MANILA, Philippines — Novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) changed our lives dramatically and most Filipinos have resorted to watching movies and concerts as well as playing games in their gadgets.
Conscious of the need to protect public health and at the same time to provide much-needed entertainment at homes, the European Union Delegation to the Philippines is holding its annual film festival of European films, Cine Europa, for the first time in digital format this year.
Until June 18, films from the first European Union Film Festival are accessible via Festival Scope.
The films come from European countries such as Austria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Cyprus, Denmark, Germany, Finland, Romania, Netherlands, Slovenia and United Kingdom. These are films ranging from comedy to drama and all are multi-awarded and have never been shown in the Philippines.
Apart from the 11 full-length films, eight short films are also accessible during this period. The films are free and subtitled in English.
“Cold Case Hammarskjöld”
Director: Mads Brügger
Date of production: 2019
Country: Slovenia
Duration: 82min
Genre: documentary
Original language version: English, Danish
Subtitles: English, Spanish
Synopsis: It’s midnight. Rhodesia’s jungle is dressed in a steaming, reeking black. A propeller is heard in the distance, bearing down upon us. Many years later, stories are still told about Belgian mercenaries creeping around in the dark that night. In the plane is UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld and his entourage of fifteen persons, and in a few seconds, they will not exist anymore. From this moment, you can draw a direct line to the Congolese civil war, Mobutu’s regime, the ongoing and accelerating exploitation of Africa and the total post-colonial nightmare as we know it today – all this due to the single incident taking place right now.
Genre: Documentary
Topics: Politics
“Consequences”
Director: Darko Štante
Date of production: 2018
Country: Slovenia
Duration: 82min
Genre: fiction
Original language version: Slovene
Subtitles: English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Serbo-Croatian, Russian, Arabic
Synopsis: After being sent to a youth detention centre, 18-year-old Andrej has to fight for his place within the group of inmates while getting closer to Zeljko, their informal leader, and struggling to keep his repressed secret in the dark.
Genre: Drama
Topics: Youth, Teenagers, Drugs, Alcohol, Violence, Gangster
Jury selection criteria: An accomplished first feature which surprises for many reasons. It is not the classical coming out of age film, because the teenagers portrayed in the film are not simply the testosterones alpha man they could initially seem. The “bad boys” attitude hides much more about their “mal-être de vivre.” Consequences puts deeper questions about their feeling, about families unable to guide and to listen, about the society incapable of addressing youngsters the right way, or social services that are losing their challenge of utility and effectiveness, eventually about sexual borders that are so easy to cross.
Main Awards: Slovene Film Festival award for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor and Slovene Film Critics Association award for Best Feature Film
“Homo Sapiens”
Director: Nikolaus Geyrhalter
Date of production: 2016
Country: Austria
Duration: 94min
Genre: documentary
Synopsis: Homo Sapiens is a film about the finiteness and fragility of human existence and the end of the industrial age, and what it means to be a human being. What will remain of our lives after we’re gone? Empty spaces, ruins, cities increasingly overgrown with vegetation, crumbling asphalt: the areas we currently inhabit, though humanity has disappeared. Now abandoned and decaying, gradually reclaimed by nature after being taken from it so long ago. Homo Sapiens is an ode to humanity as seen from a possible future scenario. It intends to sharpen our eyes for the here and now, and our consciousness of the present.
Genre: Documentary
Topics: Nature, Photography
Jury selection criteria: With a visual force to which only the big screen can do justice, the director films buildings deserted by the men who built them, where nature has reclaimed its rightful home. Science-fiction documentary, post-apocalyptic reality.
“My Brother Chases Dinosaurs”
Director: Stefano Cipani
Date of production: 2019
Country: Italy
Duration: 102min
Genre: fiction
Original language version: Italian
Subtitles: English
Synopsis: Jack has a brother, Giò, who has Down syndrome. As a child, Jack believed the tender lie his parents told him, that Giò was a special being with superpowers, as in a comic book. Now that he is about to go to high school, however, Jack no longer believes that his brother is a superhero, in fact, he is almost ashamed of him, especially since he met Arianna, the first love of his life. Jack cannot allow himself to make any gaffes of bad impressions with the girl of his dreams and looking after his little brother and his unpredictable behaviour soon becomes a burden, to the point that Jack pretends not to have any brother and hides the existence of Giò from the eyes of his new classmates and, above all, of Arianna. But you cannot be loved by someone as you are, if you cannot love someone despite his faults and this is a life-lesson that Jack will have to learn: it will be his brother Giò to teach him that, with his straight ways, his unique point of view and his simple but surprisingly wise words.
Genre: Drama, family comedy
Topics: Society, Teenager, handicap
Jury selection criteria: Multiple award-winning film.
Main Awards: Young award, European Film Awards
“One Step Behind the Seraphim”
Director: Daniel Sandu
Date of production: 2017
Country: Romania
Duration: 147min
Genre: fiction
Original language version: Romanian
Subtitles: English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Serbo-Croatian, Russian, Arabic
Synopsis: Gabriel is a 15-year-old teenager who wants to become a priest and is admitted to an Orthodox seminary. He starts by trying to fit in, but eventually realises the system is completely corrupted and abusive. Caught up in the fight for power between an incorruptible, but abusive priest and a cunning, crooked and unscrupulous secular teacher, the students learn that lying, stealing and betraying are skills they have to master in order to survive in the seminary. Who will graduate and become a priest? What kind of priests will they make after spending several years in this system?
Genre: Drama
Topics: Manhood, Religion, Society, Teenager
Jury selection criteria: This multiple award-winning film dramatizes the director’s own experience when studying theology in a Romanian Orthodox seminary. With remarkable performances by its young cast One Step Behind the Seraphim keenly paints its critic on institutional corruption with unscrupulous control by those in power.
Main Awards: Bucharest International Film Festival award for Best Screenplay, Gopo Awards for Best Feature Film, Best Directing, Best Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Actor in a Leading Role, Best Actor in a Supporting Role, Best First Feature Film
“Ray&Liz”
Director: Richard Billingham
Date of production: 2018
Country: United-Kingdom
Duration: 107min
Genre: fiction
Original language version: English
Subtitles: English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Serbo-Croatian, Arabic
Synopsis: On the outskirts of Birmingham and the margins of society, the Billingham family perform extreme rituals and break cultural taboos as they muddle through a life decided by factors beyond their control.
Genre: Drama
Topics: Society, Family issues, Alcoholism, Photography, Poverty
Jury selection criteria: A superb albeit bleak film that centres on the 1980s austerity riddled white working class family during Margaret Thatcher’s Britain. Ray and Liz is a blend of the harsh realism of poverty and brutal study of a family falling apart as a result of the stringency measures taken by their government.
Main Awards: Locarno International Film Festival: Special Jury Prize, Seville European Film Festival: Grand Jury Award, British Independent Film Awards: Douglas Hickox Award
“Smuggling Hendrix”
Director: Marios Piperides
Date of production: 2018
Country: Cyprus, Germany
Duration: 82min
Genre: feature
Original language version: Greek
Subtitles: English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Serbo-Croatian, Russian
Synopsis: Yiannis, a faded musician who is about to leave Cyprus for a better life abroad, sees his plans turned upside down when his dog runs away and crosses the Buffer Zone that separates the "Greek South" from the "Turkish North". Can he smuggle him back in?
Genre: Comedy
Topics: Politics, Society, Animals, Friendship
Jury selection criteria: This charming and delightful comedy, set in the divided city of Nicosia, gives a timely reminder of the absurdity of the walls that we continue to build between nations at our own pitfall.
Main Awards: Tribeca Film Festival award for Best International Narrative Feature, Quebec City International Film Festival: Cinephile Award, Les Arcs European Film Festival: Audience Choice Prize, Hellenic Film Academy Awards for Best Screenplay
“Stranger in Paradise”
Director: Guido Hendrikx
Date of production: 2016
Country: Netherlands
Duration: 77min
Genre: Documentary
Original language version: English
Subtitles: English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Serbo-Croatian, Arabic
Synopsis: In a classroom in Sicily, just inside the walls of Fortress Europe, recently arrived refugees receive lessons from a teacher who has some rather unbalanced traits. One moment he mercilessly rejects the refugees – the next, mollifyingly, he embraces them. Operating at the intersection of documentary and fiction, STRANGER IN PARADISE investigates the power relations between Europe and refugees. Europe is represented by a teacher who drags his class of refugees down into his despair. A plea that borders on the immoral; a welcome charged with a guilt complex; and the compromise between these, made policy: STRANGER IN PARADISE is an unflinching film essay on the mechanisms through which Europe tackles the refugees’ desire for happiness.
Genre: Documentary
Topics: Migration, Politics, Current Affairs, Justice, Social Issues
Jury selection criteria: Stranger in Paradise is a timely documentary that offers a moment to reflect on the plight of the current world refugee crisis. It address the waves of migrants from Africa and the Middle East and the often insularity and ignorance of Europe at a time when the tectonic plates that binds our world are slowly ebbing away.
Main Awards: Amsterdam International Documentary Film Festival Special Jury Award, Madrid International Documentary Film Festival Fugas Feature Film Competition.
“The Constitution”
Director: Rajko Grlic
Date of production: 2016
Country: Croatia, Slovenia, United Kingdom, Czech Republic
Duration: 82min
Genre: feature
Original language version: Croatian
Subtitles: English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Serbo-Croatian, Russian, Arabic
Synopsis: Four very different people live in the same building but avoid each other because of differences in how they live their lives, what they believe in, and where they come from. They would probably never exchange a word, but misfortune pushes them towards each other. Their lives entangle in ways that profoundly challenge deep-held beliefs and prejudices surrounding material status, sexual orientation, nationality and religion. Slowly, and even painfully, they begin to open up to each other and recognize the essential humanity each of them possesses.
Genre: Drama, Comedy
Topics: Society, Politics, Religion, LGBT, Queer, Community
Jury selection criteria: The Constitution is far more than a film about a man ostracised because of his homosexuality. It is a film that intelligently explores and confronts the scornful legacy and the bitter inter-ethnic Yugoslav wars that continues to haunt present day independent Croatia.
Main Awards: Montréal World Film Festival award for Best Film, Raindance Film Festival award for Best Film, Best Screenplay, Best Performance
“The Magic Life of V.”
Director: Tonislav Hristov
Date of production: 2019
Country: Finland
Duration: 82min
Genre: documentary
Original language version: Finnish
Subtitles: English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Serbo-Croatian, Russian, Arabic
Synopsis: Haunted by childhood traumas, Veera is trying to become more independent through live roleplaying. As she guides herself and her mentally-challenged brother through worlds of multiple roles and identities, witches and wizards, she finds the courage to face the demons of her own past and her abusive father's legacy.
Genre: Documentary
Topics: Youth, Teenagers, Society Issues, Family Issues, Alcohol
Jury selection criteria: A very strong story about a young woman who is trying to face her past, with all the demons. This film is told in very interesting ways and is full of drama. It is a very good film to speak about children rights.
Main Awards: Sofia International Film Festival award for Best Documentary Film
“Winter Flies”
Director: Olmo Omerzu
Date of production: 2017
Country: Czech Republic, Slovenia, Poland, Slovakia
Duration: 85min
Genre: fiction
Original language version: Czech
Synopsis: Mischievously self-assured Mára and somewhat eccentric Heduš set out into the frozen wastes in search of adventure – by car, naturally. After all, Mára's turning fifteen soon. A road movie about the flies that occasionally buzz around even in winter, and a story – before it ends at the police station – that tells of the elusive bond of boyhood friendship and the irrepressible desire to experience something, even if you don't exactly know what.
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Road Movie
Topics: Social Issues, Friendship, Teenagers
Jury selection criteria: Between road movie and murder mystery, these adventures of two teenagers of today, carried by two young stunning actors, renew the genre of the “apprenticeship” film using a bittersweet tone that will seduce widely.
Main Awards: Karlovy Vary International Film Festival award for Best Director, Czech Lions award for Best Film, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor, Best Supporting Actress
Short films on climate change
“Tua Ingugu” by Daniel Thomas
2019 – 8min – documentary
Synopsis: As the Xingu indigenous live in close symbiosis with water, rivers in Sao Paulo are perishing due to worrying levels of water pollution from chemicals used in the agrobusiness industry and plastic. This short movie captures the relationship between the Xingu community and their river, and the emotions of one of them when he is taken to see Sao Paulo rivers. A poetic movie to denounce water pollution and the challenging prospects for the future of both indigenous people and city folks.
“Hungry Seagull” by Leon Wang
2019 – 6min – documentary
Synopsis: On an island not far from the mainland, the young father seagull is anxiously guarding the new born gulls by the nest and awaiting the return of the mother seagull. The mother seagull has given up everything she has, but the baby seagull is still hungry. The father seagull had flown away in search of more food...The main diet of black-tailed gulls is pelagic fish in the sea, molluscs and aquatic insects in coastal wetlands and estuaries. However, with the overfishing of offshore fish and the pollution of the marine environment, seagulls can catch fewer and fewer small fish in the upper layer.
“Olmo” by Silvio Soldini
2019 – 8min – fiction
Synopsis: Olmo, eighty years old, looks out of the window of a building in the suburban area of a city. His eighty-year-old grandson Giulio is reading him an article from the newspaper about melting glaciers, the greenhouse effect, methane and CO2... “What is C-O-2?” asks the child. “Do you remember the carbon dioxide we studied?” says Grandpa. “The one the trees breathe?” asks Giulio. The day after, they’re leaving for a short tour instead of going to school, searching for an old tree.
“Qurut” by Shahbranoo Sadat
2019 – 5min – documentary
Synopsis: It is dawn. Rural central Afghanistan, far away in a village. A young wo-man is milking a goat while her little boy is assisting her by holding the horns of the goat. There is a flock of goats and sheep waiting to be milked before the young shepherd takes them to the mountains to graze all day long. She cooks Quruti, one of the most popular meals in the entire Afghanistan but especially central Afghanistan. For some years people have been making less and less Quruti as they struggle to feed their animals because the mountain pastures have dried up. Climate change has affected rain patterns and soil fertility in the whole region.
“A Sunny Day” by Faouzi Bensaïdi
2019 – 10min – fiction
Synopsis: Under the impacts of a changing climate, the world changes, it has already changed. In a distant and near future, both fantastic and absurd, men and wo-men survive as they can. Following a man, a slender figure between Tati and Buster Keaton, we discover through scenes of his daily life how devastating the effects of climate change are on humans and nature. How do we barricade against excessive heat or cold? How will it be to go to a supermarket, or a zoo filled with different animals and species? A disturbing and hilarious ride in the future, that is already our present.
“In One Drag” by Alireza Hashempour
2016 – 3min – fiction
Synopsis: It’s late in the evening. A man leaves a building, lights a cigarette and smokes it in one drag. He casually flicks the stub away – everything as always. Only this time... all the cigarette butts in the city become alive.
“Tant de forêts” by Burku Sankur and Geoffrey Godet
2014 – 3min – animation
Synopsis: The short film is based on a poem of Jacques Prévert. The poem speaks of the irony of the fact that newspaper warn us about deforestation although they are made of paper themselves.
“Kokota” by Craig Norris
2016 – 29min – documentary
Synopsis: The Islet of Hope tells the story of Mbarouk’s quest to help Kokota. This short, 30 minutes documentary introduces viewers to the resilient people living on the front lines of climate change and explores how these unlikely heroes have managed to innovatively adapt to a warming climate while reforesting their island. This inspirational film promises to leave audiences around the world believing that simple solutions really can have huge impacts.