This collaboration aims to showcase recent work by directors from the Middle East and North Africa and Europeans from this region.
The screenings at the Seville European Film Festival will be of the following films Bloody Beansby French-Algerian director Narimane Mari; Silvered Water, Syria Self-Portraitby Syrians Ossama Mohammed and Wiam Simav Bedirxan; and The Kindergarten Teacherby Israeli director Nadav Lapid. These productions will participate in different sections and will be accompanied by a debate with the directors.
In addition, coinciding with this edition of the festival, Tres Culturas will dedicate the 'Tuesday Film' programme in November to European directors from the Middle East and North Africa, showing a growing trend in recent years that combines an increasing number of creators from this region born in Europe or exiled there and the growing European participation, especially French, in the financing of these productions.
Despite being a prolific and quality production, these films continue to find it difficult to be distributed in European cinemas, being screened at best only in a few specialised festivals. It is a pleasure to be able to offer a representative sample of this type of cinema, a purpose we share with the Seville European Film Festival.
Films in the 'Tuesday Cinema' series at Tres Culturas
The Tuesday Film Screenings will take place every Tuesday in November at 20.30 at the Tres Culturas headquarters. Admission is free until full capacity is reached. The following films will be screened:
Tuesday 4 November (Fundación Tres Culturas, 8.30 p.m.)
Adieu Gary (Goodbye, Gary)
Nassim Amaouche (France, 2009, 75 min.)
In partnership with the French Institute
Synopsis
In an industrial city where the factories have long since closed, some inhabitants resist despite the loneliness and emptiness of the streets. A few even still go daily to the factories where they once worked, as Francis does. His neighbour's son, who thinks his father is Gary Cooper, waits for him every day in this contemporary no-man's land, similar to a Western set.
- Grand Prix de la Semaine de la Critique at the Cannes Film Festival (2009).
- Nominated for Best Film at the Dubai International Film Festival (2009).
French-Jordanian director and screenwriter Nassim Amaouche (1977) studied sociology at the University of Paris and film at the Institut International de l'Image et du Son. After winning the Grand Prix de la Semaine de la Critique at the Cannes Film Festival with his first feature film, Adieu GaryAmaouche directed the documentary Mawem Hisad (Family Albums), nominated for Best Documentary at the Dubai International Film Festival 2012. His next feature film, Des Apacheswill be released in France in 2015.
Tuesday 11 November (Fundación Tres Culturas, 8.30 p.m.)
Omar
Hany Abu-Assad (Palestine, 2013, 96 min.)
Synopsis
Omar is a Palestinian baker for whom crossing the separation wall to visit his girlfriend has become routine. Every night he risks his life in the face of Israeli soldiers until, together with two childhood friends, he is arrested and accused of the murder of a soldier. Coerced into becoming an informer, he begins a dangerous game whose end is uncertain: will he betray his people or the agent controlling him?
- Jury Prize in the Un Certain Regard section of the Cannes Film Festival (2013).
- Nominated for Best Foreign Film (Palestine) at the Oscar Awards (2014).
- Best Film and Best Director at the Dubai International Film Festival.
- Winner of the Norwegian Peace Film Award, Thomsø International Film Festival (2014).
The filmography that Hany Abu-Assad (1961) has centred on Palestine, with titles such as Omar (2013), Paradise Now (2005) y Rana's wedding (2002), has managed to interest both the general public and the critics, receiving prestigious international awards such as the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival for Omar or the Golden Globe for Paradise Now. In 2014, the Academy of Motion Pictures invited Abu-Assad, a Palestinian born in Nazareth (Israel) and emigrated to Norway, to be one of its members.
Tuesday 18 November (Fundación Tres Culturas, 20h30)
Les chevaux de Dieu (God's horses)
Nabil Ayouch (Morocco, 2012, 113 minutes)
Synopsis
Free interpretation of the 2003 Casablanca terrorist attacks.
Little Yachine lives with his family in Sidi Mumen, a shantytown in Casablanca. With a depressed husband and four children to support, his mother does her best to support the family. When Hamid (Yachine's older brother and neighbourhood leader) is released from prison and converted to the cause of radical Islam, he convinces the young boy and his friends to join. After being trained physically, spiritually and mentally, one day they are told that they are the chosen ones to become martyrs...
- Awarded the Golden Spike at the Seminci in Valladolid (2012).
- Nominated in the Un Certain Regard section and winner of the François Chalais Award at the Cannes International Film Festival (2012).
- Awarded the Golden Space Needle for Best Director at the Seattle International Film Festival (2013).
- Morocco's official selection for the Oscars (2013).
- Award for Best French-language foreign film at the Lumiére Awards in France (2014).
With parents originally from North Africa, director, producer and screenwriter Nabil Ayouch was born in Paris in 1969 and lives in Casablanca today. Among his most famous films are Mektoub (1997) y Ali Zaoua, Prince of Casablanca (2000), both representing Morocco at the Oscars.
Tuesday 25 November (Fundación Tres Culturas, 8.30 p.m.)
The man who sold the world (The man who sold the world)
Swel and Imad Noury (Morocco, 2009, 108 min.)
Synopsis
Based on a short story by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (A weak heart1847), the Noury brothers' second feature film tells of a love triangle in the near future in a world at war. Ney and X (who share almost more than the intimacy of two brothers) fall in love with the same woman, Lili, and their private little universe is shaken to the point of madness.
Sons of the Moroccan filmmaker Hakim Noury and Pilar Cazorla, the Andalusian-born producer who has produced Heaven's DoorsSwel (1978) and Imad (1983) Noury were born in Casablanca. Swel studied economics at a university in Paris while attending classes in Asian Civilisation. When his brother graduated from high school, they both studied Cinematography at a school in Madrid. Feeding on films by directors such as Soderbergh, Michael Mann, Wong Kar Waï, Tedeshi Kitano and the Coen brothers, they developed a rather sombre cinematic universe. Heaven's Doors was presented in the Panorama section of the 2006 Berlin Film Festival.
- Best Actor Award and Best Film nominee, Dubai International Film Festival 2009.
Films in collaboration with the Seville European Film Festival
Bloody Beans
Narimane Mari (France, 2013, 84 minutes)
Arabic and French O.V. with English and Spanish subtitles.
11 November. 20.00. Cine Nervión Sala 4, with the presence of the director
12 November. 17.00 hours. Cine Nervión Sala 4, with the presence of the director
Synopsis
A contagious rhythm infects Bloody BeansThe film has an air of black magic, somewhere between dream and nightmare. A group of children bathe on a beach, until the conflict begins: it is the Algerian War of Independence, reinterpreted entirely by children aged six to fourteen in a surreal journey in which the adults represent the oppressive colonial power. Watkins and Vigo go hand in hand in a film that combines reverie and revolutionary gesture. Mockumentary a documentary of his own filming, in which the nocturnal abduction of a soldier turns into a rave thanks to the cinema (and the music of Zombie Zombie) while questioning the telling of the story.
Silvered Water, Syria Self-Portrait
Ossama Mohammed and Wiam Simav Bedirxan (France/Syria, 2014, 92 min.)
Arabic and French O.V. with English and Spanish subtitles.
8 November. 22.15. Cine Nervión Sala 4, with the presence of the director
9 November. 8 p.m. Nervión Cinema Hall 8
Alert: This film may offend the sensibilities of the viewer. And not only because of the terrible images of the civil war in Syria, which the media did not dare to show. But also because of the mixed feelings in the face of the horror and the impotence of the distance that this film exudes. Official Selection at Cannes, made from the filming of 1,001 Syrians with mobile phones and cameras, scattered over the internet, and from the correspondence of the director, in exile in Paris, with the young filmmaker Simav (silver water in Kurdish), based in Homs. The Scheherazade of the 1,001 lacerating portraits that make up this painful but necessary self-portrait of Syria.
The Kindergarten Teacher
Nadav Lapid (Israel/France, 2014, 120 min.)
9 November. 6.30 p.m.. Lope de Vega Theatre, with the presence of the director.
10 November. 19.45. Cine Nervión Sala 2, with the presence of the director
Synopsis
It brings to the table in a matter-of-fact way a number of lurid issues that reveal the contradictory values of this society, The Kindergarten Teacher tells the story of Nira, a pre-school teacher who develops a kind of obsession with one of her pupils. But not for the reasons you might think at first, but because Yoav, at the age of five, is a genius at poetry. A talent that will be irremissibly lost in the vulgar prose of the world around him: his businessman father, his absent mother and his exploitative nanny. However, to preserve and grow this talent, he will have to take questionable actions that will lead him to a point from which he will not be able to return.