NESSUNO CI PUO’ GIUDICARE

83 minutes, 2016
Director : Steve DELLA CASA et Chiara RONCHINI (Italie)
Production : Istituto Luce Cinecittà srl (Italie)

In post-war Italy, during the economic miracle, cinema continued to be the favourite leisure-time activity of Italians, as well as a truthful mirror of the changes taking place in the country.
Musical films, starring singers of the younger generation, show us this Italy in full transformation.
Born in 1953 in Turin, Steve DELLA CASA is an Italian film critic and artistic director of several festivals. He has also made some documentaries (“Perché sono un Genio! Le Tante Vite di Lorenza Mazzetti” 2016; “Flaiano: il Meglio è Passato”, 2010) and played minor roles in a few films.

Chiara RONCHINI was born outside Rome. She has worked in international co-operation, photography, design and documentary films, between Rome, Pristina and Barcelona. Currently she is a film editor and works in post-production. “Nessuno ci può giudicare” is her first documentary as director.

JE DANSERAI MALGRÉ TOUT !

58 minutes, 2016
Réalisation : Blandine DELCROIX (France)
Production : French Connection Films (France)

“Je danserai malgré tout!” is about dance and the body. It’s about freedom. Our guides are Bahri, Sandra, Selma and Ahmed.
Everyone is determined to express the values ​​of freedom and independence as they encourage bodies to open up to dance. Their commitment is to provide the tools to build an open and critical Tunisia where everyone has a place. Where each body can feel free to express itself.
Speech has no place before the dancing bodies. Choreographic moments of suspended time, during which bodies free themselves from constraints. Say No to obscurantism.

Trained at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques in Grenoble and holding several post-graduate diplomas in social sciences (urban planning, cultural development, psychoanalysis), Blandine DELCROIX began her professional life in institutional culture before turning to producing live shows.
She has spent more than 15 years conceiving and developing creations, residencies and artistic events in the field of dance, music and theatre in Europe.
At the same time, she has a classical musical training which she still practises, as well as her writing: screenplays for dramas, short films and short stories.
She is currently in Tunisia co-writing her first feature-length fiction film.
In 2009, she went to Cairo to take part in a course in contemporary dance. It was the beginning of a long adventure which continues today with this documentary film, a coming-together of her many experiences.

ALALÁ

77 minutes, 2016
Director : Remedios Malvàrez Baez (Spain)
Production : Producciones Singulares (Spain)

Alalá is an art centre for children where flamenco is used as a tool for learning self-expression. The inspiration behind the centre was well-known guitarist Emilio Caracafé and other musicians, who introduce us to this gypsy district, where flamenco can offer opportunities and transform society.

Remedios MALVÁREZ BAEZ has been a professional photographer since 1989.
Self-taught, she perfected her training in photography and cinema in Madrid, Barcelona and London. In 2010, she created the production company Producciones Singulares in Seville.
The short documentary “Silence” was her first non-commercial creation. It has won awards at several festivals. “Alalá” is her first feature-length documentary.

A FOOTNOTE IN BALLET HISTORY ?

118 minutes, 2016
Director : Hisham Abdel Khalek (Egypt)
Production : So Freakantastik (France), H & O Productions LLC (USA)

The creation of classical ballet in Egypt, under the auspices of the State during the Cold War, is at the heart of an extraordinary saga, narrated here by its first pioneers. Prima ballerina Magda Saleh and her fellow dancers recall the founding of the first national ballet school, staffed with Soviet teachers – the early triumphs, collapse and renewed hopes over five decades.

Hisham ABDEL KHALEK is an Egyptian producer, director and screenwriter based in Paris. He has produced and directed films, opera and stage plays.
In 2002 he was artistic director for performances of Aida in Doha (Qatar) and in the shadow of the pyramids at Giza, Egypt. He has produced a series of operas and classical music concerts in Egypt, Syria, Dubai, France, the Netherlands and other countries.
In 2008, with Olivier Delesse, he created the French production and distribution company So Freakantastik and in 2014 the New York-based production company H & O Productions.

NÉ À DEIR YASSIN

63 minutes, 2016
Director: Neta Shoshani (Israel)
Production: Rotem FARAN (Israel), Artline Films (France)

The film tells the story of an Arab village called Deir Yassin In 1948 it was conquered by the Israelis after a very controversial battle, then in 1951 transformed into a government-run psychiatric hospital.
Today, access to Deir Yassin is forbidden, even to the photos of it indexed in the archives of the Israel Defence Army.
It is a stain on Israel’s past, which no one likes to talk about.
The film presents the history of Deir Yassin from the Israeli point of view – the mass exodus of Arab residents as a result of the occupation, considered now to be the beginning of the Palestinian refugee problem.

 

Born en 1980 in Jerusalem, Neta SHOSHANI lives and works in Tel-Aviv.
Graduate in visual communication from the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design (Jerusalem), she has worked as producer and editor in the news department of the Israeli radio network, Army Radio (Galatz).
As a director her film credits include: “House Call” (3 documentaries, 2016), “Handa Handa 4” (2013, 60 minutes) and “Between Her and Him” (2013, 60 minutes).

L’HÉRITAGE DE FRANCO, LES ENFANTS VOLÉS D’ESPAGNE

70 minutes, 2016
Director: Inga BREMER (Germany)
Production: Soilfilms, BR Bayerischer Rundfunk, Arte (Germany)

How can a person construct her life when she has been robbed of her identity and her past?
At the death of her adopted father, Alicia discovered she was sold at birth by her biological mother. She appealed to a police forensic expert, Jaume. Armed with samples of the young woman’s DNA, Jaume criss-crossed Spain in the footsteps of other children abducted from republican families during the Franco period – an estimated 30,000 of them, though this figure may well be too low. Traffic in children continued until the 1980’s, and bringing a real fortune to some. A documentary about a sordid state issue, still taboo, and about fighting against the law of silence.

Inga BREMER was born in Germany in 1980.
After travelling abroad, she began her studies at a drama school in Cologne, later joining Baden-Württemberg’s Film Academy, where she became a film-director in 2004.
In 2010 her film “Goodbye Kutti”, was nominated for the German Human Rights award. After a year studying at the International Film School in Cuba, she made “Perfect Girls”, financed by MFG Baden-Württemberg.
Inga is one of four founding members of the production company Soilfilms, through which she produces and directs documentaries, commercials and drama films.

LES ANNÉES DE PLOMB, UNE TRAGÉDIE ITALIENNE

53 minutes, 2016
Director: Nicolas GLIMOIS (France)
Production: Sunset Presse, with support from France Télévisions (France)

From the late 1960’s to the 1980’s, Italy was plagued with social unrest, massacres, assassinations and kidnappings. It was a time of extremism, both right-wing and left-wing, unhealthy acquaintances, gnawing suspicions of criminal complicity – possibly initiated by certain sectors of the state apparatus (police, secret services) and foreign powers.
From the explosion in Milan’s Piazza Fontana in December 1969 to the massacre at Bologna station in August 1980 and the assassination of former prime minister Aldo Moro in May 1978, violence struck Italy as nowhere else in Western Europe.
A low-intensity civil war and an open wound for Italy, which, 40 years later, is still struggling to unravel the spiders’ web of responsibility.

Nicolas GLIMOIS is an author, film director and script-writer, born in Quimper (Brittany) in 1968.
He has a degree from the Institut d’Etudes Politiques in Bordeaux, from the Ecole Supérieure de Commerce in Rheims and has a Masters in Media at the Ecole Supérieure de Commerce in Paris.
Winner of the Albert Londres award in 1999 for “Les Blanchisseuses de Magdalen”, he has made several documentaries and TV reports, including: “L’Affaire des Poisons” (2011), “L’argent sale, le poison de la finance” (2012), “Paris 2014: coulisses d’une élection” (2014), “Steve Jobs – Bill Gates: le hippie et le geek” (2014), “Les enfants du péché” (2015) and “Le Val-de-Grâce, l’hôpital de la République” (2015).

ALGER, LA MECQUE DES RÉVOLUTIONNAIRES

56 minutes, 2016
Director: Ben SALAMA (France)
Production: Electron Libre Productions, Version Originale, Arte France (France)

From the early 1960’s to the mid-1970’s, independent Algeria provided significant support to anti-colonial movements and revolutionaries around the world.
Successive presidents, Ahmed Ben Bella then Houari Boumedienne, made Algiers a place of welcome for those fighting against colonial or racial oppression.
Algiers the White became Algiers the Red. The internationalist Che Guevara established a base here for his guerilla activities in Africa. Eldridge Cleaver, the Afro-American leader, made it a centre for the world-wide spread of the Black Panther Party.
During this period, Algiers was known as the Revolutionaries’ Mecca.

Born in Algeria, French author and director Ben SALAMA arrived in France at the age of 20 and joined the film section of IDHEC in 1973. As a young film critic for Film Français, he rapidly moved into journalism, for many years working freelance before joining France 3.
His work as film-maker reflects his personal history, whether it be his immigrant parents arriving in France or the place of Islam as he knew it in Algeria in the 1960’s. He has drawn from that history a series of reflections and published works such as “Au Nom de l’Islam: Enquête sur une religion instrumentalisée”, published in 2009; and films like “Une Histoire algérienne”, produced for France 5 in 2012.
He has also made the following documentaries: “Nasser, du rêve au désastre” (53 minutes 2016); “1954, la fin d’un monde” (52 minutes 2013), in collaboration with Benjamin Stora; “Naissance d’une nation” (52 minutes, 2013), in collaboration with Thomas Marie.

SYRIE, LE CRI ÉTOUFFÉ

72 minutes, 2017
Director: Manon LOIZEAU (France) – co-written by Annick COJEAN
Production: Magnéto Presse, with the support of France Télévisions (France)

It’s a lamentation. A howl, stifled yet deafening. A silent cry whose spasms tear through prison walls, basements, the antechambers of death. It’s the cry of Syrian women who, for the past six years, have been routinely raped in Bashar al-Assad’s jails. An organized, pre-meditated crime, based on a key taboo in traditional Syrian society, which makes it impossible for the victims to ever speak about it, knowing they risk rejection – even being stoned to death – by their own family. Rape – in Syria a weapon of war, but never discussed. A way of not only destroying the woman and her identity, but also breaking her family, her clan, and any form of resistance.
How did a woman’s body become part of Syria’s war? The question raised in this film letting women, previously walled-up in shame and silence, speak.

 

From 1994 to 2002 Manon LOIZEAU worked as a journalist in Russia, for the BBC, Le Monde and for Capa. In 1997 she began to make documentaries in Moscow for France 2, Arte, Canal Plus, mainly about Human Rights, forbidden places, and forbidden countries such as Chechnya where she worked for more than ten years. After Russia she made several films in Afghanistan, India and Pakistan.
Recently she has made films trying to show the hope and despair in Iran. Since the beginning she has been motivated by a desire to tell unknown stories, to give an outlet to forbidden voices – in Syria, the Yemen and again in the Chechen Republic.

BORN IN SYRIA

86 minutes, 2016
Director: Hernán ZIN (Argentina)
Production: La Claqueta PC (Spain), Contramedia Films (Spain), Final Cut For Real (Denmark)

 

Since the start of the civil war in Syria in 2011, about 9 million Syrians have left their country. Half of them children.
Filmed in 4K and with an original music track composed by Gabriel Yared, the documentary “Born in Syria” follows seven of these young children for a year. Through their eyes, we share their lives, from fleeing Syria, through the refugee camps in the Middle East, to their arrival in the promised land, Europe. And then we continue to follow them during their first six months in Europe. This film is a unique testimony of the refugees’ experience.

 

Hernán ZIN was born in Buenos Aires in 1971. Having studied international relations he has spent the past twenty years travelling the world making documentary films, writing articles and books.
As a director his credits include several documentary films, including: “I Want to be Messi” (2013), “Born in Gaza” (2014) and “10 años con Bebe” (2016).