LIFF 2021 - Cinema Versa
The Cinema Versa Selection From The 2021 Leeds International Film Festival
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- DirectorTomasz WolskiIn 1970, protests broke out in several coastal cities in Communist Poland. Workers went on strikes to object to price increases. Growing numbers of protesters walked out onto the streets. As the situation became tense, a crisis team gathered in the capital. With the help of animations combined with telephone recordings, we can peek behind the closed doors of dignitaries' offices. Hundreds of cigarettes are smoked. Conversations get cut off. Strategies to break up protesters and future repressions are planned. Propaganda activities are thought up. The protests get out of control.
- DirectorCéline RouzetThe rough highlands of Papua New Guinea have become the land of plenty for tourists in search of exoticism and foreign oil companies looking for new fields. Tribes get paid to dress up for visitors while a local Huli family and their clan have agreed to sell their land to ExxonMobil with dreams of modernity. But the money never comes and they are now caught between rival tribes, greedy politicians and one of the most powerful multinationals in the world. Tourists point their cameras on dances that have lost their meaning. And a world is disappearing without a sound.
- DirectorRaj PatelZak PiperAnita Chitaya has a gift; she can help bring abundant food from dead soil, she can make men fight for gender equality, and she can end child hunger in her village. Now, to save her home from extreme weather, she faces her greatest challenge: persuading Americans that climate change is real. Traveling from Malawi to California to the White House, she meets climate skeptics and despairing farmers. Her journey takes her across all the divisions shaping the US, from the rural-urban divide, to schisms of race, class and gender, to the thinking that allows Americans to believe they live on a different planet from everyone else. It will take all her skill and experience to help Americans recognize, and free themselves from, a logic that is already destroying the Earth.
- DirectorJessica KingdonThe absorbingly cinematic Ascension explores the pursuit of the "Chinese Dream." This observational documentary presents a contemporary vision of China that prioritizes productivity and innovation above all.
- DirectorAndy CohenGaylen RossThe documentary film of the brief window of artistic freedom and democracy movement 1978 - 1982 following China's brutal cultural revolution.
- DirectorAndrea ArnoldStarsLin GallagherA close-up portrait of the daily lives of two cows.
- DirectorFranz BöhmThree young female activists in Hong Kong, Chile, and Uganda cope with the staggering personal impacts of their activism.
- DirectorKeith MaitlandStarsRenee BrodyMichael AroninMelissa Robyn GlassmanA documentary about Michael Brody Jr., a 21-year-old hippie millionaire who in 1970 promised to give away his $25M inheritance in an effort to usher in a new era of world peace.
- DirectorJessica BeshirStarsDJ ExpressKawa SherifSalih SigirciA spiritual journey into the highlands of Harar, immersed in the rituals of khat, a leaf Sufi Muslims chewed for centuries for religious meditations - and Ethiopia's most lucrative cash crop today.
- DirectorLuke HollandAn urgent portrait of the last living generation of Hitler's Third Reich in never-before-seen interviews raising vital questions about authority, conformity, national identity, and their own roles in the greatest human crimes in history.
- DirectorJonas Poher RasmussenStarsDaniel KarimyarFardin MijdzadehMilad EskandariFLEE tells the extraordinary true story of a man, Amin, on the verge of marriage which compels him to reveal his hidden past for the first time.
- DirectorRichard PeeteRobert YapkowitzStarsNick CaveLacy J. DaltonRick MoodyA portrait of blues and folk singer Karen Dalton, a prominent figure in 1960s New York, who discarded the traditional trappings of success.
- DirectorPaola CalvoPatrick JasimStarsLady CandyMiss KathMini SirenitaThe courageous female wrestlers of Ciudad Juárez, a city known for its high murder rate against women - who fight in the ring and in their daily lives to redefine the image of what it means to be a woman in Mexico.
- DirectorEliane RahebStarsRuben CardosoMiguel JelelatyFrançois NourA gay man confronts the ghosts of his past and explores hidden longings, unrequited love and tormenting feelings of guilt.
- DirectorMaria SpethStarsDieter BachmannAynur BalÖnder CavdarHow does one feel at home? In Stadtallendorf, a German city with a complex history of both excluding and integrating foreigners, genial teacher Dieter Bachmann offers his pupils the key to at least feeling as if they are at home.
- DirectorRicardo CalilRenato TerraStarsCaetano VelosoBrazilian singer-songwriter Caetano Veloso reflects on his imprisonment in 1968, during the military dictatorship.
- DirectorJennifer AbbottJoel BakanStarsAnjali AppaduraiChris BarrettHeidi BoghosianExposes how companies are desperately rebranding as socially responsible - and how that threatens democratic freedoms.
- DirectorVivian KleimanStarsAlison BechdelJennifer CamperAlex CombsA lively look at five LGBTQ+ comic book artists whose careers go from the underground scene to the cover of Time Magazine and the international stage.
- DirectorBill BenzStarsSt. VincentEzra BuzzingtonToko YasudaSt. Vincent sets out to make a documentary about her music, but when she hires a close friend to direct, notions of reality, identity, and authenticity grow increasingly distorted and bizarre.
- DirectorThomas LauranceOn Our Doorstep delves deep into an aspect of the refugee crisis that rarely reached the press. With NGOs being blocked by red tape and the absence of any positive action by French or British authorities, the film is a behind-the-scenes look at the unprecedented grassroots movement that rose to aid the refugees in Calais, and the community that sprang up there, before it was forcefully demolished. This is the story of what happens when young and inexperienced citizens are forced to devise systems and structures to support 10,000 refugees; and are left unguided to face the moral and emotional conflicts, blurred lines and frequent grey areas of giving aid to vulnerable people. People who do not want to be there. It questions whether the aims of the volunteers were met, and whether these aims ultimately served the refugees' needs. Originally arriving at the Calais Jungle as a volunteer, Thomas Laurance ended up documenting what he saw over the year he spent there, until the camp's destruction in October 2016. This film is the result of the remarkable and intimate access he gained to both volunteers and refugees.
- DirectorSuzy HarrisonStarsCaz AdcockRen AldridgeSarah BenthamA documentary which, through a series of interviews, looks at gender in the UK's DIY and underground music scenes.
- DirectorRaquel CastroWe are surrounded by all kinds of sounds, but how far are we conscious about them? The director and investigator Raquel Castro has been working with the concept of sound landscape. And in particular the way sounds, silences, noises, frequencies and all spectral densities - infra or ultrasounds - can shape each place and all of us. This is also a film essay about citizenship, ecology, and the responsibility we have for the sounds we produce.
- DirectorMark CousinsStarsMark CousinsMark Cousins offers hope and optimism while he explores different movies and talks about how technology is changing the course of cinema in a new century and how Covid continues the process.
- DirectorAshley O'ShayStarsJanaé BonsuSet during the height of the Movement for Black Lives in Chicago, 'Unapologetic' captures a community of millennial organizers confronting an administration complicit in state violence against its Black residents.