Full-length documentary
A Man Fell
Locals remember when the Gaza Building in Beirut, Lebanon, was the Middle East’s best hospital. Today the dingy crumbling building is the last refuge for people who have nowhere else to go.
International Competition
The films in the International Competition category use expressive cinematic language to present powerful topical themes in a current human rights context, often from high-profile regions but sometimes from places that are overlooked.
The theme of family permeates this year’s festival programme. In the fragile cinematic essay D is for Distance, the director relates to her son’s illness and uses time-lapse mapping of everyday moments and darkness to reflect on the dysfunction of the healthcare system. Then the film Mistress Dispeller presents an unconventional way of dealing with relationship troubles, introducing the Chinese technique of a relationship counsellor who incognito “breaks in” between an unfaithful husband and his mistress.
Even though the last-mentioned film also reveals how susceptible the Chinese are to manipulation, the International Competition also includes films that more understandably demonstrate the current human rights situation. Songs of Slow Burning Earth is almost a meditative contemplation about what it is like to live in war-torn Ukraine. In Mr. Nobody Against Putin we follow an unexpected hero – a school employee in a small Russian town who stands up to the gradual radicalisation and militarisation of his institution.
Other films use a sophisticated style in order to provide narratives about critical albeit often overlooked themes. The documentary A Man Fell maps an abandoned building in Beirut, Lebanon, which is home to Palestinian immigrants. The captivating visual poem All the Mountains Give takes us to the dangerous territory in which Kurdish smugglers operate, while Khartoum offers crucial local filmmaking testimony about sorely tested Sudan. The final film in the competition is Soul of the Desert, set in the arid landscape of northern Colombia, which tells the story of an elderly trans woman who has been waiting all her life for an identity card.
