We present ten documentaries worth watching at the Taiwan International Documentary Festival.

International Competition

Daughter of the Lake by Ernesto Cabellos Damian – Peru | 2015 – 88 min.

Nelida is an Andean woman able to communicate with nature’s spirits. She feels she is the daughter of the lakes that provide water to her village. But just beneath her lakes, a deposit valued at billions of dollars was discovered, and mining it means drying out the lakes. Nelida then uses all her powers to prevent the mining corporation from destroying the lakes.

TRAILER (will open in another window)

Festivals & Awards
2015 – Hot Docs
2015 – Vancouver Latin American Film Festival

Schedule
05.09.2016 – Shin Kong Cineplex 1 – 15:40pm to 16:45pm (with Q&A)
05.11.2016 – Shin Kong Cineplex 1 – 22:10pm to 23:15pm (with Q&A)

Those who feel the fire burn by Morgan Knibbe – Netherlands | 2014 – 74 min.

As a group of refugees tries to enter Europe illegally by boat, a storm suddenly appears and all hell breaks loose when an old man falls overboard. His perception shifts into a dark, hallucinatory place. Driven by a mysterious power and desperately in search of his loved ones, his soul passes by the everyday reality of many castaway refugees at the border of the alleged paradise, Europe.

TRAILER (will open in another window)

Festivals & Awards
2014 – IDFA
2015 – Hot Docs

Schedule
05.10.2016 – Sin Kong Cineplex 1 – 13:00pm – 14-15pm

Asian Vision Competition

Remote Control by Anonymous – France | 2015 – 47 min.

Tehran, June 2013. Massed in front of their TV, the Iranian people comment on the presidential campaign broadcast by national channels. After the post-election riots in 2009, do they still believe in politics? In the privacy of their homes, facing state propaganda and images of the West, Egypt or Syria, women and men freely talk about their hopes, anger and fears.

TRAILER (will open in another window)

Festivals & Awards
2015 – FID, Marseille
2015 – Grand Prize, International Festival Signes de Nuit

Schedule
05.08.2016 – Sin Kong Cineplex 2 – 10:20am to 11:25am (with Q&A)
05.09.2016 – Sin Kong Cineplex 2 – 15:10pm to 16:15pm (with Q&A)

Cities of Sleep by Shaunak Sen – India | 2015 – 74 min.

Cities of Sleep takes us into a heady world of insurgent sleeper’s communities as well as the infamous ‘sleep mafia’ in Delhi where securing a safe sleeping spot often becomes a question of life and death for many people. The film trails the lives of Shakeel, a renegade homeless who has slept in a diverse range of improvised places, and Ranjeet, who runs the ‘sleep-cinema’ community.

TRAILER (will open in another window)

Festivals & Awards
2015 – Jio MAMI Mumbai International Film Festival

Schedule
05.08.2016 – SPOT Huashan A1 – 15:40pm to 16:55am (with Q&A)
05.09.2016 – SPOT Huashan A1 – 20:40pm to 21:55pm (with Q&A)

Taiwanese Competition

Ocean by Ke Chin-yuan – Taiwan | 2015 – 58 min.

This thirty-five section, no-narration, no-music visual story is a true minimalist dialogue with fishermen. Unadorned and unadulterated, Ocean displays a collection of recorded marine images in a plain and simple way. Gazing at the images, one sees a true representation of marine life and the myriad ways humans capture nutrients from the ocean, as well as the ocean’s power to strike back.

TRAILER (will open in another window)

Schedule
05.08.2016 – SPOT Huashan A2 – 21:30pm to 22:30pm (with Q&A)
05.12.2016 – SPOT Huashan A1 – 10:50am to 11:50am

The Mountain by Su Hung-en – Taiwan | 2015 – 60 min.

For hundreds of years, Taiwan has been under different colonial rules. Each regime left their footprints on this island. Only the indigenous people of this island experienced them all. They were given different names during different periods of colonisation and their cultures have been changed. Through the life of a Truku elder, we see the history of aboriginal recertification movement.

TRAILER (will open in another window)

Festivals & Awards
2015 – Taiwan International Ethnographic Film Festival
2015 – Grand Prize, South Taiwan Film Festival

Schedule
05.11.2016 – SPOT Huashan A1 – 10:50am to 11:50am (with Q&A)

Panorama

Homeland (Iraq Year Zero) by Abbas Fahdel – France, Iraq | 2015 – 334 min.

This two-part documentary chronicles the everyday life in Iraq before and after the U.S. invasion. In Part I, the director filmed a group of Iraqis, mostly members of his family, in their expectation of the war. This part ends with the start of U.S. strikes on Baghdad. Part II shows the consequences of this invasion on the main characters. It ends with the violent death of the filmmaker’s nephew, twelve-year-old Haidar.

TRAILER (will open in another window)

Festivals & Awards
2015 – Best Feature Film, Visions du Réel
2015 – Award of Excellence & Citizens’ Prize, Yamagata

Schedule
05.12.2016 – Shin Kong Cineplex 1 – 12:40pm to 18:15pm (with Q&A)
05.14.2016 – Shin Kong Cineplex 1 – 13:30pm to 19:05pm (with Q&A)

I am the people by Anna Roussillon – Egypt, France | 2014 – 111 min.

As the Egyptian people rise up in Tahrir Square, rural villagers in the south are watching the revolution on TV. From the overthrow of MUBARAK to the fall of MORSI, the film follows the upheavals through the eyes of Farraj, a peasant in the Nile valley near Luxor. In the daily life of the farmer, between hopes and disappointments, change is a long time coming.

TRAILER (will open in another window)

Festivals & Awards
2014 – Best Film of Best World Documentary Film Award, Jihlava IDFF

Schedule
05.10.2016 – Shin Kong Cineplex 2 – 15:10pm to 17:05pm

Documemory Re-enactment

The Thin Blue Line by Errol Morris – USA | 1988 – 103 min.

The Thin Blue Line depicts the true story of the arrest and conviction of Randall ADAMS for the murder of a Dallas policeman in 1976, a crime for which he was sentenced to death. The film is credited with overturning ADAMS’ conviction. It also pioneered a new kind of non-fiction filmmaking with its use of expressionistic re-enactments, interview material and music by Philip GLASS.

TRAILER (will open in another window)

Festivals & Awards
1988 – Best Documentary, Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards
2002 – IDFA

Schedule
05.09.2016 – Sin Kong Cineplex 2 – 10:30am to 12:15pm
05.12.2016 – Sin Kong Cineplex 2 – 19:10pm to 20:55pm

Scars of Cambodia by Emilie Arfeuil & Alexandre Liebert – France | 2013 – 30 min.

Tut is a 52-year-old fisherman living in Kampot. Despite the language barrier, he told, for the first time and without any words, about his past during the Khmer Rouge regime, to a photographer and a film director, showing the hard treatments he experienced in a prison the year he turned fifteen. This shared encounter talks about the buried memory and how it marks someone for life.

TRAILER (will open in another window)

Festivals & Awards
2014 – Best International Short Documentary Award, IDFF Mexico City

Schedule
05.09.2016 – Shin Kong Cineplex 2 – 13:00pm to 14:30pm
05.14.2016 – Shin Kong Cineplex 2 – 15:40pm to 17:10pm (with Q&A)

To confirm schedule hours please visit the official webpage of the festival here: Taiwan International Documentary Festival