Director/Screenwriter of Feature Films: Deadly Delicious, The Law of Attraction, Zhongkui: Snow Girl and the Dark Crystal, Love O2O, All About My Mother. Screenwriter/Project Planner of Feature Films: Lost, Indulgence, Hide and Seek.

 

13 year old Ramin Mehdipour and his Iranian family have been living in a refugee centre in Finland. Just as Ramin starts to enjoy the school holidays, the family receives the terrible news that their asylum application has been denied.

 

The Mehdipours file a final appeal, and they continue with their everyday lives, trying to keep a positive attitude despite the looming danger of deportation. As Ramin starts the new school year, every moment, every friendship will be more precious than ever.

Having fled persecution in Iran, and survived Yugoslav refugee camps as a young boy, Hamy Ramezan arrived in Finland with his family in 1990. He graduated from the Film Production course at UCA Farnham in 2007 and has since completed several short films.

 

His short film Listen premiered in the Directors’ Fortnight parallel section of the Cannes Film Festival in 2015. It has since been screened at over 200 festivals and was nominated for Best Short Film at European Film Awards. Any Day Now is Hamy Ramezan’s feature-length directorial debut.

 

Sawako Shiraishi, a doctor at an emergency medical center in Tokyo, resigns her position to take responsibility for a procedural complaint, and returns to her birthplace of Kanazawa. This represents a turning point for Sawako, who has always given herself completely to her career.

 

Living together with her father for the first time in many years, she takes work as a staff physician at the Mahoroba Clinic. Toru Senkawa, the director, is a cheerful soul idolized by his patients, while the clinic nurse Mayo Hoshino, while raising her late sister’s son, considers Dr. Senkawa her savior. Tending to patients who live in the vicinity of the clinic, Sawako and Mayo provide treatment that respects the lifestyles of the patients, and Sawako’s “life or death” attitude evolved in an emergency clinic environment undergoes a change.

 

Now Seiji Noro, a graduate in medicine who has yet to qualify as a doctor, follows Sawako from Tokyo and joins the Mahoroba staff. He is unsure of whether he should go on and actually qualify as a doctor, while it turns out that Mayo is suffering from a trauma of her own. Encountering different patients, each presenting their own treatment problems and with their own special reasons for choosing home care, Sawako as a member of the Mahoroba Clinic staff begins to rethink her own approach to life in consideration of both patients and families.

Starting as a scriptwriter in 1994 with Osaka Gokudo Senso: Shinoidare, Izuru Narushima earned his first director’s credit in 2003 with The Hunter and the Hunted, which won him the Fujimoto Award and the Yokohama Film Festival Prize as Best New Director.

 

Moving on to such titles as Fly, Daddy, Fly (2005) and A Lone Scalpel (2010), in 2012 he won the Best Director and nine other Awards of the Japanese Academy for Rebirth.

 

Cape Nostalgia won the Special Grand Prix of the Jury and the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury at the 2014 Montreal World Film Festival. More recent titles include To Each His Own (2017) and Farewell: Comedy of Life Begins with A Lie (2020).

 

There is a delicateness and fragility to Ema, as if she were made of glass. Now, at age six, Ema has to start school - yet most schools are unwilling to accept a pupil diagnosed on the autism spectrum. The only ones prepared to teach her are the staff of a small rural school on the Paraná River. For Ema’s family, this means leaving the city behind to start a new life in the country.

 

Being close to nature and spending time with a mare called Estrellita help Ema take some small but important steps. Thanks to the unprejudiced local community and above all the gentle friendship of her classmate Irena, she becomes increasingly able to participate in the world around her, in her very own way.

 

Based on the director’s own family history, Betania Cappato’s film astutely and tenderly chronicles its young protagonist’s inner journey.

Batania Cappato, photographer and film-maker, born in 1984 in Argentina. A School in Cerro Hueso is her first feature film.

 

Leningrad, World War II. Olga, a young woman, is running around the city looking for her father. She has just buried her husband and is dying of hunger.

 

Olga hopes to see her father one last time. All along the way, as she follows the trail left by the army, through all the different people and hardships she encounters in the snow and ice, history is told and repeated before our eyes.

Andrey Zaytsev, born in 1975, graduated from the Faculty of Journalism of the Lomonosov Moscow State University and Alexander Mitta’s class at the Higher Courscs for Directors and Scriptwriters. He has a degree in directing of fiction films and documentaries.

 

Two-time winner of the Golden Eagle Award by the National Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences of Russia and Laurel Branch Award for non-fiction films and TV works, and awarded by the Government of the Russian Federation for the Cultural Achievements in 2012.

 

Li Xiaoli goes to Fuchinobe, a remote area of Tokyo, to be an exchange student for one year. He gets a part-time job at a Chinese restaurant named Nankokute. While working there, he meets a group of his fellow countrymen and some locals who live at the bottom of society.

 

Each of them has to repeatedly face the separation of choices. There’s nowhere to run, as if they were prisoners living in a jail. Each of them has their own secrets and pains. Inadvertently, Li Xiaoli and the group gradually change from indifferent to familiar. They give each other warmth, even if it’s very insignificant...

 

A year soon passes by and Li returns home as scheduled. Everyone moves on with their lives as if nothing happened, and it seems that Li has never been here or left.

Li Gen, born in 1987 in Beijing, graduated from the Japanese Department of Beijing Language and Culture University in 2009, and received his Master’s Degree from the Department of Directing of Beijing Film Academy.

 

This film “Before Next Spring” was creatively adapted from personal experience. It’s a story about “separation” and “yearning”. Although merely one year of studying abroad as a foreign exchange student seems ordinary, it is in these ordinary joys and sorrows that we’re able to exchange the sincerest human emotions.

 

To be or not to be is the question that Beyond the Skies asks. The war film follows a young soldier named Hong Qichen, who trudges through the bloodstained ruins in his deadly mission to blow up the enemy’s ammunition depot within 48 hours. He brings together wounded comrades-in-arms in the treacherous mountains for a life-and-death fight against the enemy. While questioning whether their sacrifices are worth it, his comrades-in-arms fall one after another in front of his eyes.

 

It’s getting harder and harder to complete the mission as time goes by. Some persist because of their faith; others stay true to their mission and determine to sacrifice. While embodying poetic Chinese cinema aesthetics, Beyond the Skies tells a heart-breaking story of a patriotic military mission in 1935 as these soldiers sacrificed their lives for the historical mission with their sense of calling at heart.

Long engaged in teaching cinema, conducting directing and project planning work, dedicated in the noumenal research and practical explorations of poetic cinema, promoting academic research of poetic cinema and popularization of audience aesthetics, as well as providing creative and academic support for young directors as the executive producer.

 

This is a poetic film created by the poetic cinema creative team from the China Academy of Art that portrays the relationship between man and war by studying the conflict between individuals’ will to live and their sense of calling and loyalty to their country under the current social background.

 

 

Barbara Hug is a young lawyer fighting Switzerland’s antiquated prison system in the 1980s. Walter Stürm is in and often escaping out of jail and becomes known as the Jailbreak King. When the two meet, an unlikely alliance is formed.

 

Barbara wants to use Walter’s popularity for her social reform goals. But the less Walter yields to her reasoning, the more she falls for the fascination of his uncompromising desire for freedom. Walter becomes the rock against which she beats in vain and will grow. A radical partnership conflicting priorities between state repression and personal freedom.

 

He directed Black Sheep, Monkey King and other films.

 

Natalia, a nun from a remote Russian monastery, comes to Moscow 17 years after the terrorist attack in Dubrovka Theatre. She was sent there to organise a memorial evening for the victims of the attack that happened in October 2002. We soon learn that Natalia and her family were the witnesses of the attack.

 

Almost forgotten now by the outside world the organisers and participants of the memorial evening or the Conference (as they were asked to call it officially) are made feel like a burden by the rest of the society. Following the chronology of the events as told by a few participants in the memorial evening we learn the dark details of Natalia’s personal story.

Ivan I. Tverdovskiy, born in Moscow in 1988, graduated from All-Russian State University of Cinematography named after S. A. Gerasimov. Conference is his fourth film.

 

Conference is the story of one fragile family against the backdrop of one of the major tragedies of the 21st century in Russian history. The film is an attempt to create a cinematic reflection of the tragic events that begins as a private family story but goes beyond that. Exploring the nature of fear is my main focus in the film.

 

Samay, a 9-year-old boy living with his family in a remote village in India discovers films for the first time and is absolutely mesmerised. Against his father’s wishes, he returns to the cinema day after day to watch more films, and even befriends the projectionist, who in exchange for his lunch box, lets him watch movies for free.

 

He quickly figures out that stories become light, light becomes films, and films become dreams. Samay and his wild gang of friends move heaven and earth to catch and project light to achieve a 35mm film projection. Together, they use an innovative hack and jubilantly succeed in making a film projection apparatus. But following your dreams often means leaving things behind.

Pan Nalin’ Angry Indian Goddesses won Audience Choice Award First RunnerUp at the Toronto International Film Festival 2015 and Prix du Public at the Rome International Film Festival 2015. Pan Nalin came into global limelight with Samsara a massive commercial and critical success worldwide and won him some thirty plus international awards.

 

Monday, home-schooled by her father Bob in Sydney. Due to her terminal illness, Monday’s only contact with the outside world is her weekly visit to the hospital. Monday’s imagination is captured by the Moon Rock (Uluru) which she believes will heal her and desires to travel to the middle of Australia to find it.

 

By a twist of fate she becomes caught up in a police chase involving Tyler, an street kid with a massive heart. Tyler uses Monday to evade the police, but despite the circumstances they soon form a friendship. They decide to go on the run, road tripping to the Northern Territory to find the Moon Rock. Along the way they meet a bunch of outback characters, some helpful and some not so.

Moon Rock for Monday is his first film.

 

A young man is sent to “La Maca”, a prison in the middle of the Ivorian forest ruled by its inmates. As tradition goes with the rising of the red moon, he is designated by the Boss to be the new “Roman” and must tell a story to the other prisoners. Learning what fate awaits him, he begins to narrate the mystical life of the legendary outlaw Named “Zama King” and has no choice but to make his story last until dawn.

Philippe Lac?te grew up in Abidjan near a movie theater – the Magic.

 

His work as a director has taken on several forms, before focusing in 2002 on the recent history of his country with Chronicles Of War In The Ivory Coast, a film on the edge between a documentary and a diary.

 

It is followed by the feature film Run, the story of a wandering madman, selected in Cannes Un Certain Regard 2014. Night Of The Kings, his second feature, is a dive into the largest prison in West Africa, during a night of red moon.

 

This is the story of Emil, the man who doesn’t believe in ghosts, of his best friend, Titi, and of Smaranda, the late wife of Emil. She is now six feet under and ready for judgment day. After her 40-day memorial service, days pass by, and Emil realizes that Titi looks like his life is over. He wants to brighten him up, but nothing helps. That’s because soon after the memorial service, Smaranda moves into Titi’s house and starts haunting him. Well, now, why this? That’s quite a story, but Titi has a hard time telling it.

Graduate of the National Film University in Bucharest in 1994, Andrei Gruzsniczki became First AD of Romania’s most acclaimed director Lucian Pintilie, for his Next stop Paradise and Niki and Flo.

 

His debut The Other Irene won the Main Award and Fipresci Award at CinePécs Moveast IFF 2008; was The Best Romanian Feature at Transylvania IFF 2009; Best Actor at the Festival International du Film d’Amour de Mons 2010.

 

The second feature film, Quod Erat Demonstrandum got the Special Jury Award at Rome IFF in 2013. Andrei’s third feature film “Zavera” was released at Cairo IFF 2019.

 

15-year-old Lyz, a top seeded skier, is selected by ski coach Fred as a key training object. Lacking the love of her family, Lyz soon becomes very dependent on her coach. Coach Fred also does his best to train Lyz, who shows remarkable results, becoming national champion. However, in his excitement, coach Fred does more than Lyz could have imagined...

She has written, directed and produced several short films and documentaries, and was nominated for the 2020 César Award for Best Short Film.

 

Her best known works include Omessa (2015), Free Fall (2012), and Is everything possible, Darling? (2010). Slalom is her feature-length directorial debut.

 

This film tells the story of the profound friendship between the Danish writer Karen Blixen, best known for her autobiographical novel Out of Africa, and the promising young poet Thorkild Bj?rnvig.

 

Aged 63, Karen Blixen is at the pinnacle of her fame. It has been 17 years since she gave up her famous farm in Africa only to return to Denmark. Having lost the love of her life, she has reinvented herself as a literary sensation. She is an isolated genius, however, until the day she meets a talented 30-year-old poet.

 

This film tells the heartbreaking story of a master and her apprentice, and how far people will go for love and art.

Bille August won the Palme d’Or (Golden Palm Award) at the 41st Cannes Film Festival and the award for Best Foreign Language Film at the 61st Academy Awards with Pelle the Conqueror. He won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival again in 1992 with The Best Intentions.

 

In 2017, he served as the Jury President of the Tiantan Awards at the 7th Beijing International Film Festival. In 2019, he won the Best Feature Film award at the 9th Beijing International Film Festival with A Fortunate Man.