Political engagement spawned the wildest of wonderlands for Hong Kong’s creativity – but as a new law annihilates freedom of expression overnight, artists and creatives find themselves targets and their works disappeared. We race to preserve the creative uprising amid China’s crackdown.
In June 2020, the day after the National Security Law was imposed, the government started listing words, images, books, slogans, songs that were now deemed illegal - making so much that was ‘normal', forbidden.
Hong Kong Mixtape weaves in the personal story of San the director, as we immerse with these underground artists, including some of Asia’s most famous and iconic creators - rappers, dancers, performers, illustrators, stunt collectives - as they navigate this authoritarian new normal. We also follow San having to ask herself the same questions as the other artists; are you willing to risk a life sentence for your art? And if this the last time we can be home - what do we make now?
Official Selection Glasgow Film Festival 2023 - European Premiere
During the winter of 1969, young boys started to disappear from the streets of Belfast, never to be seen again. By 1974, as the Troubles were reaching a bloody and vicious peak, five boys in total had vanished within a five-mile radius. Fifty years later, as the disappearances remain unsolved and families continue to search for answers, filmmaker Des Henderson (How to Defuse a Bomb) reopens these largely forgotten cold-cases, unearthing disturbing revelations in secret state documents to tell an extraordinary tale of abuse, trauma and potential cover-up.
Official selection Belfast International Film Festival and Irish Film Institute Documentary Festival 2023 - World premiere
A noir-ish tale centred around a packet of menthol Vogue cigarettes, moving between Sri Lanka and the UK. Intrigued by the allure of a mysterious woman and political espionage, our narrator finds herself enticed into an addiction.
Created with cut out animation using entirely painted fabric and embroidered parts.
Official Selection Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival PÖFF Shorts 2023 - World premiere
Revolving around two children who meet each other whilst exchanging an apple. Coming from different socio economic backgrounds, the kids develop a feeling of compassion.
A remarkable virtual reality experience told through an intensely personal account of a young girl’s survival during the Holocaust. Audiences accompany Rodi Glass as she revisits the sights of her survival from Amsterdam, Westerbork transit camp and Vittel internment camp.
This intimate documentary follows the story of one woman's extraordinary struggle over five years to bring the man who raped her to justice - a man accused of scores of assaults and rapes against women who applied for work at his London escort agency. Part of the BAFTA-winning Exposure strand, the film follows "Sam" with complete access to her story - from revealing her rape, through 18 months in a safe house and botched police investigations, to her discovery of other victims and crucial evidence. Finally, after thirteen years of abuses and many untold victims, her assailant was arrested and charged on 37 counts - including four of rape and assault by penetration against Sam and her friend "Gabrielle". A nine-week landmark trial ensued in October last year. This is a roller-coaster story with a climactic ending that features a close up and personal account, through the eyes of one brave woman who finds out just how hard it can be to fight for justice.
Some soldiers are stuck in a shelter and they are ruled by Sergeant Vladimir. If any of those soldiers disobey his commands he forces other soldiers to kill the disobedient one.
A real war story is not the story of men at war. A haunting encounter with a boy injured by a random bullet sends director Carol Dysinger to investigate what happened to him, who fired the shot, who is responsible? During her fifteen years following the war in Afghanistan, she often finds herself behind the curtains of an Afghan home where Bibi Hajji maintains her extended family – struggling with her grief and her remaining sons' anger and pain at the loss of their brother. ONE BULLET evolves from a procedural to an excavation of human loss and the redemption of female friendship. How do we deal with guilt and injury across vast social, cultural and religious divides? Ask two tough old broads drinking tea.
Official Selection Galway Film Fleadh 2023 - World Cinema Competition -European premiere - Winner Best International Documentary
Yuliia has become a refugee in Scotland due to the war in Ukraine. She is fighting for the future of her children while trying to maintain her relationship with her husband, who is on the frontline.
Edinburgh International Film Festival 2023 Bridging the Gap - World premiere
The film features a group of women who reside in a care home in a small market town of Sefrou, Morocco. HER PLOT OF BLUE SKY is a record of one of the days in which the Amazigh women inhabitants of the care home were seen using the cameras. The images they create - of themselves and others - are playful yet harrowing, they point to the invisibility of women, non-hetero normative, neurodiverse, functionally diverse and elderly people in media more general. Woven into the women's narratives is Rachida Madani’s poem, Tales of a Severed Head.
