The 41st New Directors/ New Film which partners the Film Society of Lincoln Center and the Museum of Modern Art will open on March 21st with Nadine Labaki's Where Do We Go Now which I caught last September at the Toronto Film Festival. Here is my interview with the director. The festival will end on April 1 with a surprise screening that will not be revealed untiil that evening.
Here are the other female directed films at the festival. Click here to purchase tickets which go on sale March 11.
CRULIC: THE PATH TO BEYOND (2011) 73min
Director: Anca Damian
Country: Romania
Anca Damian’s documentary utilizes hand drawn, cutout and collage animation techniques, combined with some very dark humor to create a striking documentary about a young Romanian’s hunger strike in a Polish jail.
FOUND MEMORIES (Historias Que So Existem Quando Lembradas) (2011) 98min
Director: Julia Murat
Country: Brazil
The original title, which translates as "stories that only exist when remembered," beautifully expresses the theme and core sentiment of Julia Murat's poetic rendering of the fictive town of Jotuomba. A magical confluence of generations and cultures is occasioned by the visit of Rita, a young photographer, to this place where time has seemingly stood still and life is rooted in the fixed roles of tradition soon to be rendered obsolete. A Film Movement release.
HEMEL (2012) 80min
Director: Sacha Polak
Country: The Netherlands/Spain
Sacha Polak’s HEMEL features Hannah Hoekstra as a strong-willed, complicated, and vulnerable heroine who longs (perhaps too much) to connect with her elusive father and ultimately find herself. The film is a powerful investigation of a sexually-empowered woman and her search for physical and intellectual intimacy.
IT LOOKS PRETTY FROM A DISTANCE (Z daleka widok jest piekny) (2011) 77min
Directors: Anka and Wilhelm Sasnal
Country: Poland
Anka and Wilhelm Sasnal’s film is set in a Polish village effectively cut off from civilization, where rough and impassive Pawel makes a living scavenging for scrap metal. There’s bad blood between him and the “community” (a more spiteful collection of individuals would be hard to imagine), and when he goes AWOL his neighbors loot and vandalize his home. What if he returns? A brooding, almost wordless drama vision of a world in an advanced state of entropy.
NOW, FORAGER (2012) 93min
Directors: Jason Cortlund and Julia Halperin
Countries: USA/Poland
A quiet tale about the search for integrity and the perfect mushroom, Jason Cortlund’s and Julia Halperin’s NOW, FORAGER follows Lucien and Regina, an urban couple living off the land foraging for fungi in upstate New York with a dream of following the seasonal emergence of exotic varieties across the country. That is, until Regina’s decision to take a job in the kitchen of a hip restaurant offers a more solid opportunity, even as it betrays Lucien’s off-the-grid ethos.
TWILIGHT PORTRAIT (2011) 105min
Director: Angelina Nikonova
Country: Russia
TWILIGHT PORTRAIT is a powerhouse collaboration co-written and co-produced by Angelina Nikonova, who directed, and Olga Dihovichnaya, who stars in this very dark, provocative and constantly surprising debut feature film. In a modern Russian city where corruption, apathy and class warfare are the norm, a woman is raped, rather casually, by the police. What follows explodes the conventions of sexual politics—and will certainly have filmgoers talking.
Shorts
CHICA XX MUJER (2011) 12min
Director: Isabell Šuba
Countries: Germany/France
In a country with the highest percentage of cosmetic surgery and beauty queens per capita, a Venezualian girl prepares to be celebrated like a princess on her quinceañera.
THE CHILDREN OF THE NIGHT (Les enfants de la nuit) (2011) 26min
Director: Caroline Deruas
Country: France
Girl meets boy, the oldest story in the book: but it’s France in 1944, and he’s German.
THE ROOM (Soba) (2011) 5min
Director: Ivana Jurić
Country: Croatia
Stop motion animation explores sensuality and sex through the eyes of a doll.
STREET VENDOR CINEMA (Cine camelô) (2011) 16min
Director: Clarissa Knoll
Country: Brazil
When a filmmaker and his team set up a shop that makes and sells short films on demand, wild fantasies come to life in the middle of a bustling marketplace.
SUMMIT (2011) 13min
Director: Medeni Griffiths
Countries: UK/USA
A chance encounter on a mountain road can lead to friendship and understanding or mistrust and betrayal.
OH SORROW (Ay pena) (2011) 20min
Director: Elisa Cepedal
Country: Spain
When you lose your last connection to the place you once called home, what’s to keep you there?
