2018

AQUARELA takes audiences on a deeply cinematic journey through the transformative beauty and raw power of water. Captured at a rare 96 frames-per-second, the film is a visceral wake-up call that humans are no match for the sheer force and capricious will of Earth’s most precious element. From the precarious frozen waters of Russia’s Lake Baikal to Miami in the throes of Hurricane Irma to Venezuela’s mighty Angel Falls, water is AQUARELA’s main character, with director VICTOR KOSSAKOVSKY capturing her many personalities in startling cinematic clarity.

AQUARELA is dedicated to fellow Russian filmmaker Alexander Sokurov. In attempting to experiment with new forms of representation, KOSSAKOVSKY, too, sets his camera free. If RUSSIAN ARK brought Sokurov to global attention with one gliding, unbroken long take, AQUARELA flies as well, across the globe. The camera’s mobility allows KOSSAKOVSKY to abstract from the water, creating suggestive patterns from both afar and close up. (Fatima Naqvi, Film Comment)


Cinema is a tremendous tool, but we use it wrong. We are still telling stories. I am beginning to hate this. We shouldn’t tell stories, writers are for that – we have to show something. When we listen to stories, we don’t know what is real life anymore. We believe in stories instead, and if they are good, they can maintain our belief for two thousand years, keeping us from seeing what is real. The storymaker is blind. (VICTOR KOSSAKOVSKY)


"How the hell did they film that?" It is a question that pops up regularly when looking at the impressive images of AQUARELA. Russian director KOSSAKOVSKY used the latest high-tech stabilization equipment and filmed with waterproof HD cameras at 96 frames per second, resulting in an overwhelming cinematography. Water is the protagonist in AQUARELA, but not so much in its gentle, life-giving form. KOSSAKOVSKY shows the raw energy of this force of nature, in all its glory and immeasurable power making people seem very fragile in comparison. (DOCVILLE)


 

Starting from a series of photographs taken during his own train journeys a year before, PANG-CHUAN HUANG initiates a process of inquiry on what goes on behind the windows, behind a stranger’s gaze. He visits the inhabitants of these alienated landscapes and presents their lives, to which he attributes a certain degree of the poetry of everyday. Gradually, it becomes clear that the stranger is as alien to the viewer, as the viewer is to the stranger. Consisting of black and white photographs and glimpses of life shot on 8mm film, LAST YEAR WHEN THE TRAIN PASSED BY is a tribute to celluloid, to which it offers the chance to save a forgotten past, and to reduce the distance between two types of alienation. (Emil Vasilache, BIEFF 2019)

"Seems like a thing, / Seems like something else". These two lines of a total of one thousand that make up MARIANO BLATT's poem "No es" (It's not) might work as a clue for PARSI (which means "It seems to be"). The poem itself has been described as cumulative, with verses added continuously over the course of a lifetime. The visual images follow the same pattern and, like the words, cover virtually everything: people, landscapes, ideas, feelings. No verse or image relates to the next, and neither do they connect with each other. Through his inventive juxtaposition WILLIAMS creates a roller coaster effect, a movement both fluid and accelerated that leaves the viewer grasping for air. Same as life itself. (Adina Marin, BIEFF 2019)

Swatting is a term which refers to making hoax calls to emergency services in order to have S.W.A.T teams sent to a specific address. The film is a captivating inquiry into this phenomenon, so infamous in the world of online gaming. It uses testimonials, fragments of internet videos, and recordings from GTA V (Grand Theft Auto) in order to create a complex web of information. The camera navigates through the blueprint of virtual reality, through the digital nervous system of the homes interlinked by thousands of connections and bits of data. A film with guns, cops and a heavy rain that never seems to stop – a true modern noir. (Emil Vasilache, BIEFF 2019)

What happens if we examine what we call the so-called refugee crisis from a different angle: Military recordings, drone photographs, a 360° camera or satellite photographs? What if we look for images we have never seen – or revisit those we have seen but never noticed – and start wondering how they came about and who they are intended for? THE MIGRATING IMAGE follows the pictorial flow of refugees on their journey to and up through Europe. The film is based on photos of refugees and turns the camera back on us – as we created them and ultimately consume them. (Stefan Kruse)

Radiohead, Palestine, and the question of individual power, debated during a personal overseas phone conversation between Palestinian director MAHDI FLEIFEL and an acquaintance. The slightly tense, sometimes reassuring voices discuss one of the most complex ethical issues of contemporary Germany – a country where we understand that the director lives at present – regarding Europe’s moral obligation to support Israel, and Israel’s harsh towards Palestine. Images shot on film of the director’s apartment filled with spots of sunlight coming through large windows are juxtaposed with found footage of the Palestinian struggle, putting in contract the intimate safe space with the troubled and uncertain place that the two men call “home”. (Emil Vasilache, BIEFF 2019)

Bosnian War 1992. In the north of Bosnia and Herzegovina lies the concentration camp Omarska, which according to Serbian reports was an assembly point and investigation centre. Between May and August 1992, thousands of people were interned, tortured, raped and murdered there. Now it is a factory site of the ArcelorMittal Company. So far, those murdered there have yet to be commemorated. The film is based on the agonizing memories of Nusreta Sivac, who served as a judge until the outbreak of the war. OMARSKA tries to construct a virtual memorial using archive material, videos and statements by survivors in a 3D animation. (Berlinale)

OPERATION JANE WALK is based on the dystopian multiplayer shooter Tom Clancy’s: The Division (Ubisoft Entertainment 2016). In this work, the game’s digital war zone is appropriated with the help of an artistic operation. Within the rules of the game’s software, the militaristic environment is being re-used for a pacifistic city tour. The urban flâneurs avoid combat whenever possible and become peaceful tourists of a digital world, which is a detailed replica of Midtown Manhattan. While walking through the post-apocalyptic city, issues such as architecture history, urbanism and the game developer’s interventions into the urban fabric are being discussed. This project is part of “Total Refusal-Digital Disarmament Movement”. (ROBIN KLENGEL, LEONHARD MÜLLNER)

A coming of age story that takes place during the summer, in the home of a family of migrants of African origin living in Australia. ALL THESE CREATURES uses a narrative that relies on the oldest son’s strong sensorial memories of the degradation of his father’s mental health. The confusion and the feeling that whatever takes place over the summer is caused by a curse are justified formally by the protagonist’s off-screen voice, who recalls and mystifies his own perception. The film plays with all sorts of religious symbols in order to enhance the catastrophic undertone. Filled with fragmentary, impressionistic images, the story structure becomes somewhat literary in form, almost like a nightmare. (Emil Vasilache, BIEFF 2019)

Doris Bizetić is one of the most famous Serbian pop stars, and her story is intimately linked to the recent history of this country in which the consequences of the war are still felt. CONFLUENCE offers up a shrewd look at Serbian history, articulating the intimate account of a star with the political, social and architectural transformations of the past years. Through the portrait of Bizetić, it is Serbia’s story that is told. (Elena López Riera - Visions du Réel)

Composed of three chapters and conceived to be shown as a video installation as well as a film, FREEDOM OF MOVEMENT speaks of the historical moment in which Abebe Bikila, the Ethiopian runner wins the gold medal at the Olympic marathon in Rome in 1960, 25 years after fascist Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia. The film then connects the need for freedom of movement, and Ethiopia’s struggle with colonialism with the present-day refugee crisis. “Why do we run?” wonders a voice from off as archive footage of Bikila running barefoot is juxtaposed with images of fascist oppression. (Emil Vasilache, BIEFF 2019)

Under the guise of a story with spaceships and aliens, THE CRAFT is an allegory of distrust, suspicion, international diplomacy, war and peace and the declining American pop culture. Child's drawings, family photos and visual images shot on VHS make up an eerie background for the author's account of her child fantasies of the biggest alien conspiracy ever, whereby she actually raises dead serious questions about current political and cultural realities. 'Everything is not as it seems.' With her cinematic fantasy, AL QADIRI teaches us to look at the world with the eyes of Saint-Exupéry's Little Prince, who was able to discern the elephant inside a boa constrictor where all the others saw just an ordinary hat. (Adina Marin, BIEFF 2019)

DEPLOYMENTS is about control and about power, a game of being seen and being invisible; of being present and being absent at the right moment. "We see picture puzzles of state control, showing simulation software for large-scale police operations and fighter pilots’ finger exercises, the movement profile of a mass protest and the ornaments made by a flying squadron. Code words drop into the frame from offscreen: orders and instructions with a poetic rhythm. The practices and media of control – what are they based on? They follow algorithms and purposes, but are also beautifully designed and musical." (Lukas Stern, DOK Leipzig)

I GOT MY THINGS AND LEFT is a reflection on life, death and afterlife following the death of Eric, a young Rwandese with high value of people, life and relations. He is mourned by a group of friends who spend the night remembering him and his singular ways within a conformist society. The title is the opening line of Charles Dambudzo Marechera’s 'The House of Hunger', published in 1979 and looked upon 40 years later as a prophetic novel that predicted the troubles of modern-day Zimbabwe. Like Dambudzo Marechera, Eric died young. And same as the controversial writer, he left people wondering about his creative legacy and their own paths in life. (Adina Marin, BIEFF 2019)

The opening shots are filled with an energy as strong as a coffee pot about to boil – an image reminding of CHANTAL ACKERMAN’s LA CHAMBRE – that is how Adelina, a transgender woman from Georgia, is presented. A woman forced into anonymity by a society that refuses to accept her identity. PRISONER OF SOCIETY is composed of four chapters entitled “mother”, “father”, “Adelina”, and “family”. In each of them, director RATI TSITELADZE acts as a catalyst for the harsh discussions between her and her family, discussions that denote a firm and genuine sincerity, and that are hard to ignore. Although captive, Adelina is a fighter, a prisoner on her way to freedom. (Emil Vasilache, BIEFF 2019)