It’s summertime, busy weeks lie ahead for Ismail and Hakan, both employed at the Nashira Resort, a large, international, all-inclusive resort on the Turkish Riviera. 18-year-old Ismail has dropped out of school and dreams of becoming a hairdresser, but works in the hotel kitchen for now. Hakan, a 25-year-old college dropout, is the lifeguard at the resort’s aquapark. The two men hope their jobs will enable them to get ahead in life and at least learn English. Who knows, maybe they can go to the US someday.

Though they are obviously very different people, they have become good friends. Ismail has grown more self-assured through his work, whereas Hakan has begun to feel increasingly invisible and insignificant.

For two summers, the Belgian-Turkish director Volkan Üce has followed the two Turkish men trying to realize their dreams, even if just partly. The big question, however, is whether those dreams are actually worth all the effort.

Volkan Üce (1981, Belgium) is a self-taught fi lmmaker who studied and worked at the University of Antwerp. His fi rst feature-length documentary Displaced world premiered at DOK Leipzig 2017 and investigated the identity crisis of third-generation Turks growing up in the Low Countries. In his latest documentary, All-in, screening at WCA, Kurdish boys discover Western consumer society at an all-in hotel in Turkey.

So We Live (pre-film)

Rand Abou Fakher | België | 2020 | 15′ | Arabic spoken | English subtitles

A family living in a war torn country spends what seems to be a normal evening together. Their conversations shift between casual matters of daily life and survival.

What happens when traditional views on the position of women clash with the modern way of life embodied by social media? This is what Egyptian director Ayten Amin addresses in her film, which she co-wrote and produced.

On the bus, a young student is telling one passenger about her fiancé being a soldier in the army, next she is chatting to someone else about her fiancé being a doctor. Both stories are untrue. 19-year-old Souad from Zagazig, a small town in Egypt’s Nile Delta, leads a complicated double life: her life in the virtual world of Facebook is filled with fun and excitement, it is the life she would love to have, but in the real world she has to adapt to the traditional views of her conservatively religious parents. It all leads to an inevitable collision, particularly when she can no longer hide her fantasy world from her family. The consequences are immense, especially for her younger sister Rabab.

Ayten Amin (1978, Egypt) studied film criticism and film in Cairo. Her graduation film Her Man screened at Clermont-Ferrand, among other festivals. She co-directed the documentary Tahrir 2011, which premiered at Venice. Her feature debut, Villa 69, screened in Abu Dhabi, Malmö and Cannes. Souad is a hybrid ‘documentary fiction film’ exploring the lives of two teenage sisters in Egypt’s Nile Delta.

The images of Cubans venturing across the sea to Florida in rickety boats are still etched in our memories. Since that route has been closed, Cubans who no longer see a future in their own country have to travel a very different route to reach the United States. They fly to Guyana and then trudge north via Brazil or Venezuela and subsequently Colombia. It is a dangerously risky journey leading through dense jungle. Many find themselves stranded in Panama, eventually ending up as illegal immigrants in a refugee camp in Panama City. Director Marcel Beltrán, who was a guest as a jury member at WCA in 2018, visited the refugees there to record their story. He discovered that many of them had filmed their own journeys. In his documentary he combines his own recordings in the camp with the at times shocking images made by the refugees themselves. The result is equally poignant and gut-wrenching.

In her previous, critically acclaimed, award-winning film By the Time it Gets Dark, Thai director Anocha Suwichakornpong already experimented freely with ways of storytelling. During the last Berlinale her new film Jai jumlong had its world premiere, a film in which she goes one step further: the narrative takes second place to the film’s atmosphere. An atmosphere she creates with stunning black-and-white images, all equally beautifully lit, while the sound design also makes viewing the film very special. Four friends in their twenties travel to Kanchanaburi in western Thailand to visit the museum dedicated to the construction of the Burma Railway in WWII, only to discover that the museum is closed for renovations. They still manage to have a good time in the house they rented. They turn out to be actors performing scenes from a play. Back in Bangkok, they re-enact their experience.

Anocha Swuichakornpon (1976, Thailand) is a scriptwriter, director and owner of production house Electric Eel Films. Her short Graceland (2006) was the first Thai short in Official Selection at Cannes and her feature debut, Mundane History (2009), picked up numerous awards. She co-directed Krabi, 2562 – a blend of documentary and camp – with Ben Rivers. Jai Jumlong is her fourth feature .

Young Jin-ah, a North Korean refugee, has completed her social adjustment training in South Korea, but she still feels lost in her small studio in Seoul. Her main objective is to earn enough money to get her father from China to South Korea. So she picks up any job she can find. She lands a cleaning gig at a boxing gym and soon becomes fascinated by the boxing sport. Her enthusiasm does not go unnoticed: Tae-soo, the gym director’s assistant, recognizes her potential and urges her to take up the sport herself. She remains hesitant, but when her money troubles increase after an incident, she decides to rise to the challenge.

Fighter is not a film about a sports talent eventually reaching the top, as the cliché would have it, but rather a character study of a woman, excellently played by Lim Seong-mi, for whom keeping her head up is a daily struggle in itself.

Jéro Yun (1980, South Korea) studied art, photography and film in France. His short documentary Promesse won the Grand Prize at the Asiana International Short Film Festival; his feature documentary Mrs. B. A North Korean Woman was awarded in Moscow and Zurich. His short Hitchhiker screened in Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes, and his debut feature Beautiful Days opened the 2018 Busan International Film Festival.  

Hardworking handyman Mofe wants to get out of Lagos. He dreams of living in Spain and is already well on his way to achieving that dream: he has a passport and has had his name changed to “Sanchez”. A death in the family puts him in financial trouble, as he has to pay for the coffin, but lacks the money to do so.

Rosa lives in a different part of the city – a hairdresser by day, a bar worker at night. She and her younger sister Grace too dream of a life elsewhere, in their case in Italy, and time is somewhat pressing as Grace is pregnant. Where to find the money though, or the right papers? Rosa gets involved with the wrong people. In their feature debut, twins Arie and Chuko Esiri present a true picture of everyday life in Lagos, a city where the road to a better life is fraught with many obstacles. A comparison with the work of the Dardenne brothers is easily made – and rightly so.

Every morning, 13-year-old Ramin’s mother tenderly wakes up her son. She then wakes up his father and little sister and they calmly start their day. The Mehdipour family seemingly live an everyday life, their life takes place in a Finnish refugee centre, however, as they have fled Iran. While Ramin is wondering how to approach the girl he has a crush on, his parents have far bigger concerns: their application for asylum will most likely be denied, which could means that they will be deported. They can still appeal, but they also know that bureaucracy in Finland is a slow-moving machine. Still, Ramin’s father keeps a positive attitude.

In his feature debut with this topical coming-of-age story, director Hamy Ramezan shows how people manage to keep their dignity even when faced with an indifferent government that can determine their future at the stroke of a pen. The story is based on his own experiences.

Hamy Ramezan (1979, Iran) is a Finnish-Iranian director and screenwriter who fled persecution in Iran. He graduated from the film school at UCA, Franham, in 2007 and has made several shorts. Listen (2015) premiered at Cannes Directors’ Fortnight 2015, screened at over 200 festivals and was nominated for Best Short at the European Film Awards. Ensilumi is his feature debut.

In 2007, Swiss-born Tim Steiner had a work of art tattooed on his back by Belgian artist Wim Delvoye. The work has since been sold to a collector, who is entitled to the tattooed skin after Steiner’s death. This strange story inspired a new film by Tunisian director Kaouther Ben Hania – a satire of elitist art circles, as well as a critique of the West’s dehumanizing apathy towards refugees. Syrian Sam Ali flees his war-torn homeland and ends up in Lebanon. He wants to go to Europe, but doesn’t have the money or the right documents. Everything changes when he meets famous artist Jeffrey Godefroi. For Godefroi, Sam’s back is the ideal canvas for one of his ideas. Sam agrees to go along with it and a tattooed visa for the Schengen zone is inked on his back. The work of art is worth a fortune, which naturally has major consequences for Sam. Nominated for an Oscar, awarded in Venice.

Most dogs hate to be home alone, but Rita, the dog of Sebastián, a man in his thirties, takes things to a next level: as soon as her owner leaves the house, Rita starts howling incessantly. It is driving the neighbours crazy, so Sebastián decides to take his dog to work. Alas Rita is not welcome there either. In the end, Sebastián quits his job, which kicks off a series of strange events: he moves to the countryside, then returns to the city, hops from job to job, finds new love. Meanwhile, a global crisis of apocalyptic proportions is happening. Director Ana Katz spent several years working on this light, absurdist drama about the search for meaning and purpose in a world characterized by generally overwhelming disorder. Sebastián is played by Daniel Katz, the director’s brother, and he does so with subdued verve. Winner of the VPRO Big Screen Award, IFFR 2021.

Burkinabe

A young woman, Mariam, is ill and returns to Burkina Faso, where she was born. Having been sent away as a young child for adoption to South Africa, she hardly knows anything about her native country. Now she is planning to spend her last days in her village in the south west of Burkina Faso. She only does not know how to get there, does not speak the language, and is unfamiliar with the local customs. In the capital Ouagadougou, she befriends a charismatic bike messenger/taxi driver, Moussa, who claims to know the exact location of her village and offers to take her there. Moussa also has problems of his own: he is lonely despite his charm, and he has large financial problems. Together, they embark on the journey south.

Burkinabe is the feature film debut of directors Nthato Mokgata and Carla Fonseca, who both have already made name in the world of theatre and music. Fonseca plays the leading role herself in this self-discovery road movie.

Zombies

BALOJI | CONGO, BELGIUM | 2019 | 15′ | FRENCH, LINGALA SPOKEN | ENGLISH SUBTITLES

Baloji takes us on a journey between hope and dystopia through a hallucinated Kinshasa. From a nightclub to the culture of the hair salon, and from a dictator’s campaigning parade to a modern western – a tale of mobile technology and connectivity.