European Short Debuts - documentary
About Marriage
The title says it all about the film, which focuses on love and marriage. The couple shows off the upsides, but is not afraid to show the darker side of life together. Still, they are not afraid to call their film a romantic documentary.
Elina Pohjola
Born 1981. Elina Pohjola has graduated as a Media Producer from the Turku Arts Academy, and is studying Film and Television Producing at the University of Arts and Design, Helsinki. She’s worked on several Finnish feature films including Producing Adults, A Man’s Job, Tears of April, Ganes and The House of Branching Love. She has also produced several short films as part of her studies and is now a CEO of her own production company, Pohjola-filmi.
2009 O małżeństwie / Avioliitosta / About Marriage (short, doc., co-dir.)
2010 The Forest of Babel (short, co-dir.)
Mike Pohjola
Born 1978. Mike Pohjola is a screenwriter, an author and a game designer, who’s studied at the University of Turku, New York Film Academy and the University of Arts and Design, Helsinki. He’s written three books, a couple of roleplaying games, several theatre plays, and some feature films that are now in development. He’s also a co-founder of the Emmy-winning Swedish media house The company P.
2009 O małżeństwie / Avioliitosta / About Marriage (short, doc., co-dir.)
2010 The Forest of Babel (short, co-dir.)
11 Degrees
11 Degrees attempts to diagnose the climate’s influence on inhabitants of a Scottish town, their behaviour and passion for skiing. Director Anna Frances Ewart evokes a palpable and evolving atmosphere in her film, which charmed a film critic, who wrote, Anna Ewart’s short film is as beautiful as it is melancholy. And it’s really melancholy.
Anna Frances Ewert
Born in 1986 in Villingen, Germany and was raised by German/Irish parents. From an early age drama and film have fascinated her and after she gathered some acting experience in different theatres, she realized that she wanted to become involved in filmmaking instead. After her graduation from secondary school in 2006 she took a gap year in which she participated on student projects as well as worked on a professional production in Berlin. In 2007 she started to study the Film and TV course at the Edinburgh College of Art with the focus on making documentaries and graduated in June 2010.
2009 11 stopni / 11 Degrees (short, doc.)
Walls
Walls is a personal journey through history. Japan occupied Korea between 1910 and 1945, and many who opposed the regime were incarcerated. Today, one of the old prisons holds a museum. Returning to his country, the Korean director juxtaposes changing realities with the history lessons immortalised on the walls.
Hayoun Kwon
Born in Seoul in 1981. She got a DNSEP. She practice performance and video installation, documentary, animation. She has hitherto produced 26 short videos. Her uninhibited graphics produce caustic micro-films mixing documentary pictures and auto-fiction in which we can half-consciously taste typical ingredients of her art: unpretentiousness, free writing and humour. Hayoun especially explores the story of her country and the difficult and complex relationships it has been maintaining with Japan. Currently she is developing a documentary animation on social imprisonment.
2010 Ściany / Des Murs / Walls (short, doc.)
The Chief
Deprived of dialogue and thus even more pure film by communicating only through images and gestures, director Yuri Ancarani shows the manager of a granite quarry. A man’s silence reflects the silence of nature – broken only by the sounds of the quarrymen’s heavy-duty machines.
Yuri Ancarani
Yuri Ancarani was born in Ravenna in 1972. He is a visual artist, director an lecturer in Video Art at the NABA in Milan and at the ABA in Ravenna. His works have been shown at film festivals and at national and international museums.
2010 Szef / Il capo / The Chief (short, doc.)
Mrs Berlin Wall
The Berlin Wall has a wife. Sound absurd? Nonetheless, this Swedish documentary by Julia Herskovits tells the story of such a curious case, devoted to a woman with a special relationship to the infamous concrete divide between East and West Berlin.
Julia Herskovits
Born 1988 in Stockholm. Studied at the KBH film school in Copenhagen during 2009. Currently studying fine art at the Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam.
2009 Żona muru berlińskiego / Frau Berliner Mauer / Mrs Berlin Wall (short, doc.)
The Hidden Smile
A story of a 10-year-old boy, who escapes from home and wants to join a group of street kids, is told against a backdrop of the African landscape. The Hidden Smile is a realistic tale about values as established in a children’s community.
Ventura Durall
Born in Barcelona in 1974. Scriptwriter, director, fiction and documentary producer. ESCAC (Escola Superior de Cinema i Audiovisuals de Catalunya) graduate with a major in script. In 2000 he established the production company Nanouk Films with the intention to create an artistic platform of reference in the Catalan and European audiovisual scene and a new comunication canal of investigation between documentary and fiction fields.
2008 Las dos vidas de Andrés Rabadán
2009 El perdón / The Forgiveness (doc.)
2010 Ukryty uśmiech / El somriure amagat / The Hidden Smile (short, doc.)
A Tall Man
At nearly 2.5 metres, Väinö Myllyrinne was one of the tallest people in the world – and the lead in Jani Peltonen’s film. The director is not merely satisfied with a portrait of the persona, but uses it as a starting point to describe civilization.
Jani Peltonen
Jani Peltonen gratuated from Lahti University of Applied Sciences, Institute of Design, Film and Television Department in 2008. His thesis film was documentary The Great Mill. Since then he had been working in the Finnish film industry in several duties. A Tall Man is his professional debut as a director.
2008 Suuri Mylly / The Great Mill (short, doc.)
2010 Wysoki mężczyzna / Pitkä mies / A Tall Man (short, doc.)