Films IFFI 2013

DIE BRÜCKE AM IBAR / MY BEAUTIFUL COUNTRY

The widowed Serb Danica has to raise her two sons in a Serbian- Albanian settlement by the river during the Kosovo War of the 1990s. One day the injured UÇK soldier Ramiz escapes into her house and...more

El Amigo Alemán

Jeanine Meerapfel tells us the story of Sulamit and Friedrich. She is Jewish, he is German, and both are the children of post-war immigrants in Argentina. Trying to come to terms with their parents’...more

KEEP SMILING

KEEP SMILING is a heartfelt tragicomedy about 10 women and their fierce rivalry to win a beauty contest for mothers. Competing in five categories, including Best Cook and Super Mother, the prize is...more

La Película de Ana

LA PELÍCULA DE ANA, Anas film. She’s an actress who’s unsuccessfully trying to make a living in Cuba while playing badly paid roles in TV shows. She needs to justify her choice of career not only to...more

La Pirogue

A pirogue is a simple type of ship, a logboat, which is actually used for fishing. In LA PIROGUE it plays a decisive role as it is supposed to bring a group of Africans over the Canaries to the...more

Nairobi Half Life

Mwas sells videos in the streets of his countryside hometown in Kenya. His strategy of reenacting scenes from the movies helps his business along and makes him a unique character. The young man moves...more

PRINCESS NAHZIK

In a fishermen´s village on the shore of lake Issyk Kul pretty Rumia lives as a single mother of seven year old Aidai. The cheerful girl enjoys the summer in the idyllic landscape when one day a...more

YERALTI / INSIDE

Mister Muharrem is a civil servant who once wanted to be a writer, but has abandoned that and most of his other ambitions. He spends his days smoking, observing and above all celebrating his...more

Capitaine Thomas Sankara

A portrait composed of archive footage of Thomas Sankara, president of Burkina Faso between 1983 and his murder in 1987. Ready to liberate his country and transform the mentalities of his fellow...more

Etwas Paradies

When about 330 Tyroleans and 120 Rhinelanders migrated to the Peruvian jungle in the mid 19th century, they carried little luggage, but a lot of hope with them. 160 years later, mobility and...more

Forbidden Voices

The film tells the story of three female bloggers from Cuba, Iran and China who risk their lives every day. Yoani Sánchez, Farnaz Seifi and Zeng Jinyan do not get intimidated by their countries‘...more

Libya Hurra

Fritz Ofner’s documentary takes us right into the Libyan uprising against Muammar al-Gaddafi. It follows the young revolutionaries but stays behind the front line. Ofner is not interested in the...more

Noire Ici, Blanche LÀ-BAS

From her family home in Brunstatt, Alsace, hometown of her father, Claude Haffner embarks on a journey in search of her African identity. Questioning her mixed race identity, she follows her African...more

SOFIA‘S LAST AMBULANCE

The daily work is the same as everywhere, but even Bulgaria’s health minister had to admit that SOFIA‘S LAST AMBULANCE depicts the sad reality of public emergency service in his country. Patients...more

Süsses Gift

After 50 years and 450 billion euros of development aid some African regions are poorer than before. Some regions are poorer after the aid than before. Using examples in Kenya, Mali and Tanzania, the...more

AQUÍ Y ALLÁ

After a few years working in New York to support his family back home, Pedro returns back home to his village in Mexico, where he now finds his daughters on the verge of adolescence, and is unsure of...more

DEINE SCHÖNHEIT IST NICHTS WERT

12-year-old Veysel, half Kurd half Turkish, is new in a strange country. At school he does not understand the language, and at home there is a big family conflict going on. The only happy moments are...more

SUSA

Susa is twelve years old and like any other boy of that age he loves games, and he also has a special thing for colored glass shards. He works with an illegal distiller for whom he delivers vodka....more

WADJDA

In this Saudi-German co-production Haifa al-Mansour tells the story of a schoolgirl’s daily life: 11-year old Wadjda wants a bicycle, but this simple wish exemplifies the boundaries of freedom for...more

WILAYA

Fatimetu is born to a Sahrawi family in a Saharan refugee camp in Algeria and later sent to Spain. After the death of her mother she returns to the camp sixteen years later. Fatimetu, who unlike the...more

BARROCO

Loosely based on Alejo Carpentier‘s novel Concierto Barroco, Leduc sends a Mexican and a Cuban Creole out to measure key points of the supposedly new world‘s history. They end up to Europe,...more

Reed, México Insurgente

In 1913 at the height of the Mexican revolution US-American journalist John Reed crosses the border in order to join general Urbina, who is a comrade of Pancho Villa. As a stranger and intellectual...more

Frida, Naturaléza Viva

FRIDA, NATURALÉZA VIVA is a 1984 feature about the life and suffering of Frida Kahlo, portrayed authentically by Ofelia Medina. Its structure is not chronological, showing memories, fragments often...more

O MELISSOKÓMOS

An old man leaves his life behind and goes on his last journey. Not even the young woman whom he picks up by the roadside can revive his spirits. Panic is all she causes in him wanting to save him,...more

TO METÉORO VÍMA TOU PELARGOÚ

„Sometimes one has to keep quiet in order to understand the music“ says a politician and leaves. Shortly afterwards he is pronounced dead. A young TV reporter believes to recognize him in a poor man...more

MIA EONIOTITA KE MIA MERA

A poet, claims he who must know, is someone who buys words - unfamiliar, unknown, yet precious and harmonic words. Somebody who can recognize his own language as strange. But the one who explains...more

ELENI

TO LIVÁDI POU DAKRÝZEI is the first part of an unfinished trilogy. Set between 1919 and 1949 its great visionary images sometimes become tableaus filled with both pathos and beauty while speaking of...more

ANAPARASTASI

A murder in a remote village in northern Greece. The victim: A man who had recently returned home after spending years in Germany earning money to sustain his family. The suspects: The victim‘s wife...more

DREWO SHELANIJA

The film tells the story of a small village in Georgia before the revolution, of the people there, their worries and pleasures. One day, a beautiful girl called Marita comes to the village. She...more

NESKOLKO INTERWJU PO LITSCHNYM WOPROSAM

Georgia, end of the 1970s. A 40-year-old journalist called Sofiko who is responsible for the letters to the editor is completely absorbed in her work for the newspaper and lives her life intensively....more

IKO SHASHVI MGALOBELI

The film depicts 36 hours in the life of the young musician Gia who plays the timbal in the orchestra of T‘bilisi and is known for his friendliness as well as his regular delays. To him, spontaneous...more

PIROSMANI

Nikoloz Pirosmani was a Georgian painter active around the turn of the 20th century and is considered an important representant of naïve art. In PIROSMANI, the director Shengelaya shows the audience...more

CASTING

A number of actors participate in a casting for a fictional German Cuban film coproduction. During the interviews and interactions in the three hard days of the selection procedure, moments full of...more

JUAN DE LOS MUERTOS

An epidemic plague breaks out in Cuba that changes people into cannibalistic zombies. According to the Cuban national television, this is a counterrevolution directed by the USA. In order to make...more

LA PISCINA

In this film the swimming pool is a place of humble charm. A summer day breaks on the coast and swimming instructor Esteban, an introverted ex-professional swimmer, waits for his four young pupils to...more

UNA NOCHE

Mired in the nervous desperation of Havana, Raúl dreams of escaping to Miami. When accused of assault, his only option is to flee Cuba. He begs his best friend, Elio, to abandon everything and help...more

VINCI

The film is inspired by an episode in the life of Leonardo da Vinci in Florence in 1476 when the 24-year-old painting apprentice was imprisoned for a short time, and was set in the hostile...more

CONGO SHORTS

The Democratic Republic of Congo, also known as Congo-Kinshasa, is spacewise the second largest and with approximately 70 million people the fourth largest African country in population. Although the...more

OBERHAUSEN ON TOUR - INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION

[Translate to English:] Sechs vorwiegend dokumentarische und experimentelle Videoarbeiten, in denen Mensch und Tier unter genauer Beobachtung stehen. In Finnland belauern sich Elch und Elchflüsterer...more

BOSNIAN SHORTS - THE SARAJEVO SCHOOL OF DOCUMENTARY FILMS

The „Sarajevo School of Documentary Films“ consists of films which were internationally recognized in the 1960s and 1970s and later stored in the Film Archives in Oberhausen as well as in the...more

OBERHAUSEN - KINDERFILMROLLE

PIP AND BESSIEVera Neubauer, Anna Fodorova, UK 1973-75The five episodes ”The Drawing”, ”The Glasses”, ”The Apple”, ”The Circus” and ”The Magician” convey values like honesty and generosity without a...more

LIONEL

„Many years ago, men and lions used to live together in peace and were allies. They protected each other. But little by little men forgot about their deal and in the end the lions did the same.”...more

Bocksiedlung

The former „Bocksiedlung“ in Innsbruck, which was established eighty years ago, has nearly fallen into oblivion. The inhabitants were denounced as beggars and crooks. In favour of a widely...more

DER KINOMANN AUS SÜDTIROL

Cinema for ever. The filmmakers visit Martin Kaufmann, founder of Bozner Filmtage, and son of a restaurant owner, in his hometown Welschnofen (South Tyrol), follow him at Bozner Filmtage and...more

DIE WALSCHE

South Tyrol in the 1980ies: the complicated struggle between Italians and Germans and Left and Right is still escalating violently. In the middle of this political fight a beautiful woman lives her...more

EIGENTLICH WOLLTEN WIR ZURÜCKKEHREN

Three couples who migrated to Switzerland decades ago have to answer a question that followed them all their lives: go back home or stay? Now as they are retired the answer matters not only to them...more

FEED ME WITH YOUR WORDS / NAHRANI ME ZU BESEDAMI

JEANINE MEERAPFEL

This film is part of the IFFI reel: there are already films about Jean Rouch, Mohammed Soudani, Shaji N. Karun, Antonio Skármeta, Fernando Birri, Ninetto Davoli; The portrait of Jeanine Meerapfel...more

KNISTERN DER ZEIT - CHRISTOPH SCHLINGENSIEF UND SEIN OPERNDORF IN BURKINA FASO

An African Bayreuth? An Opera in Burkina Faso? Christoph Schlingensief, the German film, theatre and opera director, had a vision for an opera village in Africa. Although he was sick with cancer, he...more

MALOU

In Jeanine Meerapfel’s debut film, a troubled restless woman named Hannah sets out to find out more about her mother Malou. It takes her back into the pre-war French- German border region where...more

MARE CHIUSO

Before the Libyan civil war little was known about the whereabouts of refugees who had been captured in the mediterranean sea and driven to Libya. Many of the refugees co- ming from all over Africa...more

TAKE OFF

The exciting life of Eben Mireku from Ghana. A rags-to-riches story told in a peculiar way focussing on his dream: to reactivate the railway of Ghana. It is a movie about development and about...more

¡NO TE VENDAS!

Satirical observations from IFFI 2001- 2005, with Antonio Skármeta, Fern- ando Birri, Helmut Groschup among others; including a document from Fernando Birri‘s home in Rome.more