April 12 – 20, 2024

 

Viewfinder 2011

Morgen

Marian Crişan
100’ / 2010
Romania, France, Hungary

LEMESOS
Tuesday 12.04 @ 20:00
NICOSIA
Saturday 16.04 @ 22:00

Nelu works as a supermarket security guard in a small village on the Romanian-Hungarian border. One day at the river, Nelu ‘fishes-out’ a Turkish man who is hoping to reach Germany. The two men are unable to communicate with words, but Nelu provides the illegal emigrant with clothes, food, shelter and a far-fetched promise to help him accomplish his journey. Director Marian Crisan presents a poetic film about “an immigration story not from the immigrant’s point of view but from the point of view of the people he meets on his way.” Inspired by a news article on illegal Turkish immigration, the film demonstrates how borders between people are just as real as the borders between countries.

Awards
Best Director Award, Best Actor Award ex aequo to Andras Hathazi and Yilmaz Yalcin and FIPRESCI Award – Thessaloniki Film Festival, 2010
Special Jury and Ecumenical Jury Award – Locarno Film Festival, 2010

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/embed/pkab2o0aEzk

October

Daniel Vega, Diego Vega
83’ / 2010
Peru

LEMESOS
Monday 11.04 @ 22:00
NICOSIA
Tuesday 12.04 @ 22:00

Money-lender Clemente only knows how to relate to others through transactions. His life is turned upside down when someone leaves him a baby in a basket. A client, Sofia, steps in to help tend to the baby and Clemente is faced with new possibilities during the October celebration of the Lord of Miracles. The Vega brothers compose a moving and charming film, balancing themes of loneliness and disconnection with an absurd comic tone that steers the narrative away from melodrama. With their wonderful use of religious symbolism and desperate situations, the Vega brothers present a fresh vision of their native Lima, a city that seems to pray, collectively, for new hope.

Awards
Jury Prize Prix Un Certain Regard – Cannes Film Festival, 2009

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/embed/M_iAJ1-dWyY

Loose Cannons

Ferzan Ozpetek

100’ / 2010
Italy

LEMESOS
Sunday 10.04 @ 20:00
NICOSIA
Saturday 09.04 @ 20:00

Tommaso, the youngest son of the well-to-do Cantone family, thinks he has the perfect way to escape working in his family’s pasta factory: telling his father he’s gay. Little does he know that someone else will beat him to the punch in Ferzan’s Ozpetek’s latest dissection of family, love, and personal liberation. Though Nonna, the matriarch of the Cantone clan, advises her relations to follow their own dreams, most of them feel beholden to the family’s business and reputation. Gently satirizing this large bourgeois family while creating a memorable panoply of characters, Ozpetek has made a film full of humour and heart.

Awards
Nominated for Audience Award – European Film Awards, 2010

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/embed/XoHtIKBZUbM

Heartbeats

Xavier Dolan

97’ / 2010
Canada

LEMESOS
Wednesday 13.04 @ 22:00
NICOSIA
Sunday 10.04 @ 22:00

Wunderkind filmmaker Xavier Dolan returns with his second feature – a sophisticated comedy about two close friends, Francis and Marie, who pursue their mutual obsession with a young man. As they face off in competition, cracks in their friendship begin to appear with both comic and tragic results. The film reveals a fundamentally simple intrigue that careers through a whole gamut of poetic craziness: passions unleashed, expectations, sorrow, humiliation and, finally, loneliness. Part gleaming farce, part tough-minded exploration of the inherent insanity of love and desire, the film is all the more remarkable given the young age of its director who is not even 22 years old.

Awards
Nominated for Prix Un Certain Regard – Cannes Film Festival, 2010

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/embed/znpU_Aup-Bg

Attenberg

Athina Rachel Tsangari

95’ / 2010
Greece

LEMESOS
Saturday 09.04 @ 22:00
NICOSIA
Monday 11.04 @ 20:00

Marina, 23, is growing up with her architect father in a prototype factory town by the sea. Finding people strange and repellent, she keeps her distance. Instead she chooses to observe it through the songs of Suicide, the mammal documentaries of Sir David Attenborough, and the sexual-­education lessons she receives from her only friend, Bella. A stranger comes to town and awakens her sexuality. Her father meanwhile ritualistically prepares for his exit from the 20th century, which he considers to be “overrated.” Caught between the two men and Bella, Marina investigates the wondrous mystery of the human species. The film embraces the abstract and theatrical in choreographed interludes, but provides an essential emotional point of access in the profound father-daughter bond. An unconventional coming-of-age film, Attenberg is the story of a girl-woman who comes to terms with sex and death as natural parts of life.

Awards
Coppa Volpi Award for Best Actress to Ariane Labed – Venice Film Festival, 2010
Silver Alexander Award – Thessaloniki Film Festival, 2010
New Voices Feature Award – Whistler Film Festival, Canada, 2010

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/embed/fp_gBYDcoTk

Submarino

Thomas Vinterberg

110’ / 2009
Denmark

LEMESOS
Friday 15.04 @ 22:00
NICOSIA
Sunday 17.04 @ 20:00

Submarino is the story of two estranged brothers, marked by a childhood of gloom. They were separated from each other at a young age by a tragedy that split their entire family. Today, Nick’s life is drenched in alcohol and plagued by violence, while his kid brother, a single father, is a junkie struggling to give his son a better life. Their paths cross, making a confrontation inevitable. The stories of the two brothers are intimately observed and undeniably harrowing – this is an unflinching look at cycles of neglect and addiction handed down through generations.

Awards
Nordic Council’s Film Prize Award for Best Director, Scrip Writer and Producer – Nordic Council Awards, 2010
Nominated for Golden Berlin Bear Award – Berlin International Film Festival, 2010

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/embed/RXQsSStHI5c

Tears

Cheng Wen-tang

111’ / 2009
Taiwan

LEMESOS
Thursday 15.04 @ 20:00
NICOSIA
Friday 15.04 @ 22:00

Just days before his sixtieth birthday, veteran Detective Kuo receives a new assignment involving the drug overdose and eventual death of a young girl. Departmental superiors see it as a textbook crime and urge him to conclude the case, but experience and sense tell Kuo otherwise. Thorough investigation leads him to a lively college girl, Lai Chun Chun, whose young and innocent appearance is shadowed by an indispensable grudge. Kuo’s uncompromising principles and refusal to close the case turn him into an outcast, isolated from colleagues and family. He realizes he has one last chance to impose justice and find his own redemption. While the film reveals the paradoxes in the everyday lives of policemen, it also employs the motif of police violence to highlight the burden of rash judgment which people regret after they can do nothing to change them.

Awards
Nominated for Best Screenplay Award and Best Original Film Song –Golden Horse Film Festival, Taiwan, 2010

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/embed/2sheYDErZEo

Bal (Honey)

Semih Kaplanoglu

103’ / 2010
Turkey, Germany

LEMESOS
Friday 08.04 @ 20:00
NICOSIA
Wednesday 13.04 @ 20:00

The film depicts the life of sensitive young Yusuf in his first year of school in an isolated mountain area. For the young boy, the surrounding forest becomes a place of mystery and adventure when accompanying his beekeeper father on the job. Yusuf watches in admiration as his father Yakup hangs specially-made hives at the top of the tallest trees. When his father must travel to a faraway forest on a risky mission, and doesn’t return after several days, young Yusuf summons all of his courage and goes deep into the forest to search for his father. A journey into the unknown…

Awards
Golden Berlin Bear Award and Prize of the Ecumenical Jury – Berlin International Film Festival, 2010
Special Jury Prize, People’s Choice Award – Istanbul International Film Festival, 2010
UNESCO Award – Asia Pacific Screen Awards, 2010
Nominated for European Director Award – European Film Awards, 2010

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/embed/Q7GUNXEyQRI