MINOR’S HOPE

47 minutes, 2019
Director : Mohamed KENAWI (Egypt, Italy)
Production : Domino Film (Italy), AlJazeera Documentary Channel (Qatar)

Halfway between documentary and investigative journalism, this film tries to paint an overall picture of very young, unaccompanied migrants, first by showing three boys who were minors when they arrived in Italy and then by following the person who looked after them – a supervisor in a reception centre for unaccompanied minors. He supervises young people within the structure, then trying to help them outside as he tries to understand what brought them to Italy, how they are seen by the state and legal system, what they can expect when they leave the structure, what dangers lie in wait for them – while at the same time trying to understand their sorrows and their hopes.

Mohamed KENAWI was born in Egypt. He graduated in Italian Language and Literature at Cairo’s Ain Chams University. He worked as a translator and author before emigrating to Italy in 2000, where he studied film production and editing in Rome.
From 2003 to 2006 he worked as an assistant producer for the Orbit satellite TV network. Since 2006 he has been director, author and producer with his own production company Domino Film. He has a series of documentaries to his credit which explore multiculturalism, ethnic minorities and human rights.

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FORTE

31 minutes, 2018
Director and Producer : Salim SAAB (France, Libanon)

The documentary “Forte” was made from a desire to portray Arab women differently from the way usually shown in the media or cinema. Women who express themselves artistically, through dance, graffiti, tattooing – but also combat sports. They talk about their passion, their daily lives, the place of women in the society in which they live, always coming back to the key subject: how they see feminism. They are mainly from Lebanon but also from Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Tunisia.

Former rapper, journalist, filmmaker and radio presenter, Salim SAAB is a true activist of Hip Hop culture. Also known under the pseudonym Royal S, this French-Lebanese 37 year-old already has a well stocked CV. Animator and journalist on the international and Arab Radio Monte Carlo Doualiya, where he receives artists from all over the Arab world, host of the rap programme Old School / New School on the Parisian radio Aligre FM, author of three rap records published in the mid-2000s and freelance contributor to the written press. In 2017, he directed “Beyrouth Street: Hip Hop au Liban“, a documentary about the history of Hip Hop in the Lebanon. Screened in several countries and festivals, it attracted international media attention, which helped Salim become known as a director. In 2018 he made “Forte“, a documentary on women artists in the Arab world.

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ZULU REMA WHO LEARNT TO FLY

14 minutes, 2019
Director : Gaia VIANELLO (Italy)
Production: La Furia Film (Italy)

This film is about Emeer – aka B-boy Zulu Rema – a Tunisian teenager whose legs were amputated when he was two. His passion for art and dance led him to become national breakdance champion and a role model for young people around the world.

Gaia VIANELLO is a producer/director. Having studied at Sciences-Po Paris she lived for several years in North Africa and the Middle East, working as a project manager, expert in international migration for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and other international NGO’s. She has produced and directed the following documentaries: “Aicha è tornata” (2011), “This is not paradise” (2014) and “Les amoureux des bancs publics” (chosen for the 2018 PriMed) with the production company Sunset. Currently she is collaborating with the Università Ca’Foscari in Venice and with several production companies in the audiovisual sector.

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TRACING ADDAI

30 minutes, 2018
Director : Esther NIEMEIER (Germany)
Production : Filmuniversitat Babelsberg Konrad Wolf (Germany)

The animated documentary “Tracing Addai” is about a young man in his twenties living in Germany who has always wanted to help people. In 2013 Addai went to Syria and joined a Salafist group. A few years later, Addai’s mother meets Ilias, who has returned from Syria. Through their personal stories, the film gradually constructs what has happened to Addai.

Esther NIEMEIER is a producer/director who works between the UK and Germany. Her first short documentary “Walz” was selected at the Edinburgh International Film Festival and has been broadcast throughout Europe on Canal+, Future Shorts and Okto TV. “Tracing Addai” is her graduation film.

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THE WHITE HELL

15 minutes, 2018
Director and Production : Ahmed ASSEM, Mahmoud KHALED and Omar SHASH (Egypt)

It is one of the most dangerous and deadly workplaces in Egypt. Stonecutters and heavy-plant drivers navigate through clouds of white dust, which then enters their lungs, making breathing difficult. 300 square kilometers of limestone quarries, where 35,000 workers suffer from terrible working conditions, all for the meager salary of $3 to $4 a day.

Ahmed ASSEM, Mahmoud KHALED and Omar SHASH are part of a team of film-makers who graduated from the film department at the Applied Arts Faculty at Helwan University in Cairo.
Together they have made several short films, one of which won the Best Editing Award at the 2018 Masr Dot Bokra Film Festival.

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THE END OF DARKNESS

27 minutes, 2018
Director : Ranko PAUKOVIC (Croatia)
Production : Spiritus Movens Productions (Croatia)

Over the past 50 years little has changed at the Breza coal mine in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Despite the coal dust and darkness, 400 metres below the surface, miners continue to benefit from the solidarity and employment security which characterized Yugoslavia’s socialist era. Now Capitalism and individualism are the key words.
This film follows Sakiba, one of the last workers in the Breza mines. Her underground existence is a relic from another age, when the oil crisis and labour shortages forced women to work and the government tried to improve their conditions.
When she is 50 Sakiba will be able to retire, but when she comes back to the surface and says goodbye to this important chapter of her life, will she leave some of her identity behind?

“The End of Darkness” explores what it means to work in the mines as the fossil fuel era draws to a close, and to be a woman in Bosnia and Herzegovina today.

Ranko PAUKOVIC was born in Zagreb in 1960. A graduate in Drama, he worked as assistant editor on several international co-productions filmed in Croatia. En 1991 he went to live in Holland, where he worked as sound editor for Dutch directors. In 1993 he created Editson Studios and specialised in sound conception, sound editing and sound mixing. He is based in Amsterdam.
A few years ago he made his first film as director with the feature-length documentary “White House” (2015) about the white stone on the island of Brač in Croatia. His second documentary, “90 seconds in North Korea“, has been shown at many festivals. Ranko also teaches sound design at the University of Zagreb.

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THE GOOD NEWS

15 minutes, 2018
Director : Sebastiano Luca INSINGA (Italy)
Production : Jump Cut (Italy)

When the weather is mild in the Mediterranean, boats filled with migrants leave the African and Asian coasts to reach Europe, the “promised land”. One summer night a boat, The Bochra, with more than 130 people on board, landed on a beach in Sicily. All of them quickly disappeared into the night. The boat remained, in limbo between the sea and the land…until the tourists arrived.

Sebastiano Luca INSINGA was born in Catane, Italy, in 1984. Studying literature in Trente, he began to use video and photography as a means of expression. In 2008 he made his first short film “Maledetta primavera“, a compilation of family films made on super8. In 2012 he took part in the Berlinale Talent Campus with his documentary “Nulla è accaduto“, and in 2013 in Film Factory Italia. In 2015 he made his first feature-length documentary “Complimenti per la festa“, followed in 2017 by a short drama “Non gioco più“.

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CITY PLAZA HOTEL

14 minutes, 2019
Directors : Anna-Paula HÖNIG (Germany, Argentina) and Violeta PAUS (Chile)
Production : Triade Films (France)

An apparent calm reigns at the City Plaza Hotel in Athens. This once abandoned building is now gradually filling with people driven from their homes by war.
Zhenos is eleven and lives in the hotel with her family, in a state of constant uncertainty. The film shows the complex reality of a young Afghan girl whose dreams are haunted by dark memories.

Anna-Paula HÖNIG was born in Berlin in 1981.Having studied international relations in the Sorbonne and at King’s College London, she worked as a journalist. In 2010 she studied film at the Universidad del Cine in Buenos Aires. She made short films there — “Les couleurs d’Helena” and “Catalina et le Soleil“.

Violeta PAUS was born in Santago, Chile, in 1987. She studied film in Argentine at the UBA University in Buenos Aires. Her first long film “Ajawaska, fragmentos de un viaje a las alturas” (2013) was a documentary shot in the mountains of Peru. In 2014 she moved to Paris where she worked on the multimedia installation “Sin Panteón” (2015). In Paris she works as festival programmer for Silence on Court! and as an editor for YessirFilm. Currently she is making a multimedia installation in Chile, “Re.incorporar” (2018), about women murdered in South America.

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NUMBER 387

(NUMÉRO 387)
61 minutes, 2019
Director : Madeleine LEROYER (France)
Production : Little Big Story (France), Stenola Productions (Belgium), Graffiti Doc (Italy), Arte (France), RTBF (Belgium)

A hoodie, a pair of trousers, a belt…all that is left of “no. 387”, one of 800 migrants who drowned off the Libyan coast on April 18^th 2015. In Sicily, forensic scientist Cristina Cattaneo is conducting the largest identification operation ever undertaken in the Mediterranean. Far away, in small West African villages, ICRC anthropologist Jose Pablo Baraybar meets the families of the missing to gather as much ante-mortem information as he can. On both sides of the Mediterranean, our characters progressively come together in their search for missing identities.

“Numéro 387” is Madeleine LEROYER’s first feature-length documentary.
Journalist and author, she learnt how to make documentaries at the Ateliers Varan and at the IDF Academy. With “Numéro 387” she was one of the ten winners of the 2018 Chicken & Egg Accelerator Lab for emerging film-makers.

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NAR

52 minutes, 2019
Director : Meriem ACHOUR-BOUAKKAZ (Algeria)
Production : Afkar Films (Canada)

“Nar” explores a form of extreme violence in Algeria – self-immolation – an act which the film tries to understand through the testimonies of survivors and families bereaved by the loss of a brother or a son who chose fire as a way of expressing his despair. To kill time the young take refuge in cafés, or in sports stadiums where they shout out their rage to live. Feeling confined, constrained, all of them nourish the same dream: “harga”, to leave the country clandestinely. But what seems to them to be their only hope is actually just another form of suicide.

A veterinary medicine graduate, Meriem ACHOUR-BOUAKKAZ is an Algerian film-maker working in Montreal since 2011. She did a course in making documentaries at Montreal’s Institut National de l’Image et du Son (INIS).
She has two films to her credit: “Harguine harguine” (2008) about young people who want at any cost to leave the country, risking their own lives, and she has co-directed “Nous dehors” which looks at women’s lives and conditions through what they live in public.

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