Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk
Synopsis
Driven to document the war in Gaza, filmmaker and Festival alum Sepideh Farsi (2014’s Red Rose) tries to enter the region. Blocked at the border, Farsi strikes up a relationship via cellphone with a bright-eyed young Palestinian photographer and poet named Fatma Hassona, who is holed up in her bombed-out neighborhood. Through a series of intimate video conversations, by turns lighthearted and heartbreaking, Sepideh and Fatma grow closer despite the layers of screens between them, even as the conditions around Fatma become increasingly dire.
Mirroring in its construction the distance between Gaza and the rest of the world, this cleverly conceived Cannes Film Festival stunner also subtly explores potent contrasts between the two women: the Iranian filmmaker’s world travels and her long life in exile vs. Fatma’s isolation, entrapment, and dreams of escape. As weeks turn to months, the film chronicles their deepening relationship, becoming a compassionate portrait of a life under siege that celebrates the remarkable fortitude of the Palestinian people.
Screenings & Events
There are currently no upcoming screenings of this film.
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Media
Film Credits
- Javad Djavahery, Annie Ohayon-Dekel
- Sepideh Farsi
- Sepideh Farsi
- Fatma Hassona
- Rêves d'Eau Productions
Sponsors
Program Partner
Program Patron
Cynthia Stone Raskin
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Synopsis
After a young woman goes missing at a rave deep in the mountains of southern Morocco, her father and brother traverse the forbidden desert landscape searching for her. Their journey takes them from one dance party to another, but none of the itinerant revelers can point to her whereabouts. Hearing rumors of an event near the border of Mauritania, the pair take up with a band of outsiders, together embarking on one last dangerous journey beneath the scorching sun.
The pounding pulse of electronica provides the soundtrack to a gripping existential journey to ends of the earth—the film’s title refers to the bridge separating Heaven and Hell in Islamic tradition. Unfolding amid an apocalyptic landscape in which reports of conflict and other crises issue from the radio, director Oliver Laxe’s metaphysical road movie, produced by Spanish cinema icon Pedro Almodóvar, is simultaneously meditative and harrowing in its potent exploration of loss, grief, and violence.
Screenings & Events
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Film Credits
- Domingo Corral, Oliver Laxe, Xavi Font, Pedro Almodóvar, Agustín Almodóvar, Esther García, Oriol Maymó Ferrer, Mani Mortazavi, Andrea Queralt
- Santiago Fillol, Oliver Laxe
- Cristóbal Fernández
- Mauro Herce
- Sergi López, Brúno Nuñez, Stefania Gadda, Joshua Liam Henderson, Tonin Janvier, Jade Oukid, Richard Bellamy
- Esther García
Sponsors
Program Patron
John and Jacolyn Bucksbaum Family Foundation
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The Stranger L'Étranger
Synopsis
Algiers, 1938. Meursault, a quiet and unassuming office worker, attends his mother’s funeral without shedding a tear. The following day, he begins a casual affair with Marie, an old acquaintance, effortlessly slipping back into his daily routine. An emotional detachment from the people closest to him signals his utter indifference to the events of his life. His blithe existence is disrupted, however, when his neighbor Raymond draws Meursault into his shady dealings, leading to a tragic confrontation on a blistering hot day at the beach that lands Meursault in jail on murder charges.
A sense of inevitability and dread pervades the existential drama as it shifts between scenes depicting the wretched prison conditions Meursault endures as he awaits his trial and the succession of events that landed him there. Striking black-and-white cinematography, lensed by Manuel Dacosse, a frequent collaborator of director François Ozon, is evocative of the period setting while also lending the film an expansive timelessness. Effortlessly embodying Meursault’s aimless indifference, Benjamin Voisin (winner of the Silver Hugo for Best Performance for The Quiet Son at the 60th Chicago International Film Festival) commands in the lead as a man with nothing and yet everything to lose.
Screenings & Events
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Film Credits
- François Ozon, Sidonie Dumas
- François Ozon
- Clément Selitzki
- Manu Dacosse
- Benjamin Voisin, Rebecca Marder, Pierre Lottin, Denis Lavant, Swann Arlaud
- Fatima Al Qadiri
- Foz
- Foz, Gaumont
- https://www.gaumont.com/en/movie/the-stranger
Sponsors
Program Patron
John and Jacolyn Bucksbaum Family Foundation
Film Patron
Mary and Joseph Plauché
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The Beauty of the Donkey La Beauté de l'Âne
Synopsis
Award-winning Swiss Albanian filmmaker Dea Gjinovci (2020’s Wake Up on Mars) returns to the bucolic Kosovo town of her father’s youth—a place he hasn’t seen in 60 years—for this lyrical journey into the past at once wistful and tragic. Together, they recreate his childhood memories, making sets that resemble his former home and with scenes acted out by the local villagers. Through this collective creative project, 1950s Kosovo springs to life in a series of beautifully realized vignettes that prompt Gjinovci’s father to reflect on times of innocence, of violence (when the country persecuted the Albanian population), and of loss, enabling him to finally reckon with the disappearance of his mother decades before.
This evocative mix of memory and reenactment allows father and daughter to uncover shocking truths about their family history and to come to terms with a legacy of oppression. A touching narrative of resilience and catharsis, The Beauty of the Donkey is also a sensitive and bittersweet testament to the power of stories to bring back people and places that history and political strife have tried to erase.
Screenings & Events
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Media
Film Credits
- Dea Gjinovci, Palmyre Badinier
- Dea Gjinovci
- Lizi Gelber
- Maxime Kathari
- Asllan Gjinovci, Leart Gjinovci
- Gael Kyriakidis
- Maida Lynn
- Astrae Productions
Sponsors
Program Partner
Program Patron
Cynthia Stone Raskin
With support from
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True North
Synopsis
This captivating documentary directed by visionary filmmaker Michèle Stephenson (co-director of Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project), is a provocative confrontation of Canada’s historical and ongoing anti-Black racism. Through a masterful blend of insightful interviews and evocative archival footage, the film traces the height of the nation’s civil rights movement of the ‘60s in the unlikely hotbed of Montreal, revealing how the nation’s myth of tolerance masks a legacy of slavery, systemic exclusion, and generational trauma.
Haunting soundscapes, layered visuals, and non-linear storytelling combine to create a visceral atmosphere that echoes the emotional weight of displacement and erasure. The film not only excavates buried truths about Canada’s complicity in the transatlantic slave trade and xenophobic immigration policies but also challenges viewers to question national narratives that sanitize oppression. With both personal tenderness and historical rigor, True North shatters illusions of Canadian innocence, demanding accountability and reckoning with the untold stories of resistance, survival, and Black resilience on northern soil.
Screenings & Events
There are currently no upcoming screenings of this film.
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Media
Film Credits
- Leslie Norville
- Shannon Kennedy, Sarah Enid Hagey
- Stephen Chung
- Andy Milne
- Miranda de Pencier, Nelson George
- Studio 112, ITVS
Sponsors
Program Partner
Program Patron
Cynthia Stone Raskin
With support from
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