Films

The Mole: Undercover in North Korea

Director: Mads Brügger Denmark, Norway, UK, Sweden, 2020, Colour, 135 min.

A real-life spy thriller about a retired chef from Denmark, and his double life as a secret agent. Together with his side kick, a former jet set cocaine pusher from Copenhagen, The Mole manages to infiltrate one of the most brutal dictatorships in the world; North Korea. Over a period of more than 10 years, the film team gains access to the heart of an international criminal network that produces and distributes weapons and drugs for the rogue state of North Korea. Contracts are signed, deals are cut and soon the protagonists become deeply involved in a plan to make a secret, underground weapon and drug factory somewhere in Africa. But how far can they push the envelope before the trap clicks?

In 1961, United Nations secretary-general Dag Hammarskjöld’s plane mysteriously crashed, killing Hammarskjöld and most of the crew. With the case still unsolved 50-plus years later, Danish journalist, filmmaker, and provocateur Mads Brügger leads us down an investigative rabbit hole to unearth the truth. Scores of false starts, dead ends, and elusive interviews later, Brügger and his sidekick, Swedish private investigator Göran Björkdahl, begin to sniff out something more monumental than anything they’d initially imagined.

Cold Case Hammarskjöld

Director: Mads Brügger Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Belgium, 2019, Colour, 128 min.

The Ambassador

Director: Mads Brügger Denmark, 2011, Colour, 93 min.

A strange, enigmatic and decadent white diplomat arrives in central Africa, looking like a mixture of Henry Stanley and Karl Lagerfeld. He has recently bought an ambassadorship and claims to be a dogood rich business man, who has come to spearhead a diplomatic mission. Officially he is there to start a factory that produces matches – this, to employ locals and teach how to make this simple piece of fire-making equipment. Unofficially he is really there to gain access to vast reserves of diamonds.

The film revolves around the divorce of a 30 something couple, Salma, a Palestinian from Nazareth, her husband, Tamer, the son of a famous intellectual revolutionary killed in Beirut. Salma and Tamer have been married for the past five years and living in the Palestinian territory. In the process of the divorce, they are confronted with a staggering discovery about Tamer’s father’s past. A love story about divorce became the journey of exploration of occupied territories, a divided country, and two people from different visions of a country.

Between Heaven and Earth

Director: Najwa Najjar Palestine, Iceland, Luxembourg, 2019, Colour, 95

The Voice of Ahmad

Director: Dan Geva, David Ofek, Doron Djerassi, Iddo Soskolne, Mamdooh Afdile, Noam Kaplan, Ram Loevy, Shadi Habib Allah Israel, 2019, Colour and B&W, 85

I AM AHMAD, a 1966, 13-minute revelatory short, was originally censored before its stormy release. Fifty years later, top Arab and Jewish alumni of the Jerusalem Sam Spiegel Film School conduct a poignant dialogue about “today’s Ahmad,” contending with questions of the impossible coexistence between Palestinian citizens of Israel and Jews that is deteriorating rapidly. Comprised of six chapters, the feature film is political, activist and fistful, mirroring a torn Israel.

King Alexander of Yugoslavia and French Foreign Minister, Louse Barthou, were assassinated in Marseille on October 9, 1934. BULLETS OVER MARSEILLE follows the trial of the assassin Vlade Georgijev Cernozemski’s co-conspirators. Through the reconstruction and dramatization of the legal proceedings, but also everything that had been skipped over during the trial, a courthouse drama has been constructed that comes closest to the truth of the trial itself and its impact on peace in Europe.

Bullets Over Marseille

Director: Gordan Matić Serbia, 2021, Colour and B&W, 74 min.

Our River…Our Sky

Director: Maysoon Pachachi Iraq, France, United Kingdom, Germany, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, 2021, Colour, 117

In a typically mixed Baghdadi neighbourhood in 2006, a community of ordinary people try to live their everyday lives amidst the threat of unpredictable violence. At the heart of these intersecting stories, we find Sara, a single mother and novelist, who regains her will to write after witnessing the forced exile of her Christian neighbour and best friend Sabiha. With the news of Saddam Hussein’s sudden execution shortly before the New Year, Sara and her neighbours brace themselves for an uncertain future. Yet, like a miracle, each is able to sustain a fragile sense of hope.