The European Independent Film Festival (ÉCU), in partnership with G-Technology by Hitachi, is delighted to announce the Official Selection. ÉCU 2010 will showcase 67 films from 26 countries on the 12th, 13th and 14th of March in Paris, France.
European Dramatic Feature
Director: Barbara Kowa
Country: Germany
It tells the story of the first virtual state that a globally composed collective of hundreds of people founded on the Internet.
Director: Kris De Meester
Country: Belgium
The story of 12 characters who are stuck in a hotel and have nothing else but time to kill.
Director: Jamil Dehlavi
Country: United Kingdom
A fallen angel seeks redemption for the death of a child under his protection.
Director: Ventura Durall
Country: Spain
He had been born for the pages of events “The madman of the crossbow”; For public opinion, the inexplicable horror; For experts, a case of psychotic outbreak worthy of a manual.
European Dramatic Short
Blocked
Director: Paiman Kalayeh
Country: Norway
A young man attempts to get over his writer’s block.
Director: Andreas Ksoll
Country: United Kingdom
Sean finds his career on hold and his love life in tatters when Gas Division provide him with a service that keeps him in hot water and his house without it.
Director: Antoine Coutou, Joszef Tari
Country: France
A woman has to face the sudden departure of the man she loves… Slowly she will overcome her grief.
Director: Aisha Tyler
Country: Iceland
A woman goes to extreme lengths to demonstrate her deep personal commitment to the environment.
Director: Juan Parra
Country: Spain
Mistreated by her husband, Berta leaves him for an unsatisfactory substitute.
Director: Julian Barratt, Dan Jemmet
Country: United Kingdom
After 50 years working the wooden dolls, things begin to fall apart for Barry Shepherd, drinking and cursing his way unrepentantly onwards, he continues with the show that threatens to take his soul.
Director: Marco Gadge
Country: Germany
Transporter of german! The two harderned gangsters Klaus and Bernd have to supply again. One package. It has get in time in this kind of business and the date should be always are kept. But this is not always …. And so Bernd and Klaus realize that a small traffic light becomes a big problem.
Director: Bjarki Thomsen
Country: Denmark
A darkly humorous suspense drama in which a professional hitman’s job does not go quite as expected. In the meantime, certain characters attempt to cover their own sinister motives by acting nice
Director: Reeve Rixon
Country: UK
Old and alone, living in the countryside, Deirdre becomes
trapped in an old Victorian washing line. During the cold night
she is forced to confront a bitter former lover, resentful friends,
with her family ultimately neglecting her in old age. A nightma-
rish tale of living and dying with regrets.
Director: Fabian Dubois
Country: France
Two brothers have just moved to Tokyo. The first one is working on a decibel map project. The second one, totally lost and confused, drowns his dreariness in alcohol.
Director: Johan Lundh
Country: Sweden
A dark twisted story of a factory worker who holds no interest for the girl of his dreams until he develops a curious cyst on his body, a cyst which seems to reproduce itself.
Director: Philippe Lamensch
Country: Belgium
John is born with his feet back to front. His parents are upset.
Director: Oded Binnun
Country: France
After spending a few intimate moments in a hotel room, a man and a woman get dressed and realise that everything around them has lost its charm.
Director: Robi Voigt
Country: Germany
A woman, a parking deck and the sky. The poetic 10-minute-short shows the fateful day of a woman, who decides to quit accepting life but to take action instead. Certainly she did not anticipate such a reaction. A film about anger, mercy and emancipation.
Director: James Rumsey
Country: United Kingdom
A neurotic voyeur’s late night quest for a carton of milk forces him to confront what he’s really capable of, what that means for his future, and the girl next door.
Director: Tito Sacchi
Country: United Kingdom
Not Yet is a dream-like tale about fixation and the inability to accept the cards you are dealt. Standing on the ledge on top of a tall building, a man weighs up the consequences of his next step.
Director: Josephine Mackerras
Country: France
A 15-year-old catholic girl takes a pregnancy test. The 3-minute wait is about to reveal much more than the test result itself.
Director: Tom Bewilogua
Country: UK
Scissu tells a chronologically split story about a lonely cop and an addicted couple.
Director: Tom Fisher
Country: United Kingdom
Spunkbubble is a rock of cinematic crack: It’s gonna f*** your head with an intense combo of porn and violence and leave you skint, soiled and wired.
Director: Tom Fisher
Country: United Kingdom
It is a black comedy about three outcasts who meet under strange circumstances in a robbery and how their lives completely change after the encounter.
Director: Mircea Nestor
Country: Romania
In-between an irritating big brother and an attractive girl who fails to fall for his charm, Tarantyno decides to take what he wants.
Director: Carlo Chiaramonte
Country: Italy
Angry and frustrated, Chiara bares her soul to her supposedly sleeping boyfriend. Little does she know, he has been listening to her revealing monologue all along.
Director: ‘Tamiliam’ Subas
Country: Norway
Vanni Mouse is a short film that follows the journey of two mice that flew from Vanni’s woods. The two inseparable couple end unfortunately in an internment camp (Manik Farm) located in Vavuniya (Sri Lanka) where hundreds of thousands tamils are imprisoned by the Sri Lankan government.
European Documentary Feature
Director: Jawed Taiman
Country: United Kingdom
Afghan children addicted to heroin struggle to survive in a troubled land.
Director: Yonathan Levy Country: France, Romania, Ukraine
Irma and her son Andre undertake an intimate journey across Europe, searching memories of events occurred long ago, as well as History, Irma remaining, to this day, the last witness.
Director: Laurits Munch-Petersen
Country: Norway
The story about Gitte and Susie, two young Danish women, who send their men off to war in Afghanistan. Only one of the men returns home alive. The film follows the two woman closely in the most fatal period of their life.
Director: Klaus Pas
Country: Switzerland
With 1 billion of the world’s population going to bed hungry at night, documentary film, “Last Supper For Malthus” sheds light on one of the most prevalent and alarming issues of our time, the global food crisis.
Director: Esbert, Viginia Camino, Alvaro Lagos, Graciela de Pablos
Country: Spain
The story of a unique experience. Fifteen orphaned blind children and fifteen girls who had suffered child exploitation in the south of Madagascar, leave their country for the first time as a part of a concert tour taking them to over twenty different locations in Spain in an effort to demand children’s fundamental rights
Directors: Mirel Bran, Jonas Mercier Country: Romania
The Securitate Hunter exhumes the partisans killed by the political secret police in Romania. This is a story of a young generation with new hope for their country.
Director: George Olver
Country: United Kingdom
Tenacity on the Tasman is a 2009 documentary film about adventurer Olly Hicks’s attempt to circumnavigate the world in a rowboat.
Animation
Director: Joao Fazenda, Alex Gozblau
Country: Portugal
A ritual of three decades that takes place in a cafe. A fortune-telling mother, a distant father, and an excessively noisy family.
Director: Christian Lachenschmidt
Country: Germany
A planet-like creature is drifting through space, devouring asteroids and rocks, digesting them, and excreting new worlds.
Director: Teemu Auersalo
Country: Ireland
Trolley Boy’s frustration with his work builds up into a monster. He realises there’s more to life than pushing shopping trolleys into stacks.
Non-European Dramatic Short
Director: Daniel Clements
Country: Canada
A man and a woman meet at a coffee shop and dispense awkward pleasantries as if on a blind date. However, the truth behind their meeting is revealed as their conversation spirals deeper and darker.
Director: Gerhard Ehlers
Country: South Africa
A bride on her honeymoon is confronted by her dark past and even darker future when her new husband finds out more than he bargained for.
Director: Valentina I. Avayu
Country: United States
The Magician recounts a series of strange moments that take place at the wake of a man who seems to have scarcely lived.
The Miraculous Tale of the Children Dubois
Director: Cassandra Lee Hamilton
Country: United States
When a great devastation befell the Dubois house, young Juliette was forced into a life with out magic, it is not until twin brother Nikolai returns from the great beyond to shepherd her back to the innocence of her childhood that Juliette must decide between the reality of her present or the magic of her youth.
Things You Should Know about a Woman
Director: Charles Haine
Country: United States
A brief letter from XXX to her ex, letting him know the things she wished he had known.
Non-European Dramatic Feature
The Last Confession of Alexander Pearce
Director: Michael James Rowland
Country: Australia
Alexander Pearce, an Irish convict, escapes from a maximum-security prison with other inmates but is the only one to survive. His confession to his sins before his execution shakes the legal system.
Non-European Documentary
Country: Pakistan Director: Kiran Rao
The lives of four people intersect in Mumbai: a washer-man who wants to become an actor, a banker-turned-photographer, a painter looking for inspiration, and a newly-married immigrant who journals her experiences on home video.
Experimental Film
Director: Costas Chrysanthou
Country: Cyprus
A distant couple attempts to re-establish intimacy through their dreams. However, their evil alarm clock seems to have its own ideas.
Country: Greece
Director: Giorgos Drivas
Beta is the second letter of the Greek alphabet, the letter B. Beta test is the story of a city. Beta is the first version of software that has to be tested before going out in the market. Beta test is about our future. It is about surveillance, urbanity, communication and the feeling of non-existence. Beta test is a love story. It can happen to anyone.
Director: Arturo Fuentes Calle
Country: Spain
Planar studies the visual perception mechanism and reflects on the image-generation process in our mind.
Director: Bernard Weiß
Country: Austria
This is the ordinary day of an extraordinary man
Student Film
Director: Julia C. Kaiser
Country: Germany
A magical moment between two people in the subway, but then it is all over and they will never see each other again – wrong! Fabian fights for his love and chases Marie through Stuttgart. That is Amoklove: a declaration of love during a cardiac recess.
Director: Vesko Cholakov
Country: Bulgaria
The movie begins in a remote rural village in Bulgaria and zoom out to go back 200,000 years ago in time when the anatomically modern-appearing humans first came into existence.
Director: Mark Triller
Country: United Kingdom
Shepard and Malika Mason have lost that which they hold most valuable. And only a witch doctor can negotiate with the darkness of hell, the Deadside, to help them retrieve it. But some things lost are not meant to be found. For every choice there is a consequence.
Director: Anartz Zuazua
Country: Spain
Laura asks the Three Kings for a grandfather
Director: Clare Kurylowski
Country: United Kingdom
Depicting the world of Eleanor, a woman marked by a miscarriage and her subsequent infertility.
Director: Nuno Neves
Country: Portugal
The genesis of any living thing comes from the conflict between opposing forces.
Country: Russia
Director: Oksana Vertinskaya
The LUDWIG-265 consists of three parts. A fatally ill man and his wife Dina, a mother and her adult sun Pasha, and professor Grisha and his friend Vadim. All the characters use to go to one hairdressing salon, and have just bought an expensive vacuum cleaner.
Country: Italy
Director: Valentina Pedicini
What is true love? Rely on somebody. To undress. Construct… against time, against everybody. Between theater and reality… this is the true story of the Drag King Julius Kaiser and his girlfriend Mistress Kyrahm.
Country: Mexico
Director: Santiago Maza
The legendary ‘Faraonica San Juan Boxing Arena’ is once again the scenario for an epic encounter, this time between ‘Choko’ Tabarez and ‘Duvalin’ Espadas. Everything seems to be ready to enjoy round after round of pugilist talent, when all of a sudden, an unexpected uppercut changes the outcome of the fight and the course of the night for all those present.
Country: Slovakia
Director: Lukas Hanulak
A spiritual drama about an ordinary man, who is losing his only child. The story tells us about useless conflicts in our lives, and shows the depth of human soul.
Director: Lukas Hanulak
Country: United Kingdom
Twenty-three-year-old filmmaker Louisa Mayman documents the struggle to get her back on track following a life-changing incident.
Country: United Kingdom Director: NJ Silva
Hungary, 1944. Yael is a Jewish freedom fighter who is captured by the German army in Hungary. She’ is held captive and tortured to give away important information. On the verge of insanity, she’ll fight to stand her ground.
Country: France
Director: Samuel W. Hefti
A young guy claims to have the ability to see the amount of days the people have left to live.
English