ÉCU-The European Independent Film Festival is delighted to announce the Official Selection of it’s 8th Edition. ÉCU 2013 will showcase 90 films from 28 countries on the 29th – 31st of March in Paris, France.
Dramatic Feature
Director: Simon Powell
Country: United Kingdom
This is a modern-day love story set in Manchester about how coincidences bring two strangers together and take them on an eventful and beautiful life-changing adventure in just one day.
Director: Simon Phillips
Country: United Kingdom
Damien, a London copper, has a past he’s trying to forget. Before joining the force, he ran with a football firm, getting involved in tear-ups up and down the country.
Director: Hammudi Al-Rahmoun Font
Country: Spain
A carefully selected cast for an audacious adaptation by a director ready and willing to squeeze every last drop from his actors without any moral, legal, or sexual scruples. Burning passions, intrigue, and jealousy are ruthlessly inflamed in real life before being served on the screen, blurring the line between fact and imagination.
Director: Clas Lindberg
Country: Sweden
‘Stranger Road’ is a drama between three different but equally lost persons. The drama begins after a meeting via online dating. This triggers a series of events, eventually leading to a terrible resolution, but who is the perpetrator? It is not even noticeable who the victim is.
Dramatic Short
Director: Nicholas Abrahams
Country: United Kingdom
The film is a magical odyssey through the British countryside, following a man’s search for his way home.
Director: Steve Reeves
Country: United Kingdom
A stressed-out businesswoman has the worst day of her life.
Director: Calum Macdiarmid
Country: United Kingdom
A carefully selected cast for an audacious adaptation by a director ready and willing to squeeze every last drop from his actors without any moral, legal, or sexual scruples. Burning passions, intrigue, and jealousy are ruthlessly inflamed in real life before being served on the screen, blurring the line between fact and imagination.
Director: Daniele Scarpi
Country: Italy
He wants to know whose side I’m on, so he can kill me, but to save myself, how can I figure out whose side he’s on?
Directors: Petros Papadopoulos, Zina Papadopoulou
Country: Greece
In a virtual cut-throat world that brooks no mistakes, everyone is deadline-driven. The main character, a postman, is assigned the mission to deliver a letter on a unicycle in eight minutes. Torn between love and duty, the character lives through short-lived moments of passion, scrubbing round the rules.
Director: Timo von Gunten
Country: Switzerland
The life of a doll in the display window in Paris. The doll tries to escape from its life behind the window of fashion into the world where it hopes to find more recognition.
Director: Dan Smyth
Country: United Kingdom
The lyrical memoirs of Britain’s most reviled woman, Myra Hindley
Director: Francisco Falcão
Country: Austria, Portugal
He tries to cope with the loss of his Mother, but unfortunately, a passion for an older neighbor, XANA, will throw things out of balance.
Director: Venetia Evripiotou
Country: Greece, India
Five-year-old Hasan discovers the key to one of life’s greatest secrets in the streets of Delhi. And the secret is, in the words of ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, that “Happiness depends upon ourselves.”
Director: Natasha Novik
Country: Russia
A cart is rolling along the endless road with no one aboard, with no horse or engine, or even sails – just the wheels turning by themselves. There are different people it rolls by and different reactions it leaves behind.
Director: Luis Ventura
Country: Switzerland, United Kingdom
The only thing that stands between Maxine “Bunny” Vance and happiness is her mentally unstable pimp and his Winchester rifle.
Director: Flaminia Graziadei
Country: United Kingdom
Mind and body are two aspects of the same unity. However, sometimes, the harmony gets broken. Panic attacks are that sneaky enemy inside ourselves, always ready to trigger when we least expect it. They are the monsters that restrict our vital and personal space, putting all of us in a vulnerable condition of which we are ashamed.
Director: José Miguel Moreira
Country: Portugal
In a society controlled by the System, a Nazi variant of Big Brother limiting citizens’ privacy, Joao falls in love with Leonor, a persecuted Jew. The vigilant inspector who watched them decided to let them be free, reconciling with his past: he was Leonor’s grandfather.
Director: Karni Arieli, Saul Freed
Country: Hungary, United Kingdom
A dark fantasy story in which a man makes a pact with all the inhabitants of his cottage, with honey, sex, meat…and a very sticky end.
Director: Ainur Askarov
Country: Russia
A small boy in the besieged Leningrad during World War II.
Director: Leonard Leiter
Country: Austria
The young couple is still in love and on the run. They try to get along together no matter how many troubles – caused by human nature – stand in their own way
Director: Guy Paterson
Country: United Kingdom
A performer stands on stage in a run-down theatre that has forgotten better times if it ever had them. There is a tense, electric atmosphere; despite their weary cynicism, the audience cannot help but wonder if what they’ve heard is true. The performer begins: he picks up a scalpel from the tray of medical equipment at his side and starts to cut along the scarred side of his ribcage. The spectators’ expressions change: some are scared, some are entranced, and some are repulsed. From the side, the performer’s doctor watches, transfixed…
Director: George Kouvaras
Country: Greece
A cinematic approach in boy-meets-girl relationships. Maybe there is a script, and maybe there isn’t. The fact remains. People act.
Director: Marco Gadge
Country: Germany
Shadows are all Commissioner Stern sees: the darkness he comes from is too powerful to escape.
Dramatic Short
Director: Andrew Thompson, Lucy Bailey
Country: United Kingdom
“The Waiting” is a vivid and compelling portrait of those driven by the hope that one day they will return home.
Director: Mauro John Capece, Claudio Romano
Country: Italy
New York City. A secret diary by Anton Perich, one of the most interesting artists at the Andy Warhol Factory.
Moving Gracefully Towards the Exit
Director: Jean-Bernard Andro, Patrice Regnier
Country: France, United States
A homage to a man who shared with me the pas de deux of love and life as he bowed towards the exit.
Director: Sulev Keedus
Country: Estonia
Looking from the bridge, it is a gloomy and mysterious fortress. The island of River Narva stands in the middle of the Russian-Estonian border river like a wrecked ship. The red brick walls of the abandoned textile factory look like torn skin. The Kreenholm factory, set up in 1857, was once the biggest in Europe, and only two years ago, the machines pounded in the halls. When the factory went bankrupt, over 10.000 people lost their jobs and income, mostly Russian-speaking folk of an Estonian city. Adults, youngsters, and children walk past us, telling their fate-bruised stories. We will see how the equation of unemployment and social exclusion has inevitably come true also here with fateful consequences such as orphanhood, drugs, and crimes, even expulsion.
Were you the last man to see Hitler?
Director: Caroline von der Tann
Country: Germany,Italy
The film tells the story of my stepfather, Bernd Freytag von Loringhoven. He gives an unusual personal testimony on crucial moments in the German history of the 20th century. Bernd Freytag survived the cauldron of Stalingrad and witnessed the assassination attempt on the 20th of July 1944 against Hitler. Thereafter, for nine months, he encountered Hitler daily at the military briefings as adjutant to the Chief of the General Staff Guderian. In that position, he stayed the last week in the Fuhrer Bunker in Berlin, up to 24 hours before Hitler’s suicide. Besides the high cinematic quality, the film features Bernd Freytag’s outstanding narrative talent. The film is shot in Munich, Berlin, and Poland and employs plentiful archive material.
Dramatic Short
Director: Iria Lopez
Country: United Kingdom
Jose is a teenage pig living in a Spanish town and the only pig in his family. One day, a new neighbor moves in next door and Jose starts to come to terms with who he is.
Director: Emma De Swaef, Marc James Roels
Country: Belgium
Forced to return to his naturist roots, Willy bungles into noble savagery.
Director: Daisy Jacobs
Country: United Kingdom
Drinks are raised, guns are fired, women ogled, and horses straddled before we are spat out into the gutter in this satirical attack on elitism and privilege.
Director: Ainslie Henderson
Country: United Kingdom
A surreal trip through the subconscious of a stifled musician as he struggles to sing.
Director: Dennis Stein-Schomburg
Country: Germany
One child is different than the others. Because of her dreamy and sporty nature, she doesn’t match the generally accepted behavior of the other kids. Being different makes her more and more lonely. But in the end, her loneliness saves her from being killed by the bomb that hit the orphanage.
Director: Peter Bunzl
Country: United Kingdom
A boy and his mum live on an isolated farm. One day, a Crow man crashes into their world. Mask characters combine with animation in this experimental short narrative film.
Director: Tobias S. Hoffmann
Country: Germany
Brainside is a storytelling experiment for medical visualizations. In contrast to classical images of this genre, which usually appear very distant and sober, Brainside runs another path by using cinematic devices when helming with the cruel beauty of a nature catastrophe- all taking place in a hidden microcosm.
Music Videos
I’ve Only Just Begun
Director: Elias Koskimies
Country: Finland
Slow Place Like Home – There Go The Lights Again
Director: Jules Hackett
Country: Ireland
Brazzaville – Boeing
Director: Natalya Kudryashova, Semyon Galperin
Country: Russia
Malk de Koijn “A long time ago”
Director: Kira Richards Hansen
Country: Denmark
Purple Clown- Free
Director: Matthias Neumayer, Alexander Hamernik
Country: Austria
Experimental Films
Director: Eric Dinkian
Country: France
A Japanese woman is looking for the forms of nature in an urban world.
Director: Julien Martorell
Country: France
Pianoworks 13 combines motion design and live photography. Four hip-hop dancers each perform their movements to a soundtrack played solely on the piano. The film illustrates the vital link between the body, the instrument, and the instrumentalist. The dancers’ movements then give rise to a calligraphic language reinterpreting them.
Director: Alexei Dmitriev
Country: Russia
The work is a war film and a visual exploration of hermeneutics. The artist appropriates footage from World War II and reconfigures it to manipulate the viewer’s expectations.
Director: Alessia Travaglini
Country: Italy
It is a surreal film that enters the dreams and nightmares we go through every day, a ‘metaphor of vision’ that shows the shapes of the world beyond realism.
Director: Moritz Krämer
Country: Germany
It’s a photoshoot, and the model is unnerved. Back in the changing room, she makes a surprising discovery. Everything around her is edible—the chair, the TV, the walls.
Non-European Dramatic Features
DAR HE: The Lynching of Emmett Till
Director: Rob Underhill
Country: United States
It is 1955. The body of 14-year-old Emmett Till from Chicago is discovered in a Money, MS river. Two men are acquitted of the murder. LOOK magazine interviews the Money residents to get at the root of what happened.
Director: Boris Wexler
Country: France, United States
A young French chef with a fondness for America and a life in shambles pushes the limits of the American Dream by converting a Chicago pizza shop into an escort service for the super-rich, with the help of a suburban slacker who dwells in his parents’ basement.
Director: Don Thacker
Country: United States
Ian Folivor, a depressed and reclusive 30-something, finds himself taking advice from a growth in his bathroom after a failed suicide attempt. The Mold, a smooth-talking fungus who was born of filth collecting in a corner of Ian’s neglected bathroom, works to win Ian’s trust by helping him clean himself up and remodel his lifestyle. With The Mold’s help, Ian attracts the attention of a neighbor he’s been ogling through his peephole, Leah, and he manages to find a slice of happiness despite his unnatural circumstances. But Ian starts to receive strange messages from his old and broken down TV set that make him realize that The Mold may not be as helpful as it seems to be, and strange characters combined with stranger events cast Ian’s life in the shadow of an epic battle between good and evil that Ian is only partially aware of.
Non-European Dramatic Shorts
Director: Ali Pour Issa
Country: Iran
It depicts an apocalypse concentrating on the last days of a family’s catastrophic life in a prevalent winter (nuclear winter) in Iran in 2012. The notions of void and terror are dominant in the film. (The nuclear catastrophe or winter is not explicitly mentioned in the short film because of the hard political situation in Iran. However, its implications exist throughout the film, such as their imprisonment in their claustrophobic place.) The figures are indifferent in their challenging circumstances and cannot communicate with each other.
Director: Alex Merkin
Country: United States
‘HEADS UP’ is an edgy, comedic story of two long-time friends and somewhat surrogate siblings who love each other to death. When suspicions of trust and loyalty arise at the weekly poker game, the situation erupts extremely – because nobody fights like siblings do!
Director: Hussain Al-Riffaei
Country: Bahrain
It’s about an old woman who is physically present in her current life, doing her daily duties monotonously, but spiritually, she lives in the past. She dwells in the middle, between a present life that can be tolerated by nothing but delusion and a past life that cannot be evoked without a trick.
Director: Fabián Suárez
Country: Cuba, Guatemala
A woman sells her beauty salon to help her friend leave Cuba. As soon as she hears his first news from abroad, she starts practicing a strange martial art.
Director: Eduardo A. Garcia
Country: United States
Death, incarnated as a beautiful young woman, flirts with a dying man in a hospital room while she waits for the patient next door to die.
Director: Sam French
Country: Afghanistan, United States
Set against the dramatic landscape of contemporary Afghanistan and the National sport of Buzkashi – a brutal game of horse polo played with a dead goat – Buzkashi Boys tells the coming-of-age story of two best friends, a charismatic street urchin and a defiant blacksmith’s son, who struggle to realize their dreams as they make their way to manhood in one of the most war-torn countries on Earth. Shot on location in Kabul city by an alliance of Afghan and international filmmakers, Buzkashi Boys is a look at the life that continues beyond the headlines of war in Afghanistan.
Director: Ernesto Fundora
Country: Mexico
The world belongs to those who learn to take advantage.
Non-European Documentaries
Director: Naga Kataru
Country: United States
This is a real-life story about a young woman who suddenly became totally blind months before her college graduation, how she fought back with courage and achieved success. It is a testament to the resilience of the human spirit and how it can overcome any insurmountable odds. All you need is motivation.
Director: Jeffrey Karoff
Country: United States
An unsung land artist who creates singular, cathedral-like eighth wonder of the world’s sculptural caves with nothing but hand tools and passion struggles with unappreciative patrons, financial hardship, and his aging body.
Director: James Johnson
Country: United States
American Courtesans is a feature documentary that takes you into the lives of American sex workers.
Director: Genevieve Bailey
Country: Australia
The lives and thoughts of children from all around the world. It weaves together deeply personal and, at times, hilarious portraits of what it means to stand on the cusp between childhood and adolescence.
Student Films
Director: Heedye Koren
Country: Israel
Young Noa tries to escape from her family’s house grim reality, being abused by her father and being denied by her mother. She has an affair with her neighbor Haim, a failed writer who is forty years old and senior. Being isolated in a remote Village, she spends most of her time with Haim and learns well from his hateful, violent eruptions, but she also comes to love his tender, caring side. When she understands that only violence inspires him to write again, it changes her perspective on his behavior. When Haim manages to write, he replies that he loves her. When even hurting Noa doesn’t motivate him anymore, Noa faces a shocking decision. The film is dedicated to Noa Sahan and is based on a true story.
Director: Max Lowenbein
Country: United Kingdom
After sustaining a brutal injury in a boxing match, Danny King must decide whether to pursue his dream of the championship at the risk of devastating consequences.
Director: Chadi Adbul-Karim
Country: Denmark
We follow a messenger on his nightly route who delivers fatal packages to different people, but every night, he doesn’t deliver a package.
Director: Muriel d’Ansembourg
Country: United Kingdom
Rachel and Chloe are done with being innocent 14-year-olds. They head into town on a secret night out, dressed way beyond their years and oozing sexuality they barely own. There, they find themselves pushed to extremes, and the boundaries between innocent play and dangerous seduction start to blur.
Director: Ondrej Hudecek
Country: Czech Republic
After hitting a man with his car in the middle of a snow-covered countryside, a young actor has to improvise to escape from punishment.
Director: Leopold Dewolf
Country: United Kingdom
Two love-struck gangsters escape with one million dollars in a bag and some serious trust issues. A road trip starts.
Director: Nathan Nill
Country: Germany
The world of a young neo-nazi Jan is constricted but stable. When he escapes from the police and ends up in an Asian strip club, his entire world is thrown into disorder.
Director: Rob Petit
Country: United Kingdom
Emily has been missing for a year when her father, Ray, receives a call in the middle of the night telling him that she has been found. But where has she been for a year? And who killed her best friend, Olivia?
Director: Martin Rath
Country: Poland
Written in Ink is a documentary about hope. It is the poignant story of a man trying to regain contact with his sister after 14 years of silence. But can one change what has already been written in ink?
Director: Francesca Pagani
Country: Italy
Hip Hop Hassid is not a conventional documentary about music because Shnuer Hasofer is not a traditional artist. As his alter ego Describes, Shneur doesn’t rap about expensive cars, top-shelf liquor, or demeaning women because he is an observant, Hassidic Jew. Shneur views music as a medium to awaken the human soul and decides to expose himself outside his own community in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, to confront and challenge racial and religious conflicts.
Director: Ma’ayan Rypp
Country: Israel
Martha is a foreign worker employed as a caretaker of sick old woman who refuses to die. Martha’s only moments of freedom come when she delves into her imaginary world. Feeling trapped and lonely, Martha tries to free herself but the authorities make it clear to her that until the old woman dies she must stay. She decides to fight for her freedom but reality pushes her into her fantasy world, one last time.
Director: Andreas Steen Sørensen
Country: Denmark
The married couple, Elin and Eske, run a farm in the countryside; however, not everything is as idyllic as possible.
Director: Max Lincoln
Country: United Kingdom
Through discovering a pot of magical Thyme, Shaun must learn what is truly important in life and escape his dull job at A.I.R Industries.
Director: Piotr Ryczko
Country: Poland
When Piotruś is brutally beaten by his children’s homemates, all he’s left with is to escape. There begins a new adventure, which will change his life forever.
Director: Florian Ross
Country: Germany
The simple intent of crossing the street to get a sip of a tasty beverage turns into a nerve-wracking fight against hookers, brutal thugs, and armed, let alone drenched bandits. And just when everything seems lost, Gina serves a milkshake with a special ingredient.
Director: Janos Menberg
Country: Switzerland
Vincent wants to go home to persuade his wife to come back to him. However, his Alzheimers does not make it easy as everything in his world is not as it appears.
Director: Benjamin Bee
Country: United Kingdom
When his ex-wife cancels his party for their son’s 8th birthday, Dan decides to proceed with the one person who turns up as planned, the clown.
Director: Ross Domoney
Country: United Kingdom
A DOCUMENTARY EXPLORING THE WORST PLACE TO BE A WOMAN, THE CONGO, AFRICA.
Comedy Films
Director: Fabrice Sebille
Country: France
Not so easy for a policeman to get into an actor’s skin. Tough luck for Officer Arthur Blanpin, who is forced to infiltrate a small group of artists suspected to be dangerous terrorists. The shadow of public enemy number one continues to hover over the city.
Director: Ben Mallaby
Country: United Kingdom
PVT Craine finds the body of his sergeant after a bombing. The events that follow take a dark turn.
Director: Sara Verhagen, Yannick Privat
Country: France
A young English student in Paris looks after dogs to support herself. She finds that a man’s best friend can sometimes be an unexpected burden.
Director: Vadim Viner, Dovran Khalhodjaev
Country: Russia
Cabbagemincer has exquisite taste. He knows a lot about how to shred the cabbage. In addition, he is a great admirer of the beauty of female feet.
Director: Martin Guggisberg
Country: Switzerland
Encounters in the hallway of a Swiss housing estate lead to a neighborly invitation. What starts as a nice evening takes an unexpected ending.
Director: Mark Davenport
Country: United Kingdom
Elaine Moss, celebrity photograph hunter, is on the verge of breaking a world record: a personal collection of photographs of herself taken by thousands of celebrities over several years. Local journalist Michael David came to cover Elaine’s story on the day she prepared to have her record-breaking photo taken with celebrity number 3, 237. As the big moment arrives and Elaine’s obsession intensifies, Michael discovers darker sides to the story.
Director: Ben Mallaby
Country: United Kingdom
Mim has never ventured off her little hometown island. It’s time to leap into the adult world, by getting pregnant, with deeply unpleasant consequences.
Youth Selection
Director: Compass PRU
Country: United Kingdom
Three girls compare notes on where boys have tried to have sex with them. They get the giggles and try to outdo each other. Ultimately, they decide the best place to go is in bed.
Director: MFC Study Support Centre
Country: United Kingdom
Young carers, the hidden army
Arab Selection
Director: Elham Abi Rached
Country: Lebanon
Samir, a 65-year-old man, reminisces about the good old days he spent close to his family and friends, only to discover that the war in Lebanon has drastically changed this world.
Director: Maria Abdel Karim
Country: Lebanon
Dreams can only be fulfilled when you let go of your reality, but where are you outside the dream?
Director: Abu Bakr Shawky
Country: Egypt
A chronicle of Egypt’s modern history through the eyes of one middle-class family
Director: Elissa Ayoub
Country: Lebanon
Mali revolves around the life of Mali, a Sri Lankan domestic worker locked within the household of her Lebanese employer in Lebanon.
Director: Zahi Farah
Country: Lebanon
“The Myth of Saleh Sharif” portrays the quest of a man who set out to avenge his family, murdered at the hands of the Shahid Brothers.
Director: Abdullah Assan Ahmed
Country: United Arab Emirates
“Smaller than the Sky” tells the story of a woman who suffers after the car crash that caused the death of her husband and daughter. This film is about raw emotions and feelings between life and death.
English