We present a list of 15 Film and 5 Short Films you can’t miss at the DMZ Korean International Documentary Film Festival (DMZ Docs) that will be held from September 22th – 29th in South Korea.
After breaking the silence by Park Bae-il – South Korea | 2016 – 81 min.
Korean Competition
4th April 2014. Workers who worked in ‘SaengTak’ are get to the struggle to require adjust of working environment for safely food, and guaranteed a Three Right of labors. Then, Worker’s tried to record there’s own struggle and launch forth to street, However, Law, Capital, unconcern of crowd and avoid of facile are swallow up them.
After Spring, the Tamaki Family… by Huang Yin-yu – Japan, Taiwan | 2016 – 96 min.
Asian Competition
On a warm spring day in 2015, Grandma Tamayo and the Tamaki family, the largest immigrant family on Yaeyama Islands of Okinawa, goes a journey back home where they’d long left before World War II: Taiwan, on which they little by little steer out of the disorientation of their memory and complex identity. This is a heartwarming home movie spanning 80 years about how a family together wades through and eventually revives in the tide of the vicissitudes in East Asian history.
All Live, Olive by Kim Tae-il and Ju Ro-mi – South Korea | 2016 – 91 min.
Korean Competition
Wizdan lives in the rural village of Sebastia. Both their parents are olive farmers. With the expansion of Israeli settlements, Wizdan’s and Nidal’s parents are losing their farmland, but the problem is not theirs alone. But many Palestinians have been living in refugee camps for almost 70 years, and the fourth generation of refugees are growing up in refugee camps today. They struggle to guard their land despite repeated humiliation, and the film focuses on the resistance of such ordinary Palestinians including Wizdan’s family.
Cities of Sleep by Shaunak Sen – India | 2015 – 74 min.
Asian Competition
Cities of Sleep takes us into a sleeper’s communities as well as the infamous ‘sleep mafia’ in Delhi where just securing a safe sleeping spot often becomes a question of life and death. The film trails the lives of two individuals. Shakeel tries to find a safe sleeping space and Ranjeet runs the ‘sleep-cinema’ community. The film looks at not only the tremendous social and political pressure that sleep exerts on the homeless in the city but is also a philosophical exploration of sleep at large.
Depth Two by Ognjen Glavonic – Serbia, France | 2016 – 80 min.
International Competition
In 2001 a mass grave was discovered in a suburb of Belgrade. Depth Two investigates the hidden story behind this horrid discovery and takes us back to 1999 and the NATO bombings in Serbia. Using the verbal testimonies of perpetrators and victims, it unfolds like a hypnotic thriller that visits the places where the crimes happened 17 years ago and follows the trail of this untold massacre, in an attempt to uncover and give a voice to the stories that are still intentionally buried in silence.
Hooligan Sparrow by Wang Nanfu – China, US | 2016 – 84 min.
Asian Competition
Six elementary school girls were sexually abused by their principal in Hainan Province of southern China, but the states shrugged off the case. Haiyan, alias Hooligan Sparrow, organized a demonstration to protest the case and was marked as enemies of the state. She never stopped struggling under constant government surveillance, imprisonment, face interrogation and harassment, and her story spread quickly through the Internet.
In Jackson Heights by Frederick Wiseman – US | 2015 – 190 min.
Jackson Heights, Queens, New York City, 167 languages are spoken, is one of the most ethnically and culturally diverse communities in the World. The people live in Jackson Heights, in their cultural, racial and ethnic diversity, are representative of the new wave of immigrants to America. The subject of the film is the daily life of the people in this community and the conflict between maintaining ties to traditions of the countries of origin and the need to learn and adapt to American ways and values.
Mrs.B., a North Korean Woman by Jero Yun – South Korea | 2016 – 72 min.
The documentary was forcibly sold to a Chinese farmer by her smugglers. To earn a living in China and help her family, who remained in North Korea, Mrs. B. turned to drug trafficking. She succeeds in getting her husband and sons smuggled into South Korea and then leaves herself with a group of illegal migrants to join her children at last. Her life takes a completely unexpected turn than the one she’d dreamed of.
Red Clothes by Chan Lida | Cambodia – 2016 – 65 min.
Asian Competition
In a suburb of Phnom Penh, where Cambodia’s textile industry is flourishing, Ty Sophanith lives with his wife and his five years old son. The young workers, former peasant from the countryside of Kampong Chhnang, were hired by the factory, supplier to the well-known brands in the West, but the couple lives in starvation wage. Sophanith was wounded by the police bullets during a demonstration for their better working conditions, The Cambodian workers’ demonstration is getting violent.
Seven Years-Journalism without Journalist by Kim Jin-hyuk
South Korea | 2016 – 111 min.
A total of 20 journalists have been fired since 2008, the beginning of Lee Myung-bak’s presidential term. They fought against the companies that they worked for succumbing to power and are now frustrated at reality where censorship of the press by authority has now become a norm. Can they continue their activities as journalists?
The Road by Zhang Zanbo – China | 2016 – 95 min.
The Chinese director Zhang Zanbo managed in 2010 to get unique and unprecedented access to the implementation of the 586 billion USD financial plan that the Chinese government implemented as an attempt to minimize the impact of the financial crisis on the world’s second largest economy. For more than three years the director filmed the making of a section of a highway through a quiet village in Hunan, a province in central China. This is the province where Chairman Mao was born. The result is a rare insight to China and its economy.
The Song of Rice by Uruphong Raksasad – Thailand | 2014 – 75 min.
This is a visual record of rice culture and its influences on the people in different parts of Thailand. The lyrical structure of this documentary film reflects the melodies in the songs of rice, crafted and composed by the diverse harmonies of the people who may sing in different voices but who share the same heart. This is the final movie in the rice trilogy that began with stories from the north and agrarian utopia.
Those Who Jump by Abou Bakar Sidibé, Moritz Siebert, Estephan Wagner
Denmark | 2016 – 82 min.
International Competition
In northern Morocco lies the Spanish enclave of Melilla: Europe on African Land. On the mountain above live over a thousand hopeful African migrants, watching the land border, a fence system separating Morocco and Spain. Abou from Mali is one of them. For over a year, he has ceaselessly persisted in attempting to jump the fence. At the fence, they have to overcome the razor-wire, automatic pepper spray and brutal authorities. Some give up and return home, others never return from the fence.
Traces of an Invisible City by Bo Wang, Pan Lu
Hong Kong, US, South Korea | 2016 – 70min.
Asian Competition
The film presents urban space in Hong Kong as a vivid showcase of the hidden logics of globalization, capitalism and historical changes of today’s world cities. The film contains three chapters that is parallel to but interwoven with each other: global, local and border space. The film examines a series of urban landscapes in Hong Kong to illustrate the tension among their visual existence, function and ownership, and how the city’s public space has been constructed, used, owned and interpreted.
When Two Worlds Collide by Heidi Brandenburg, Mathew Orzel
Peru, UK | 2016 – 103 min.
Tense and wholly immersive, this film take you directly into the line of fire between two, powerful Peruvian leaders over the future of the country. When president Alan Garcia attempts to extracts oil and minerals from untouched Amazonian land with the hopes of elevating his country’s economic prosperity, he is met with fierce, violent opposition led by indigenous leader Alberto Pizango. This film capture all angles of a conflict that quickly escalates from a heated war of words to one of deadly violence.
International Competition
Short Films
Adults Only by Ahn Soo-hyeon, Cho Han-nah, Jin Ji-won
South Korea | 2016 – 25 min.
Youth Competition
The flower of democracy: Right to vote. Why only for adults?
Away from Ayah by Amelia Tan – Singapore | 2015 – 13 min.
Away from Ayah is an intimate look into the life of Ipin (not his real name), a 12-year-old boy coping with his father in prison. This film explores the emotional impact on a child through Ipin’s perspective as he narrates his thoughts and feelings. Considering how important it is to have a parent throughout a child’s formative years, he may grow up differently from his peers.
Between 9 and 0 by Kim Su-min – South Korea | 2015 – 10 min.
Youth Competition
I once set the goal. When I became twenty, it would be time to be independent. Many aspect of independence of my life at 20, which I am approaching closer, looked achievable, but I found that has been very difficult task. Being independent meant not only financially from parents’ help, but building my own concrete world view. So I choose a path to experience some controversial sites by myself to taste some.
The Living Forest by Marc Silver – UK | 2015 – 9 min.
The Kichwa tribe in the Sarayaku region of the Amazon in Ecuador believes in the ‘living forest’, where humans, animals and plants live in harmony. They are fighting oil companies who want to exploit their ancestral land, and have been doing so since Nina Gualinga was a child. A delegation of indigenous people, including Nina, went to the Paris COP21 climate conference to make sure their voices were heard. Along with other indigenous groups, they sailed down the Seine in a specially-constructed canoe.
We Can Call It Love by Min Ge-o – South Korea | 2015 – 10 min.
Youth Competition
Is there a definite border between friendship and love that people feel? Friends at school talk affectionately to each other, walking down the hall in hand or arm-in-arm, and they also never mind giving a sweet hug to each other. As long as they value each other, sometimes they feel jealous of him or her, as more than just friends …
To know more about the festival you can see the FESTIVAL PROFILE or go to the official website to know all the screening times and dates HERE.
Categories: Film Festival
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