Syria in 1977. Ossama Mohammed’s film explores how in an oppressive society individuals are subjected to various stages of submission until they are prepared to accept violence. Images of everyday life in rural areas where education is minimal provide a portrait of young villagers. Theirs is a choice between a life of toil working the land as their parents have done, or that of a migrant labourer in the city. Trapped between religious and political ideologies and completely fascinated by authority, many of these young peasants choose the army.
Category: Short
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Two prisoners in complete isolation, separated by the thick brick walls, and desperately in need of human contact, devise a most unusual kind of communication.
A street with pedestrians. Music. A voice reads the credits and clarifies, “This is a very violent film.” The action begins: a man crosses the street and enters his flat. He opens the door, puts out the fire under the kettle whistling in the kitchen, and enters the living room…
This film is a moving tribute to French filmmaker Jean Rouch. Pauwels, a former collaborator of Rouch, accompanies him on a trip to Japan. In this cinematic letter, which he himself calls “a journey into the memory”, Pauwels philosophises about the essence of cinema and, consequently, of life.
This short film traces the story of a man from birth to old age. The magical dreams of his youth sometimes appear, but daily routine quickly takes over. His striving for material wealth leads him to betray his youthful ideals.
Rein Raamat’s Hell adapts the engravings of Estonian graphic artist Eduard Wiiralt into a surreal, grotesque, and heavily sexual animated short. Wiiralt’s three source works, “The Preacher,” “Cabaret,” and “Hell,” date back to the early 1930s and portray a cacophony of bacchanalia, hysteria, and violence in the final years of Estonian independence amid the unrest of the Great Depression and European instability.
The Sandwich explores the daily life and work of children in Abnoud, a rural village located 600 kilometres to the south of Cairo, where the trains that carry the tourists to the south of Egypt pass through without stopping. A boy outsmarts the meagerness of his circumstances by dripping goat’s milk on a piece of stale bread and turning it into a special sandwich.