Projects in genres: Woman Director

Synopsis

Friends, colleagues and strangers compare notes on their journeys with hormonal birth control - and its indelible effects on their mental health.

Synopsis

A work of speculative cinematic writing, the film is about war and displacement, architecture and place-making. It tells the fragmented biography of the so-called Rock Church, an iconic building in Helsinki and its architects who were excluded from the canon of Finnish modernism. The architects' personal history of displacement due to the Finnish Winter War of 1939 and Soviet occupation is braided with the war on present-day Gaza.
Past and present histories, temporalities and geographies fold into, and over one another collapsing time, place and identities narratively to consider, in the gentlest of tones, the impact of atrocities on contemporary lifeworlds.

Synopsis

Divided by barriers and borders, the three sisters confront their childhood after spending decades apart in culturally and politically diverging countries. For all of them, one moment in life determined everything that followed.
An emotionally revealing essay film.

Synopsis

Marmar listens to the stories told by her grandmother’s friends as they play an illicit game of cards. Based on childhood memories and shared stories, AND GRANNY WOULD DANCE is a tale of love, grief and resilience. At its heart, it is a tribute to the solidarity of Iranian women.
Official Selection Palm Springs International ShortFest 2024 - World premiere
Palm Springs International ShortFest 2024 - Best Short Animation Audience Award - Winner
Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2024

Synopsis

When a massive Chinese factory complex attempts a high-stakes expansion in rural Ethiopia, three women in search of prosperity have their faith in industrialisation tested to the limit.
Official Selection Tribeca Film Festival 2024 - Documentary Competition - World premiere
Tribeca Film Festival 2024 - Documentary Competition - Jury Special Mention
Warsaw Film Festival 2024 - Documentary Competition - Jury Special Mention

Synopsis

BRANDED is a woman’s defiance, in the face of atrocity, to uphold Art and Freedom. Set at some time, in the past, present, or the future. A Ukrainian woman, captured by a regime that forbids artistic expression, challenges her oppressors. She is anonymous, without a presence in the world, the non-existence of a political prisoner. Pacing around the cell, her words directed at the Wall behind her. The Wall that protects her from what is beyond. From other cells, noises of torture are heard. The sounds of conflict increase as the war comes closer. Knowing she will die, her dreams are of the life she used to have, with freedom, laughing and painting in her studio. Her concern is not for herself when she asks, is this the end of Art? She has a vision and imagines Leonardo da Vinci visits her, and asks him, will Art survive? Her desperation increasing, she paints with her own faeces and urine on the Wall. Collapsing, she imagines a future artist visiting her cell. He tells her, Art cannot die, artists are the future.
Kateryna Polishchuk, a soldier in the Ukrainian army, is the voice of the woman in the cell.

Synopsis

As the Palestinian identity continues to be threatened with erasure, Palestinians turn to their folk dance, the dabke, to assert their existence. Ultimately, they dance because they love life, and insist on living it.
Official Selection Leuven International Short Film Festival 2024

Synopsis

A day in the life of Claire. FARM DAYS is a heartfelt glimpse into the world of a farm manager and her twelve alpacas as they engage in feeding, trekking, and community volunteering in the woods of Sheffield, UK.

Synopsis

Mayaw's indigenous Taiwanese roots and his daughter's biracial identity are at the heart of their transcendent dreams. As Mayaw's mind fades, the call of his homeland grows stronger, leading to a magical reconnection with the help of lullabies and mystical guardians.

Synopsis

Gaza, December 2023. A confrontation with a disturbing photograph on social media triggers questions about what it means to be an onlooker.

Synopsis

In the early hours of 6 February 2023, a Mw 7.8 earthquake hit a large area of Turkey and Syria. It’s destructiveness was exacerbated by the instability that had torn the region apart. Waad Al-Kateab’s film is powerful record of the disaster, drawing images from TV news reports, social media, CCTV and drone footage, alongside archive material of the region. The shock of the earthquake soon gives way to a damning record of human failure, with Al-Kateab focusing on two Syrian families over the course of ten days, sensitively recording their desperate efforts to find their loved ones. Highlighting official incompetence and a paltry level of humanitarian aid, Death Without Mercy is, above all else, a moving testament to human dignity. (Sheffield DocFest 2024 Programme)
Official Selection Sheffield DocFest 2024

Synopsis

John (Jared Harris) and Mary (Juliet Stevenson) have lived in an agonizing limbo of grief and guilt for the past ten years. Their only child, Clare, ran away from home when she was fourteen and no trace of her whereabouts has ever been found. When Clare returns, now a young woman of twenty-four, Mary is overjoyed. But John comes to believe that Clare is not who she claims to be. As old tensions resurface, a gripping search for the truth unfolds.
REAWAKENING is the powerful, psychologically piercing and searingly emotional second feature from BAFTA-nominated writer/director Virginia Gilbert.