TIFF 2010 International Competition Contenders

 

Today, December 10, 2010 marks the last day of screenings for the films in competition at the 51st Thessaloniki Film Festival.

 

 

Films in competition are:

1)     David Michod's Animal Kingdom (2010) - Australia

"Where do you fit? Where's your place and where do you belong? For J. Cody, the task of answering these questions will mean making the hardest decisions of his life."

2) Ari Bafalouka's Apnea (2010) - Greece

"Everything’s quiet when you’re in the water. No one can hear you. You don’t have to speak. You don’t even have to breathe." 

 

3) Athina Rachel Tsangari's Attenberg (2010) - Greece

"Marina has grown up with her architect father in a small industrial community, almost cut off from the reality of the rest of the world. With the exception of her bizarre friendship with Bella and the companionship she shares with her ill father, Marina observes human behaviors from afar, almost with repugnance."

 

4)  Morag McKinnon's Donkeys (2010) - UK and Denmark

"Sixty-four-year-old Alfie, a curmudgeonly pensioner, hasn’t talked to his daughter and granddaughter in ten years. As his health begins to fail and before embarking on a long-desired trip to Spain with his best friend Brian, he realizes that he needs to make amends with his family."

 

5)  Marek Lechki's Erratum (2010) - Poland

"Sometimes, some mistakes, however tragic they might be, can present themselves as opportunities to better or change one’s life – as long as one is able to seize them."

 

6) Laura Amelia Guzmán, Israel Cárdenas's Jean Gentil (2010) - Mexico-Dominican Republic-Germany

"Jean is a middle-aged professor, one of many Haitians who have moved to the Dominican Republic to find any kind of work available to them. He is a kind man and a devout Christian, alone in the world and steadily tested – and devoured – by the quiet desperation of his life."

7) Maxime Giroux's Jo For Jonathan (2010) - Canada

"Actions go hand in hand with their consequences, and Jo is about to feel their weight. Jo is growing up with his brother, whom he admires to such a great extent that he is taking up, or at least tries to, the same habits and treating them as his own."

 

8) Maria Sødahl's Limbo (2010) - Norway

"It’s the 1970s. Norwegian Sonia and her two young children arrive in Trinidad to join her husband Jo, who has been already working there as an oil engineer for six months. In this unfamiliar environment, Sonia is introduced to a novel – luxurious, but dull – way of living and a new code of ethics implemented by the expatriate men and followed to the dot by their idle wives."

 

9) Mike Ott's Little Rock (2010) - USA

"Lack of communication and the dissonance between appearances and reality take their toll in Mike Ott’s Littlerock, which paints a portrait of an unknown and undiscovered, off-the-tourist-track American landscape."

 

10)  Ebrahim Saeedi's Mandoo (2010) - Iraq

"It is 2004 in Iraq. Sheelan, a young Kurdish doctor who has immigrated to Sweden with her parents, is returning to her country after the fall of Saddam Hussein. She is looking for the rest of her family and finds them as they are about to embark on a significant and difficult journey."

 

11) Ahmad Abdalla's Microphone (2010) Egypt

"A vibrant tour of Alexandria is captured along with protagonist Khaled’s walks through the Egyptian city. When Khaled returns to his hometown, and after his disappointment with his ex-girlfriend and his detached father, he starts to discover new streets and corners of the city that lead him into a new universe."

 

12) Marian Crisan's Morgen (2010) - Romania-France-Hungary

"Nelu is a security guard at the supermarket in Salonta, a town on the Romanian-Hungarian border where illegal immigrants attempt to cross to Western Europe. Nelu’s passion is fishing in the mornings; after work, he returns home to his ill-tempered wife."

 

13) Bogdan George Apetri's Ourbound (2010) - Romania-Austria

"Matilda has one day at her disposal. Twenty-four hours in which, after going to her mother’s funeral on special leave, she must return back to the prison where she is serving her sentence."

 

14) Olivier Coussemacq's Sweet Evil (2009) - France

"When judge Henri van Eyck finds out that fifteen-year-old Céline has been living in his garden house, he cannot imagine that this encounter will forever change his life."

 

15)Michelangelo Frammartino's The Four Times (2010)- Italy-Germany-Switzerland

"An elderly shepherd lives in a quiet medieval village, perched high on the hills of Calabria in southern Italy. He is ill and his daily medicine is dust dissolved in water, collected from the church’s floor; when he dies, a baby goat is born, thus ensuring the cycle of life continues uninterrupted."

 

16) Belma Baş's Zepfyr (2010) - Turkey

"Zephyr, a strong-minded and somewhat peculiar 11-year-old girl, lives with her grandparents in their home in the countryside. She has no father and her activist mother is absent for long periods of time, imbuing Zephyr’s outlook on life with an enduring sense of loss, a skewed sense of the future and a rebellious, almost cruel streak."

 

DRUM ROLL!!!!!!!!!!!

 

AND THE WINNER IS.....

 

STAY TUNED TOMORROW DECEMBER 11, 2010 FOR NEWS ON THE WINNER OF THE INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION