ÉCU-The European Independent Film Festival is delighted to announce the Official Selection of its 9th Edition. ÉCU 2014 will showcase 85 films from 32 countries on the 4th-6th of April in Paris, France.
Arab Selection
The 3 Suicides of Paul Hamilton
Director: Daniel Gerges
Country: Egypt
After losing his identity overnight, Paul Hamilton has to decide whether to live as Paul in a world that rejects him, or as Elmore in a world he despises.
Director: Karim Rahbani
Country: Lebanon
After visiting a neighboring village, a man comes back to find his wife brutally violated.
Director: Farah Alhashim
Country: Lebanon
How can a 7-hour time difference between Beirut and New York change the course of a loving relationship between two people living in different cities?
Director: Peter Sporremark
Country: Sweden
Nadja is living a good life with her family. But when she’s seen with a boy, a rumor starts spreading. Her family must now take action to restore Nadja’s reputation—and, more importantly, her honor. And even more importantly, the family’s honor…
Animated Films
Director: Jon Yeo
Country: United Kingdom
Bound in ancient celestial ballet, nine dead Kings arise to claim a fallen Emperor.
Directors: Michelle Kranot and Uri Kranot
Country: Canada-Denmark-France
In this evocative film about the eternal human search for home, Berta and Solomon arrive in a land that promises respite from their many journeys. But have they found utopia… or just another stop on their long journey?
Director: Bobby de Groot and Arjan van Meerten
Country: Netherlands
On a long, dusty road, a routine cruise patrol takes a strange turn and spirals out of control.
Director: Nikos Kellis
Country: Greece
Drag Me is essentially what it declares to be: A wandering through the sleazy, dark backstreets of Metropolis, which is Athens, Greece here, but it could be as well anything from New York to Gotham under the disturbingly dirty and distorted sounds of The You And What Army Faction, that seem to derive directly from the filthy guts of the city.
Director: Péter Vácz
Country: Hungary
The friendship of Rabbit and Deer is tested by Deer’s new obsession to find the formula for the 3rd dimension…
Comedy Films
Director: Ben Mallaby
Country: United Kingdom
The Dukinson brothers have finally beaten their archrivals, but the Krullmuller sisters are out for blood, and revenge is a dish best-served underarm.
Director: Victor Nores
Country: Spain
Would you like to die the same way your icon did? Would you like to imitate the death of some memorable scene? Euthanas Inc. This is for those who need or want to put a legitimately spectacular end to their lives.
Director: Andreas Henn
Country: Germany
Did the Nazis ever see Charlie Chaplin’s ‘The Great Dictator’? Yugoslavia, 1942 – The young Serbian projectionist Nikola Radosevic decides to teach the German oppressors a lesson they won’t forget—the beginning of a true and astonishing World War II resistance story.
Director: Marco Espirito Santo
Country: Portugal
Jack was a rocker—a roller. No stopping him. Until he met the Leone twins.
Documentaries
Director: Juri Rechinsky
Country: Austria
It is a documentary film about a group of homeless kids who have survived their drug-addicted childhood, grown up, and started to live an adult life.
Director: Mladen Kovacevic
Country: Serbia-Montenegro-Finland
Vera, a private detective retired to the village where she grew up as a shepherdess, and Pera, the know-it-all peasant of many esoteric skills, are the last remaining leaf-players – both in the autumns of their lives, still strongly blowing into leaves. Josip is an amateur inventor who set out to decode the obscure artistry of leaf-playing. “Unplugged” is an existential allegory about music played on tree leaves, humorously rattling between the most primitive instruments and the most universal escapism of music. Music has rarely been so offbeat.
Director: Zeljko Mirkovic
Country: Serbia
In 1999, as NATO forces bombard Belgrade city, USAF pilot Dale Zelko began his sortie into a nearby Belgrade target, flying his F-117 stealth bomber. On the opposite side, Serbian colonel Zoltan Dani commands his soldiers to detect and destroy enemy bombers with their seemingly outdated former Soviet-made SAM radars and missiles.
Dramatic Features
Director: Romas Zabarauskas
Country: Lithuania
Luke is an up-and-coming DJ from an affluent New York family with a Lithuanian father and an African-American mother. When Luke hears from an estranged grandmother in Lithuania, he defies his parents and decides to visit this faraway country, flying straight to Vilnius’s capital. He falls in love with the city, a rebellious girl called Marta, and the local music scene.
Director: Nathan Codrington
Country: United Kingdom
A lawyer and his wife stiff through painful conversations at a residents-only champagne party, with a dark and bewildering author, a flirtatious fiancé, a Machiavellian psychiatrist, an artist with a blank canvas, and a neglected son and his group of youthful friends who seem as out of place as the furnishings.
Director: Guillaume Levil
Country: France
Julien and Nina sign a pact with the universe: they must enjoy life, whatever the cost. Will that decision lead them to happiness or to their disappearance?
Director: Yorgos Tsemberopoulos
Country: Greece
When a brutal gang invades his home, a grizzled father of two finds himself confronted with a destructive dilemma. But when guns have the final say, everyone is the enemy.
Dramatic Shorts
Director: Kira Richards Hansen
Country: Denmark
‘Damn Girl’ is a coming-of-age story about Alex, a 12-year-old tomboy. She hangs out with a group of only boys, drinks, paints graffiti at night, etc. Confronted with an incipient sexuality, she fights the changes that are taking place within and around her.
Director: Roland Kennedy
Country: United Kingdom
An innocuous kids’ football game becomes a scene of aggression and loss of control. Separate worlds collide. Minor acts of rebellion are perceived as a dark threat by someone who has never known what it is to exist on the other side of the demarcated lines. The film captures how tragedy can suddenly puncture the banality of everyday life.
Director: Rocco Labbé
Country: France
Paris at the end of the 19th Century. Four gentlemen are smoking and drinking in a smoking lounge. Each one recalls the memory of a beloved woman he has lost—four moving “Portraits of Mistresses,” adapted from a story by Charles Baudelaire.
Director: Nicola Di Vico
Country: Italy
Paris at the end of the 19th Century. Four gentlemen are smoking and drinking in a smoking lounge. Each one recalls the memory of a beloved woman he has lost—four moving “Portraits of Mistresses,” adapted from a story by Charles Baudelaire.
Director: Olga Korotko
Country: Kazakhstan
“One needs to be in danger when one utters a wish” – little Dove is convinced. Thus, a dangerous balancing act on the roof seems to be the only way out of a life without perspectives.
Director: Camille Delamarre
Country: France
He hears the ‘click’. Lowers his head. Damn. He is standing on a mine. If he moves, it will explode. How will he get through this? He doesn’t have much time left… He hesitates.
Directors: Riccardo Salvetti and Gianfranco Boattini
Country: Italy
Enrico leads a perfect life. He has a good job, a beautiful house, and a caring family, but the glamour of his everyday routine stirs a restlessness that will bring him on a road of no return. The movie is based on a true story: a silent cry for help that no one could hear.
Directors: Valentin Potier and Frédéric Potier
Country: France
Maureen is a famous ventriloquist singer, secretly pregnant with an 18-year-old boy. But the truth is about to come out… The deep voice bursting out of her womb has a name: Charles. He is in the age of rebellion and has one thing in mind: to be born.
Director: Anna Troyanskaya
Country: Russia
Love. Living without love is hard, but it is even more challenging to live with somebody you don’t love. However, when you lose hope for love, it becomes impossible to live.
Director: Oliver Briginshaw
Country: United Kingdom
Two old and young mobsters get to know each other as they wait in a car park to meet a rival gang. However, as they converse, neither one is telling the whole truth, and when the rival gang turns up, the truth has to come out…
Director: Vlad Fenesan
Country: Romania
Matthew is a 23-year-old who likes to do nothing but sleep. He has no purpose in life and is utterly ignorant of everything around him. He lives with his mother, who tries her best to persuade him to get a job and make something of his life. After one fight, he finally decides to take the interview at the military unit his mother has arranged for him.
Director: Amaury Brumauld
Country: France
Because he let a young woman wanted by the authorities get into his car, Paul Castello, sixty-five, is taken into custody by the police. The fugitive is not identified, and Paul must reconstruct the features of his face.
God Got His Head in the Clouds
Director: Gianluca Sodaro
Country: Italy
In a small country chapel, an elderly local priest kneels in prayer. He is alone until he turns around to find 11-year-old Angelina standing behind him. She has an inquisitive look in her eyes. Who is this little girl? Why is she there?
Director: Xavi Rull
Country: Spain
Carlos is a brilliant young writer who has just obtained successful international acclaim for his latest work. During a casual conversation, he remembers his mentor and soon realizes that not everyone has such a positive view of Angel Millan, who, after a creative silence of several years, is on everybody’s lips thanks to his new and controversial trilogy.
Director: Camiel Schouwenaar
Country: Netherlands
Janet discovers that her ears are changing into rabbit ears and locks herself in her home. As her ears grow longer, she desperately needs help.
Director: Hans Vercauter
Country: Belgium
After several years in prison, Marcus is determined to settle a score with his brother Simon. Wolf’s Milk is about brotherly love and a family struggling with disintegration after a white lie turns sour.
Director: Virginie Schwartz
Country: France
Léo and Victor are two very close friends. They share their memories, the events they went through, and the choices that led them to this last confrontation. More than a discussion between two friends, the movie brings us back to a crucial time in French history.
A Day in the Life of a Bathroom Mirror
Director: Phil Hawkins
Country: United Kingdom
The reflective life of a bathroom mirror – his love, lust, loathings, and longings – all in one day.
Directors: Raf Roosens and Jan Roosens
Country: Belgium
Olli (15) is a lonely skunk who makes trouble whenever possible. He spends his days riding his motorcycle and hanging around in the park. He lives with his grandmother because his mum was diagnosed with cancer and therefore has to stay in the hospital. She is insecure about her future, so she suggests throwing a party in the hospital for Olli’s upcoming birthday. But since Olli has no friends to invite, he first tries to find excuses to cancel this party. However, he doesn’t want to let his mother down so he starts searching for people he can invite to his sixteenth birthday party…
Director: Nicole Albarelli
Country: United Kingdom
A beautifully bleak countryside trailer park. Soft-spoken, 16-year-old Lottie lives in the cramped, dirty trailer but does all that she can to mentally transport herself away to a self-created world populated by her books and dolls.
Experimental Films
Director: Sergey Tsyss
Country: Russia
The Earth is uninhabited no more. There is no air to breathe, no water, no vegetation. But from time to time, strange metal flowers appear among waste and barren soils—as if it is one’s desperate effort to revive the dead nature.
Director: Charline Branger
Country: Belgium
Bye-Bye STAR-FIZZ is a vintage tribute to a whole side of Pop culture (fantasy movies, film noirs, and monster movies). Loosely based on the famous novel ‘Alice in Wonderland,’ the story immerses you in an urban universe, dark and off-the-wall. Let this delirious trip carry you away …
Director: Santiago Parres
Country: Spain
Nobody understood the Prophets when they talked about them. They are intangible, and nevertheless, they look so real.
Directors: Thomas Stellmach and Maja Oschmann
Country: Germany
Synchronizing to music, ink drawings ‘grow’ in an interplay of curiosity, timid encounters, and dynamic pursuits.
Director: Gabriel Richard
Country: France
When you stare into the abyss, the abyss gazes back. Wordsmiths and dreamers are aware of facing blank pages daily with unflinching resolve. The Typewriter is a poetic journey into a creator’s dark struggle with his process of facing the machine on which he is to pour his inspiration.
Directors: Tegan Ashmore and Jody Elizabeth
Country: Germany
It is not sufficient to examine what can be seen but rather to reflect upon what one sees, to imagine it. This film, an adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Purloined Letter, reimagines the classic detective story through a modern-day Zeitgeist.
Director: Marie Elisa Scheidt
Country: Germany
The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein maintained that the limits of one’s language are the limits of one’s world. But is it possible that by expanding and broadening the definition of language, the world itself can become broader, deeper, bigger?
Music Videos
Are We Apart
Director: Viktor Enoksen
Country: Norway
Sandra Kolstad – Run Away
Director: Yenni Lee
Country: Norway
Plurabelle – Lindo
Director: Bogdan Stamatin
Country: Romania
Things that Go Around
Director: Prano Bailey-Bond
Country: United Kingdom
Lyapis Trubeckoy – Tancuy
Director: Alexandr Stekolenko
Country: Ukraine
God Damn – Heavy Money
Director: Ben Parry
Country: United Kingdom
Vitalic – Fade Away
Director: Romain Chassaing
Country: France
Stick Me in my Heart
Director: Alex Sufit
Country: United Kingdom
Non-European Documentaries
Not Anymore: A Story of Revolution
Director: Matthew VanDyke
Country: United States
The story of the Syrian revolution as told through the experiences of two young Syrians, a male rebel fighter and a female journalist, as they fight an oppressive regime for the freedom of their people.
Director: Zohreh Soleimani
Country: Afghanistan
This is the story of one of these women. When Soheila was only five, she was given away in marriage to an old man in compensation for her older brother’s crime: stealing his young third wife. When she ran away from the abusive marriage, her father had her arrested and imprisoned.
Director: Bob Miller
Country: United States
The unrest that gripped Kenyan slums, neighborhoods, and villages following the disputed 2007 presidential election was the worst outbreak of ethnically motivated violence the nation had ever seen. In the years following, many Kenyan youth have begun to seize active roles in the reform of their nation, using gardening, waste removal, education, and athletics to encourage their peers toward a self-respecting and self-sustaining community.
Non-European Dramatic Features
Director: Jason Priestley
Country: Canada
A dying Doctor who plans to check out on his terms takes a reluctant detour when he inadvertently winds up on the lam with an ‘anything-but-normal’ 22-year-old girl.
Director: Michelle Mower
Country: United States
The estranged daughter of a small-town minister is forced to return to the strict, religious home of her youth, where she must confront the troubled relationships that caused her to leave four years before.
Non-European Dramatic Short
Director: Marwan Abderrazzaq
Country: United States
Desolate Road is a horror short about a couple on their way to start a new life and run into car trouble on a desolate road in Texas.
Director: Tal Zagreba
Country: Israel
A frustrated street artist makes a face that unknowingly moves onto people’s faces and conquers the city.
Director: Ethan Shaftel
Country: United States
When his cybernetic pet project is threatened, the handyman of a decaying apartment building is forced to take a stand, blurring the lines between human and machine.
Director: Oliver Yan
Country: China
In the early morning, an old man hit by a car is lying on the ground. Soon, passersby form a crowd one by one, but nobody would dare to touch him. When a deaf girl tries to help, she is kindly stopped by everyone else. As time passes, more bystanders come, but the old man is still down and alone.
Director: Jordan Berger
Country: United States
Sage and Thyme are in a boat going straight ahead. Maintain consistency; that is key…
Director: David Mboussou
Country: Gabon
While secretly recording a couple’s quarrel, a priest makes a terrible discovery.
Director: Aimee Long
Country: United States
In the year 2038, a man is about to embark on a journey of reconciliation with his estranged daughter when a natural disaster hurls his plans off course.
Directors: Ross Daniels and Chris Tomkins
Country: Australia
Terry, a homeless Doctor Who fanatic, spends his days reflecting on his mistakes and dreaming of being reunited with his long-lost son, John (named for John Pertwee, the third Doctor Who). Terry knows he’s made some bad choices, but will the universe offer him a second chance?
Director: Ara Arush
Country: Armenia-Russia
Deep in the country, in a small and forgotten village, lives Nelson, the drunkard, and the war hero…forgotten by his king and country. His family–wife and infant son–only wish for a cow…the “wet nurse” they call it. The story begins at the death of the cow…torn to pieces by a hungry she-wolf mother, because all the game has been exterminated by humans.
Student Films
Director: Yoav Hornung
Country: Israel
Two (female) soldiers are alone in the Israeli desert as a part of their final Officers’ school Exam – Land navigation. Things are getting complicated when one of them can’t find her weapon.
Director: Jan-Gerrit Seyler
Country: Germany
Marco and Lisa are in love. Online, they fight side by side against dreadful monsters. However, Lisa refuses to meet Marco in real life. One day, when she stops attending the game, Marco decides to search for her. He finds a new world. And learns absolute dread.
Director: Malika Pellicioli
Country: Australia
On the occasion of their father’s funeral, Theodore, Jeanne, and Gabriel are gathered in the family living room. The question arises as to what they will do with the expensive signet of their progenitor. They will then imagine the worst schemes to recover this ring, which is impossible to remove from the paternal ring finger. Everyone will compete with imagination until…
Director: Arthur Molard
Country: France
In the future, following successful animal experiments, humans now have electronic chips in their brains that assist them daily. Nathanaël, the repairer of these chips, must make a decision the day when the parents of an autistic young person ask him to hack their son’s electronic chip.
Director: Martina Plura
Country: Germany
Hannah sneaks into Paul’s apartment to surprise him but finds that the surprise is on her.
Director: Jason O’Hara
Country: Brazil-Canada
Shortly after the police invade the favela of Cantagalo, lifetime resident and acclaimed samba composer – Cathola – is gunned down by the UPP and nearly dies. As Cathola recuperates, his samba composition wins the championships and is selected to be performed at Rio’s most prestigious Carnaval parade.
Director: Daniel Ruebesam
Country: Germany
Tom is a driver for a security company and lives a decent life. He has left his criminal past behind. But when the life of his younger brother Mikey is in danger he is forced to help him out one last time. Their plan fails, and Mikey sees only one way out of this – a robbery in Tom’s armored car.
Director: Colin Huyser
Country: Netherlands
After having been gone for six years, Henry returns to his family for the wedding of his younger sister, Wendy. He is hoping to restore the relationship with his family, which has always been difficult. Especially the one with his father, Harold, who initially drove him away.
Director: Iain Forbes
Country: Norway
The tale of Ryan MacCrimmon, guardian of the last set of bagpipes on earth and those who would see the instrument wiped out for good. We join him for the final part of his journey at the edge of the world, where he hopes to secure the future of the bagpipe once and for all.
Directors: Arturo Bandinelli and Gevi Dimitrakopoulou
Country: United Kingdom
Otto Floss guides us on a journey through a world where people are invisible unless seen by someone else. In this reality, the Watcher Union is an established institution, as many people need watchers to make themselves visible. ‘Otto Floss: Freelance Watcher’ is a portrait of one man’s journey escaping the banality of his common profession as a watcher and understanding the deep human disconnection that characterizes his personal life and society.
Director: Youssef Nassar
Country: Lebanon
It is the story of a photographer on a mission who will stop at nothing to get it done. Along the way, he becomes a family man himself.
Director: Fiona Dalwood
Country: Australia
Five real people share their true stories of losing something precious and what it has taught them about living. Good Grief is a short stop motion animated documentary that explores the lessons we learn from dealing with grief and loss.
English