International Competition 4

Time and place

Sunday, 22 October 2023 at 18:15

Dom Kino Cinema Center – Blue Hall: Karavannaya Street, 12

Description

"Fran and Verka; or a Usual Day in an Abandoned Village", dir. Sovran Nrecaj. Kosovo, 2023, 13 min.
"Planet D", dir Olesya Rudyka. Russia, 2023, 14 min.
"Background" dir. Khaled Abdulwahed. Germany, 2023, 64 min.

Q&A with director Olesya Rudyka.
Q&A with director Khaled Abdulwahed, online.

Fran and Verka; or a Usual Day in an Abandoned Village

Genres: Documentary, Short-length

Director: Sovran Nrecaj

Operator: Besim Ugzmajli

Screenwriter: Sovran Nrecaj

Producer: Aurela Kadriu

Producer company : Can and Cam

Year: 2023

Country: Kosovo

Duration: 13 min.

Description

Synopsis:
Fran and Verka are the sole inhabitants of Vërnakollë – the place they first met many years ago, got married and have been living ever since. They remember a lively village where children played in the streets and weddings lasted for a week. After the 1999 war in Kosovo, it all changed. Everyone but Fran and Verka left the village. Their story is a testament to the unbreakable bonds that tie us to what we call home and to where we belong.

About the director:
Sovran Nrecaj. Filmmaker. Born in 1998 in Ferizaj, Kosovo. He began his artistic career as a photographer and later developed a passion for writing and directing. Studied at Sarajevo Film Academy, where he worked on various film projects. His latest work, “Sea by the River and River by the Sea” has won several awards at international festivals. Currently, he is working on his first feature film, “Around the River Beyond the Sea”.

Planet D

Genres: Documentary, Short-length

Director: Olesya Rudyka

Operator: Yaroslav Golovkin, Sasha Veremchuk, Olesya Rudyka

Year: 2023

Country: Russia

Duration: 14 min.

Languages: Russian

Description

Synopsis:
Could another form of life be waiting for us? Somewhere out there, on a distant Planet D? The film is composed of footage captured in a teenage prison camp, where the author led classes for inmates in 2018, as well as from family video chronicles made in the 1990s. Olesya Rudyka reflects: “When my dad was released from incarceration, we believed we had our whole life ahead of us. He seemed to understand that leaving prison isn’t the end – it stays with you indefinitely and, sooner or later, catches up with you unexpectedly, like a bullet”.

About the director:
Olesya Rudyka. Director, producer, art-director. She graduated from The Rodchenko Moscow School of Photography and Multimedia (2017, video workshop) and Higher School of Economics (2022, Film and Television Production). Olesya Rudyka worked in stage directing and production groups, supervised the work of production houses, developed and implemented advertising campaigns. In 2018, she visited a juvenile colony and developed a career guidance program for teenagers.

Background

Genres: Documentary, Full-length

Director: Khaled Abdulwahed

Operator: Khaled Abdulwahed

Screenwriter: Khaled Abdulwahed

Producer: Alex Gerbaulet, Philip Scheffner

Producer company : pong film

Year: 2023

Country: Germany

Duration: 1 h. 4 min.

Languages: Arabic, German

Description

Synopsis:
A photo camera is cleaned. Click. The shutter works. Bright light. A crackle and hiss in the sound. A broken “Hello?” opens a conversation between Khaled Abdulwahed, a Syrian filmmaker living in Leipzig, and his father in Aleppo. The son reconstructs his father’s journey, arriving in the GDR as an exchange student in 1956 His son applies for asylum more than 60 years later as a refugee. The civil war in Syria separates their stories, the film brings them back together and continues them.

About the director:
Khaled Abdulwahed. Artist, photographer and filmmaker. Born 1975 in Homs, Syria, lives in Leipzig. Since 2011 he has realized numerous video art works as well as experimental documentaries, which have been shown worldwide at festivals as well as in art contexts, and some of which have received multiple awards. His videos have been shown a.o. at the Centre Georges Pompidou, the Berlin Art Biennale and others. In 2016, his first feature-length film “Jellyfish” about the Syrian civil war was invited to the Berlinale Forum.