ÉCU – The European Independent Film Festival is excited to announce its Official Selection of films that will be showcased at the 12th edition of the festival. ÉCU 2017 proudly screened 81 films from 37 countries on May 4th, 5th, 6th 2017 in Paris, France.
Animated Films
Directors : Iring Freytag / Linus Stetter / Viktor Stickel
Country: Germany
A child has to leave their hut to collect the wood for the fire that went out. The search for suitable wood becomes a life’s work.
Director: Sean Cunningham
Country: Ireland
Father Priestly is an Irish priest struggling with his faith, which is tested even further when he comes face to face with God and Jesus themselves in this sci-fi comedy adventure
Directors: Uri Kranot, Michelle Kranot
Country: Denmark
A visual journey that challenges us to think about a universal belonging that doesn’t confine itself to a city, region, or national boundary in an age where xenophobia, nationalism, and intolerance are ubiquitous.
Director: Daniela Leitner
Country: Austria
An elderly couple seems to have lost their affection for one another. One day, at the beach, after falling asleep, something incredible happens to them – something that rekindles their long-lost romantic feelings.
Director: Elli Vuorinen
Country: Finland
An optician grows tired of seeing the world too clearly and her inevitable involvement in its defects.
Director: Jadwiga Kowalska
Country: Switzerland
A man on a bridge, separated from the love of his life. Wanting to be with her one last time, he decides to seek her in the afterlife.
Arab Selection
Director: Hassanein Khazaal
Country: Iraq
A short-film about the psychological conflicts of every Iraqi young man in recent times, representing one’s homeland, friends, and love… It shows how an Iraqi young man thinks, and what he could possibly do in these inconvenient circumstances, as there is a noticeable lack of services in the country …… what would he decide to do? Heads to demonstrations or goes the other way?
Director: Hisham Sharafeddine
Country: Lebanon
A man on a bridge, separated from the love of his life. Wanting to be with her one last time, he decides to seek her in the afterlife.
Director: Sama Waham
Country: Canada
A personal journey that follows a river to meet Baghdad, the film travels through shared family memory and archival footage that provide a glimpse of Iraq’s defeated dreams of a modern and just society. The journey is guided by a familiar voice from the past, found on an old audiotape in an abandoned box, to a new exposition of ‘home’.
Director: Hisham Sharafeddine
Country: Lebanon
Miranda’s life falls into pieces when her son, Adam, wouldn’t take off her blue bra. A single mother, she finds a way of coping when she understands how the personal intertwines with the universal.
Comedy Films
Director: Nata Moreno
Country: Spain
Inside an old cabin, a group of musicians tries to create art under the pressure of a mean director.
Director: Lionel Auguste
Country: France
Antoine gets back home and finds out that his girlfriend Mélanie is sleeping with a man. His revenge will be bittersweet.
Directors: Cristina Piernas & Victoria Ruiz
Country: Spain
In a world dominated by women, Bernardo will have to get through a singular interview to access the secretary’s position that he wishes.
Director: Phil Lowe
Country: United Kingdom
Martin and Jane decide to rejuvenate their marriage by making love in their car. When this plan hits a snag, they begin to re-evaluate their relationship. Is being in love with each other enough?
Director: Ben Mallaby
Country: United Kingdom
It’s hard to find cover when you’re an East End gangster.
Documentaries
Director: Yoon-ha Chang
Country: Germany
Producer and composer Ralf Kemper becomes obsessed with bringing attention to forgotten jazz legend Jimmy Scott. Together with like Quincy Jones, Joe Pesci, and James Moody, Kemper spares no expense and reaches the limits of what can be done to record a last album.
Director: Paula Palacios
Country: Spain, Qatar
A portrait of a Somali refugee who has fled her country leaving her two daughters behind. Halimo confesses to her children, through a letter that the person with whom they live is not who they believe and will narrate her journey through more than ten countries until arriving in Austria.
Directors: Stephan Bookas/Tristan Daws
Country: UK, Germany
Set to the verses of W.H. Auden’s 1939 poem, “Refugee Blues” charts a day in ‘the jungle’, the refugee camp outside Calais. More intimate and unlike much of what has been seen in the mass media, this documentary poem counterpoints the camp’s harsh reality of frequent clashes with the French riot police with its inhabitants’ longing for a better future.
Dramatic Feature Films
Director: Joe Ahearne
Country: United Kingdom
A gay couple stays at a Christian guest house for a laugh and gets more than they bargained for when a Russian thug checks in.
Director: Dren Zherka
Country: Germany
Loss and loneliness linger on a thread that connects two aging parents far away from each other through a fatal accident. A woman in Germany starts a journey to explore the life of an illegal immigrant and finds her loneliness, and an old man in Kosovo whom loss has brought him to the end of his journey.
Director: Michał Wegrzyn
Country: Poland
Quarrelling with his wife, Adam spends time with his mistress at the gym. He gets a huge promotion and life is great. But Adam doesn’t know his world will soon collapse.
Director: David Sousa Moreau
Country: Spain
Doni, David, Ma and Jack lives inexorably cross. The World has changed them all… now it´s time for them to change the World.
Dramatic Short Films
Director: Daniel Halsall
Country: Netherlands
Oath is a 8 year old girl in quest for sweets!
Director: Ely Chevillot
Country: Belgium
When Catherine looks for her son Clément at the swimming pool, she finds out that he’s been aggressive with a girl of his age. This news troubles her and arise questions…
Director: Nanna Kristín Magnúsdóttir
Country: Iceland
A single father wants to fulfil his young daughter’s wish to throw a slumber party for her friends, but it turns out to be more of a challenge than he thought due to the rules of modern society.
Director: Courtney Hope Thérond
Country: Italy
At the intersection of child’s play and reality, Echo explores an unfortunately common occurrence in the United States. The lines of what is real and what is imagined are blurred in this short film.
Director: Christian Wittmoser
Country: Germany
When Europe turns to chaos, Emily must hold out in her apartment in hope of reuniting with her loved one. The promise to wait becomes increasingly difficult to keep, as desperation grows and hope dwindles.
Director: Marcel Glauche
Country: Germany
Carl Patzke was born and raised in Berlin. The ongoing gentrification is now forcing him, like many others before and after him, to leave his apartment. Carls belief in justice has gone long. After three years sleeping on a little mattress in his garage, he decides to take matters back into his own hands.
Director: Alex Hardy
Country: United Kingdom
Soldier Jodie Baxter has returned home from Afghanistan after being injured by a booby trap. She is scarred both physically and psychologically.
Director: Konstantinos Sampanis
Country: Germany
Mr. Schwamm, an indulgent husband and caring father, who wants to save his depressed son is paired up by destiny, with an insensitive stranger, in whom he confides his troubles.
Director: Jack King
Country: United Kingdom
Battling infertility and failing to cope with the breakup of his relationship, Terry is plagued by recurring nightmares and a profound uncertainty about his future. When a chance encounter with his ex reveals he’s been permanently left behind, Terry is forced to confront his anxieties head on.
Director: Mike Sharpe
Country: United Kingdom
Set in the violent world of Victorian boxing and the honour code of the Romany Gipsies, this is the compelling story of the unlikely kinship between young boxer Bendigo Barlow and ‘Ina’, an elephant from a travelling menagerie. Bendigo’s struggle to live with Tourette’s syndrome is made all the more difficult by fear and ignorance as he is violently shunned by those who simply don’t understand.
Director: Nan Feix
Country: France
On the run after committing a murder, Dave gets stuck in a village from a parallel world, governed by an Oracle in the form of a jukebox.
Yellow Cab 267. A Musical Hell
Director: Patricia Venti
Country: Spain
Intertwining stories in a New York restaurant, a kind of parallel universe where the worlds of the living and the dead have blurry borders.
Experimental Films
Director: Julien Thiry
Country: France
On the run after committing a murder, Dave gets stuck in a village from a parallel world, governed by an Oracle in the form of a jukebox.
Director: Giada Ghiringhelli
Country: United Kingdom
Intertwining stories in a New York restaurant, a kind of parallel universe where the worlds of the living and the dead have blurry borders.
Director: Andrés Klimek
Country: Mexico
By crossing through three rooms AVE will pour sounds and ink into the VOID giving it back the essential content which will transform it into ADAM and AVE into EVE. A mutation generating the force to break the circle which allows both lovers to fly into the endless spiral.
What Happens In Your Brain If You See A German Word Like…?
Director: Zora Rux
Country: Germany
Intertwining stories in a New York restaurant, a kind of parallel universe where the worlds of the living and the dead have blurry borders.
Music Videos
Director: Theo Papadoulakis
Country: Greece
Director Theo Papadoulakis gave the song a political dimension commenting on the Greeks’ feelings towards the financial and political crisis in Greece.
Director: Manuel Lebriez
Country: France
A magical tale of loneliness, lost identity and flying origami cranes on Lorca’s beguilingly minimal thread.
Director: Ainhoa Rodríguez
Country: Spain
Conchita, a conservative and septuagenarian woman, returns home after cremating her husband. She is fed up with the suffocating social norms that have surrounded her, so she decides to break free. Meanwhile, a menacing shadow roams the house as the only companion of her solitude.
Tom Rosenthal – I Got Myself A Finish
Director: Thomas Vernay
Country: France
A girl who is going through different kinds of feelings.
Director: Nadine Keil
Country: Germany
I dedicate the Song and the Video “Where is God?” to our inner child. The innocent part in all of us, that remained through the years of ignoring our natural born sense for what is wrong and what right!
Non-European Documentaries
Director: Esteban Arrangoiz
Country: Mexico
Julio César Cu Cámara is the chief diver in the Mexico City sewerage system, his job is to repair pumps and dislodge garbage that flows into the sewerage waters.
Director: Estelle Fromentin
Country: Argentina, France
Argentina. A musician who raises goats, an experimental filmmaker, a ceramist, and a businessman tell us about a love story, sharing their philosophy of love. Carried by images of their worlds, marked by the diversity of the Argentinian territory, we embark with them on an introspective journey, a poetic wandering.
Director: Niu Zi
Country: China
See the images of the world, using the heart as a mirror. Photographer Yang wants to use his camera to record and preserve, trying to show the world his journey in Tibet and capturing the images of the mind of decades of enlightenment.
Part Of Me Now: Living With Breast Cancer
Director: Emily Gerhardson
Country: United States Of America
“Part Of Me Now” highlights a side to cancer that has yet to be focused on- the aftermath. It centers around the personal stories of individuals who will live with cancer in their bodies or as a lingering threat for the rest of their lives.”
Non-European Dramatic Feature Films
Director: Ilker Savaskurt
Country: Turkey
Groom’s Block is slang in Turkey for prison sections holding those accused of serious sex crimes, where men judge each other and lash out justice daily.
Director: Rudolf Buitendach
Country: United States Of America
Isobel is an ordinary mother with an ordinary job. She lives with her five year old daughter and boyfriend. But one day a very charming photographer, approaches Isobel and tempts her with an offer few people could resist. He manages to lure her into a commercial photo shoot. One that will change her life forever!
Director: Kire Paputts
Country: Canada
Eugene, a young man with Down syndrome, embarks on a life-altering journey to find the end of the rainbow.
Non-European Dramatic Short Films
Director: Phedon Papamichael
Country: United States Of America
Gene gets up every day and follows the same monotonous routine that he has lived since the death of his wife ten years earlier. Today, however, he awakens with a new determination to change.
Director: Aviv Maaravi
Country: Israel
Solo performer Shamel Pitts employs creativness to construct a personal, poetic narrative about search for identity and striving for survival amidst impermanence.
Director: Dawn Han
Country: United States Of America
Set in industrial noir-esque city, CORK MAN is about a man with a hole in his head trying to hide his deformity until one day he crosses path with a mysterious stranger.
Director: Wang Heze
Country: China
The film respectively represent the two facets of a woman in the eyes of men. The old woman is the spirit and girl is the body.
Director: Erfan Shafei
Country: Iran
A weird life of two loners who suddenly realize that the world is gonna end.
Director: Megan Park
Country: Canada
On the eve of her wedding, Lucy has a conversation with her six year old self.
Director: Claude Demers
Country: Canada
During a heat wave in Montreal Tom, 11 years old, meets Edith, also 11. He soon discovers that Édith carries a terrible secret. Tom eventually loses his innocence at the dawn of this first love, which becomes the symbol of his last summer.
Director: Ruya Koman
Country: United States Of America
A 25-year-old boy is exploring love with a much older woman. But who is she really?
Director: Merve Gezen
Country: Turkey
Socially and economically different four women (a CEO, a peasant, a prostitute and a high school student) come together to play scrabble. They are shouting their destinies and reflect their tragic endings to the scrabble board by using the power of the words.
Student Films
Director: Korinna Herzig
Country: Germany
Every night, the peaceful streets of Stuttgart are being plagued with the sudden appearance of a dark figure wearing a clown’s mask. Nobody knows what the anonymous person could be up to.
Director: ZI Gao
Country: United States Of America
‘Eliza’ centers on a caged phenomena in modern society, where people follow the social rules and their daily routine. Amid a lower middle class family in North America, the film presents an estranged relationship between a single father and his daughter.
Director: Oliver Beaujard
Country: Czech Republic
A story of a young motherless boy, his gardener father and their reconciliation in a magical world.
Director: Luz Olivares Capelle
Country: Austria
A teenager finds the bodies of three drowned kids on the shore of a lagoon. During summer holidays, three kids are playing around a lake when they find a drowned woman drifting in the water. Who is dreaming and who is being dreamed?
Director: Eric Shahinian
Country: United States Of America
A devoted husband is forced to confront his doubts about remaining the caretaker of his wife suffering from Alzheimer’s disease.
Director: Iris Hogendoorn
Country: Belgium, Netherlands
Fien is experiencing a lot of problems with the fact that she is overgrowing her mentally handicapped brother Mees in several ways. However, in the end she realizes she cannot imagine a life without him.
Directors: Noa Gottesman, Asaf Schwartz
Country:Israel
18 Years old Omer, woke up one day with a thick beard and discovers that he turned out to be Omar, an Arab. His metamorphosis takes place on Israel’s Independence Day. This impossible situation forces Omar to keep his new identity undercover…
Director: Nicholas Nazari
Country: United Kingdom
Hamilton is in charge of scrutinising newly-weds applying for a spouse visa. He has to demonstrate the true or false nature of the applicants’ love. His job – finding perfect love, juxtoposes the imperfections of Hamilton’ s unsatisfying life.
Director: Yağmur Altan
Country: United States Of America
Just an ordinary day at an old mysterious Turkish country house where its residents have an extraordinary way of brewing tea.
Director: Charlotte Regan
Country: United Kingdom
A comedy entirely set in a police patrol car. A emotional roller-coaster accompanied by the capture of criminals from Micky the Irish gypsy to Tyler the gangster rapper.
Director: Joshua Long
Country: Australia
A bus breaks down in the North Korean countryside. The two drivers must overcome a series of setbacks to get their bus running again – to deliver their shocking cargo.
Director: Nicolas AUZEINE
Country: France
Pauline, 19, spends her life hanging out with friends and piling up one-night stands. She has decided to avoid love to stop suffering.
Director: Ibrahim Nada
Country: United States Of America
Zaar is a suicide bomber who enters a random diner in a terrorist attack but after listening and interacting with the innocent people around him, he questions his intent. Will he do it??!!
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