Projects matching: ISO

Synopsis

A young boy in Gaza, Mohammad Assaf, dreams of singing in the Cairo Opera House with his sister and best friend, Nour. One day, Nour collapses and is rushed to the hospital where it is discovered that she needs a kidney transplant. Nour leaves Mohammad with a dying wish that someday, he will sing in Cairo. Escaping from Gaza to Egypt against unbelievable odds, Assaf makes the journey of a lifetime. Directed by Academy Award® nominee Hany Abu-Assad and based on the incredible true story of Mohammad Assaf, the Gazan wedding singer who became a worldwide sensation after winning 'Arab Idol' in 2013. Toronto International Film Festival 2015 - World premiere

Synopsis

The remarkable love story inspired by the lives of Lili Elbe and Gerda Wegener (portrayed by Academy Award® winners Eddie Redmayne and Alicia Vikander), and directed by Academy Award® winner Tom Hooper. Lili and Gerda’s marriage and work evolve as they navigate Lili’s journey as a transgender woman. Venice Film Festival 2015 - World premiere

Synopsis

Talking genitals discuss masturbation, sexuality and vaginas in this intimate documentary. A range of people share their insecurities and desires and each voice is visualised by a different animator. A collaboration of self-expression.

Synopsis

Harrison, a nice guy with a history of schizophrenia, battles the diverse and unpredictable voices he hears, a judgemental society and the hazards of social media as he attempts to make a new friend. As a coping mechanism, he projects the voices into some of his childhood toys. These nagging, amusing, plain-spoken and occasionally disturbing voices are consistently unhelpful, especially when Harrison tries unorthodox methods in order to meet his ideal candidate for a new friend – the modelesque aspiring actress and social media addict, Amber.

Synopsis

Five young people wake up dead. Washed up by the tide they scramble to an abandoned beach house, soon realising that the perpetual night and blasts of pain suggest this is some version of hell. Between in-fighting and attacks by a demonic shadow creature, they recall the collapse of the nightclub that brought them here - and begin seeing hope of a second chance in the cabin's two mysterious paintings...

Synopsis

'The Sky Trembles and the Earth is Afraid and the Two Eyes Are Not Brothers' [the complete title of this piece] is partially inspired by Paul Bowles’ story 'A Distant Episode', and charts a mysterious transformation from observational making-of to inventive adaptation, shot against a staggering Moroccan landscape. "Ben Rivers explores the illusion of filmmaking in Morocco... The Moroccan Sahara is littered with the legacy of films shot in its dramatic vistas: abandoned sets that reveal the artifice of filmmaking and trigger our recollection of the half-imagined spaces of familiar films from decades past." (Artangel) Locarno Film Festival 2015 - World premiere

Synopsis

An unassuming young lawyer leads a fight against the Nazis near the end of the Second World War.

Synopsis

The documentary film explores an unknown chapter in post South African liberation. In 1993, Lady Anya Sainsbury, a former principal ballerina at Royal Ballet in London, met Nelson Mandela at a party in South Africa. They both agreed for her to set up a dance scholarship programme at the Rambert School of Ballet and Contemporary Dance in London, which provided 23 of South Africa’s talented young dance students between 1995 to 2003, with the opportunity to follow their dance dreams. The film highlights the personal experiences of six of those dancers that subsequently met Mandela in London at a dinner party in Lady Sainsbury’s house in 1999, they are Mandela’s Dancers. The film combines archival dance photographs and video footage spanning over fifteen years, with excerpts from the student performances and candid recollections. Mandela’s Dancers is not about the triumph of the human spirit or any other of the top 10 favourite dance clichés. It’s about something far rarer and of vastly greater significance – it’s about real life. It’s about how Nelson Mandela changed the face of contemporary dance!

Synopsis

On her way back home from school, 14-year-old Sky (Alana Boden) is followed home, the rest is a blur. Her big sister Jessy-May (Jessica Barden) a tough, isolated 16-year-old attempts to protect her family the only way she knows how.

Synopsis

A fortysomething ex-lead singer of a once-moderately-famous British indie band has just had his solo album rejected and parted ways with his manager. And, to make matters worse, his wife is cheating on him. With a woman. So he embarks upon an ill-conceived plan to teach his wife a lesson and maybe win her back. It involves kidnaping both her and her lover and making them swallow what he claims is rat poison – as well as swallowing some himself. He says he's brought an antidote, but only enough for two people, and he wants the group to decide who lives. But he hasn’t really poisoned anyone. However, the antidote is poisonous. But when he tries to explain this, not everyone believes him, with tragic consequences for all.

Synopsis

Living far from the continent and isolated from the rest of the world, the Guanches believed they were the only survivors of a terrible natural catastrophy that had wiped out the entire humanity, until six hundred years ago when the Spanish sailors first stepped on the Canary islands. More than 2500 years separated the two cultures. SAVAGES IN FOREIGN LANDS is a quest to the truth and identity, but also story of survival, legacy, conquest and recognition.

Synopsis

"The striking and brutal realities of the students struggling for food, shelter and medication. Mimi's death from TB - and her illness unnoticed at first even by her closest friends - cannot but send a chilling chord in our modern world." A Cape Town-set reworking of Puccini’s La Bohème, sung in Xhosa (with some English dialogue). 'Breathe Umphefumlo' sees director Mark Dornford-May (U-Carmen eKhayelitsha) reunited with singer Pauline Malefane and the Isango Ensemble. Berlinale 2015, Berlinale Special - World premiere