SHAHIN
Finland, 2004
14 min.
Director: Minna Lindroos
Editor: Tero Nikulainen
Producer: Helle Faber
Production Company:
YLE Finnish
Broadcasting Company
Shahin, 14, is like any other Finnish schoolgirl. Life is filled with friends, school, hobbies, boys and dreams about the future. But her life has not always been as carefree as it is now. She is a Kurd, originally from Iran. She had to escape from Iran with her mother when she was only three years old. After several years spent as refugees in different places, they settled in Finland. What is it like to arrive in a new country and culture, and to start a new school in an incomprehensible language? How can one integrate into a new way of life? It is possible, but it takes time. Seven years ago Shahin only spoke Kurdish; now she thinks in Finnish. It is difficult to build up your true identity when you live between cultures. Sometimes Shahin feels she is Kurdish, sometimes Finnish and sometimes Iranian. It depends on the situation. She will always carry the fears of the past with her, but after surviving all those hard times, she appreciates the tranquil life she has now, and all the possibilities she has in life.
Shahin is a documentary about being a refugee and finding your own place in a new culture. But it is also a film about finding your true identity, a struggle that everybody has to face in life, no matter where you live.
THREE СOMRADES
Netherlands, 2006
99 min
Director: Masha Novikova
Editor: Srdjan Fink
Producer: Ymke Kreiken
Production Companies: VPRO, NOVDOC
Three friends - Ruslan, Ramzan and Islam - cruise the streets of the Chechen city of Grozny at the start of the 1990s with their car radio up full blast. A few months later, Ruslan is arrested and executed by Russian soldiers. Ramzan is the next one to die when he is killed during an air strike. The last of the three friends - Islam the doctor - only survives the war as a result of being deported to Holland. This is where director Mascha Novikova begins shooting her documentary on the tragic destinies of the three cheerful comrades. The film looks at the Russian-Chechen conflict from the point of view of the Muslim inhabitants. As a result, it is primarily based on interviews with survivors, who recall the three men who are the central figures in the story. Fragments of the past are supplemented with a rich film archive that was found in the estate of Ramzan, who was a cameraman.
The film creates an invaluable mosaic of intimate confessions and candid thoughts from a humiliated citizenry, whilst also providing the neutral watcher with an unusually authentic insight into a place where massacres occurred and into the life of ordinary people in the middle of a war zone.
ENEMIES OF HAPPINESS
Denmark, 2006
59 min
Director: Eva Mulvad
Editor: Adam Nielsen
Producer: Helle Faber
Production Company: Bastard Film
In 2003, Afghan woman Malalai Joya (who was then 24) appeared before the lower house of the Afghan parliament, which is practically an all-male body. She delivered a short but highly critical attack on Afghan society, which she felt had not done anything to deal with the unjust oppression of Afghan women. She was led out of the chamber within a few minutes and soon received anonymous death threats, forcing her to wear the hated burka for her own safety. Danish director Eva Mulvad follows Malalai Joya during the week leading up to parliamentary elections, in which she is standing as one of three women among forty one candidates. Her campaign is marked by threats but also by the support of villagers for whom she is often the only authority they can turn to with problems like domestic violence and forced marriage.
Two years ago, the BBC declared Malalai Joya to be the most famous woman in Afghanistan. In any Western Country, this information would sound trivial, but in a country where women were only able to participate in elections for the first time in 2005 it deservedly attracts admiration.
WHITE RAVENS - NIGHTMARE
IN CHECHNYA
Germany, 2005
92 min.
Director: Johann Feindt and Tamara Trampe
Editor: Stephan Krumbiegel
Producer: Thomas Kufus
Petya and Kiril – who’ve just turned 18 – volunteer to serve on the front in Chechnya. Katya, a nurse, works in a field hospital in the war zone. Neither of them are the same when they come back. Crippled physically and emotionally, abandoned with their experiences of mutilations, torture and death. Over a three-year period Johann Feindt and Tamara Trampe observe the returnees trying to cope again in a society that represses awareness of the war. The Committee of Mothers of Russian Soldiers is the only place where they, along with the helpless parents, find like-minded people they can talk to.
War has raged in Chechnya for ten years. A dirty, pointless war. A war of the wounded Russian empire. The politicians pulling the strings are glad the war has now acquired a new label: combating terrorism. That sounds fair and is much more internationally acceptable.
L’ACCORD
Switzerland, 2005
83 min.
Director: Nicolas Wadimoff
Journalist: Beatrice Guelpa
Editing: Karine Sudan / Naima Bachiri
Production: Akka Films
Peace? The word was buried in Israel and Palestine for the last three years. Check points, occupied cities, suicide attacks: in the middle of this devastated daily life, suddenly hope emerged near Lake Geneva. December 1, 2003, 400 Israelis and Palestinians arrived in Geneva to announce their peace plan, baptised The Geneva Initiative, that had been negotiated in secret for the previous two and a half years, with the support of the Swiss Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The peace plan is unique in two senses: it comes from civil society figures and, for the first time, it gives specific answers to the most sensitive issues: Jerusalem, the settlements and the return of Palestinian refugees.
While the people that issued the Geneva Initiative are considered as traitors in their own countries, the Initiative has an unexpected echo in the world and gets supports from states all around the world.
« L’ACCORD » follows eight members of the Geneva Initiative, four Israelis and four Palestinians, men and women that dared to break the silence and face fear, fantasy and indifference from both sides.
This movie dives in the backstage of the diplomacy and tells how one builds and caries an initiative in a desperate battle for peace.
PUNJABI CAB
USA, 2004
20 min
Director / Producer / Editor: Liam Dalzell
The darker side of American liberal society reveals itself through the eyes of San Francisco’s Sikh taxi drivers in PUNJABI CAB. Since 9/11, turban-wearing Sikhs in America have endured harassment and violence because they are mistaken for the stereotypical Middle Eastern terrorist.
In this film, isolation and fear are made visceral through juxtaposing scenes of the almost other-worldly cultural kaleidoscope of the turbaned and long-bearded Sikhs and the dark, mean streets of the surprisingly ignorant and oftentimes hateful people who climb into their cabs. Death is “100 percent immigration, no one gets refused from there,” reflects one Sikh cabbie.
ENCOUNTER POINT
USA / 2006
85 min.
Director/Producer: Ronit Avni
Co-Director: Julia Bacha
Producer: Joline Makhlouf, Nahanni Rous
Just when the world is losing hope about the possibility of resolving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict comes Encounter Point. Created by a Palestinian, Israeli, North and South American team, Encounter Point moves beyond sensational and dogmatic imagery to tell the story of an Israeli settler, a Palestinian ex-prisoner, a bereaved Israeli mother and a wounded Palestinian bereaved brother who risk their safety and public standing to press for an end to the conflict. They are at the vanguard of a movement to push Palestinian and Israeli societies to a tipping point, forging a new consensus for nonviolence and peace. Perhaps years from now, their actions will be recognized as a catalyst for constructive change in the region.
Encounter Point is a film about hope, true courage and implicitly about the silence of journalists and politicians who pay little attention to vital grassroots peace efforts.
BRIDGE OVER THE WADI
Israel / 2006
55 min.
Scriptwriter/ Director/
Producer: Tomer Heymann and Barak Heymann
In 2004, two years after the beginning of the Second Intifada, a group of Arab and Jewish parents decided to establish a joint bi-national, bi-lingual school in the Arab Area village in Israel’s Wadi. Although the initiative was idealistic and noble, the reality was that parents had some major hurdles to overcome, wit many having to defend their decision in the face of opponents and sceptics. The school, which is called Bridge over the Wadi, has room for 50 Jewish and 50 Arab students.
In a sober manner, the filmmakers observe how students, faculty and parents struggle to coexist peacefully during the first exciting year, showing how fragile the attempt is to create an environment of co-existence against the backdrop of the complicated reality. By the end of the year, it would appear that they have succeeded in establishing a foundation, however shaky and unpredictable it may be. In 2005, twice as many students signed up to attend the school.
TO BE AND TO HAVE
France, 2002
100 min
Director/Editor: Nicolas Philibert
Producer: Gilles Sandoz
Production Company: Maia Films
A gentle study of life in a small French village and the tradition of the one-teacher school. Filmed in a new verite style of quiet observation, the film reveals the rhythms and routines of the children’s lives during a school year. Their teacher is a dedicated and compassionate man. The children are of different ages and with different needs, and he is able to give each of them personal attention and guidance. Slowly, the strong bond between the teacher and his students is revealed. By following activities in the classroom, on field trips, and also the lives of the students at home, the film demonstrates the unique French tradition of the one-teacher school and its central importance in village life.
Filmed with great sensitivity and unobtrusiveness, this is a deeply humanist portrayal of life in the village classroom and a prime example of an emerging trend in French documentary filmmaking, combining verite techniques with a meditative and poetic eye for evocative details.
Festival sponsors in South Caucasus:
Heinrich Boell Foundation South Caucasus office,
South Caucasus foundations
of Open Society Institute’s
(OSI) network,
Eurasia Partnership Foundation (Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia),
the Embassy of Switzerland
in Georgia
