Programmer Margot Amadei

Shorts Competition : Trapped

How can a cucumber change your life? What do you do when your body starts exploding every day? Can fathers not get drunk at weddings and soothe our hearts? Showcasing some of the latest and best short films that have toured the world’s most prestigious festivals, this programme is the perfect window into short film at its finest: impressive, liberated, acid and sensitive. These films made me laugh, cry, drop my jaw on the floor and turned my stomach into a wreck. It’s time to feel, everyone!

Ghost Cat Anzu (dir. Yôko Kuno, Nobuhiro Yamashita)

ONE FILM OLDER
Ghost Cat Anzu is a rich film of contrasts, where what you see and what you feel clash beautifully: it deals with the most serious topics, but in the lightest form of all. It’s a funky, stunning Japanese animated comedy about grief, the relationship between parents and children, the importance of friends, and about knowing when to trust your gut. It follows Karin, an 11-year-old child in all her hope, naivety, and intelligence, ready to do anything to see her dead mother again while bonding with Anzu, a giant ghost cat.

All we imagine as light (dir. Payal Kapadia)

CRITICS’ CHOICE
After winning the Grand Prize at the Cannes Film Festival and being named Best Film of the Year by the New York Times and by Sight and Sound magazine, recommending All we Imagine as Light feels like putting a drop in the ocean. Payal Kapadia’s first fiction feature is an astonishing film about how people’s lives collide and coexist, support and comfort, from near and from far. In the streets and homes of Mumbai, we follow three women who work in the same hospital, each dealing with her own pain, but all three counting on each other to ease it.

Vermiglio (dir. Maura Delpero)

CRITICS’ CHOICE
Kanų kino festivalyje pelnęs „Didįjį prizą“ ir žurnalų „The New York Times“ bei „Sight and Sound“ pripažintas geriausiu metų filmu , „Taip įsivaizduojame šviesą“ – tai tarsi dar vienas lašas jūroje. Payalos Kapadia debiutinis vaidybinis filmas – stulbinanti istorija apie žmonių gyvenimų sankirtas, tarpusavio palaikymą ir paguodą, kuri kartais čia pat, o kartais – labai toli. Mumbajaus gatvėse ir namuose stebėsime tris moteris, dirbančias toje pačioje ligoninėje – kiekviena jų neš savo skausmą, tačiau visos trys ras stiprybės viena kitoje.

Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (dir. Jim Jarmusch)

JIM JARMUSH RETROSPECTIVE
Defined by its own director as a “gangster samurai hip-hop eastern western”, Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai is a unique patchwork of influences that reflects American society and its cultural richness, fusing the New York’s Italian mafia with a top-secret black killer who follows the ancient Japanese Samurai code and communicates strictly by carrier pigeon. Jim Jarmusch’s crime drama starring Forest Whitaker takes us on a delirious journey of killing, honour, loyalty and guns wielded like swords. It’s a badass film for badass audiences only: follow the code.