Hungarian Premiere

Love Is Not an Orange

Otilia Babara is a documentary filmmaker from Moldova, currently based in Brussels. She holds a degree in documentary filmmaking from the DocNomads European Master program (Belgium, Hungary, Portugal), and is a 2013 Berlinale Talents fellow. She directed and produced the short films Irene (2015), selected for several international film festivals, and Women on Canvas (2009), awarded at the Astra and Cronograf Film Festivals. She is drawn to those who usually go unnoticed. Her films expose big wounds hidden in small details. She's fascinated by the untold stories of women.

The Golden Thread

Nishtha Jain is an internationally-recognized filmmaker based in Mumbai. She is best known for Gulabi Gang (2012), Lakshmi and Me (2007), and City of Photos (2004). Her films examine lived experiences at the intersection of gender, caste, and class. They explore the political in the personal, and uncover the mechanisms of privilege. She’s worked across various platforms: documentary, narrative, virtual reality, and TV series. Her films have been widely screened at film festivals and art-house cinemas, and broadcast on TV. They have won over 25 international awards and have been reviewed by print media and academic journals.

Free Money

Sam Soko is an award-winning director, producer, and editor based in Nairobi, Kenya. He is co-founder of LBx Africa, a Kenyan production company that works to bring uniquely African perspectives to global audiences. LBx Africa produced the 2018 Academy Award–nominated short Watu Wote. His first feature-documentary, Softie, a story about balancing a deep love for one's country with the needs of family, premiered at Sundance 2020, winning a special jury prize for editing. His satirical radio play, "The New Bwana," was produced and broadcast by BBC4. Soko is an outspoken defender of freedom of expression and has taken part in global conversations on how to make media matter when the world is on fire.

Dancing on the Edge of a Volcano

Cyril Aris is a Lebanese Director & Screenwriter and a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences®. He holds an MFA from Columbia University in the City of New York, and has taught Film at Columbia University, NHSI at Northwestern University and Barnard College. His latest feature documentary Dancing on the Edge of Volcano (2023), recipient a post-production grant from the Sundance Institute in the US and the Robert Bösch FilmPrize in Germany, premiered in the Main Competition of the 57th Karlovy Vary IFF and won a jury special mention. It had its UK premiere in competition at the 67th BFI London Film Festival and its North American premiere in competition at DOC NYC. His debut feature documentary, The Swing (2018) premiered at the Karlovy Vary IFF, and won awards in El-Gouna, Rome, London, Budapest and Tunisia.

The Other Profile

After studying Political Science, Armel Hostiou studied cinema at La Fémis film school in Paris in the camera department. His graduation film SoLoS, that he directed, has travelled and won several awards nationally and internationally. He has since dedicated himself to directing, first of short films but also installations and music videos. His first feature film Rives premiered in ACID Cannes and was distributed in France in 2012. His second feature, shot in New York, Une Histoire Américaine, premiered at Lincoln Center in New York at RDV with French Cinema and was distributed in France in 2015. His first documentary La Pyramide Invisible premiered at Cinema du Réel in 2019. His last feature The Other Profile premiered at the main competition of CPH:DOX and will be released in theatres in France by Météore Films in June 2023. He is also working on a script for his next fiction feature film.

Falling

Anna Gyimesi was born in 1985, in Budapest. After receiving her degree in medicine in 2011, she turned to filmmaking. She graduated from the film directing program of the University of Theater and Film Arts, Budapest, in 2019, and from documentary film directing in the DocNomads Erasmus Mundus Joint Master Course in 2021. Her interests are taboo social dilemmas represented through personal dramas, especially connected to motherhood, womanhood, and social marginalization. Her latest short, Affricate focuses on a single mother raising her disabled teenage daughter while facing her own deeply-buried needs. The film premiered in the short film competition of the Sarajevo Film Festival and screened, among many others, at PÖFF Shorts 2022, Seattle International Film Festival, and OFF-Odense International Film Festival. Recently, she has been focusing on the development of her debut, Soft Hours, under the frame of Midpoint Feature Launch 2023. Falling is her graduation film for the DocNomads Joint Master Programme.

Deserters

Damir Markovina was born in 1973, in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. In 2022, he graduated in Film and TV Directing (Documentary Film) from the Academy of Dramatic Art in Zagreb, having previously graduated in acting from the same school. He appeared in many Croatian films and TV series. He is a film director, producer, and writer. His short documentary film, Šihta was selected for the 25th Sarajevo Film Festival official student competition in 2019. His medium-length documentary film, Wait for Me won, among other things, the AJB DOC festival’s main award in Sarajevo in 2021, and Oktavijan – the Croatian national FIPRESCI award for the best Croatian documentary film. His second medium-length documentary film, Deserters won the best Central and Eastern European medium-length documentary and the Best Sound Design at Jihlava IDFF 2022, where it had its world premiere.

The March on Rome

Mark Cousins is an Irish-Scottish director and writer. His films – including The Story of Film: An Odyssey, What is This Film Called Love?, Life May Be, A Story of Children and Film, Atomic, Stockholm My Love, I am Belfast and The Eyes of Orson Welles – have premiered in Cannes, Berlin, Sundance and Venice film festivals and have won the Prix Italia, a Peabody, the Stanley Kubrick Award and the European Film Award for Innovative Storytelling. He has filmed in Iraq, Sarajevo during the siege, Iran, Mexico, across Asia and in America in Europe. Mark’s books include Imagining Reality: The Faber Book of Documentary and The Story of Looking. He has collaborated with Tilda Swinton on innovative film events, and tries to find new, filmic ways to explore his themes: looking, cities, cinema, childhood, and recovery. His 14 hour documentary Women Make Film tries to rethink cinema. His newest films are The Storms of Jeremy Thomas, The Story of Looking and The Story of Film: A New Generation. He has walked across Los Angeles, Belfast, Moscow, Beijing, London, Paris, Berlin, Dakar and Mexico City and likes night swimming.

Arsenie. An Amazing Afterlife

In the early 1990s, Solomon emerged as a young director of photography and he started making documentaries aside from filming feature films. Solomon was among the first Romanian film makers who committed themselves to a then compromised genre; today, he is one of the leading political film makers from Romania and active on the international documentary scene. His recent work triggered public debates about the function of documentary film within the public sphere and contributed to re establishing documentary film as an arena for reframing Romania’s recent history. Solomon’s previous work, The Great Communist Bank Robbery (2004), broadcast on Arte and as part of BBC4’s prestigious Storyville series, was awarded Best Film at the History Film Festival in Pessac, France and the Prize for Social Values at Documenta Madrid. His Cold Waves (2007) is a chilling slice of political history that played for 12 weeks in Romanian theatres. It deals with the love and hate story between Radio Free Europe, the Romanian audiences and the communist regime. Kapitalism our secret recipe (2010), speaks of the rise of a new ruling class in the East (produced for Arte and RTBF with Media support). Tarzan’s Testicles (2017), which premiered in Karlovy Vary, is a film about utopias & a metaphoric drama that threads the similar destinies of monkeys & men.

Silent House

Born in Tehran, Iran, Farnaz Jurabchian works as an independent filmmaker based between Tehran and Toronto. She received her BA in French Literature from Tehran University, and worked as writer and translator for art magazines in Iran. She later immigrated to Canada and studied cinema at Concordia University in Montreal. Most of her films revolve around the notion of homeland and characters that each represent a part of society. Her debut mid-length documentary, Overruled, about unauthorized Afghan tennis players was premiered at Hot Docs 2016 and won 5 international prizes. Her autobiographical documentary Silent House had its world premiere at IDFA 2022, and was nominated for the IDFA Award for Best First Feature. With her brother Mohammadreza Jurabchian, Farnaz started an independent film company, F&M Productions, where they work as co-directors and producers.

Mohammad Reza Jurabchian works as an independent filmmaker and cinematographer based in Tehran. He received his BA in photography from Azad University. He was among the best photographers of the year in the 10th Iranian National Biennial of Photography and had several group exhibitions in and outside Iran. He made several short films and documentaries which have been selected for a number of international film festivals. Jurabchian's films are heavily indebted to photography. He tries to depict his relationship with the world around him and his lived experience. He and his sister, Farnaz Jurabchian, started an independent film company, F&M Productions, where they work as co-directors and producers. They directed Overruled and Silent House together.

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