Germany

From Greece

Peter Nestler (b.1937) is one of the most singular and important filmmakers to emerge in postwar Germany. In the early 1960s Nestler made a series of poetic films about the changing realities in rural and industrial areas and about the working class communities, mostly in Germany, but also in the UK, where he filmed A Working Men's Club in Sheffield (1965). In the same year he directed From Greece (1965), on the rise of and struggle against fascism followed by the unsparing and exigent In the Ruhr Area (1967). Opposition to his political views and film aesthetics led Nestler to Sweden, where he worked mostly for television. Since the 1970s, Nestler has directed an extraordinary body of work further expanding the form and themes of his first films, including history, the working class, anti-fascism, the history of labour and production, and immigration. In the past 20 years, Nestler's films have continued to focus on change, remembrance and preservation, as exemplified by The North Calotte (1991), a remarkable travelogue tracing the harmful effects of industrialisation on the Sami communities and the landscape of Northern Europe.

(Source: https://dafilms.com/)

Time

Peter Nestler (b.1937) is one of the most singular and important filmmakers to emerge in postwar Germany. In the early 1960s Nestler made a series of poetic films about the changing realities in rural and industrial areas and about the working class communities, mostly in Germany, but also in the UK, where he filmed A Working Men's Club in Sheffield (1965). In the same year he directed From Greece (1965), on the rise of and struggle against fascism followed by the unsparing and exigent In the Ruhr Area (1967). Opposition to his political views and film aesthetics led Nestler to Sweden, where he worked mostly for television. Since the 1970s, Nestler has directed an extraordinary body of work further expanding the form and themes of his first films, including history, the working class, anti-fascism, the history of labour and production, and immigration. In the past 20 years, Nestler's films have continued to focus on change, remembrance and preservation, as exemplified by The North Calotte (1991), a remarkable travelogue tracing the harmful effects of industrialisation on the Sami communities and the landscape of Northern Europe.

(Source: https://dafilms.com/)

Xaraasi Xanne (Crossing Voices)

Raphaël Grisey lives and works in Berlin. Grisey uses video, editorial, and photographic works to assemble narratives about politics of memory, migration, and architecture. The book Where is Rosa L. (2001–2006), and the film National Motives (2011), study the ghosts of various political regimes in the public spaces of Berlin and Budapest. Through diverse documentary, fictional, or essayist forms, Grisey’s films and installations deal with neocolonial spatial politics, and decolonial storytelling and practices in agriculture and urban space (Trappes, Ville Nouvelle, 2003; Cooperative, 2008; and Sowing Somankidi Coura, a Generative Archive 2015– in collaboration with Bouba Touré). He collaborated with Florence Lazar on the films Prvi Deo and Red Star (2006), which deal with post-war former Yugoslavia’s justice. Other film projects were made in France, amid students’ strikes (The Indians, 2011); in China, amid Míngōng peasant-workers (The Exchange of Perspectives, 2011); in the social housing complex of Pedregulho in Brazil (Minhocão, 2011), in the Brazilian Positivist Church in Rio de Janeiro (Amor e Progresso, 2014), and around maroon quilombola communities in Minas Gerais (Remanescentes; A Mina dos Vagalumes, 2015). Since 2019, various forms of his research and collaboration with Bouba Touré, Sowing Somankidi Coura, a Generative Archive, have been presented in several countries.

Bouba Touré was born in Mali in 1948 and died in France in January 2022. Bouba Touré was a photographic researcher. He studied at Vincennes University and was a projectionist at Cinema 14 Juillet and L’entrepôt, Paris. Photographer since the 1970s, he documented the lives and struggles of migrant workers and peasants in France and Mali. Bouba Touré co-founded the Co-op of Somankidi Coura in 1977. In 2015, he published the book Notre case est à Saint Denis. Since the 1980s, Touré has exhibited works and given talks in associative and foyer’s circles and more recently in art institutions. Touré and Grisey worked together over fifteen years on collaborative projects under the current name of Sowing Somankidi Coura, a Generative Archive. This collaboration led to various workshops, film and theatre production for example with the theatre group Kaddu Yaraax in 2017 and 2019, as well as publications and texts, such as Sowing Somankidi Coura, a Generative Archive (2017, Archives Book).

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.

Dear Daughter

Hsu Pan Naing was born in Yangon, in 1997. The daughter of a writer, she grew up surrounded by the books of her mother and many other writers, and soon fell in love with storytelling. Shortly after receiving her journalism degree from the National Management Degree College, she was hired by The Myanmar Times as a video journalist. Keen to further explore the moving image, she gave up her job to attend the Yangon Film School in 2020, and has since worked in various roles, including as sound recordist on The Singing Bookman (Dir. Nan Cho Lae Yee Thein). Her first brush with animation was Reborn, a short film she co-created with other students during a YFS Animation & Mixed Media course in 2021. Developed at a time when the pandemic and the military coup made independent filmmaking in Myanmar more challenging than ever, Dear Daughter marks her first film as a director in her own right. She is currently working as an intern in a developmental organization whilst developing her first short drama, Lost Girl, with support from the Myanmar Script Fund.

Light Falls Vertical

Efthymia Zymvragaki got her Master's Degree in Artistic Productions and Research at the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of Barcelona and trained as a photographer at the Institut d'Estudis Fotogràfics de Catalunya. From the University of Crete, Greece, she got a degree in Psychology. She is an alumna of IDFAcademy 2020; Circle - Women's Doc Accelerator 2020; Acció producció - Dones Visuals 2021; LIM Development Angels; and dok.incubator 2022. She is attracted by social and gender issues and feels close to personal and sensitive approaches to complex and lesser known realities. She seeks to explore spaces of intimacy between and within people. She worked as a co-director of photography on the documentary Serás hombre by Isabel de Ocampo (2018) and was the DOP of the feature film Rocco tiene tu nombre by Angelo Orlando (2015). In 2015 she directed the documentary short Refrán. Light Falls Vertical is her first feature.

Hollywoodgate

Ibrahim Nash’at (born 1990, in Jeddah) is an Egyptian documentary filmmaker based in Berlin, Germany. His career in journalism spans various formats as he has worked with several international channels and online platforms, such as Deutsche Welle, Al Jazeera, Business Insider, AJ+, Voice of America, and others. Ibrahim holds a master’s degree in documentary filmmaking from Met Film School. He co-edited Academy Award-nominated director Talal Derki’s latest film, Under the Sky of Damascus, which premiered at the Panorama section of Berlinale 2023, and won the Golden Alexander at the 25th Thessaloniki Doc Festival. Ibrahim has directed A Moment With the Wind, Home Away from Home and Berlin's Diversity, short films selected for multiple festivals around the world. Hollywoodgate is Ibrahim’s first feature-length film.

5 Seasons of Revolution

Born in Damascus, Lina is a documentary filmmaker, journalist and camerawoman. She has documented events in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and Turkey over the past ten years. She holds a master’s degree in documentary filmmaking from Essex University. Lina made short and medium-length documentaries, and her debut feature, 5 Seasons of Revolution, premiered at the Sundance World Cinema Documentary Competition in 2023.

Darkening

Carlotta arca

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