Mediterrane Film Festival
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Mediterrane Film Festival
The Mediterrane Film Festival is a celebration of film and creativity that brings together the best of the Mediterranean region and beyond. Established in 2023, the annual event takes place in the beautiful islands of Malta and aims to unite countries to foster collaboration, opportunity, and a shared love for film.
The festival showcases exceptional films from the region and serves as a platform for filmmakers, industry professionals, and enthusiasts to connect, exchange ideas, and create partnerships for future projects.
Nocturnes
Date and Time: Monday, June 24th at 4.30PM
Duration: 1 hour 22 minutes (82 minutes)
Language: Hindi, English, Bugun
An immersive viewing experience of sound and imagery, the film weaves together an intricate and poetic tapestry of our world. Ecologist Mansi sets out on a quest to study moths in one of the most vibrant places on earth. She teams up with Bicki, a young man from the indigenous Bugun community, to seek clues about what the future has in store for the moths.
Together, Mansi and Bicki traverse the landscape, meticulously working night after night to put up light screens that transform into a dynamic canvas with moths of varying sizes, designs and textures, creating a painterly effect with their form, movement and color. Meanwhile, the human beings wait, watch and listen with patient anticipation and wonder.
By focusing on a small, ephemeral, nocturnal creature like the moth, NOCTURNES seeks to question an human-centric view of the world. The lush forest, throbbing with a vast diversity of life, emerges as a breath-taking character as the film responds to the symphony of sounds and the inherent rhythms of the trees, the wind and the rain. The result is a rare and transformative experience that invites us all to look with more attention and care at the hidden interconnections in nature.
Who Do I Belong To
Date and Time: Monday, June 24th at 7:00 PM
Duration: 118 minutes
Language: Arabic
Synopsis: Aicha, a Tunisian mother gifted with prophetic dreams, lives in a rural farm with her husband Brahim and three sons. Aicha and Brahim’s lives are completely changed after the departure of their eldest sons, Mehdi and Amine, to the violent embrace of ISIS. Having lived their lives solely for their children, Aicha and Brahim find themselves groundless and trying to make sense of a painful new reality.
A few months later, Mehdi returns home with a pregnant wife named Reem. Reem’s niqab and silence deeply unsettles Brahim. Aicha, on the other hand, wants to protect Mehdi and Reem at all cost.
Meanwhile, Mehdi’s arrival triggers strange happenings in the village. Aicha is too consumed with protecting her son and barely notices the rising fear in the community. Aicha must overcome her blind love for Mehdi in order to discover the truth behind the growing darkness.
My Way
Date and Time: Tuesday, June 25th at 4:00 PM
Duration: 1 hour 18 minutes (78 minutes)
A compelling voyage to the heart of an iconic song that explores the timeless classic’s universal appeal and long-lasting legacy.
Sweet Dreams
Date and Time: Tuesday, June 25th at 5:30 PM
Duration: 1 hour 42 minutes (102 minutes)
Language: Dutch, Indonesian
On a remote Indonesian island during the waning days of the colonial era, Dutch plantation owner Jan and his sickly wife Agathe are at the top of the food chain. Their sugar factory has seen better times, just like their marriage, but disaster strikes when after an exuberant feast, Jan returns from his nightly visit to his concubine, Siti to drop dead in front of his unwavering wife.
Desperate to keep the privileges of her status quo, Agathe secretly disposes of her husband’s corpse and forces her son Cornelis to arrive from Europe and take over the family business.
With him, Cornelis brings his spoiled, pregnant wife Josefien and progressive ideas for the plantation and factory workers. As the old colonial world is collapsing and the native Indonesians gain power, ideals prove to be idle and blood thicker than water when it is revealed that Jan has left the family estate to his ten year old bastard son, with native, Siti.
Following her debut Take Me Somewhere Nice (RIFF Special Jury Award / Cannes ACID) & IMPORT (Cannes Quinzaine) Ena Sendijareviç blends unforgiving satire with lavish aesthetics in a game of cat and mouse that documents the tragic and delicious demise of European colonialism.
Negu Hurbilak
Date and Time: Wednesday, June 26th at 4:30 PM
Duration: 1 hour 30 minutes (90 minutes)
Language: Basque
In 2011, the prolonged armed conflict in the Basque Country appears to come to an end. A young woman flees with a clear goal: to cross the border, the “muga”. She knows this will take her away from her home and roots, where she is no longer safe. During her escape, she arrives in Zubieta, a border village where ancient myths and modern conflicts seem to converge. Hidden in the attic of one of the town’s houses in the village, she begins to observe an unchanging everyday life.
Time passes — a hazy, indefinite passage where days blur into nights and nights into days. Her escape becomes increasingly labyrinthine, getting completely enveloped in the dense fog…
Meeting With Pol Pot
Date and Time: Wednesday, June 26th at 7:00 PM
Duration: 1 hour 52 minutes (112 minutes)
Language: French, Khmer
Democratic Kampuchea (Cambodia) – 1978. Three French journalists are invited by the Khmer Rouge to conduct an exclusive interview of the regime’s leader, Pol Pot. The country seems ideal. But behind the Potemkin village, the Khmer Rouge regime is declining and the war with Vietnam threatens to invade the country. The regime is looking for culprits, secretly carrying out a large scale genocide. Under the eyes of the journalists, the beautiful picture cracks, revealing the horror. Their journey progressively turns into a nightmare. Freely inspired by journalist Elizabeth Becker’s account in When The War Was Over.
Link to Youtube Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LzJCnxiMEFQ
Palazzina Laf
Date and Time: Thursday, June 27th at 4:30 PM
Duration: 1 hour 39 minutes (99 minutes)
Language: Italian
Taranto, 1997. Caterino, a simple workman at Ilva industrial complex, is secretly recruited as whistle-blower by the company’s top management in order to check on the employees and workers who are disliked by the new business administration. During his spying activities, incapable of feeling his role as unethical, Caterino asks to be relocated at Palazzina Laf, where some workers are punished by being devoid of any duties and responsibilities. Even if it looks live heaven, Caterino will find out for himself that it is a perverse strategy applied by the company’s management to psychologically bend troublesome workers, pushing them to resign or demote. In short time, the man will have to choose between the obedience to the factory and the relations of friendship that he has established with people he has to control. Based on a true story, it is the first official case of mobbing and bossing in Italy.
The Strangers’ Case
Date and Time: Thursday, June 27th at 7:00 PM
Duration: 1 hour 37 minutes (97 minutes)
Language: Arabic, English, Greek
In Sir Thomas More, Shakespeare wrote a speech in which More makes a passionate defence for refugees, pleading for empathy from his fellow countrymen and culminating in a poignant description of the plight of refugees – “The Strangers’ Case” – which persists today.
A doctor and her daughter come home following a chaotic shift at an Aleppo hospital. In the midst of a birthday celebration the two women are forced to make a difficult decision that will forever change their lives and their relationship.
A soldier witnesses heinous crimes towards men, women and children in service of the Syrian regime. As the violence and corruption escalate, he finds himself reevaluating his own humanity.
A smuggler in Turkey tries desperately to make ends meet for his young son. In an effort to save enough money to afford their own escape, he arranges for passage to Greece on inflatable liferafts to refugees in a nearby camp for a steep price.
A poet who has made it to the safety of a Turkish refugee camp with his young family barters for space on an overcrowded boat, which is pushed out into rough seas, bound for Greece.
A Greek coastguard captain spends his days and nights rescuing sinking lifeboats full of migrants off the coast of Lesvos, constantly haunted by those he wasn’t able to save.
The Rye Horn
Date and Time: Friday, June 28th at 4:30 PM
Duration: 1 hour 43 minutes (105 minutes)
Language: Spanish
Synopsis: 1971, Francoist Spain. In the Galician countryside María assists women in childbirth. After an attempt to help a young woman in trouble, she suddenly has to hide from the authorities, leave everything behind and flee the country.
On her perilous journey to Portugal, María encounters female solidarity and realizes that she is not alone and that, thanks to the help of others, she might finally find her freedom.
Hayat
Date and Time: Sunday, June 30th at 2:00 PM
Duration: 3 hours 13 minutes (193 minutes)
Language: Turkish
In 1985, I had a job hanging advertising posters in gas stations all over Anatolia. At one point on my travels, I found myself waiting for the bus on a deserted road just outside a village. Across the road, I noticed a girl waiting by a small grocery store, as bored as I was. We began by making eye contact and then quickly became carried away by the moment.
After a while, a bus turned up. I got on and naturally never saw the girl again. I don’t remember much about the place or how long we were there; but I have never forgotten that encounter, the girl’s loneliness, and the deep pain I felt for no reason.”
“Hayat” is a story I wrote inspired by this memory, by stories I have experienced, witnessed and heard over the years, and by lifelong observations. Although it may have the look of a youth and family drama set within a specific group of people, it is fundamentally an age-old story about human destiny, our helplessness in the face of it, and the sense of sheer impossibility that goes with it.
Link to Youtube Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MPAbrvQxQA
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