2024 The Belt and Road Film Week Film Line-up

[Nominated Films]

THE SETTLERS

Director: Felipe Gálvez

-2023-

Chile, beginning of the 20th century. A wealthy landowner hires three horsemen to mark out the perimeter of his extensive property and open a route to the Atlantic Ocean across vast Patagonia. The expedition, composed of a young Chilean half-blood, an American mercenary, and led by a reckless British lieutenant, soon turns into a "civilizing" raid.

THE MIDSUMMER'S VOICE

Director: ZHANG Yudi

-2024-

Sun Xiaolei, a student of Peking Opera, is facing the first important competition of his life, but his delayed voice change might jeopardize everything. Fortunately, during this anxiety-inducing preparation period, he unexpectedly befriends two competitors, a tomboyish girl Shi Jiahui and the rebellious "Nepo baby", Xie Tianci. The three teenagers are about to embrace a subtle change of their adolescence and friendship during this endless summer.

MATRYOSHKA

Director: Jorge Forero

-2024-

Out of the blue, Ana travels to Colombia to spend the weekend with her grandmother Lucía at her country house. Julia, her mother, a writer in her sixties, greets and welcomes Ana with whom she never has built a good relationship. In the past, Julia handed over to Lucia her daughter’s care, who ultimately looked after Ana since then. Their mutual and daily exchange turns rather awkward. Ana confesses to her grandmother that she got an abortion due to an unplanned and unwanted pregnancy. The upcoming motherhood has affected her deeply, leading her to seek a shelter at her grandmother's house; nevertheless, being there could not refrain. This weekend apparently gains perfect momentum to heal these atavistic wounds.

MURDERESS

Director: Eva Nathena

-2023-

Early 1900's on a Greek island. Hadoula has learned to survive in a male-dominated and extremely patriarchal society. Instead of accepting the devaluation and lower fate of women, Hadoula reacts. Her personal, internal, bubbling revolution is soon externalized. The victims of her outburst are the little girls of the island, whom she sets free from the social and economic burden that their existence entails by taking their lives. Her actions will bring her face to face with the authorities. Forcing her to leave her home and escape to her refuge, nature. As much as her faith and morals dictate that she has done the right thing, her transgenerational trauma follows her everywhere.

CHILDREN OF THE COAST

Director: Bruno Bancalari

-2024-

A Portrait of a group of characters from different areas on the Costa Chica region (Oaxaca and Guerrero, Mexico), who represent different perspectives and ways of approaching the Afro-Mexican culture of the coast, opening a space for reflection on their historical present, their singularities, their illusions and their deep love for music, which is, in this case, the language that unites them. CHILDREN OF THE COAST is a documentary that seeks to lift up the regional musician as the protagonist of a story about tradition and love for their homeland, making a community visible through their artform thanks to the collective participation of adults and children who have been entrusted with protecting, preserving and sharing their own story.

IF ONLY I COULD HIBERNATE

Director: Zoljargal Purevdash

-2023-

A poor but prideful teenager, Ulzii, lives in the yurt area of Ulaanbaatar with his family. He is a physics genius and is determined to win a science competition to earn a scholarship. When his mother finds a job in the countryside, she leaves him and his younger siblings to face a harsh winter by themselves. Ulzii will have to take a risky job to look after them all and keep his home heated.

GITLING

Director: Jopy Arnaldo

-2023-

Jamie just called off her engagement, free from a relationship fraught with problems. Makoto ran away from his home in Japan to escape his wife, his family and the question of whether he wants to return to them, finding an excuse by flying to a film festival in the Philippines. Jamie ends up both as Makoto's interpreter and translator for his film, tasked to create Ilonggo subtitles together. After they decide to escape a pretentious film party together, the two end up getting to know each other in the city of Bacolod, getting closer and closer as the days go by. They bond sweets and street food, grilled chicken and alcohol, and over a made up language created by Jamie, getting lost in words that don't have any meaning except to them. Having found something they never knew they needed in one another, they keep finding excuses to stay around each other until, eventually, the film premieres, the festival ends and the two have to go their separate ways. No matter what happens next, they're better equipped to tackle it all thanks to the quiet comfort that they've found someone in the world that could give them the thing they crave the most.

GOODBYE JULIA

Director: Mohamed Kordofani

-2023-

Wracked by guilt after covering up a murder, Mona, a northern Sudanese retired singer in a tense marriage, tries to make amends by taking in the deceased's southern Sudanese widow, Julia, and her son, Daniel, into her home. Unable to confess her transgressions to Julia, Mona decides to leave the past behind and adjust to a new status, unaware that the country's turmoil may find its way into her home and put her face to face with her sins. 

[Selections]

PERSONA NON GRATA

Director: Antonin Svoboda

-2024-

After the death of her husband, former skier Andrea is confronted with many problems. The relationship with her parents and her daughter Sara has always been tense, and she has to cope with the loss of her partner alone. Traumatized and plagued by fears, she tries to cope with her everyday life. In the wake of the #MeToo wave, Andrea decides to give an interview about her time as a young professional skier. In this very personal interview, she records the monstrous power structures of the home management at the time and how the abuse between colleagues and coaches continued. In doing so, she unleashes a media avalanche to which her family also reacts with rejection. However, more and more people support the allegations. A story of liberation based on true events. A film about a remarkable woman.

MIGHTY AFRIN: IN THE TIME OF FLOODS

Director: Angelos Rallis

-2023-

Disappearing mud islands along the mighty Brahmaputra river, a 12-year-old orphan girl named Afrin is coming of age. As if an annual ritual, heavy rainfalls and flood waters ravage Afrin’s island. When a severe flood submerges her home, Afrin transforms into a heroine that shows her remarkable resilience and adaptation qualities. Confronted by the urgency of the situation Afrin begins a journey to the heart of Bangladesh to trace her estranged father. A quest that ultimately brings Afrin face-to-face with the inescapable complexity of homeless orphans in Dhaka who struggle to make a living by handling waste and burning rubbish, forcing her to accept early her adulthood.

PICTURES OF GHOSTS

Director: Kleber Mendonça Filho

-2023-

PICTURES OF GHOSTS is a multidimensional journey through time, sound, architecture, and filmmaking, set in the urban landscape of Recife, Brazilian coastal capital of Pernambuco: a historical and human territory, examined through the great movie theatres that served as spaces of conviviality during the 20th century. Having hosted dreams and progress, these places have also embodied a major transformation on social practices. Combining archive documentary, mystery, film clips and personal memories, PICTURES OF GHOSTS is a map of a city through the lens of cinema.

SEMMELWEIS

Director: Lajos Koltai

-2023-

1847, Vienna. Ignác Semmelweis, the short-tempered but passionate Hungarian doctor delivers babies and carries out autopsies on a daily basis whilst looking for the cause of puerperal fever, the mysterious epidemic that decimates patients in the hospital. His boss prohibits him from conducting research into the subject and sends his right-hand man to cross him at every turn. He also threatens a young midwife, Emma Hoffmann, to spy on him. After a rocky start, the relationship between Semmelweis and Emma develops into a romance. When Semmelweis's friend gets wounded mid-autopsy and dies with the same symptoms as the women in labour, Semmelweis discovers the cause and prevention of childbed fever. Half of his peers discredit him, yet he carries on with the fight to prove his theory at all cost.

SIMA'S UNFINISHED NARRATION

Director: Alireza Samadi

-2023-

Dr. Arash Simin is running a successful life, but a piece of news in the social media changes his life, making him to struggle to turn the table to normal.

BAURYNA SALU

Director: Askhat Kuchinchirekov

-2023-

Following an old nomadic tradition "bauryna salu", Yersultan was given at birth to his grandmother so that she could raise him. He grew up with resentment and disconnection from his parents. When he turns 12, his grandmother dies and he has to move back with the family he barely knows. Yersultan's coming of age process coincides with an unbearable transformation and an attempt to restore the relationship between him and his parents, especially his father.

VALLEY OF EXILE

Director: Anna Fahr

-2023-

Two sisters arrive in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley at the onset of the Syrian war, embarking on a journey into exile that tests their loyalty to their country, their family and each other.

THE EXPERTS

Director: Andre Chiew / Nazim Shah

-2024-

After a decade of hard-earned peace, ex-criminal siblings are ruthlessly dragged back into their treacherous past. A notorious gangster's blackmail forces them into a heart-pounding heist, where old grudges ignite, and a shocking family tragedy resurfaces. As the shadows of their criminal history engulf them, loyalties fray, and survival hangs in the balance. Will they outsmart their ruthless enemy and protect the family, or will this desperate job tear them apart forever?

NASTY

Director: Tudor Giurgiu

-2024-

1972 was a turning point in Ilie Nastase's career: he won his first US Open, while reaching both Wimbledon and Davis Cup finals. Moving back and forth in time and featuring amazing archive footage and exclusive interviews with top athletes, the documentary explores Nastase's highs and lows, the controversies that surrounded him and the enduring impact he has had on the world of tennis. Lovable, charming and generous, yet temperamental, arrogant and obscene. Mr. Nice' n' Nasty disrupted the old-fashioned etiquette of the sport in the 70s thus becoming its first rebel rockstar.

!AITSA

Director: Dane Dodds

-2023-

The Great Karoo in South Africa to most, is not that great: it is vast and empty. !AITSA rejects this idea of emptiness and instead reveals the Great Karoo as an ancient site for humans exploring the darkness all around us. Central to the film is the exploration of existential questions of huge proportions, such as the essence of time. In this search, the voices heard range from unemployed youth to world-class scientists, professors and archeologists, to local clergy and the spiritual leaders of Bushman-communities. !AITSA gives space for all of them to speak. All of this results in an expansive, transcendental film experience about the questions we share, and the many paths leading towards the answers, which will always remain slightly out of reach.