 2007.
Traveling through forty years of records of extraordinary legal trials, archival images and revealing personal recollections, the film will be the first documentary to open the Pandora’s box of the Israeli military courts, expose the mechanism of this alternative legal system and follow the changes and development of the system over the years.
Justice Must Be Seen tries to unearth Israel’s legal schizophrenia. This is accomplished by listening to the people who run the machine and have done so for the past forty years. Some of the individuals who came up in the military court system have become prominent figures in Israel’s legal arena, others moved as far from legal work as possible. They are all normal Israelis who came to work—some willingly, some without much choice—in an establishment that in essence manufactures thousands of years of Palestinian imprisonment on an ongoing basis.
By placing the words of the judges, defendants, prosecutors and attorneys alongside images of the reality outside the courtroom, the film travels through time and observes the changing terrain and the transformations in language and political ideas. This condensed account of the forty year evolution of Israeli occupation and Palestinian resistance, seen from a new perspective, will hopefully provide viewers with a new understanding of the events and currents behind the formally accepted landmarks of this painful piece of history.

Rights sold to
Israel

World premiere
Jerusalem Film Festival 2011

Key festivals and awards
Best Documentary Film, Jerusalem Film Festival 2011
Sundance International Film Festival 2012, World Cinema Competition

Kyrgyzstan 2010
Director: Aktan Arym Kubat (aka: Aktan Abdykalykov)
Production: A.S.A.P. Films Paris (France), Oy Art Production Bishkek (Kyrgyzstan)
German WCF partner: Pallas Films
World sales: The Match Factory (Germany)

Funded in WCF jury session in June 2006
Funding: 70,000 €

Synopsis
They call him “Svet-ake” (“Mr. Light”). The electrician is responsible for bringing more than just light to the people around him. Like moths, everybody is drawn to his kindness: those with short circuits in their electricity, and those with short circuits in their marriage, those who have taken all the power in the city, and those who have given up the will to live. He helps everyone and is everywhere. He doesn’t even shy from breaking the law, rewinding an old and lonely pensioner’s electricity meter so that he doesn’t owe the State, but rather the State owes him. The economic devastation of the country has had an enormous impact on the working people and yet despite the upheaval they have not lost the ability to love, to suffer, to share their lives with friends, and enjoy what they have …

World premiere
Cannes International Film Festival 2010, Quinzaine des Réalisateurs

Festivals
Locarno International Film Festival 2010
Toronto International Film Festival 2010
Sao Paolo International Film Festival 2010
Thessaloniki International Film Festival 2010
Doha Tribeca 2010

Argentina 2008
Director: Lisandro Alonso
Producers: Slot Machine (France), Fortuna Films (The Netherlands), 4 L (Argentina), Black Forest Films (Germany), Eddie Saeta (Spain)
German WCF Partner: Black Forest Films
World sales: The Match Factory (Germany)

Funded in the WCF-jury session in June 2006
Funding amount: 35,000 €

Synopsis
Farell is a 48 year-old man sailing back because he wants to find out if his mother is still alive, he is back since on the ocean nobody trusts him anymore. He is back to see, if it is possible to ask his mother for forgiveness. Perhaps that way he will finally be able to free himself from something that doesn’t let his head rest. Before leaving, he used to share the bed with his mother at night. As soon as he got home Farell used to pull down his pants and do it without even asking. Throughout the years, he worked in different places, on different ships; he drank until he fainted without caring at all where he was. And now he comes back to his home village and arrives at his mother’s house. However, she doesn’t talk anymore. Farell watches her without being seen; he spies on her until the coldness penetrates him and then decides to go in. There he also gets to know a new relative.

Director's Note
“What interests me in Liverpool – Farell – is what he gets from the world he lives in, his submission, his loneliness, his lack of motivation and his lack of hope that something might change, that his life might be different, that he might have the possibility of relating to someone without distrust. I would like to try and see what goes on in his head full of dark, blurred memories, hangovers and awakenings on floors splattered with wine, his body bearing wounds the origin of which he could not tell.”

World premiere
International Film Festival Cannes 2008, Official Programme, Quinzaine des Réalisateurs

Right sold to
Argentina, France, Germany, Mexico, The Netherlands, Spain

Key festivals and awards
Cannes Internationale Filmfestspiele 2008
Jerusalem International Film Festival 2008
Rio de Janeiro International Film Festival 2008
Filmfest Hamburg 2008
Vancouver International Film Festival 2008
Independent Film Festival Cracow 2008
Pusan International Film Festival 2008
Films Fra Sor South Festival Oslo 2008
London International Film Festival 2008
Vienna International Film Festival 2008
São Paolo International Film Festival 2008
Tallinn Black Nights International Film Festival 2008
Estoril International Film Festival 2008
Thessaloniki International Film Festival 2008
Gijón International Film Festival 2008

Argentina 2011
Director: Gustavo Taretto
Producers: Rizoma Films (Argentina), Pandora Film (Germany), Morena Films (Spain)
German WCF partner: Pandora Film
World sales: The Match Factory

Funded in the WCF jury meeting in June 2008
Funding amount: 50,000 €

Synopsis
Medianeras is the story of Mariana, Martin and the city of Buenos Aires.
Martin and Mariana live across from each other on the same block, but never meet. They pass each other, not knowing about the other’s existence. She goes up the stairs as he goes down the stairs; he gets on the bus just as she gets off the bus. They are at the same video club, but a video rack separates them; they are sitting in the same row at the cinema, but the room is dark. The city brings them together, and, at the same time, keeps them apart.

Director’s note
Medianeras is a short film that received 40 awards worldwide – a short film with a feature film hidden inside. Our aim is to bring the feature to light.
In the film El sol del Membrillo (Quince Tree of the Sun), Victor Erice reflects upon, among other things, Antonio López’s obsession with painting the tree that he had planted and seen growing in his garden. The tree changes with to the passing of time, the seasons, and especially with the shades of light.
Medianeras is my tree. I planted it over 4 years ago, and I’ve been watching it grow since then. Following the analogy with the painting, the short film unveils the gesture in the stroke, the artist’s palette, the trunk which holds it in place, the main branches and the colour of its leaves. Now, with the feature, comes the moment for going into detail, for exploring depth and hues, ambiguities and contradictions. The story changes in exactly the same way as the city that serves as its scenario: Buenos Aires. Some of the scenes wither away, while others bloom. The tree is strong and leafy. The fruit is ripe, brilliant and tasty.

Rights sold to
Andorra, Argentina, Austria, Chile, Germany, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland, Uruguay

World premiere
Berlin International Film Festival 2011, Panorama

Key festivals and awards
Golden Athena Best Film Award, Athens International Film Festival 2011
Award Rail d’Oc, Rencontres Cinémas d’Amérique Latine de Toulouse 2011
BAFICI 2011
Karlovy Vary International Film Festival 2011
BFI London Filmfestival 2011

Turkey 2008
Director: Semih Kaplanoglu
Producers: Kaplan Film (Turkey), Heimatfilm (Germany), Arizona Film (France)
German WCF partner: Heimatfilm
World sales: The Match Factory (Germany)

Funded in WCF jury session in June 2006
Funding: 50,000 €

Synopsis
Recent high school graduate Yusuf is uncertain about his future in the provincial countryside. Writing poetry is his greatest passion and some of his poems are starting to be published in obscure literary journals. But for the time being, he continues working in his single mother’s village milk business, also with an uncertain future. Up until now, Yusuf’s widowed mother Zehra has focused all her attention on her only son. Still a young and beautiful woman, Zehra is having a discreet relationship with the town station master. His mother’s affair and the fact that he has been named unfit for military service due to a childhood illness make Yusuf even more anxious about making the sudden jump toward manhood. Will young Yusuf be able to handle the changes in his peaceful existence? Can he survive on poetry and working alongside his mother in her small-time milk business? Or will he be forced to move to the big city?

World premiere
Venice International Film Festival 2008, Competition

Rights sold to
France, Germany, India, Poland, Turkey

Festivals
Venice International Film Festival 2008
Toronto International Film Festival 2008
Nantes Festival des 3 Continents 2008
International Film Festival Rotterdam 2008
Göteborg International Film Festival 2008
International Fajr Film Festival 2008
Pune International Film Festival 2009

Peru 2009
Director: Claudia Llosa
Producers: Wanda Vision / Oberon Cinematográfica (Spain), Vela Films (Peru)
German WCF partner: The Match Factory
World sales: The Match Factory (Germany)
German distributor: Neue Visionen Filmverleih

Funded in the WCF jury meetings in November 2006 and in November 2009
Production funding: 50,000 €
Distribution funding: 10,000 €

Synopsis
Fausta suffers from the "scared breast", a strange illness that is transmitted by mothers who have been raped or mistreated during their pregnancy or nursing period. The children of these women are irremediably infected by their milk and inherit a terrible atavistic fear. Fausta’s illness manifests itself in the form of haemorrhages or bleeding during moments of crisis or extreme tension. Fausta also keeps a secret she won’t reveal until her mother’s death will unleash a series of unexpected events that will change her life.

World premiere
Berlin International Film Festival 2009, Competition

Key festivals and awards
Golden Bear for the Best Film, Berlin International Film Festival 2009
Best Ibero-American Picture, Guadalajara International Film Festival 2009
Best Film Award, Best Director Award, Best Actress Award, Best Film Award of the Film Students Jury, Festival de Cinema de Gramado 2009
Nomination Academy Awards USA for Best Foreign Language Film 2010

Theatrical release in Germany
November 5, 2009

Argentina 2005
Director: Rodrigo Moreno
Producers: Rizoma Film (Argentina), Charivari Film (France), Pandora Film (Germany)
German WCF Partner: Pandora Film
World Sales: The Match Factory (Germany)

Funded in the WCF jury session in June 2005
Funding amount: 40,000 €

Synopsis
As a bodyguard, it’s Rubén’s duty to keep the Minister of Planning under constant surveillance. If the Minister gets out of the car, Rubén gets out of the car. If the Minister turns left, Rubén turns left. If the Minister goes to the country club with his family for the weekend, Rubén must follow along. If the Minister decides to rest and have a nap, Rubén must keep watch over the sleeping man.
Although Rubén must always be present, he must also go completely unnoticed. A shadow, Rubén witnesses everything from the sidelines, as if life was passing by some meters away from him. Yet, despite his insider’s view, he never understands clearly what’s going on, what’s being talked about, nor where the characters come from or go to.
Single Rubén is hardly even a protagonist in his own life. A lonely life, involving a mentally unstable sister and a ditzy niece, the sale of illegal arms and cheap prostitutes. Plus the monotonous routine of being a bodyguard and the occasional humiliation from the Minister or his family… Some jobs result in virtually replacing one life for another. Such pressure can ultimately explode. This is Rubén’s inevitable outcome.

World premiere
Berlin International Film Festival 2006, Competition

Awards (selection)
Alfred Bauer Prize, Berlin International Film Festival 2006
Best Film, Guadalajara 2006
Cine Ceara Brazil
Norwegian Film Institute´s Import Award, Bergen International Film Festival, Norway
"Horizontes" International Film Festival San Sebastián

Festivals (selection)
Berlin International Film Festival 2006
Alba Regia International Film Festival 2006
Rotterdam International Film Festival 2006
Karlovy Vary International Film Festival 2006
San Sebastián International Film Festival 2006
Santiago de Chile International Film Festival 2006
Ceara International Film Festival Brazil 2006
Bergen International Film Festival Norway 2006
Guadalajara International Film Festival 2006

Egypt 2012
Director: Safaa Fathy
Producers: TS Productions (France), ZERO Productions (Egypt), Docdays Productions (Germany)
German WCF partner: Docdays Productions

Funded in the WCF Jury meeting in July 2012
Funding amount: 30,000 €

Synopsis
My brother a Fathy lived all his life long next to the Nile. He was just as sick as the highly polluted river. He suffered from chronic kidney failure, which killed him. The film tells his story through his life, and after. It deals with the relationship to the body, tradition, religion, family, healing and survival within the context of revolutionary Egypt, whose revolution is precisely about the respect of human dignity and the body.

Director’s note
My brother Mohammad Fathy Hussein lived in Upper Egypt. He suffered from serious kidney failure. Why did Mohammad suffer from kidney failure? Because of the water. Egypt, known as “the gift of the Nile,” is now the gift of a sick river. Mohammad’s story also illustrates one of the great issues of our time: bioethics. The idea to do a film sprang from my powerlessness at seeing my brother wither away after he refused a kidney transplant. The film shows the dynamics of our story as an Egyptian family touched by these collective issues, and the means by which we try to rescue the youngest and the most beloved among us from perishing in the waters of his own body.

World premiere
Abu Dhabi Film Festival 2012

Key festivals and awards
Abu Dhabi Film Festival 2012

Peru
Director: Héctor Gálvez
Producers: Piedra Alada Producciones (Peru), MPM Films (France), Autentika Films (Germany), Septima Films (Colombia)
German WCF partner: Autentika Films
World sales: tbc

Funded in the WCF Jury meeting in July 2012
Funding amount: 40,000 €

Synopsis
The remains of a male body that disappeared during the years of political violence have been exhumed but are unclaimed. Now the only clue to identify him is the picture of a smiling girl found in his shirt. Only a blurred photograph, a snapshot of a time and a memory…

Director’s note
The finding of an unidentified body with only a picture in his shirt was a real case that I was told and happened at some exhumation sites carried out to investigate the killings that took place during the years of political violence in Peru. What sort of whim allowed a picture to be preserved for more than 20 years under the earth, when pieces of clothes are damaged over that time? The image of a blurred picture and the idea of the stubbornness not to disappear grew in my head. It’s not my intention to try to explain things. What I’m after is to focus on people, I want this story to be an elegy, a film about mourning and personal suffering, not only of the wife of a missing person, but also of a forensic anthropologist who is doing a job that consumes him little by little – a job that doesn’t give him any answers.

Argentina 2007
Director: Ariel Rotter
Producers: Aire Cine / Aquafilms (Argentina), Celluloid Dreams Productions (France), Selavy Filmproduktion (Germany)
German WCF Partner: Selavy Filmproduktion
World Sales: Celluloid Dreams (France)

Funded in the WCF-jury session in January 2005
Funding amount: 60,000 €

Synopsis
A run of the mill, one-day business trip to the country becomes another journey: Upon reaching his destination, Juan Desouza discovers that the man travelling at his side is dead. Secretly, almost like a game, he decides to adopt the dead man’s identity, inventing a profession for himself, finding a place to stay: the possibility of not returning.In his new days off, in a state of availability, the man undertakes, without knowing it, an adventure into nature, into the rediscovery of his tastes, his basic instincts, trying to grasp the idea that the life dealt out for him, and he chose to live, is not the only one possible. In Ariel Rotter's words: "Over the years, I believe that all of my films have been about the same subject. From my first short films to El Otro, I am always aware of the time allotted to us in life, and the question of what we do with this time preoccupies me."

World premiere
Berlin International Film Festival 2007 Competition

Awards
Winner of the Silver Bear (Grand Jury Prize for Best Film), Winner of the Silver Bear for Best Actor, Berlin International Film Festival 2007
Winner of the Audience Award, Fribourg International Film Festival 2007
Special Mention of Major of Trenciansek, Teplice Bratislava Int’l Art FilmFestival 2007
Winner of Best Film, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Photography, Best Sound Track, Special Mention Acting, Festival Cine Argentino Tandil 2007
Best Actor, Lima Latino American Film Festival 2007
Best Actor, Baja California Film Festival 2007
Best Script, Gijón International Film Festival 2007
Amakourou Award, Brugge Cinema Novo 2008
Best Director, Best Actor, Lleida Mostra de Cinema Latinoamericano 2008

Rights sold to
Belgium, Eastern Europe, France, Finland, Israel, Latin America, South Korea, Spain, Turkey

Festivals (selection)
Berlin International Film Festival 2007
Fribourg International Film Festival 2007
Guadalajara International Film Festival 2007
Bratislava Int’l Art FilmFestival 2007
Moscow International Film Festival 2007
Karlovy Vary Film Festival 2007
Jerusalem International Film Festival 2007
Lima Latino American Film Festival 2007
Ghent International Film Festival 2007
Rio de Janeiro International Film Festival 2007
Pusan International Film Festival 2007
London Film Festival 2007
Vienna Film Festival 2007
International Film Festival of India 2007
Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival 2007
Gijón International Film Festival 2007
Rotterdam International Film Festival 2008
Belgrade International Film Festival 2008
Miami International Film Festival 2008
Brugge Cinema Novo 2008
Hong Kong International Film Festival 2008
Copenhagen NAT 2008
New York Havana Film Festival 2008
Lleida Mostra de Cinema Latinoamericano 2008

Turkey 2008
Director: Yesim Ustaoğlu
Producers: Ustaoğlu Film Yapim (Turkey), Silkroad Production (France), Les Petites Lumières (France), Stromboli Pictures (Belgium), The Match Factory (Germany)
World sales: The Match Factory
German distributor: Kairos Film
Funded in the WCF jury meetings in June 2008 and in November 2009
Production funding: 25,000 €
Distribution funding: 8,000 €

Synopsis
Three 40-something siblings in Istanbul each receive a call one night: their aging mother has disappeared from her home on the western Black Sea coast of Turkey. The three meet and set out to find her, momentarily setting aside their individual problems. As the siblings come together, the tensions between them quickly become apparent, like a Pandora’s box spilling open.
They come to realize that they are very ignorant of each other, and are forced to reflect on their own shortcomings.

World premiere
Toronto International Film Festival 2008, Visions

Rights sold to
Bangladesh, Belgium, Bhutan, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Central America, Colombia, Croatia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, France, Germany, Greece, India, Japan, Kosovo, Latin America, Macedonia, Montenegro, Pakistan, Puerto Rico, Serbia, Slovenia, Spain, Sri Lanka, Turkey

Theatrical release in Germany
26 November 2009

Awards
Golden Shell for Best Film, Silver Shell for Best Actress, San Sebastián Film Festival 2008
Best Supporting Actress, Antalya Golden Orange Film Festival 2008
Best Actress Award, Amiens Film Festival 2008

Festivals
Toronto International Film Festival 2008
San Sebastián Film Festival 2008
Antalya Golden Orange Film Festival 2008
Amiens Film Festival 2008
Göteborg International Film Festival 2009

Palestine 2005
Director: Hany Abu-Assad
Producers: Augustus Film (The Netherlands), Razor Film (Germany), Lumen Films (France), Lama Films (Israel)
German WCF Partner: Razor Film
World Sales: Celluloid Dreams Distribution (France)

Funded in the WCF-jury session in January 2005
Funding amount: 30,000 €

Synopsis
Hany Abu-Assad has already taken a look at the madness of daily life in Jerusalem in his romantic drama about a young Palestinian woman’s search for a bridegroom, Rana's Wedding. Filmed exclusively in Palestinian territories, Paradise Now once again reveals just how tragic and abstruse are the consequences of the conflict in the Middle East.

The film revolves around two young Palestinian men – Khaled and Said – who have been friends since childhood. They are both recruited to carry out a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv. The two men are allowed to spend what is presumably their last night alive with their families. However, since absolute secrecy must be maintained and they can tell nobody of their mission, theirs can be no proper farewell.

The next morning, the men are brought to the border. The bombs have been attached to their bodies in such a way as to make them completely hidden from view. However, the operation does not go according to plan and the two friends lose sight of each other. Separated from each other and left to their own devices, it’s up to them to face their destiny and stand up for their convictions…

World premiere
Berlin International Film Festival 2005, Competition

Key festivals and awards
Screenwriter, Blue Angel Award, Berlin International Film Festival 2005
Toronto International Film Festival 2005
New York International Film Festival 2005
Nominated for an Academy Award for the Best Foreign Language Film 2006
Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film 2006

Chile 2012
Director: Esteban Larraín
Producer: Piranha Films (Chile), Tchin Tchin Productions (France), Cine-Ojo (Argentina), Oliver Röpke Filmproduktion (Germany)
German WCF partner: Röpke Films

Funded in the WCF Jury meeting in November 2010
Funding amount: 40,000 €

Synopsis
Chile, 1983. The first street protests pose a dangerous threat to Pinochet’s military government. The regime responds through a secret operation in order to divert public opinion. They pick a 14-year old street child called Miguel Angel, who swears he can see and talk to the Virgin Mary herself, and they turn him into a pop prophet. His tormented face starts to be reproduced in all the media, and in just a few weeks hundreds of thousands of people make a pilgrimage to Peñablanca, the village where Miguel Angel lives, to participate in ceremonies where prophecies, stigmata, levitations and miracles of all kinds are part of the usual routine.
During the period of the hoax, Miguel Angel himself goes through a deep transformation. From being a fragile and shy kid, he becomes a clever and capricious teenager who uses his “divine gift” to manipulate his environment to his advantage. When the church investigates and finally resolves to ban the cult of the Virgin of Peñablanca, the government leaves the boy to his fate. Even if he tries hard to keep his seat of honour, Miguel Angel cannot avoid suffering a biblical fall: he is humiliated, abandoned and banished.

Director’s note
I was 10 when Miguel Angel (14) began to see the Virgin. It was a time of politicalprotests. I remember the images on the television showing those thousands of people forming endless lines to reach the hill where the Virgin Mary was supposed to appear. And, at the top, the magnetic presence of Miguel Angel, who seemed to levitate in celestial ecstasy. Twenty five years had to go by for the protagonists of this story to confess the obvious: a huge hoax, an elaborate manipulation of popular faith.
Miguel Angel, the illiterate orphan who kept government and church on tenterhooks for years, lived his entire life as a passion. He was pulled out of the mud, anointed as prophet and adored by the crowd. Once in heaven, he sinned by lust and vanity. It would be that same crowd that would pull him down from his pedestal, humiliate him and make him to carry a heavy cross for the rest of his life.
This story, absurd and tragic, exaggerated and dark, reveals us as people in need of affection, recognition, existence; ready to give in, without further questioning, to luminous promises – paradise, development, the football World Cup. Over and over, we wake up, ashamed of our atavistic naivety and cruelty.

Lebanon 2005
Directors: Khalil Joreige and Joana Hadjithomas
Producers: Abbout Productions (Lebanon), Mille et une Production (France), Twenty Twenty Vision (Germany)
German WCF partner: Twenty Twenty Vision
World Sales: Celluloid Dreams Distribution (France)

Funded in the WCF jury session in January 2005
Funding amount: 35,000 €

Synopsis
A perfect 24 hours in modern-day Beirut, a day in which Claudia is finally ready to come to terms with her husband’s disappearance 15 years earlier while her son, the narcoleptic Malek, searches the chaotic streets for his own lost love, Zeina. Moving between the old and the new and existing in an emotional void, Claudia and Malek are dislocated and numbed by the trauma of the Lebanese Civil War in which 17,000 vanished. As Beirut’s past is interrupted by its future, this is a perfect day to end the harrowing wait, to put old ghosts to rest and to search for a new future while not forgetting the past.

World premiere
Locarno International Film Festival 2005, Competition

Awards
Winner of FIPRESCI Award, Federation of Film Societies and the Don Quijote Award, Locarno International Film Festival 2005
Winner of the Special Mention of the Jury and of the Bayard d’Or for Best Actor Ziad Saad, Namur Francophone Fest 2005
Winner of the Mongolfière d’Argent, Prix de la Création Musicale, Prix du Meilleur Acteur in Nantes Festival des 3 Continents 2005
Winner of the Prix d’Aide à la Distribution, Belfort 2005
Winner of the Best Director Award, Muscat International Film Festival 2006

Festivals (selection)
Locarno International Film Festival 2005
Tribeca International Film Festival 2006
Toronto Discovery International Film Festival 2005
Athens International Film Festival 2005
Montreal New Cinema 2005
London International Film Festival 2005
Tokyo Filmex 2005
Nantes Festival des 3 Continents 2005
Dubai International Film Festival 2005
Reykjavik International Film Festival 2005
Rotterdam International Film Festival 2006
Alba Infinity Festival 2006
Istanbul International Film Festival 2006
Hong Kong International Film Festival 2006
Seattle International Film Festival 2006
Sydney International Film Festival 2006
Munich International Film Festival 2006

Guatemala 2012
Director: Julio Hernández Cordón
Producers: Melindrosa Films (Guatemala), Tic Tac Producciones (Spain), Fábula (Chile)
German Producer: Autentika

Funded in the WCF jury meeting in July 2011
Funding amount: 30,000 €

Synopsis
Carla and Luciano are a happy couple. One day Luciano takes one of his usual working trips. Following a sudden intuition, Clara decides to go with him at the last moment but cannot. Days go by and Clara does not hear from her husband. She immediately senses that something abnormal has happened because during his trips he is constantly in contact with her.
She starts looking for information regarding his whereabouts. Her desperation increases until she decides to travel to the south of Argentina to where he is supposed to have travelled. A perplexing discovery awaits her: she finds Luciano – or someone just like him – leading a different life and married to another woman. From that moment on, Clara will develop a series of strategies to get close to this man, to have him and go back to her previous life.

Director’s Note
My narrative intention is to expose certain wounds that did not heal in Guatemala. I am most interested in what happens to my characters, even to the supporting characters, which are distant and confused as they are the result of a historical and political time. This film is about revenge, fatherhood and family in a time with a postwar atmosphere.

Argentina 2006
Director: Sandra Gugliotta
Producers: El Angel Films and 16M (Argentina), fieber.film (Germany)
German WCF partner: fieber.film
World sales: Primer Plano Film Group (Argentina)

Funded in the WCF jury meeting in June 2005
Funding amount: 60,000 €

Synopsis
Carla and Luciano are a happy couple. One day Luciano takes one of his usual working trips. Following a sudden intuition, Clara decides to go with him at the last moment but cannot. Days go by and Clara does not hear from her husband. She immediately senses that something abnormal has happened because during his trips he is constantly in contact with her.
She starts looking for information regarding his whereabouts. Her desperation increases until she decides to travel to the south of Argentina to where he is supposed to have travelled. A perplexing discovery awaits her: she finds Luciano – or someone just like him – leading a different life and married to another woman. From that moment on, Clara will develop a series of strategies to get close to this man, to have him and go back to her previous life.

World premiere
Locarno International Film Festival 2007, International Competition

Awards
C.I.C.A.E. Award – Special Mention, Locarno International Film Festival 2007
Best Actress, Festival Latinoamericano de Ceará 2008
Global Film Initiative 2008

Festivals (selection)
BAFICI 2007
Cannes International Film Festival 2007
Tucumán Cine 2007
Locarno International Film Festival 2007
Festival de Lima 2007
SANFIC 2007
International Film Festival Film by the Sea 2007
Mostra Internacional de Cinema, São Paulo Internacional Film Festival 2007
Flanders International Film Festival, Ghent 2007
World Film Festival of Bangkok 2007
Nantes Festival des 3 Continents 2007
Festival de Cine Iberoamericano de Huelva 2007
Cairo International Film Festival 2007
Festival Internacional del Nuevo Cine Latinoamericano, Havana 2007

Chile 2012
Director: Pablo Larraín
Producers: Fabula (Chile), Canana (Mexico), Autentika Films (Germany)
German WCF partner: Autentika Films
World sales: Funny Ballons (France)

Funded in the WCF Jury meeting in June 2009
Funding amount: 50,000 €

Synopsis
Mario, 55, works in a morgue typing autopsy reports. In the midst of the 1973 Chilean coup, he fantasizes about his neighbour Nancy, a cabaret dancer, who mysteriously disappears on September the 11th. After a violent Army raid on her family’s home, he hears about the arrest of her brother and father, a prominent Communist and Salvador Allende supporter. Troubled and madly passionate over the loss of his would-be lover, Mario begins his frantic search for Nancy.

Director’s note
“To go back to the past. To rebuild the scene. To live again what has been lived. To rethink what has been thought. To find in the past today’s significance”. Post Mortem responds to the need to keep on exploring the same path I began with Tony Manero. I feel like I have found a way of approaching a human and cinematographic perspective that resounds very strongly within me, and that has somehow touched both my own country’s and the foreign audience. Even though Tony Manero and Post Mortem are very different movies – both are rooted on opposite narrative and audiovisual treatments – they both meet in the same human and ethical perspective which I found valuable and worthwhile rescuing. These are stories of small men and their minimal conflicts, both of them inserted into big moments of Chile’s recent history.

World premiere:
Venice International Film Festival 2010, Official Competition

Awards:
Winner of the FIPRESCI Award 2010
Winner of Silver Coral for Best Film 2010
Best Actor Award, Best Actress Award 2010, Best Script Award, Festival International del Nuevo Cine Latinoamericano La Habana 2010

Festivals:
Venice International Film Festival 2010
San Sebastian Film Festival 2010
New York Film Festival 2010
Festival International del Nuevo Cine Latinoamericano La Habana 2010
International History Film Festival, Pessac 2010 France
Rotterdam International Film Festival 2011

Mexico 2011
Director: Paula Markovitch
Producers: Kung Works (Mexico), Mille et une productions (France), Staron Films, IZ Films, Altamira Films (Spain), NiKo Film (Germany)
German WCF Partner: NiKo Films

Funded in the WCF Jury meeting in July 2010
Funding Amount: 50,000 €

Synopsis
The sea takes away the windows and the door. It’s such fun. I’m eight years old and I’m not afraid, on the contrary. When there’s a rising tide it’s better because I can play pirates. The sea passes by below my house. My dog Captain barks at the waves as if they were animals like him.
Through my window I can see how the sea takes away another cabin of the nearest beach-front kiosk. The sea doesn’t scare me. It’s gray and yellow. Why is it that everyone thinks the sea is blue? The sea takes the roof away. The sea takes away a table and three steps. It’s fun. If the rising tide is very strong, the sea could tear my house apart, although the house is bigger than the last one, it’s also made of wood, like every beach-front kiosk in San Clemente. It’s just a tide. There are much worse things, like the time the soldiers came. I wasn’t afraid. Even though I knew where the books were hidden, and where was my dad’s friend was hidden, inside a closed beach-front kiosk bathroom, the one that smells bad.
The soldiers have already killed my cousin. There is a famished dog who wanders the beach, dragging his leg. Some soldiers wounded him, just to practice target shooting. Everytime I see him, it reminds me of my cousin. I wonder if it hurt her when they killed her.
I don’t know why, but I know that some day the sea will take my house away. And there’ll be nothing left, not the dishes, or nor the clothes or nor my parents. I’m gonna stay alone in the middle of the wind, without shoes, roof, table, without my dog. That will happen, but I’m not scared of anything. I shouldn’t be afraid. It’s better to play pirates, taking advantage of the rising tide and the fact that the house looks like a ship. My mom is so afraid. I’m not. The sea takes the door away and tears it apart.

World premiere
Berlin International Film Festival 2011, Official Programme, Competition

Festivals & Awards
Berlin International Film Festival 2011, Competition
Silver Bear for Outstanding Artistic Achievement in the Category Camera and Production Design 2011

Jordan 2007
Documentary
Director: Mahmoud Al Massad
Producers: iSee Film (Jordan, Netherlands), mec film (Germany), Jo Film (Jordan)
German WCF partner and distributor: mec film
World sales: Wide Management (France)

Supported during the WCF jury session in November 2006 and in June 2008
Production Funding: 30,000 €
Distribution Funding 10,000 €

Synopsis
What makes a terrorist? In Zarqa, Jordan’s second largest city with a population of nearly one million, it is a much-debated question. Zarqa’s political Islamists are a powerful force in this industrial center, and Zarqa was the birthplace of Abu Musa al Zarqawi, a brutal Al Qaeda leader in Mesopotamia before being killed by American forces in 2005. Al Zarqawi was well-known in the city and many of his family members remain, making Zarqawi a continual source of new recruits to the Jihadist cause. Inspired by his reporting on al Zarqawi and Al Quaeda for international news agencies, filmmaker al Massad returned to Zarqa, where he grew up, to make Recycle. With ravishing cinematography that belies the unforgiving landscape, Jordanian-Palestinian filmmaker Mahmoud al Massad charts the daily life of a religious Islamic man trying to survive in one of Zarqa’s poorest neighborhoods. In a deceptively calm manner, the film slowly unravels the hidden agents of terrorism: poverty, humiliation, lack of opportunity and religious doctrine define the daily rhythms of a man and his family, all against the backdrop of an era when jihad that spans the globe. Unlike what is insinuated by the daily bombardment of dramatic headlines about Islam and the war on terror, Recycle suggests that evil acts can emerge from the most ordinary of circumstances.

World premiere
Dubai International Film Festival 2007, Muhr Awards, Official Competition for Documentaries

Awards
Cinema in Motion Award, San Sebastián International Film Festival Work in Progress 2007
World Cinema Cinematography Award, Documentary – Sundance Film Festival 2008
Special Mention – Planete Doc Review, Warsaw Documentary FilmFestival 2008

Festivals
Dubai International Film Festival 2007
Sundance Film Festival 2008
International Film Festival Rotterdam 2008
Fribourg Film Festival 2008
Guadalajara International Film Festival 2008
BAFICI 2008
Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival 2008
San Francisco International Film Festival 2008
Yerevan International Film Festival 2008
Rio de Janeiro International Film Festival 2008
Vienna International Film Festival 2008
Ayam Beirut Al Cinema'iya (Les Journées Cinématographiques de Beyrouth) 2008

Argentina
Director: Diego Lerman
Producers: Campo Cine (Argentina), 27 Films (Germany)
German WCF partner: 27 Films
World sales: tbc

Funded in the WCF Jury meeting in July 2012
Funding amount: 40,000 €

Synopsis
Dressed in a Spiderman costume, fouryear-old Matías arrives at a women’s shelter with his mother Laura, and Tito, his little plastic dinosaur. They spend two days at the shelter, adapting to new rules of cohabitation and coming across many discoveries. Laura decides to leave the shelter, to set out and rebuild her broken family. With Matías, she begins a whirlwind tour through the city, where things once familiar now pose a threat. In this film, which is part-thriller and part-domestic road movie, strange characters and situation are triggers, always reflected through the eyes of Matías, for whom reality has unexpectedly turned into a true mystery. Slowly, Matías comes to term with the deep transformation of his world and all that is around him.

Director’s note
Refugiado is an urban road movie and a sort of domestic thriller at the same time. It’s a living, simple and very emotional film. Furthermore, it’s a film about relationships, about differences, and the powerlessness that comes from not being able to resolve one’s conflicts through mutual understanding. This film’s not about big drama. It’s a road story, an escape, a get-away towards the future, with elements of humour and most of all, a crisp and lively presence of humanity. There will also be a constant tension, a thriller-like undertone which will generate suspense. I plan to be there on the set with the camera ready to catch and capture the treasure of the innocent.

Mongolia
Director: Byamba Sakhya
Producers: Guru Media (Mongolia), Majade (Germany)
German WCF partner: Majade
World sales: tbc

Funded in the WCF Jury meeting in November 2012
Funding amount: 30,000 €

Synopsis
This is the story of Tsog, a runaway boy who longs to control his dream world and harsh reality with the help of a stolen remote control. Tsog and his little brother Tulga are growing up in a loveless home with a bitter stepmother and a drunken father. To support his family, Tsog resells the neighbor’s milk in the city. His only survival is to retreat inside his imaginary world. And he constantly draws pictures of his favorite hero – a young monk. He finds joy and pleasure in observing other people’s lives. What begins as an innocent game turns gradually into obsession and Tsog starts focusing on a beautiful young woman, Anu, living opposite his little nest. Just like Tsog, she seems to be longing for affection and care, wandering through memories and dreaming of future happiness. But growing up from his dream and fantasy world Tsog decides to face the reality in the end. He saves Anu’s flat from a robbery using the remote control for the last time.

Director’s note
Remote Control is clearly a story of two people – a teenage boy Tsog and a young beautiful woman, Anu. The theme emerging through both Anu’s and Tsog’s storylines is control. Both of them have been trying to control their own lives - symbolically being able to fly above the circumstances of their lives.

Algeria, 2006
Director: Teguia Tariq
Producers: Neffa Films (Algeria), INA (France), Flying Moon Filmproduktion (Germany)
German WCF Partner: Flying Moon Filmproduktion
World Sales: Neffa Films (Algeria)

Funded in the WCF jury session in January 2005
Funding amount: 40,000 €

Synopsis
For more than 10 years a “slow war” is going on in Algeria. A war without battlefields, but with more than 100.000 people killed. It is the wilderness that Zina and Kamel – two youngsters, bewildered and merry, gloomy and undisturbed – want to traverse for the last time, before leaving elsewhere. Without a passport, and therefore without a visa, Kamel has to find a smuggler. Along with the entertaining Zina, they walk the streets of Algiers and its suburbs looking for Bosco, the sailor who makes a business out of transporting people to Europe. Bosco seems to be everywhere – except for the places where Kamel looks for him.

World premiere
Venice International Film Festival 2006, Orizzonti

Awards
“Everyday Life – Transcendence or Reconciliation“ – Award, Thessaloniki International Film Festival 2006
Special Jury Award, Fribourg Film Festival 2007
Prix Janine Bazin, Prix d’interprétation, Festival du Film Belfort 2007

Festivals
Thessaloniki International Film Festival 2006
Rotterdam International Film Festival 2007
FICCO Mexico 2007
Fribourg International Film Festival 2007
New Directors / New Films, MoMA 2007
San Francisco International Film Festival 2007
Istanbul International Film Festival 2007
Festival du Film Belfort 2007
Beirut International Film Festival 2008

Syria
Director: Meyar Al Roumi
Producers: Bizibi (France), Collage Film Production (Egypt), Belle Epoque Film (Germany)
German Producer: Belle Epoque Films GmbH

Funded in the WCF jury session in July 2011
Funding amount: 30,000 €

Synopsis
Damascus, Syria, nowadays. A taxi drives into a traffic jam. Walid, at the steering wheel, is a student and a part-time taxi driver. Souhaire, a roguish young woman, sits in the back seat of the cab. She is not a mere customer, she is Walid’s girlfriend.
The two lovers drive out of the city in search of an isolated place. As they are not married, they must hide to share intimate moments. Walid parks the cab. They start kissing but a car parks nearby and they must stop. Souhaire is fed up with their furtive meetings. She mentions a friend from high school, Sulmaze, who lives in Teheran. Why not visit her? That way, she and Walid could spend time together far from Damascus. Walid is surprised but accepts. They embark on a train to Iran…

Director’s Note
With Round Trip, I hope to tackle universal feelings about love through a particular couple story. And I built the particularities of the story in order to expose aspects of the life of the Syrian middle class, a class which must find ways to adapt in front of moral imperatives of the tradition.

Kyrgyzstan 2005
Director: Ernest Abdyshaparov
Producers: Kyrgyzfilm Studio (Kyrgyzstan), Coin Film and Viet Filmproduktion (Germany)
German WCF Partner: Coin Film
World Sales: MDC International, Germany

Funded in the WCF jury session in January 2005
Funding amount: 15,000 €

Synopsis
Kyrghyz director Ernest Abdyshaparov’s feature film debut uses an episodic form to tell a number of stories about the inhabitants of a small Kirghiz village during the ten years following the end of the Soviet Union. These are tragicomic tales of politics and religion, tradition and modernity, pride and honour. Everyone in the village is up in arms because pensions are not being paid, money is not flowing as it should and everyone is determined to feather their own nest, even resorting to underhand dealings, if need be. There are still die-hard Communists in the village, and cattle thief Tashmat is still going about his business on a regular basis – which means that village policeman Salamat has plenty to do trying to track him down.
It’s plain to all the villagers that nothing in life seems to have very much to do with what is right and just any more and they express as much to their village administrator, Kabylbek. They don’t have much faith in a better future, nor do they particularly believe in a just God. Regardless of what Allah or Jehova might think, the villagers decide they’d rather devote themselves to earthly pleasures. However, in spite of all their bitter complaining and their nostalgia, life seems to go on as usual; some managing to take great advantage of the situation and others less so. Then comes the surprising and shocking news that the cattle thief has finally been hunted down by the village policeman; moreover, unable to bear the humiliation of his capture, he has committed suicide. Community spirit is put to the test as the headman struggles to keep his village in one piece.

World premiere
Berlin International Film Festival 2005, Panorama

Awards
L’ étoile d’Or / The Golden Star – Grand Prix – Marrakech International Film Festival 2005

Other festivals (selection)
Fribourg International Film Festival 2005
Filmfest Emden 2005
Split Film Festival 2005
Rio de Janeiro International Film Festival 2005
International Film Festival Eurasia, Turkey 2005
International Film Festival Eurasia (Kasachstan) 2005
Kinoblick 2005 - Tage des russischen Films Stuttgart / Berlin
Pusan International Film Festival 2005
Mill Valley Film Festival 2005
Warsaw International Film Festival 2005
Haifa International Film Festival 2005
London International Film Festival 2005
Sao Paulo International Film Festival 2005
Internationales Filmfest Braunschweig 2005
Asiaticafilmmediale Rom 2005
Osteuropäische Filmtage Göttingen 2005
Eurasia II International Film Festival, Almaty 2005
Singapore International Film Festival 2006

South Africa 2009
Director: Oliver Hermanus
Producers: DV8 Films (South Africa), Centropolis Entertainment Inc (USA), London Film School (United Kingdom), Pandora Films (Germany)
German WCF partner: Pandora Films
World sales: Visit Films (USA)

Funded in the WCF Jury meeting in June 2009
Funding amount: 25,000 €

Synopsis
Shirley Adams spends her days caring for her disabled son, Donovan – he was shot in the back of the neck on his way home from school one afternoon over a year ago. Since then the Adams family have lost all their worldly possessions to medical bills. Shirley has no money, no job and no husband – he left without a trace months ago. Shirley’s life now consists of trying to make ends meet by shoplifting and relying on the charity of others. Then a young, eager occupational therapist, Tasmin Ranger, comes into their lives. Shirley hopes that this might lift her son’s spirits and finally put them on the path to some form of stability. At the same time Shirley receives a phone call one afternoon informing her that Donovan’s case is finally going to trial, but the glory is short-lived when Shirley discovers that the gunman is one of Donovan’s childhood friends. Her reaction to the betrayal is so overwhelming that she chooses not to tell Donovan for fear of further damaging his already unstable emotional state. Determined to make a change in their lives, Shirley actively decides to embrace their new circumstances, hoping that Donovan will follow her example. But his mental state continues to deteriorate and Tasmin is unsuccessful in distracting him from his ever-present disability. Shirley is eventually left without trace of the family she once had. Set in Mitchell’s Plain, Cape Town, Shirley Adams story is symptomatic of the relationship between violence and poverty – the destruction of an entire family is related to one single incident that cannot be erased or repaired. Riddled with the sociopolitical and racial tensions that plague these Cape Flats slums, Shirley Adams is the story of one woman’s amazing strength and self-sacrifice.

World premiere
Durban International Film Festival 2009

Awards
Best Actress, Best Editor, Dubai International
Film Festival 2009; Best SA Feature Film, Best First
Feature Film, Best Actress, Durban International Film Festival 2009
Best Actress, Reunion Festival 2009

Festivals (selection)
Durban International Film Festival 2009
Locarno International Film Festival 2009
Toronto International Film Festival 2009
Rio International Film Festival 2009
London Film Festival 2009
Mumbai International Film Festival 2009
Dubai International Film Festival 2009
Rotterdam International Film Festival 2010
Dubai International Film Festival 2010
Palm Springs International Film Festival 2010
Goteborg International Film Festival 2010
Film Festival Cines Del Sur 2010
Carthage Film Festival 2010

Mexico 2007
Director: Carlos Reygadas
Producers: Mantarraya Producciones / NoDream Cinema (Mexico), BAC Films International (France), Motel Films (The Netherlands), The Match Factory (Germany)
German WCF partner: The Match Factory
World sales: BAC Films International (France)

Funded in WCF jury session in June 2006
Funding amount: 35,000 €

Synopsis
Johan and his family are Menonites in the North of Mexico. Against the law of God and men, Johan falls in love with another woman.

Director's Note
“When I was working on the project development of this film, I wrote a long text about its content and its artistic concept. Now that I have filmed it, I’ve been invited to say something again: I have declined, as I feel anything said will be conceptual and thus false.”

World premiere
Cannes International Film Festival 2007, Competition

Awards
Winner of the Jury Prize, Cannes International Film Festival 2007
Best Film, Best Director, International Critic Award, Best Photography, Lima Latino American Film Festival 2007
Winner of the Golden Colon – Best Film, Huelva Latin American Film Festival 2007
Best Script, Film Festival Stockholm 2007
Best Foreign Film, Bergen International Film Festival 2007
FIPRESCI Award, Rio de Janeiro 2007
Winner of the Golden Hugo, Chicago International Film Festival 2007
Best Director, Best Film, Best Photography, Best Audio, Festival Internacional del Nuevo Cine Latinoamericano, Havana 2007
Nominated for an Academy Award (Oscar) for the Best Foreign Language Film 2007

Festivals (selection)
Cannes International Film Festival 2007
Toronto International Film Festival 2007
Rio De Janeiro International Film Festival 2007
The New York Film Festival 2007
Chicago International Film Festival 2007
Pusan International Film Festival 2007
The Times BFI 51st London Film Festival
AFI – Los Angeles International Film Festival 2007
Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival 2007
Stockholm International Film Festival 2007
Festival Internacional del Nuevo Cine Latinoamericano – La Habana 2007
Lima Latin American Film Festival 2007

Israel 2011
Director: Hagar Ben Asher
Producers: Transfax Films (Israel), Sophie Dulac Productions (France), Rohfilm (Germany)
German WCF partner: Rohfilm

Funded in the WCF Jury meeting in November 2009
Funding amount: 50,000 €

Synopsis
Tamar is 35 years old, proud and pretty and runs the village’s chicken farm. She no longer seeks redemption. Her behaviour is stuck. One man after another, a hand job, a blow job, and so on and on. She is also the mother of two girls, Mika (12) and Noa (8). On a gloomy wintry day a sweet man arrives in the village one who might comes to her rescue. Shai, a 38-year-old handsome veterinarian, comes to the village in order to sell his dead mother´s property. They meet. Shai, who hasn’t been to the village for years, is unaware that Tamar is still up to her old behaviour. Quickly enough, he reveals her way.
He doesn’t care. They fall in love. They become a couple rather quickly. He moves into his mother’s house, wishing to be as close as possible, the girls love him, he loves them back, and it all seems to be possible. Tamar stops her messing around. She gets pregnant, wishing to maintain this stability. But for Tamar it is not so simple to give up on her men … especially when they feel her drifting-away. Tamar is lost. She starts alienating herself from Shai and the girls, passing all domestic maternal responsibilities over to Shai. And she goes back to her path, tempting her forsaken lovers to want her again – only this time she makes it for Shai to see. He sees. He forgives. Tamar can’t bear his forgiveness and she has an abortion. Shai neglects his sick animals and narrows his entire being to surrounding and protecting the girls. They grow closer and closer while Tamar flows further away. The intimacy between Shai and the girls is growing. Tamar pays no notice. The thin boundaries between them become vague … Though not for Shai … who finds his erection to be as tangible as his repression. Shai sexually abuses Noa, the younger one of the girls. Tamar finds out by chance. Tamar relinquishes her motherhood, her womanhood and her life. Shai relinquishes his freedom. The girls remain lonely, raped and hurt. With a sealed future and a hard lesson. A warning they can now pass on to their own children …

Director’s note
Sex, violence, religion, motherhood, and the one thing which unites them all together – guilt – are the primal resources of this film. By combining these “pornographic” elements, a story of a family where the sexual abuse is metaphorically similar to a DNA thread will be told. This cheerful sympathetic Israeli village setting for a journey where a man full of fear is having his ego shattered and a woman so lonely realises she can show mercy and compassion only after destroying the good within the ones surrounding her. With a clear view, this film shows no victims and no desperate psychological motivations, just a physical animalistic being.

World premiere
Cannes International Film Festival 2011, Semaine de la Critique

Theatrical release in Germany
March, 29th, 2012

Key festivals and awards
Cannes International Film Festival 2011
International Women’s Film Festival Israel 2011

Chile 2008
Director: José Luis Torres Leiva
Producers: Jirafa Films (Chile), Charivari Films (France), Rommel Film (Germany)
German WCF partner: Rommel Film
Word sales: Memento Films International (France)

Supported during the WCF-Jury session in November 2006
Funding amount: 40,000 €

Synopsis
The life of four solitary persons that live throughout the routine and silence in the south. They gather to eat, stroll by the beach, be transported in the ferry or simply carry along each other without saying a word. To a certain extent, they attempt to save themselves in a silent, furtive, extreme manner. They search for love, sex, non-existent family ties, private space and time not only to detach from the solitude that intimately constitutes them but rather, to finally find themselves. An absolutely visual, atmospheric movie where human being and landscape fuse. Solitude and isolation portrayed not as a negative consequence, but as an internal process of learning.

World premiere
Rotterdam International Film Festival 2008

Awards
FIPRESCI Prize, Rotterdam International Film Festival 2008
Special Jury Prize, The Jeonju International Film Festival 2008
Best Film, FICCO Mexico 2008

Festivals
The Jeonju International Film Festival 2008
FICCO Mexico 2008
Transilvania International Film Festival 2008
BAFICI 2008; Bucharest Film Festival 2008
Paris Cinema 2008; Warsaw Latin American Film Festival 2008
Sydney International Film Festival 2008
Midnight Sun Film Festival 2008
Munich International Film Festival 2008
Bratislava Artfilm 2008
Jerusalem International Film Festival 2008
Sydney Film Festival 2008
Warsaw New Horizons 2008
Durban International Film Festival 2008
Brisbane International Film Festival 2008
Locarno Fim Festival 2008
Lima Film Festival 2008
New York Latin Beat 2008
AFI Latin American 2008
Festival de Rio de Janeiro 2008
Vladivostok Film Festival 2008
Bogota Bogociné 2008
Montreal Nouveau Cinéma 2008
Quito Film Festival 2008
Chicago International Film Festival 2008
London Film Festival 2008
World Film Festival of Bangkok 2008
Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival 2008
Thessaloniki International Film Festival 2008
Gijon International Film Festival 2008
Bratislava International Film Festival 2008
Cineuropa Santiago de Compostela 2008
Cine Ambigu 2009
Adelaide Film Festival 2009

Kazakhstan 2008
Director: Marat Saralu
Producers: Kino Company (Kazakhstan), Rohfilm (Germany), Kinoproba (Russia), Arizona Films (France)
German WCF Partner: Rohfilm

Funded in the WCF jury session in October 2005
Funding amount: 80,000 €

Synopsis
Ivan is Russian and his neighbour Assan is Kazakh. Both live side by side in a small Kazakh Village. When Ivan’s wife gives birth to a “brown” boy, Ivan suspects that she has been cheating on him with Assan. Later Assan’s wife gives birth to a ginger boy. Now Assan accuses her of adultery. Both fathers agonise over the alienation of their sons alike. Finally Ivan sets off to see his grandfather on the other side of the border and discovers the true story of his family. Assan also disappears to roam aimlessly through Mongolia. Ivan learns that generations ago his family had nomadic ancestors. Assan comes to terms with himself and the world on his journey to the Southern seas. In the end one thing is clear: after generations of love and hatred they are all somehow related to each other, Russians with Kazakhs, Christians with Muslims, Europeans with Asians.

Director's Note
“My story is a reflection upon issues created by our cultural and ethnical sense of belonging. The inside logic of the story drove me to realise that classifications are childish and dangerous illusions which lead one to fear, hostility and oppression.”

World premiere
Eurasia Film Festival 2008

Awards
Prize for the Best Lead Actress, Eurasia Film Festival 2008
NETPAC Award, Audience Award, Asiaticafilmmediale Rome 2008

Festivals
Eurasia Film Festival 2008
Pusan International Film Festival 2008
FilmFestival Cottbus 2008
Asiaticafilmmediale Rome 2008
Nantes Festival des 3 Continents 2008
International Film Festival Rotterdam 2009

Colombia 2010
Director: Rubén Mendoza
Producers: Día Fragma Fábrica de Películas and Laberinto Producciones (Colombia), Ciné Sud Promotion (France), El Baile Films (Spain), Dagstar Film (Germany)
German WCF partner: Dagstar Film

Funded in the WCF jury meeting in June 2008
Funding amount: 50,000 €

Synopsis
Stoplights are hell for the people forced out of the countryside to beg in the city. One of them, Raul, a recycler alienated through his desire for absolute freedom and drugs, is set on using his cleverness to control the red traffic lights so that the street artists and vendors working at the lights can perform longer. This resembles his chaotic existence which turns into an ode to anarchy, despair and insanity.

Director’s Note
"I always insist, when introducing this film, that it is not political. No more than it may naturally be. It is not an attempt to redeem or explain the Third World to the First. I am neither an anthropologist nor a social worker. I am drawn to stories through the revelations; I offer my head, heart and eyes. I discovered a kind of social pyramid that existed among people living on the street, that reproduces the one familiar to us, with all its easily identifiable strata: traveling salesmen, jugglers, artists, window washers, cripples and recyclers. The recycling world is generally linked to the world of street drugs, especially crack or bazuco. I don’t feel I approached it with an apologetic or pitiful eye, especially as I began my discovery of this world. Many foreigners completely changed the course of their destiny after passing through Colombia and becoming entangled in its streets."

World premiere
Cali International Film Festival 2010

Key festivals and awards
Prize of the Jury, Cali Film Festival 2010
Prize of the city of Amiens for best director, Amiens Film Festival 2010
Prize of the Jury, Huelva Film Festival 2010

Brazil 2006
Director: Karim Ainouz
Producers: Videofilmes and Fado Filmes (Brazil), Celluloid Dreams (France), Shotgun Pictures (Germany)
German WCF partner: Shotgun Pictures
World Sales: Celluloid Dreams (France)

Funded in the WCF jury session in January 2005
Funding amount: 25,000 €

Synopsis
Young and pretty Hermila returns to her small town, her baby son in her arms. The big city was fun, but it was too expensive. She’ll wait for her husband to come and make a better life for them in the provinces. Hermila finds comfort back home with her grandmother and aunt Maria. She quickly falls into the relaxed local routine of dancing and having fun with friends. When she realises that her young, irresponsible husband Mateus isn’t serious about joining her, lonely Hermila renews a relationship with her old boyfriend João. But Hermila knows there’s nothing for her here, no reason to stay. Just odd jobs washing cars or selling raffle tickets for bottles of whisky. And she has already learned her lesson about running off for love and depending on a man. Hermila takes inspiration from her friend Georgina, a prostitute and decides to raffle herself off for one time only. She’ll get the funds necessary to leave town and the holder of the winning ticket will get “A Night in Paradise”. For her surprising scheme, Hermila adopts the name Suely, the name that will give her freedom, take her to the sky, and beyond.

World premiere
Film Festival Venice 2006, Orizzonti

Awards
FIPRESCI Award, Best Screenplay Award and Artistic Achievement Award, Thessaloniki Film Festival 2006
Best Film, Best Director and Best Actress, Rio de Janeiro International Film Festival 2006
Best actress, Bratislava International Film Festival 2006

Festivals
Toronto International Film Festival 2006
Rio de Janeiro International Film Festival 2006
Thessaloniki Film Festival 2006
Stockholm International Film Festival 2006
Gijón International Film Festival 2006
Rotterdam International Film Festival 2007
Brugge Cine Novo 2007
Hong Kong International Film Festival 2007
Istanbul International Film Festival 2007

Morocco 2011
Director: Leila Kilani
Producer: Aurora Films (France), Socco Chicco Films (Morocco), Vandertastic (Germany)
German WCF partner: Vandertastic

Funded in the WCF Jury meeting in November 2010
Funding: 30,000 €

Synopsis
Badia and Imane work in a shrimp packaging factory, a difficult and humiliating job. The strong odour of shrimp is so overpowering that Badia scrubs her skin every day with buckets of rare water. She perfumes herself with lies to wash away the shrimp smell and pretends to be someone else, for example a textile worker. Imane never refutes her, even in public.
Badia, who feels that she embodies legitimate social defense, turns her daily existence into a crusade. She will do any work that presents itself, without guilt. She never feels like a delinquent: she doesn’t steal, she’s getting her payback; she doesn’t rob, she’s recovering her own: she doesn’t traffic, she’s doing business; she doesn’t prostitute herself, she gets asked out; she doesn’t lie, she already is what she is. A “textile girl” or better. Badia and Imane join up with Asma and Nawal, so-called textile girls who work in the textile industry in the Free Zone. They are pretty and frivolous, have spirit and enjoy what life has to offer. The girls work in the factory from dawn to dusk, through the night, chatting up men and committing burglary. They are exhausted, and plan the robbery that will finally break the cycle of tiredness.
But Badia and Imane go one step too far in the eyes of Asma and Nawal, who pull back out of fear. Imane knows that she and Badia will fail.

Director’s Note
On the Plank is a film noir, which tries not to use the usual codes. It is neither a story of romantic outlaws and magnificent landscapes, nor a combat between good and evil. It is the expression of a specific cultural milieu, the story of the “debarrins” (literally: those who are here), and of Northern Marocco at the start of the 21st Century. It is closely linked to the societal desire to penetrate Europe at whatever cost.
Badia’s physical resistance in the face of exhaustion is impressive. She is incapable of resting: her fatigue keeps her away. She has gone beyond tiredness like one goes beyond boredom in prison. Badia lives with no fear of collapsing or dying from it. This is what attracts the other three characters, Imane, Asma and Nawal like magnets. They are witnessing the performance of a living phenomenon.

World premiere
Cannes International Film Festival 2011, Quinzaine des Réalisateurs

Key festivals and awards
Best Actress, Best Film, Best Director, Taormina Film Festival 2011
Best Film, Antalya Golden Orange Festival 2011
Marrakesh Film Festival 2011
Fipresci Award, Oslo 2011

Argentina
Director: Celina Murga
Producers: Tresmilmundos Cine (Argentina), Martin Scorsese (USA), Rommel film (Germany)
German Producer: Rommel Film

Funded in the WCF jury meeting in July 2011
Funding amount: 40,000 €

Synopsis
Nicolas, a 16-year-old boy, lives in a small town close to Buenos Aires in the Argentine province of Entre Ríos.
Nicolas’ father, a much respected local doctor, has fathered two families and lives two parallel lives. First, he has a socially acceptable marriage to a professional woman who is also a doctor and with whom he has a 12 year-old son. Second, is his relationship with a woman of humble origin who has born him four children. Nicolas is the eldest and the only one he officially acknowledges. Only six blocks stand between the two houses, but Nicolas’ father does not allow the boy to walk those streets, and does not even allow him to call him “dad” in public, even though the boy carries his name.
The two women in the doctor’s life know about each other, but their lives are a sotto voce secret: the whole town is fully aware of the situation, but everyone pretends not to notice. Nicolas takes this situation for granted, as though it were completely normal, for it’s the only reality he knows. Yet, the tension of the situation must inevitably explode one way or another. Nicolas will have to make a decision on his own.

Thailand 2010
Director: Apichatpong Weerasethakul
Producers: Kick The Machine Films (Thailand), Illuminations Films (UK), The Match Factory (Germany)
World sales: The Match Factory (Germany)
German WCF partner: The Match Factory

Funded in the WCF jury meeting in October 2008
Funding amount: 60,000 €

Synopsis
Uncle Boonmee is suffering from kidney failure. As an avid practitioner of Yoga, he is well aware of his body. He knows that he will die in 48 hours. He calls his distant relatives to take him back from hospital to die at home. There, they are greeted by the ghost of his deceased wife, who has re-appeared to take care of him. His lost son also returns from the jungle in an ape-like form. The son has mated with a creature known as a ‘monkey ghost’ and has lived in the trees with her for the past 15 years.
On the first night, Boonmee talks about his six past lives that he remembers. On a second night, while the ghost wife is doing his kidney dialysis, Boonmee has a sudden urge to visit a place she has mentioned. So the group takes a journey into the jungle at night. It is full of animals and spirits. They finally reach a cave on top of the hill. Boonmee realizes that this is the cave in which he was born in the first life that he can remember. Then he passes away, taking with him tales that span hundreds of years.

Director’s note
A few years ago I visited a temple near my home and a monk there gave me a little book called “A Man who Can Recall his Past Lives.” In it, the monk wrote about Boonmee, who could recall his multiple lives in the cities of the northeast. The book is an inspiration for this film and aninstallation, which, like my other films, focuses on memory. During this time when rapid annihilation processes of everything from species to cultures have become commonplace, it is important to simply remember.

World premiere
Cannes International Film Festival 2010, Competition

Theatrical release in Germany
September 30, 2010

Awards
Palme d'Or, Cannes Film Festival 2010

Festivals (selection)
Cannes International Film Festival 2010
Sydney International Film Festival 2010
Munich International Film Festival 2010
Jerusalem International Film Festival 2010
Melbourne International Film Festival 2010
Sarajevo International Film Festival 2010
Toronto International Film Festival 2010
New York International Film Festival 2010
Sitges International Film Festival 2010
London International Film Festival 2010
Viennale 2010
São Paolo International Film Festival 2010
Tallinn Black Nights International Film Festival 2010
Tokyo Filmex 2010
Dubai International Film Festival 2010
Thessaloniki International Film Festival 2010

Kazakhstan, 2013
Director: Emir Baigazin
Producers: Anna Katchko (Russia), LLC Adigul Production Studio (Kazakhstan), Rohfilm (Germany), Post Republic (Germany)
German WCF partner: Post Republic
World sales: tbc

Funded in the WCF Jury meeting in July 2012
Funding amount: 40,000 €

Synopsis
Following a humiliation in front of his classmates during a medical check-up, Aslan (13) falls ill with an obsessive–compulsive disorder. Aslan is a student at a village school in a crime-ridden section of Kazakhstan. The dirty criminal world of the school conflicts drastically with Aslan’s perfectionism and sense for beauty and purity. Aslan sees all the evil in the school gang leader Bolat (13), the one responsible for Aslan’s humiliation. Bolat is part of the established power system at the school: he collects money from younger kids and beats them up severely. With good intentions to rid his school of violence, Aslan decides to kill Bolat...

Director’s note
Uroki Garmonii is a spiritual journey, a coming of age story and at the same time a controversial social drama. It touches universal and still very intimate subjects of violence and loneliness as well as the decisions that we make in life.

World premiere
Berlin International Film Festival 2013, Competition

Argentina 2010
Director: Alejo Taube
Producers: Ruda Cine (Argentina), Pandora Film Produktion (Germany)
German WCF partner: Pandora Film Produktion

Funded in the WCF Jury meeting in June 2007
Funding amount: 50,000 €

Synopsis
Biguá (35) is a fisherman, and he has just found out that his new girlfriend Milena (17) is pregnant. Though he doesn't seem very enthusiastic, they plan to get married. He has an opportunity to earn good money working for a Korean factory ship. He decides to take the job and sets off on the open sea. The daily work out in the ocean is shared with some twenty other men, each with their own goals and life stories, each eager to tell about them. All except for Biguá, who keeps a low and laconic profile. One night, after having one too many drinks and while warming up to his new friends, Biguá accidentally falls into the sea. Deep in the waters, a scuba diver rescues him and they head back inland in a small wooden boat full of tourists.
Only now he is Javier (35), physically identical to Biguá, but another man. He is a successful financial businessman on holidays in Brazil with his wife, Sara (33), when he has an accident. The shock leaves him somewhat disturbed. On their way back to Buenos Aires, the couple receives tough news: Sara is sterile.
The maid tells Sara about a relative of hers living in Mar del Plata: a pregnant girl whose boyfriend disappeared in a Korean ship. She is thinking about giving the baby up for adoption. Javier and Sara travel to Mar del Plata. But Sara simply can’t face Milena, the teenage mother; so she decides to return to Buenos Aires. Javier decides to stay and visit Milena in her humble house. She doesn't talk to anybody and stays in bed all day. Since her boyfriend's disappearance, she's been in a state of despair and abandonment. Javier invites her to go for a ride in his car and to get a coffee, and even manages to make her smile. They spend all afternoon together. Milena doesn't want to give her baby up for adoption. Javier understands and promises to help her. In that precise moment, Milena breaks water. They both rush to the hospital. Javier stays there until Milena delivers her baby; then he leaves. The night finds him alone, driving his car on his way back to Buenos Aires.

World premiere
Mar del Plata International Film Festival 2010

Key festivals and awards
Mar del Plata International Film Festival 2010
Miami International Film Festival 2011

Colombia 2009
Director: Ciro Guerra
Producers: Ciudad Lunar Producciones (Colombia), Cine-Ojo Films (Argentina), Razor Film (Germany), Volya Films (The Netherlands)
German WCF partner: Razor Film

Funded in the WCF jury session in June 2007
Funding amount: 60,000 €

Synopsis
Ignacio Carrillo traveled all his life throughout the villages and regions of northern Colombia, carrying music and traditional songs on his accordion: a legendary instrument that is said to be cursed because it once belonged to the devil. As he grew older, he married and settled with his wife in a small town, leaving his nomadic life behind. When she suddenly dies, he decides to make one last journey to the northern edge of the country and return the accordion to the man who gave it to him, his teacher and mentor, so he will never play it again. On the way, he is joined by Fermín, a young mixed-raced man who dreams of becoming a “juglar” like Ignacio and of traveling all around playing the accordion like he did. Tired of his loneliness, Ignacio accepts Fermín’s company.Together they start the journey from Majagual, Sucre, to Taroa, beyond the Guajira desert, discovering along the way the enormous diversity of the Caribbean, surviving all kinds of adventures and understanding the mix of cultures that gave birth to the music they play. Ignacio tries to convince Fermín to take a different path in his life, having learned that his only led to solitude and sadness, but he has to face the fact that destiny has different plans for him and his pupil...

World premiere
Cannes International Film Festival 2009, Un certain regard

Mexico
Director: Pepe Valle
Producers: Zensky Cine-Foprocine (Mexico), Autentika Films (Germany)
German WCF partner: tba

Funded in the WCF jury session in November 2011
Funding: 40,000 €

Synopsis
After a whole life of work at Tijuana, Rafael and Lidia are victims of injustice against their rights and dignity: Rafael learns that due to a paperwork mistake, he will not be entitled to his retirement pension. As for Lidia, she finds out that her employer’s will leaves the entire heirloom to the dog, and that the fortune would only be passed down to the employees should the dog die. In their own way, alone and silently, they´ll begin a battle: Rafael against a company, Lidia against a dog. Curiously, these struggles are not visible.

Director’s Note
I once saw a maid leave the house she worked. She silently observed the empty room that used to be hers. It was an uninteresting space, barely a few square feet, but she looked at it intensely, as if there were a lot to see. Her eyes travelled across every crack, every water stain, every rough spot in the wall’s texture… everything meant something to her.
I felt a natural empathy towards this fragment of life I was a spectator to, because we’ve all experienced these feelings of belonging, the strength of habits, and we’ve all become fond of things and places.
That was the seed of Workers, where the approach to work is not in the shape of a “message” or a complaint, but as life experiences that bring dignity and emotional balance, along with subsistence.

Israel 2009
Director: Eran Merav
Producer: Norma Productions (Israel), MK2 (France), Tradewind Pictures (Germany)
German WCF partner: Tradewind Pictures
World sales: MK2 (France)

Funded in the WCF jury session in June 2005
Funding: 40,000 €

Synopsis
Twelve-year-old Zion and his seventeen-year-old brother Meir live alone with their mother Ilana, who dreams of a better life. Zion is a passionate soccer player in a youth team, but after his new shoes are stolen, he is banned from the field. When he discovers that Salomon, the son of Ethiopian immigrants has his shoes, he goes to his big brother for help. The dispute escalates and leads to a tragic accident…

World premiere
Sundance Film Festival 2009, Competition