WINDOW ON THE WORLD

Premieres, Previews & New Releases

Booking Ref

Fri 12 Aug 20:45 – Studio Sat 13 Aug 10:45 – Studio

Sat 13 Aug 18:00 – Auditorium Mon 15 Aug 21:00 – Auditorium Preview – Canada WILDHOOD

Two brothers search for their birth mother after their abusive father had lied for years about her whereabouts: along the way, reconnecting with their indigenous heritage. Link (Phillip Lewitski), a Mi’kmaw teenager finds out that his mother, who he had been made to believe was dead, is alive. He embarks on a journey with his younger half-brother, Travis (Avery Winters-Anthony) to find her. They come across Pasmay (Joshua Odjick), pow wow dancer and fellow Mi’kmaw teen, who ends up joining them. As their odyssey unfolds, they share tales of hardship and become closer as they embark further through Eastern Canada. The more self-aware and connected Link becomes to his surroundings and his own sexuality, the easier it is for him to cultivate a relationship with Pasmay. There is a sense of hopefulness to ‘Wildwood’ in Guy Godfree’s beautiful cinematography that encapsulates the rural Canadian landscape, and in the uplifting soundtrack. Hannam is able to breathe fresh life into the ‘road movie’ genre, offering it up as a story of queerness, nature and homecoming. CANADA 2021 BRETTEN HANNAM 99M Our thanks to Peccadillo for this screening.

Booking Ref Preview CLARA SOLA

In a remote Costa Rican village, a woman experiences a sexual and mystical awakening as she begins a journey to free herself from repressive religious and social conventions. In some ways, Clara (Wendy Chinchilla Araya) is the most liberated woman in the verdant, remote, and deceptively matriarchal village where she works for God. A semi-feral 40-year-old who legend has it was once visited by the Virgin Mary, Clara has been moulded into a faith healer by her ultrareligious mother Fresia (Flor María Vargas Chaves), who’s successfully rebranded her daughter’s curved spine and childlike intellect as symptoms of divinity. Fresia keeps her only surviving daughter on a tight leash, and tries to stifle the late awakening of her feminine instincts. This is a film about women, written and directed by women, made and acted mostly by women. It is a remarkable debut film, which manages to create an impressive and memorable female character, and Nathalie Alvarez Mesen is a director who deserves to be watched. (Subtitles) COSTA RICA/SWEDEN 2021 NATHALIE ALVAREZ MESEN 106M Our thanks to Peccadillo Pictures for this film.

Tue 16 Aug 11:30 – Studio

Argentina MALOS AIRES

An intimate two-hander which was skilfully shot during lockdown in the centre of Madrid. An artist and his ‘ex’, both unnamed and both in exile from their native Argentina, are reunited in his studio for less than 24 hours. Their interactions, as well as the atmosphere, are the stuff of a stage play – we glimpse only occasionally the empty city streets – but, by using a single camera to focus in turn on the subtlest gestures and glances of his first-rate actors, Damián Comas achieves his aim of creating a hyper-realistic work about the complexity of human thought. (Subtitles) ARGENTINA 2022 DAMIÁN COMAS 72M

Booking Ref India BURQA

Najma is a 21-year-old nurse, widowed after one week of marriage. She observes a fourmonth period of mourning when she must stay at home and avoid being seen by any male. Her purdah is compromised when a man collapses outside her door with a stabwound sustained during a riot. After she takes him in and treats him, they engage in debate about the disciplines imposed by Islam. This unhurried, unashamedly stagey and beautifully lit chamber piece offers a fascinating insight into a philosophical conflict which to most of us is relatively unfamiliar. (Subtitles) INDIA 2021 SARJUN KM 82M

Wed 17 Aug 11:00 – Studio

Booking Ref

Thu 18 Aug 20:45 – Auditorium Tue 23 Aug 21:00 – Auditorium

Booking Ref

Fri 19 Aug 13:45 – Auditorium Sat 20 Aug 18:15 – Auditorium Premiere – Kazakhstan 18 KILOHERTZ

Teenagers in 1990s Almaty, Kazakhstan, witness an unprecedented heroin boom and need to face its deadly consequences. 18 kilohertz refers to a sound frequency that adults cannot hear. The film tackles one side of the conflict between a child and his parents leading to his alienation and flight from home. When a schoolteacher asks one of the two young main characters of the film, Jaga (Alibek Adiken) “What are your values?”, the boy replies “Freedom”. ‘18 kHz’ is a vibrant and kinetic coming-of-age drama which pits the trials and tribulations of youth with the growing drug culture of the era. Mixing with director Farkhat Sharipov’s memories of his own adolescence, we are transported into a world of degradation, desire and dilapidation. Set to a thrilling soundtrack, the film skilfully conjures up the excitement and dangers of a period of national change and exploration. 36th Warsaw Film Festival Grand Prix winner. (Subtitles) KAZAKHSTAN 2020 FARKHAT SHARIPOV 82M Our thanks to Antipode Sales for this screening.

New Release – Iran HIT THE ROAD

Jaddeh Khaki Premiering in the Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes, this impressively made and touching debut it demonstrates a skill and control of the medium that’s rare for a first film by Jafar Panahi the son of the greatest living Iranian director. A young man (Amin Simiar) is on a road trip with his mother (Pantea Panahiha), father (Hassan Madjooni), and brother (Rayan Sarlak). He is leaving his Iranian hometown for a somewhat mysterious purpose, but it is not hard to gather what happened, especially knowing that director Panahi has spent the last ten years watching his father struggle to live and express himself under house arrest. Criticism of his country’s authoritarian regime and the psychological toll it takes on ordinary people is implicit in every stage of the journey but achieved with the lightest of touches. For ultimately, as with much of the enduring work of his father and other recent Iranian cinema icons, from Abbas Kiarostami to Asghar Farhadi, these are stories both culturally specific and able to evoke universal experiences that connect beyond borders. (Subtitles) IRAN 2021 PANAH PANAHI 93M Our thanks to Picturehouse Entertainment for this screening.

Tue 23 Aug 18:15 – Main Auditorium Wed 24 Aug 13:15 – Main Auditorium English Premiere – China RETURN TO DUST

Nuestsras Madres A humble, unassuming couple having been forced into an arranged marriage, have to come together and build a home for themselves to survive. A small Chinese village is being whittled away as its inhabitants move to the cities for work. The towering sand dunes nearby provide an evocatively dusty metaphor for what the future holds: due to a government edict encouraging the demolition of uninhabited structures, these are worth more to their absent owners as piles of rubble. This is a worry for Youtie Ma (Wu Renlin) and his new wife Guiying Cao (Hai Qing) as upon their marriage, briskly arranged by family members no longer willing to support them, they move into one of those empty houses only to have to relocate to another when the municipal bulldozers show up. The movie is beautifully shot, with picturesque landscapes and the images of the shifting seasons. After Edinburgh’s UK premiere, this is the first screening in the South. (Subtitles) CHINA 2021 LI RUIJUN 133M Our thanks to Modern Films for this film.

WOODWRITER: THE WORLDLESS ART – CANADA

Sat 20 Aug 11:00 See Documentaries on Pg36 for full details DAWN OF WAR – ESTONIA

Mon 15 Aug 18.45 & Tue 16 Aug 13:45 See Eastern European Cinema on Pg27 for full details JUNIPER – CLOSING GALA – NEW ZEALAND

Sun 28 Aug 10:30 & 18:30 See Closing Gala on Pg9 for full details

Booking Ref

Thu 25 Aug 12:15 – Auditorium Fri 26 Aug 18:15 – Auditorium

Booking Ref

Fri 26 Aug 13:30 – Auditorium Sat 27 Aug 10:30 – Auditorium

Preview – Iran BALLAD OF A WHITE COW

In a suspenseful drama that quietly builds tension, a widow battles her in-laws after her husband is executed, and she meets a new mysterious man. Mina’s life is turned upside down when she learns that her husband Babak was wrongly accused of the crime for which he was executed. The bureaucracy apologizes for the miscarriage of justice and holds out the prospect of financial compensation. Just as money is running out and she loses her flat, a stranger named Reza shows up. He claims to have owed Babak a debt that he now wants to settle. Here the film pivots into a kind of subtle thriller, as Mina and Reza become friends, possibly more. This develops into a suspenseful engrossing watch. The film constantly challenges the viewer not only to acknowledge criminal justice and social systems, especially in Iran, but assess their own views of justice, consequences, and revenge. In the tradition of Asghar Farhadi (‘A Hero’). (Subtitles) IRAN 2020 MARYAM MOGHADAM & BEHTASH SANAEEHA 105M Our thanks to Totem Films for this screening.

Preview – Bhutan LUNANA: A YAK IN THE CLASSROOM

In this feel-good comedy drama, an aspiring singer living with his grandmother in the capital of Bhutan dreams of getting a visa to move to Australia. Young teacher Ugyen shirks his duties while planning to go to Australia to become a singer. As a reprimand, his superiors send him to the most remote school in the world, a glacial Himalayan village called Lunana, to complete his service. He finds himself exiled from his Westernized comforts after an arduous 8-day trek. There he finds no electricity, no textbooks, not even a blackboard. He begins to learn of the hardship in the lives of the beautiful children he teaches and begins to be transformed through the amazing spiritual strength of the villagers. Opening the doors to a land and people most Westerners know little about, the director crafts a crowd-pleaser in stunning, mostly unseen locations whose charms weather even its most idealistically patriotism. The very lack of pretentiousness is the film’s charm. The 2022 Oscar entrant for Best International Feature Film from Bhutan. (Subtitles) BHUTAN/CHINA 2021 PAWO CHOYNING DORJI 110M Our thanks to Peccadillo Pictures for this screening.