Wallonia-Bruxelles Delegation

A beach frozen in time, as if in a snapshot: people enjoying the sun, a child eating ice-cream, a father taking his picture. But in the frame another character appears. Laboriously making their way out of the waters, a group of refugees crawl to the uncertain safety of the beach, escaping from near-certain death. Premiered at the Berlinale 2016 and inspired by a photograph by Juan Medina, Summer is an ingenious and sharp political commentary on the ongoing humanitarian crisis. By mixing 3D modelling and 16mm footage, it contrasts stasis and movement, moment and duration and reveals how liberating having your struggles acknowledged is and, conversely, how limiting photographs are in telling the stories we so readily consume. (Diana Mereoiu, BIEFF 2017)

Juliet's fate might have been crueller still, had she not been able to see dead Romeo with her own eyes. This what-if scenario is a plausible introduction to Manon Coubia’s cinematic impression of a forlorn life. A woman has spent most of her lifetime waiting for the eternal snows to melt and return the body of her husband, a mountain climber who had died in an accident during an ascent of the Mont Blanc. Under the gaze of the camera, creased bed sheets, complemented by the sound of wind, turn into mountains covered in snow. The wife lies on her bed perpetually, her dreams of the passing of seasons shown in accelerated time-lapse. With its temporal perambulation through times gone by and states of the soul, The Fullness of Time (Romance) is fundamentally a film about eternal love and about the endless power of cinema to get to the deepest core of human experience. (Ioana Florescu, BIEFF 2017)