ÉCU – The European Independent Film Festival is delighted to announce the Official Selection. ÉCU 2012 will showcase 101 films from 33 countries on the 30th and 31st of March and 1st of April in Paris, France.
Dramatic Feature
Director: Stephen Manuel
Country: Germany
After a night of drinking, a man finds himself in a small room sealed off with an iron door, from which there is no escape; he takes drastic measures to avoid starvation.
Director: Uwe Johnson
Country: Germany
After brutally murdering his girlfriend’s alleged rapist, Allen is sent to a hospital for psychiatric treatment.
Director: Tolga Örnek
Country: Turkey/Germany
The story (fictional) of a Turkish intel team trying to stop a terrorist organization trying to conduct attacks in Istanbul.
Director: Daniel Mitelpunkt
Country: United Kingdom
Five students spend the night in the old dark house on the moor.
Director: Stelios Kammitsis
Country: Greece
This story takes place in an empty Athens in August, during a 12-hour period from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. Three friends, Phevos, Andreas, and Savvas, stay up all night walking around the streets of Exarchia for what is their last night before they leave Athens for good and move to Berlin, just like they had agreed one year ago.
Dramatic Short
Director: Inti Calfat
Country: Belgium
A short film featuring the struggles of a doomed couple. What happens when a woman can no longer prove intimately useful to herself or her husband? Does this make her less of a woman?
Director: Lars Ostenfeld
Country: Denmark
As a cone, the little fir tree is kidnapped by a mouse, and it must take root and grow far away from its family.
Director: Mathilde Arnaud, Jean-Yves Arnaud
Country: France
A strange photographer takes pictures of people down the streets of Paris. What is he going to do with these portraits? He doesn’t even have a face.
Director: Rodolphe Viémont
Country: France
A father visits his son, who was hospitalized after a suicide attempt. The communication between both men passes badly.
Director: Fabien Montagner
Country: France
A lonely teenager will enter an adventure out of time, revealing a dark moment about her family history.
Director: Tom Bewilogua
Country: Germany
A film about Flesh. Flesh in all its meanings! A story of two tragically colliding worlds. Poor and Rich! The film reflects an unadorned view of the current circumstances of our reality while the audience Is flying through society like a ghost.
Director: Elmar Freels
Country: Germany
Maria is eight years old. She’s growing up poor. When her violent stepfather is hospitalized after a heart attack, and Maria’s mother is in a desperate state, the girls start praying, which is unusual for her.
Director: Parker Ellerman
Country: Germany/South Africa
Amal, a 13-year-old refugee from Lebanon, deals drugs in the Hannover subway system. He lives an isolated life in an asylum home outside the city. One day, he meets a young German girl named Clara, who might be his savior.
Director: Socrates Alafouzos
Country: Greece
Ari is forced to face his secret childhood abuse, and the truth triggers events that are beyond his control.
Director: Ettore Nicoletti
Country: Italy
When you think you have found the perfect lover, your partner forever, when you seal your love to the universe, what’s next?
Director: Mauro John Capece
Country: Italy
This is a study of the friendship between a Chinese woman and a fisherman who came to Italy from Yugoslavia many years ago and lives in a small city island in the Veneto lagoon.
Director: Blerta Zeqiri
Country: Kosovo
A man comes back from a Serb prison to his wife and son. A lot has changed since he was declared missing. Continuing where they left off four years ago may not be as easy as it seems.
Director: Yenni Lee
Country: Norway
The story of Julie, a girl who carries around a box full of memories, and her goal is to release herself from them.
Director: Svetozar Golovlev
Country: Russia
The first love story of a seaman and pioneer leader happens in hard postwar times.
Director: Pablo Navarro-Rubio Gonzalez
Country: Spain
All his life, Benjamin has wanted, above all else, to become a vampire. However, the life of a vampire in reality is not how it is portrayed in the movies.
Director: Julio Soto Gurpide
Country: Spain
A woman called D seeks shelter from a tormenting past in a sanatorium in the middle of the mountains. The obsession she runs away from is death. But death has taken for her an unusual shape: her own hair.
Director: Maria Dolores Lopez
Country: Spain/ Italy/ Switzerland
We will diet when the earth runs out of food
Director: James W. Griffiths
Country: United Kingdom
Can two people who live on opposite sides of the world have anything in common? This is the story of two parallel lives, one in New York and one in Paris, and the journey that will lead them together is told simultaneously through the eyes of both characters.
Director: George Hamilton
Country: United Kingdom
Zoheir immigrated in the 70s and has run the local corner shop ever since. Inot his shop walks Danny – tired and at the end of his tether. All Danny wants to pick up some beer and cigarettes and go home to his family.
Director: Alan Arrivée
Country: United States Of America
A young couple’s marriage hilariously hits the rocks during a weekend wedding in the country.
Director: Rocco Labbé
Country: France
From April 16th to May 8th, 1945, during the Battle of Berlin, close to 360,000 Russians and 460,000 Germans were killed or wounded. It is estimated that more than 100,000 rapes occurred among the people of Berlin.
Director: Philippe Lamensch
Country: Belgium
What would you need the most if – and don’t say that will never happen to you! – if you were a refugee somewhere, abandoned in some transit camp? A knife? No! A spoon! To eat.
Director: Wim Geudens
Country: Belgium
True love has no limits. Driven by his obsession for sound, a man enters the city to find the perfect beat to conquer the heart of the woman he loves.
Noite Gélida em Castelo Branco
Director: Luís Diogo
Country: Portugal
Sofia and Marco, a young couple, are visiting Castelo Branco at night. They start a conversation with a homeless man playing guitar on the street. While the conversation takes place, Sofia starts suspecting that he is the father she never knew.
Director: Mark Hendrixx
Country: Germany
A Muslim taxi driver is caught up In the middle of a very busy location, in the middle of terror threats and all people can do is think the worst. Little do they know that the actual situation will make those who saw it never forget this day.
Documantaries
Al-Halqa – In the Storyteller’s Circle
Director: Thomas Ladenburger
Country: Germany
On a journey around Morocco, Abderahim teaches his son Zoheir the art of storytelling. Zoheir, torn between a modern lifestyle and his father´s wish to continue the tradition, has to face his fear of performing in front of the audience and experiences that the first story to learn is your own.
Director: Rita Broka
Country: Latvia
Life is calm in this quiet Latvian village. Thadeus was once known as an exemplary citizen. Obliging and considerate, he loved his cow and little Laura, the granddaughter of his farm worker. But this love was double-sided.
Director: Patrick Chadwick
Country: United Kingdom
During a unique year-long research trip, Dr Emily Lethbridge is exploring Icelanders’ centuries-old Sagas. This film shows how one saga continues to hold on to local people’s imaginations, with Icelanders describing the characters as friends and talking of the pride they have in both the protagonists and the landscapes in which the sagas take place.
The Boy Mir – Ten Years in Afghanistan
Director: Phil Grabsky
Country: United Kingdom
Tracks cheeky, enthusiastic Mir from a childish eight to a fully grown eighteen-year-old in Afghanistan.
Experimental Films
Director: Emily McMehen
Country: Canada/United Kingdom
An introduction to Haitian Vodou as told by Vodouisants, Achante is an immersive image-driven portrait of spiritual practices in Haiti.
Director: George Drivas
Country: Greece
In a contemporary corporate environment and during a sudden system crisis, two leaders of two groups (workers vs. executives) deliver some of the aforementioned speeches.
Director: Oonagh Kearney Country: Ireland
An older woman sits before a telephone in an empty house. Her daughters have flown the nest. As she prepares to phone them, their memory is brought back to life
Director: Alessandro Bavari
Country: Italy
Metachaos, from Greek meta (beyond) and Chaos (the abyss where the eternally formless state of the universe hides), indicates a primordial shape of ameba, which lacks precise morphology and is characterized by mutation and mitosis. Even though an anthropomorphous appearance, in reality, characterize the bodies represented in METACHAOS, they are without identity and conscience.
Director: Ian Pons Jewell Country: United Kingdom
‘Inch by inch, I conquered the inner terrain I was born with. Bit by bit, I reclaimed the swamp in which I’d languished. I gave birth to my infinite being, but I had to wrench myself out of me with forceps.’ Fernando Pessoa’s ‘Book of Disquiet’.
Director: Adriano Cirulli Country: United Kingdom
A study of human interaction expressed through movement and sound.
Director: Mark Maxwell
Country: Spain
This is the story of a soldier of the International Brigades fighting in Spain against Fascism (1936). A soldier is injured in battle and lies unconscious in an olive grove. Through innovative time-lapse photography, a nighttime and daytime film sequence of the stricken soldiers follows until finally, he awakens to find himself isolated and his comrades have disappeared. His journey begins.
Director: Noemie Lafrance
Country: USA
Perched on a wall and wrapped in sculptural beeswax and lanolin costumes that melt away, dancers progress in euphoria and exhaustion, melting until their souls escape their ephemeral bodies and disintegrate into light.
Director: Constantine Konov Country: Russia
Every second, our planet is spinning you, but you can begin to spin our world yourself. Every day, you can be happy and make others happy. Yes, it is not so simple. There are many obstacles in the way. Life is not a movie. Although it is a movie that has a physical end. Nobody knows what will be at the end of our lives. And while you live, you are the director of each moment.
Non-European Dramatic Films
Director: Ronnie S. Riskalla
Country: Australia
He just woke up. He’s in a hospital. He can’t move. He can’t remember who he is. Memories begin to flood back to him as he regains consciousness. He was part of a heist gone wrong. One of the crew of six asked to steal a briefcase from a secret vault. But that’s all he can remember.
Director: Paul Donovan
Country: Canada/Germany
The story of a group of young American Christian fundamentalists on a mission to Berlin to bring the Germans back to Jesus.
Director: David Jakubovic
Country: United States
Awkward and socially dysfunctional, Nathan writes strange poems, buries jams in the park, and converses with the voices. Voices that fight for his attention and demand his subordination.
Director: Robert Heydon Country: Canada
Heather Thompson is frustrated with her marriage and her life, which is too quiet. It was then that she fell in love with Lloyd, a drug addict she met in a club. They spend a lot of time together doing drugs and partying.
Non-European Dramatic Shorts
Director: James Francis Khehtie
Country: Australia
The Telegram Man explores the impact of World War II on a close-knit Australian farming community.
Director: Jared Abdul-Rahman
Country: Australia
A young woman finds herself conflicted when faced with love’s uncertainty.
Director: Frank Benitez Peña Country: Colombia
Heather Thompson is frustrated with her marriage and her too quiet life. It was then that she fell in love with Lloyd, a drug addict she met in a club. They spend a lot of time together doing drugs and partying.
Director: Omar Iyer
Country: India
The film traces the life of an unnamed female protagonist who is molested as a teenager by a man she trusts and has known for a while. The incident has a strong psychological effect on her behavior, and she cannot find a way to deal with what has happened to her.
Director: Adam Bizanski
Country: Israel
Still, after a tough breakup, Paul’s life is slowly deteriorating. A mindless burglary of his rented apartment forces him to push through the underworld of Tel Aviv to investigate.
Director: Kevin Margo
Country: United States
One astronaut’s journey through space and life ends on a hostile exosolar planet. Grounded is a metaphorical account of the experience, inviting unique interpretation and reflection by the viewer.
Director: Rob Underhill Country: United States
It is 1956. The previous year, 14-year-old Emmett Till from Chicago had gone missing in Money, Mississippi. Later, the boy’s mutilated body was found in a river.
Zoltan: The Hungarian Gangster of Love
Director: Justin Reardon
Country: United States
A Felliniesque adventure that centers on the Don Juan of a remote Hungarian Village, during his daily quest to satisfy his lust for women.
Director: Jess Zakira Wise
Country: United States
A nanny discovers a dark secret about the picture-perfect family she works for.
Non-European Documentaries
Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea
Director: David Schmidt
Country: Australia
When she was 9, Zainab’s parents made the heartbreaking decision to leave their home in northern Afghanistan. They set out on a journey across the globe, putting the fate of their family in the hands of strangers.
Orchids: My Intersex Adventure
Director: Phoebe Hart Country: Australia
Documentary filmmaker Phoebe Hart comes clean on a journey of self-discovery around her hidden intersex condition.
The Rhythm of My Life – ISMAEL SANKARA
Director: Franck A. Onouviet
Country: Gabon
It unconventionally follows the journey of ‘Ish’, a former Miami-based rapper who traveled to Africa to visit family. Little did he know that Libreville (Gabon) would be the place where the project of his dreams would fall into his lap.
Director: Sushmit Ghosh Country: India
Completing 100 years as the capital of modern India, Delhi today stands at the crossroads of time. ‘Dilli’ raises critical questions about urbanization and development through the personal stories of its people and explores the social and spatial landscape of a city that dreams of becoming a super megapolis.
Director: Deborah Louise Robinson
Country: United States
“Last Will and Embezzlement” is a feature-length documentary that examines the financial exploitation of the elderly.
Director: Raylene Jin Country: China
This documentary film features a four-and-a-half-year-old child in Inner Mongolia. What distinguishes him from other children is that he is a Reincarnation of a great Buddhist master.
Music Videos
CMX-The Milky Way
Country: Finland
L’Ancre, la Croix, le Coeur
Director: Ville Leinonen
Country: France/ Finland
New and For Sale – Candid
Director: Henneke Holst Country: Germany
Addiction
Country: United States/Italy/United Kingdom
Rugged Wilderness & Mountain Man No More – Dropping Feathers
Director: Charles Chinasky Country: Norway
House
Country: United Kingdom
Legalize
Country: United States
Animated Films
Directors: Philipp Comarella, Simon Griesser
Country: Austria
The main character is a bookmark stuck in a forgotten book, in a life marked by a standstill in a deserted room. One day, the wind knocks over the book and blows the bookmark onto the table, separating them
Lost and Found Box of Human Sensation
Director: Stefan Leuchtenberg
Country: Germany
When his father dies unexpectedly, a young man seeking to cope with his grief goes on a powerful emotional journey through time and space.
Director: Marcin Janiec
Country: Poland
Somewhere between life and death, a thrilling chess match takes place. The stake is high – a gateway to the world of living. The sole referee of this exciting tournament is a figure no one wishes to meet on their path.
Director: Pablo Serrano Rosillo
Country: Spain
A hungry guy prepares a nice romantic dinner for himself and chooses the worst possible menu…
Director: Jadwiga Kowalska Country: Switzerland
It’s raining. A small village is in big trouble. The raindrops are a young girl’s tears. And it’s up to the hunter to put things in order.
Director: Anna Benner
Country: United Kingdom
Exploring the pitfalls goyim face when talking about Jewish culture and the elephant in the room that is the Israel-Palestine conflict.
Director: Charlotte Colbert Country: United Kingdom
A surreal tale about a Man who wakes up one day only to discover his heart has left. This forces him on a journey of self-discovery as he tries to find his heart.
Youth Films
Director: ICFF Country: Cyprus
The Youth Team of the International Children’s Film Festival of Cyprus made the fiction documentary to mark the 20th Anniversary of the Convention for Children’s Rights.
Director: Sergio Manfio
Country: Italy
A surreal tale about a Man who wakes up one day only to discover his heart has left. This forces him on a journey of self-discovery as he tries to find his heart.
Student Films
Director: Milko Yovchev Country: Bulgaria
1997. New Year’s Eve. A man braves the cold winter night to bring a friend of his a cake as a gift. The cake never makes it to the receiver because it ends up in front of the door of a poor gypsy’s family.
Director: Samanou Sahlstrom Country: Denmark
Maria is attracted to Vincent and fascinated by the woman from the book and their love. Maria wants to experience the same kind of love with Vincent and slowly changes her life, identity, and destiny.
Director: Arnaud Saibron, Bertand Saint-Martin, Guillaume Petit, Luc-Ewen Martin-Fenouillet, Mathias Barday, Olivier Landais
Country: France
36-year-old accountant Raymond is always the target of everyday life annoyances. And today is not his best day. A bus driver will learn it the hard way.
Director: Christina Ruettinger, Christof Kirchner Country: Germany/ New Zealand
The work and life of photographer Victoria Proebstel, who spent her childhood at one of the world’s most remote and beautiful places – a lighthouse on New Zealand’s North Island.
Director: Tal Haring
Country: Isreal
Running away from the cops and bleeding to death, Michael walks into a local pub, hoping to stay there until the heat wears off. A meeting with the pub’s depressed waitress, Maya, forces Michael to hide his injuries and past.
Director: Ariel Weisbrod, Yossi Meiri Country: Israel
Shachar, a young and aspiring Israeli scientist, has received a research scholarship at a leading German university. His grandmother is a Holocaust survivor and has maintained her bitter temperament and anguish for German society ever since her release from a concentration camp. As the story unfolds, a conflict between grandmother and grandson becomes inevitable.
Director: Elisa Resinaro
Country: Italy
10 minutes of pure tension, violence, and breathtaking realism where nothing is like it seems and all the rest is… just for love.
Director: Ghina Hachicho
Country: Lebanon
Rima is a shy and insecure girl, yet very curious and imaginative.
At the age of 19, she moves to Beirut to lead an independent life away from her parents.
Director: Kaia Kajos-Kendall Country: Norway
Christine is head-over-heels in love with Øystein, even though he might not be the best guy. After a turbulent hike in the mountains, Christine realizes who he is. She saves herself and her dignity before it’s too late.
Director: Rolf Lang, Quinn Evan Reimann
Country: Switzerland
Three gang members set out to punish their former cohort…but fate intervenes.
Director: Pete Roe
Country: United Kingdom
When a man wakes up to find his city deserted, he realizes he has the opportunity to do everything he has always wanted to do.
Director: Michael van der Put Country: United Kingdom
When his first love, Joanna is killed at a local train station, average schoolboy Callum struggles to cope with feelings of guilt, grief, and fear. Finding himself increasingly isolated and with the police starting to ask questions, Callum must look for the courage to do the right thing.
Director: Roland Kennedy
Country: United Kingdom
A portrait of Peter Scott, an aged gentleman thief who, during his life of crime and high living, orchestrated heists of grand bravado, like the theft of a Vermeer, but is now ending his days in penury and loneliness, raging against the dying of the light.
Director: Trey Moya, Howard Cook
Country: United States
Meet Bart Tyler, a cocky up-and-comer in the dangerous sport of professional bull riding. Live the passion and drama as a documentary film crew records Bart’s struggle to escape his father’s looming shadow, the infamous Bill ‘The Buzzerbeater’ Tyler, and become the champion he was meant to be.
Director: Cathira Jeyra
Country: United States
Meet Bart Tyler, a cocky up-and-comer in the dangerous sport of professional bull riding. Live the passion and drama as a documentary film crew records Bart’s struggle to escape his father’s looming shadow, the infamous Bill ‘The Buzzerbeater’ Tyler, and become the champion he was meant to be.
Director: Cathira Jeyra Country: United States
Meet Bart Tyler, a cocky up-and-comer in the dangerous sport of professional bull riding. Live the passion and drama as a documentary film crew records Bart’s struggle to escape his father’s looming shadow, the infamous Bill ‘The Buzzerbeater’ Tyler, and become the champion he was meant to be.
Director: Andrés Moret Urdampilleta
Country: United States
Two elderly ladies living in a nursing home are the only ones alive from their friends. The group had an agreement in which if any of them had gotten ill, the other ones would kill her to avoid her suffering. Now that only two of them are left, one friend decides to back out of the pact, and the other one wants to continue with it.
Director: Roozbeh Dadvand Country: United States
In 1959, under the coercion of the CIA, an American physician questions his objectives of having to assassinate a deposed famed Iranian political figure living under house arrest.
Director: Jonathan Reid-Edwards
Country: United Kingdom
London. Monday, 18th April, 1960. In the offices of English printing pioneers Hadley Print & Press sits Richard Simpson, a junior executive who has it all: a gorgeous secretary he longs to hold; the Hadley TK-421, Britain’s first commercial photocopier, and his idea for the company’s future
Director: Sezen Kayhan Country: Turkey
It’s the time of the plums and 10-year-old Yasemin lives in her own world of fantasy. On a day her fantasy world hinders her first encounter with death.
Director: Elle Sofe Sara
Country: Norway
The yoiking hand shows the fascinating movements of 3 Sami yoikers and their thoughts about why the hand moves in a certain way when they are yoiking.
Director: Elin Gronblom Country: United States / Finland
A struggling young musician buys a goldfish who longs to swim in the open sea, and a special friendship evolves between the two dreamers.
English