This year´s International Competition section, which consists of each director´s first or second film, invites a total of 10 films that will have their Asian premiere and for some, their international premiere. These films, created by young filmmakers, cover a wide range of genres and are full of spirit.
Like last year, six out of ten films are directed by women, showing that female filmmakers are continuing to make strides. First of all, there are two documentaries. The Silence of the Mole re-examines the tragic modern history of Guatemala, where many people were brutally sacrificed by the military dictatorship, through the testimony of a journalist risking his life working as a spy for democracy. Geographies of Solitude depicts the magical beauty of Sable Island, located off the Atlantic coast of Canada, and the daily life of Zoe Lucas, a scholar and environmentalist who has been living there since the 1970s, exploring and documenting nature and collecting plastic waste.
Argentinian film Album for the Youth is a coming-of-age story about two friends who just graduated high school. Brazilian film Medusa deals with political and timely themes of women with wit and humor. These films present new perspectives of South American female filmmakers on how they view the younger generation. In addition, Aleph is an experimental film by a former Yugoslavian (and currently American) director after being inspired by the work of the Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges and Actual People is an American film that captures the stage of youth in a boldly forthright way. Each of the six female filmmakers unfolds their unique world of artwork through film.
In addition, there is TOKYO KURDS, a heartrending film about Turkish-Kurdish refugees settled in a suburb of Tokyo, and A Human Position follows a female journalist who becomes interested in An Afghan refugee in a secluded small town in Norway. With the recent Ukrainian attacks by Russia, these films directly and metaphorically deal with the international refugee problem that the world is facing right now. Moreover, Taiwanese film Raydio portrays the growing gap between the rich and the poor, the generation gap, and employment problems in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, in the miserable daily life of a father and son, while Unrest, a Swiss film set in a watch factory in a small town in Switzerland at the end of the 19th century, captures the workers’ solidarity with the anarchist movement domestically as well as internationally through beautiful images. It is safe to say that the two represent reality and ideal, respectively.
Written by Programmer CHUN Jinsu
