COMPETITION PRIX SAUVAGE 2020
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Surdina
by Rodrigo Areias
(Fiction, Portugal, 2019, 75′, English subtitles)
Cast: António Durães, Ana Bustorff, Adelaide Teixeira
In a rural setting, an old man is told his dead wife was seen at the market. Spiteful and sad, he chooses to hide away from the rest of the world. However, his friends insist that he shouldn’t listen to hearsay. They say he should try to recover and, who knows, even remarry.
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A Picture with Yuki / Снимка с Юки
by Lachezar Avramov
(Fiction, Bulgaria, 2019, 110′, English subtitles)
Cast: Kiki Sugino, Ruscen Vidinliev, Serafim Todorov
A Bulgarian man and his Japanese wife, who have met and got married in Canada, are planning to have a baby and travel to Bulgaria in order to begin an in vitro fertilisation procedure. There, they get involved in a tragic accident which claims the life of a child. Nothing can be the same anymore.
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Dream State / Natsværmer
by Asger K. Bartels
(Fiction, Denmark, 2019, 87′, English subtitles)
Cast: Karim Theilgaard, Kimmie Falstrøm, Adam Schmidt Jensen
Following the death of his estranged father, the photographer Louis is left feeling he hasn’t achieved as much in life as he had hoped for. He is still chasing the same dream of becoming a famous photographer but has been stuck working on the same project for many years. Louis’ girlfriend Rosa is determined to help him out, but when old acquaintances make an appearance the night draws Louis back in.
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Prix Sauvage 2020 Winner Best Feature
Die Kinder der Toten
by Kelly Copper and Pavol Liška – Nature Theatre of Oklahoma
(Fiction, Austria, 2019, 90′, English subtitles)
Cast: Andrea Maier, Georg Beyer, Greta Kostka, Klaus Unterrieder,
While on a trip in an Austrian village that hides some dark secrets from the Nazi past, Karin is killed in a road accident. Mysteriously, she comes back to life. This event triggers a series of others culminating in an absurd and over-the-top festival of zombies, doppelgängers and Syrian refugees. An adaptation of Elfriede Jelinek’s eponymous novel.
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Gasman / Gasmann
by Arne Körner
(Fiction, Germany, 2019, 87′, English subtitles)
Cast: Rafael Stachowiak, Gala Othero Winter, Kristof van Boven
Bernd is a thirty-something actor longing to play leading roles. The theatre manager convinces him to accept the part of a Nazi in a new play by a pretentious director he despises. As the rehearsals take on an absurdist turn, Bernd is ever more reluctant to follow the game he is forced to play. Speedy, merciless and with plenty of black humor portrayal of a man in search of his inner soul.
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Snaeland
by Lise Raven
(Fiction, Germany/Iceland, 2019, 75′, English subtitles)
Cast: Emily Behr, Frank Brückner, Víkingur Kristjánsson, Vignir Rafn Valþórsson
Set in Iceland and Berlin, this slow burn neo-noir focuses on a disgraced journalist and a story that could revive his career: is the wife of a local really the notorious nanny who supposedly killed herself after being accused of murdering a child?
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Prix Sauvage 2020 Special Mention for First Feature
A Hole in the Head / Dziura w głowie
by Piotr Subbotko
(Fiction, Poland, 2017, 93′, English subtitles)
cast: Bartłomiej Topa, Sandra Korzeniak, Andrzej Szeremeta, Ewa Dałkowska
Having toured around the country for many years, an ambitious actor returns to his home village to regain strength after an artistic crisis. He discovers that his dying mother has replaced him with a man coming straight out of a mental institution.
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Prix Sauvage 2020 Special Mention
Free Subject / Eleuthero thema
by Stella Theodorakis
(Fiction, Greece, 2018, 148′, English subtitles)
Cast: Theodora Tzimou, Laurent Sauvage, Dimitris Kitsos
Iris, a professor at a Fine Arts School, assigns to her students an exercise on a free subject. The 20-year-olds are thrilled at the idea of being free to choose their own subject. They create an “imagination factory” that has no limits. After finding Iris’s lost cell phone, Yorgos decides to base his free subject project on a fictitious recreation of Iris’s life.
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Those Who Remained / Akik Maradtak
by Barnabás Tóth
(Fiction, Hungary, 2019, 88′, English subtitles)
cast: Károly Hajduk, Abigél Szõke, Mari Nagy
Aldo is a doctor in post-World War II Hungary. Having lost his wife and their two children in the camps, he leads a solitary life. Meeting with a 16-year-old Klára who is brought to him by her grand-mother, marks a change in his wrecked life and paves the way to healing through love. But as the Soviet Empire rises to power in Hungary, their pure and loving father-daughter relationship is misunderstood and frowned upon.
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COMPETITION PRIX PRÉSENT 2020
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Dreamaway
by Johanna Domke and Marouan Omara
(Documentary, Germany/Egypt, 2019, 90′, English subtitles)
Since the Arab Spring and the confusion of the post revolutionary period, the southern tip of the Sinai Peninsula has quickly lost its charm as a go-to summer resort. An Egyptian filmmaker and a visual artist from Germany set out to visit the resort employees who feverishly dream among the abandoned hotel suites. How hard is it to balance a traditional lifestyle with the unbridled liberalism?
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The Good Death / Dobrá smrt
by Tomáš Krupa
(Documentary, Slovakia/Switzerland/UK/USA, 2018, 83′, English version)
online availability June 15-16
Janette is terminally ill and wants to die in a dignified way but British laws do not allow it. She gets in touch with Dr. Erika in Switzerland, who is willing to help her. Muscular dystrophy, the illness that Janette suffers from, has affected her family for generations. With inner peace Janette organizes her departure while her loved ones go through an emotional turmoil.
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Prix Présent 2020 WINNER Best Documentary
Welcome to Sodom
by Christian Krönes and Florian Weigensamer
(Documentary, Austria, 2018, 90′, English subtitles)
Hundreds of thousands of mobile phones, LCD TVs, notebooks and the likes become useless and “out” relatively soon and end up in Ghana where children and adolescents dismantle them in toxic smoke. A “clean” business for some, a poisonous routine for others.
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A Calm Day / Miren Dan
by Jan Mozetič
(Documentary, Slovenia, 2018, 90′, English subtitles)
In a small, border town, constantly bombarded by the bizarity of history, where even the cemetery was severed between emergent Yugoslavia and Italy, over the arc of one quiet day, intertwining complex stories unfold, which seem to flow into parallel worlds.
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The Breath / Der Atem
by Uli M. Schüeppel
(Documentary, Germany, 2019, 95′, English subtitles)
Twenty-six people talk about love and hardship, hope and bitterness, fear and happiness accompanied by celluloid images of Berlin at night. A symphony of life, a magical cosmos.
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Zones and Passages / Ζώνες και περάσματα
by Iro Siafliaki
(Documentary, Greece/France, 2019, 108′, English subtitles)
Images of labour and unemployment in Greece, today. Athens, Perama, Thessaloniki, Skouries… “Block after block, the liquidation of the world goes on…” (René Char). Instants that show the disruption of what defined the world of labour until now but also the movements invented by the people who fight.
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The Ancient Woods
by Mindaugas Survila
(Documentary, Lithuania/Estonia/Germany, 2019, 63′, no dialogue)
One of Europe’s last remaining old-growth forests comes alive in a poetic documentary about the quotidian rituals, survival and non-anthropocentric harmony of the varied inhabitants of a Lithuanian woodland. The film takes its viewers on the endless journey. There is no commentary, only rich, almost palpable sounds of the forest and the magical situations captured by the camera.
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(out of competition)
Walk on the Wild Side
by Germaine McCormack-Kos
(Documentary, UK/France, 2018, 57′, English version)
The amazing, inspirational story of the pioneers who found the first cures for cancer and those who have followed, intertwined with Germaine’s poetic upbeat fight for her life when diagnosed with stage 4 cancer.
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COMPETITION PRIX SAUVAGE CORTO 2020
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Black&White / Černobílá
by Eluned Zoe Aiano and Anna Benner
(Documentary, Czech Republic, 2019, 19′, English subtitles)
The small Czech town of Třeboň found itself at the centre of unexpected international attention when the world-wide press picked up on an obscure urban legend from World War Two, some 70 years after the event. The story in question involves nurses, Nazis, seduction and syphilis, but no-one can agree on what really happened.
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Jacob’s Ladder
by Rupert Clague
(Documentary, UK, 2019, 7′, English version)
The Machiguenga tribe of Peru prize a rare plant known as toé for its ability to create intense, lucid dreams. Made entirely on location in the Amazon jungle under the guidance of Werner Herzog, Jacob’s Ladder invites you to cross over from the black and white waking world into this phantasmagorical realm.
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Lux Ex Umbra
by Gregor Erler and Cristina Perera
(Experimental, Germany, 2019, 7′, no dialogue)
Cast: Ludger Pistor, Miguel Clark, Lia Kemendi, Finnja Hesse
Experimental dance video by Cristina Perera & Gregor Erler
“There are things known and things unknown, between them there are doors…” (William Blake)
“My demons walk with me. They told me not to leave them alone” (William Fitzsimmons)
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Blue Matter / Materia celeste
by Andrea Gatopoulos
(Fiction, Italy, 2019, 15′, English subtitles)
Cast: Marina Occhionero, Teorodo Giambanco
It’s a sunny summer day. Mickey is sick with the worst disease. He chooses Flo, an old friend, for a trip in his hippie van to forget about everything just for one night.
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Alma in the Herd / Alma nel branco
by Agnese Làposi
(Fiction, Switzerland, 2019, 24′, English subtitles)
Cast: Lavinia Giordano, Leonor Oberson, Leonardo Enrique Maina
Alma, thirteen years old, visits her older sister, who lives in a commune in the countryside. A stolen cow and a young man live in the garden of the house. The young girl struggles to come to terms with this new reality.
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Grandad Was a Romantic
by Maryam Mohajer
(Animation, UK, 2019, 4′, English version)
My grandad was a romantic. He once saw a picture of my granny and realised that she was the love of his life. One day he decided to go and meet my granny.
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The Heavy Burden / Barê Giran
by Yilmaz Özdil
(Fiction, Turkey, 2020, 17′, English subtitles)
Cast: Adil Abdurrahman, Saman Mustafa, Nazmi Kirik
Avdel feeds his family by working with his donkey in the sanitation service of the city of Mardin in Turkey. To keep his job he is obliged to find a younger animal. His nephew decides to slip over the border into Syria to bring back his own donkey, that he has left behind because of the war.
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Prix Sauvage Corto 2020 Special Mention
Paperboy
by Ninna Pálmadóttir
(Fiction, Iceland, 2018, 10′, English subtitles)
Cast: Trausti Hrafn Þorsteinsson, Salóme R. Gunnarsdóttir
Young Breki grows up fast when he peers into a basement window on his paper delivery route.
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Woods & Waters
by Antoine Parouty
(Experimental, France, 2018, 15′, English subtitles)
Cast: Nicolas Guerrier, Valentin Dignac
At the crossroads between the science documentary and the poetic essay, Woods and Waters is a tribute to the photographic work accomplished at the end of 19th century by the American pioneer of wildlife photography Georges Shiras.
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Demetrius
by Fabio Thieme
(Experimental, Germany, 2019, 14′, English subtitles)
Cast: Christoph Gawenda, Jana Antonissen
Demetrius, a charismatic up-and-coming journalist, is caught of having faked all his articles, stories and protagonists. When another journalist gets the offer to interview Demetrius after the scandal, they engage in a dialogue about political responsibility and construction of reality through journalism and art.
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Prix Sauvage Corto 2020 WINNER Best Short
Short Calf Muscle / Korte Kuitspier
by Victoria Warmerdam
(Fiction, Netherlands, 2019, 13′, English subtitles)
Cast: Henry van Loon, Beppie Melissen, Sieger Sloot
Short Calf Muscle is an absurdist black comedy about Anders. Anders is different. But he doesn’t know that. Yes, he’s gay, but that’s not the point. There is also this thing that others see but he doesn’t.
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Time and Tide / Tijd en Tij
by Marleen van der Werf
(Experimental, Netherlands, 2018, 29′, original version)
Filmmaker Marleen van der Werf observes the tides of the wind in a coastal scenery. As the camera captures voids of stillness, the natural world slowly becomes a simile for the mental landscape, confronting the viewers with their expectations of nature in film.
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Dogwatch / Der Wächter
by Albin WIldner
(Fiction, Austria, 2019, 29′, English subtitles)
Cast: Rainer Wöss, Anna Tenta, Anton Noori
After losing his lifelong position at an industrial corporation, Raphael is forced by the Austrian Unemployment Office to take an underwhelming job as a night-time security guard. He moves back in with his bedridden mother, who is also cared for by the dedicated Ukrainian nurse Vera.
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