Twelve more movies on RIFF

Reykjavík International Film Festival just unveiled 12 new movies for this years festival.

RIFF takes place every year in late September for eleven days, this year from September 25th to October 5th. The festival features a wide range of dramas and non-fiction films from over 40 countries and highlights independent film making from all over the world with an emphasis on up-and-coming filmmakers.

This years guest of honor is director Mike Leigh. 

From the documentary category:

In a new place // Eisheimat by Heike Fink ( Germany)

A fascinating documentary about women who left Germany to live in Iceland after the second world war. 

1949: post-war Germany. Destroyed, without any prospects for young women - a country lacking men. In those days the Icelandic farmers' association ran an advertisement in the newspapers of Northern Germany: "Female farm workers from Germany wanted." 238 German women followed the call and traveled to an unfamiliar island in the North Atlantic as Iceland experienced its first mass immigration. Each of these women had their own reasons for leaving ruined Germany and choosing solitude on this volcanic island. Six brave females, now at the age of 80, look back upon this time. It is their last glance at a time of deprivation, of twofold loss, of their home in Germany and the home far away. They reflect and draw the balance: affectionate, open and forgiving.

Altman by Ron Mann (USA)

The film is an in-depth look at the life and times of Robert Altman and a heartfelt meditation on an artist whose expression, passion and appetite knew few bounds. While refusing to bow down to Hollywood's conventions, or its executives, Altman's unique style of filmmaking won him friends and enemies, earned him world-wide praise and occasionally scathing criticism, and proved that it IS possible to make truly independent films.

 Love Hotel by Phil Cox and Hikaru Today

With unprecedented access, this doc reveals the desires, fantasies and motivations that inhabit one of the most secret and anonymous spaces in Japanese society: love hotels. We follow the struggling manager, his staff and the lives of the visiting customers. Issues of lost love, loneliness, hope and fantasy are all brought up - against the backdrop of tough economic times and a conformist society.

 VIRUNGA by Orlando von Einsiedel ( UK/Congo)

VIRUNGA is the incredible true story of a group of brave people risking their lives to build a better future in a part of Africa the world has forgotten and a gripping exposé of the realities of life in the Congo. In the forested depths of eastern Congo lies Virunga National Park, one of the most bio-diverse places in the world and home to the last of the mountain gorillas. In this wild, but enchanted environment, a small and embattled team of park rangers protect this UNESCO world heritage site from armed militia, poachers and the dark forces struggling to control Congo's rich natural resources. When the newly formed M23 rebel group declares war in May 2012, a new conflict threatens the lives and stability of everyone and everything they've worked so hard to protect. 

Gabor by Sebastián Alfie  (Spain)

Preparing to make a documentary on blindness, Sebas hears of Gabor, a cinematographer who had gone blind during shooting in S-America, and he thinks it might be a good starting point to tackle the project. Initially reluctant, Gabor agrees to do it and when they receive the funding they needed nothing stands in their way. Gabor tells Sebas about his turbulent life and experiences. Sebas, in turn, will be Gabor’s eyes and Gabor will contribute his personal and professional experience, which makes him the perfect partner for the assignment. 

In the Open Seas category

XENIA directed by Panos H. Koutras (GR / FRA / BEL)

After the death of their mother, Dany, 16, leaves Crete to join his older brother, Odysseas, who lives in Athens. Born from an Albanian mother and a Greek father they never met, the two brothers–strangers in their own country–decide to go to Thessaloniki to look for their father and force him to officially recognize them. At the same time in Thessaloniki, auditions for the cult show “Greek Star” are taking place. Dany dreams that his brother, a gifted singer, could become the new star of the contest in a country that refuses to accept them. Xenia could be translated as hospitality, though the meaning of this ancient Greek concept is much more complex. The Greek gods abided by this law, which meant to honour and welcome strangers wherever they come from. 

Waiting for August, directed by Teodora Ana Mihai ( BEL)

Georgiana Halmac is turning fifteen this winter. She lives with her unemployed mother and six siblings in a social housing complex in Bacau, Romania. When the mother finds work in Torino she leaves Georgiana in charge of her six siblings. Coping with her new role and the abrupt end to her adolescence, Georgiana does the best she can improvising with advice from television and the occasional phone call with her mother. The children have to deal not only with a very fragile daily balance between themselves but also outside the home with school and neighbors who threaten to turn them in.  Intimate scenes from the daily life of the family show how real events are experienced and dealt with by these incredibly imaginative children under unwanted circumstances.

In the category films from the Faroe Islands and Greenland

Vetrarmorgunn / Vetrarmorgun, directed by Sakaris Fríði Stórá

Winter Morning is a story about two girls in their early teens whose friendship has led them to a turning point in their lives. They deal with love, friendship, identity crises and the struggle with stigmas.

Ludo, directed by Katrin Ottarsdóttir 

LUDO is an intense film that takes place during a day and a night in the life of a young family living in a beautiful house by the sea in the village of Sandur in the Faroe Islands. At a first glance they – a mother, a father and their 11-year-old daughter – seem to be an ordinary, happy family. But at a closer look something dark and sinister can be seen lurking behind the nice and normal facade waiting to explode.

Italian Focus

CHE STRANO CHIAMARSI FEDERICO! - How Strange to Be Named Federico directed by Ettore Scola

A tribute and a portrait of Federico Fellini, told by director and screenwriter Ettore Scola on the twentieth anniversary of the great director’s death. Looking beyond Fellini’s incredibly rich cinema, Scola, a contemporary of the incomparable maestro commemorates a few private and lesser known aspects of his personality. He evokes the privilege in knowing him and the emotions he would provoke in whoever listened to him, with his irony and his thoughts on “life that is a party”. From his debut in 1939 as a young designer, to his fifth Oscar in 1993, year of his seventy third and last birthday, Federico is depicted as a great Pinocchio that fortunately never turned into a “proper boy.” A brief film made out of moments, fragments, and scattered impressions.

CON IL FIATO SOSPESO

Holding My Breath  (ITA) by Costanza Quatriglio

Stella is studying for her university degree in pharmacology. To write her thesis, she is sent to work with a research group. Little by little she realizes that there is something strange going on in the chemistry lab. Working conditions are unhealthy, people start to fall ill, professors talk of coincidences. Stella’s friend Anna who has dropped out of college to play with an independent punk band, tries to convince her not to spend entire days in the laboratory. But Stella does not want to give up on her dream. From disbelief to the loss of all certainties, her story becomes enmeshed with the diary of a young Ph.D. candidate who has already gone down the same road. 

Sacro Gra (ITA) directed by Gianfranco Rosi

Gianfranco Rosi tells the tale of a part of his own country, roaming and filming for over two years in a minivan on Rome’s giant ring road – the Grande Raccordo Anulare, or GRA – to discover the invisible worlds and possible futures harbored in this area of constant turmoil: A modern day cigar-smoking prince who does gymnastics on the roof of his castle, surrounded by the sea of new apartment buildings proliferating around him; a paramedic in an ambulance eternally on duty treating car accident victims along the vast road; and an eel fisherman who lives on a houseboat beneath an overpass along the Tiber River. Far from the iconic sites of Rome, the GRA is a repository of stories of those at the edges of the ever-expanding universe of the capital city.