2020

The Place That Makes Us
Official Selection
Documentary Feature
United States
Runtime:
1 hour(s)
10 minutes
Director:
Karla Murthy

Among the industrial ruins of America, a new generation is rebuilding home.

When the steel mills shut down in Youngstown Ohio, it shattered a way of life. Over half the population left. Thousands of empty blighted homes were left behind, eroding the social fabric of this once mighty industrial base. Like many post industrial towns, persistent joblessness, crime and poverty plague the city.

Filmed over the course of 2 1/2 years, this film weaves the lives of a new generation of residents who have grown up in a world of post industrial decline. Unlike their parents generation, haunted and traumatized by watching their way of life crumble around them, this generation is able to envision a new future, and they are working to make a life for themselves in their hometown.

This film is an inspiring testimony to the modest but profound resilience and dedication it takes to transform a community. A crucial story to be heard at a time of extreme inequality, divisiveness, upheaval and uncertainty, "The Place That Makes Us" is a meditation on the meaning of home in America today.  

Martha: A Picture Story
Official Selection
Australia
Runtime:
1 hour(s)
25 minutes
Director:
Selina Miles

In 1970s New York, photographer Martha Cooper captured the some of the first images of graffiti appearing on the city’s subway carriages. Decades later, she realises she’s become an unexpected icon of the street art world. Now, at age 75, must navigate her way through this vastly

Star Light
Official Selection
Narrative Feature
Runtime:
1 hour(s)
29 minutes
Director:
Lee Cummings, Mitchell Altieri

While skateboarding, a kind hearted teenager, Dylan, crashes into a beautiful young woman who secretly turns out to be the World Famous Popstar, Bebe A. Love. Keeping her identity under wraps, Dylan takes Bebe to his best friend’s house for help. While he and his group of friends try to help this mysterious woman, unexplained events begin to occur within the home. And they only intensify when Bebe’s handler, Anton, shows up at their door and demands the teenagers return her immediately. When Dylan refuses fearing for Bebe’s safety, he unleashes a barrage of dire consequences that turns a fun graduation party into a night of living hell.

My Blood is Red
Official Selection
Documentary Feature
United Kingdom
Runtime:
1 hour(s)
26 minutes
Director:
Various

In the middle of an environmental and humanitarian catastrophe a young poet raps in the forest.

My Blood Is Red is a music documentary with a very dark heart. It follows the fortunes of a young indigenous rapper as he tries to make sense of the violence being meted out against his people. His name is Werá and his lyrics are fuelled by the anger and sadness he feels, confronted by the state-condoned genocide of the disenfranchised indigenous of Brazil. On his journey he is adopted by Criolo – one of Brazil’s most famous music artists and godfather of Brazilian hip-hop. He’s also comforted and counselled by Sonia Guajajara, the internationally recognised indigenous leader and charismatic figurehead of the indigenous struggle.

Driven by beats and lyrics we descend into a world of official violence and end up at the largest assembly of indigenous people in Brazil – a demonstration against the government’s barbaric policy of arming farmers, loggers and miners. Thousands of painted and feathered indigenous people – men, women and children – hurl coffins at the Senate building and are repelled with tear gas and rubber bullets.

So actually, this is a film about genocide. And one young artist's response to it.

Because we present as a music documentary we are able to carry this message of the indigenous struggle to commercial and world-music audiences that otherwise might never hear of it. That is the power and the duty of the documentary form – to take an audience on an emotional journey that leaves them with a deeper understanding of the variety, and yet also the shared space of the human experience.

Like Werá says: “We are all Guarani Kaiowa”.

He’s still rapping in the forest today …

As it burns down around him.

Haunt
Official Selection
Narrative Short
Iran
Runtime:
17 minutes
5 seconds
Director:
Siamak Kashefazar

Reza and Tooba are a young couple that are struggle to pay their home mortgage. Reza enters into a gambling game in order to make payments, but he loses his wife without knowing it. When he returns home and understands the depth of the tragedy of losing his wife, he looks for a way to escape, however it’s too late and his benefactors have come to collect their prize.

april eighty-nine
Official Selection
Narrative Short
United States
Runtime:
11 minutes
Director:
Thomas Southerland

A woman recalls a fateful road trip taken thirty years earlier with her first love.

Baitullah
Official Selection
Narrative Short
India
Runtime:
6 minutes
40 seconds
Director:
Jitendra Rai

Millions of children are engaged in child labour in India, in an increasingly growing number every year. And with that, millions of childhood dreams are never realised as a result of a lack of education. Baitullah is the story of one such child, with a dream, surviving in the maddening metropolis of Mumbai, waiting for someone to notice.

Imperfect Age
Official Selection
Italy
Runtime:
1 hour(s)
36 minutes
Director:
Ulisse Lendaro

Camilla lives in a quiet northern Italy town. She’s seventeen, well-mannered, gets good grades and has a little dream: to become a ballet dancer.
When she doesn’t pass the audition for an important ballet college, she blames Sara. She’s her friend and a ballerina who also tried out for the audition. Sara was admitted. Not only Camilla’s convinced she sabotaged her, but she’s also got the proof.
Nothing is as it seems, and the plot spirals into disconcerting and tense situations to the point that Camilla concocts a horrifying vendetta against her friend.
Doubts, set backs, twists and turns will be part of this vendetta, which will set off a series of unforeseen consequences.

The Mirror
Official Selection
Narrative Short
Australia
Runtime:
21 minutes
42 seconds
Director:
Joel Kohn

When a young girl discovers a mysterious antique mirror in the basement of her ailing grandmother’s house, she accidentally opens a window between time that allows her to cross over into war-torn Nazi-occupied Poland.

Anna
Official Selection
Narrative Short
United Kingdom
Runtime:
14 minutes
59 seconds
Director:
Dekel Berenson

Living in war-torn Eastern Ukraine, Anna is an aging single mother who is desperate for a change. Lured by a radio advertisement, she goes to party with a group of American men who are touring the country, searching for love.

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