AFF 2020: Films from France and other countries – not in French

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Last week we told you about the Adelaide Film Festival 2020 (AFF 2020) films that are in French. In this article we tell you about the 5 films co-produced with France, which are not in French as well as a film with a French theme which are showing at AFF 2020.

AFF 2020

AFF 2020: French co-prodouctions not in French

 

Beginning

https://adelaidefilmfestival.org/event/beginning-2/

Having abandoned an acting career to become a Jehovah’s Witness missionary in a remote Georgian village at her husband’s suggestion, Yana finds herself under pressure when locals burn their place of worship during a service. The men surrounding her , police, her husband, her son and God, are all unsympathetic and manipulative. Yana searches for peace.

This Franco-Georgian film from new Georgian female director Déa Kulumbegashvili and showcases her signature style while telling Yana’s story in an unconventional fashion.

FROM: Georgia, France

IN: Georgian

 

 

Epicentro

https://adelaidefilmfestival.org/event/epicentro/

A documentary from Austrian born, French based director Hubert Sauper. Epicentro asks about the lingering effects of American international imperialism in Cuba and the Spanish-American War in 1898 being the first war in which cinema played an important role.

Rather than ask the opinions of experts, Hubert Sauper prefers to turn to children (or “little prophets” as he refers to them) and people he meets in the streets of Cuba.

FROM: AUSTRIA & FRANCE

IN: SPANISH & ENGLISH

 

In the dusk

https://adelaidefilmfestival.org/event/in-the-dusk/

It’s 1948 in Lithuania. The war may be over but the struggle is just beginning. Untė, 19, is resisting Soviet occupation as part of the partisan movement. Their resistance is compromised however, not by their small place in world geopolitics, but by turning on each other in betrayal and retribution.

FROM: Lithuania, France, Czech Republic, Portugal, Serbia, Latvia

IN: Lithuanian


Memory House

https://adelaidefilmfestival.org/event/memory-house/

Memory House is the debut feature film from Brazilian film-maker João Paulo Miranda Maria.

In the white, white world of a milk factory there lives a black man, transplanted from the North of Brazil to a former Austrian colony in the country’s South.

One day an abandoned house he discovers will remind him of his origins. As he settles into the abandoned house, reason starts to slip away, and the barriers between human and animal become more and more tenuous.

FROM: Brazil, France

IN: German, Portuguese

 

Symbiosis

https://adelaidefilmfestival.org/event/animation-shorts/

Symbiosis is a short film which depicts an evocative migration of envy. A wife stalks her husband to understand the women he’s cheating with.

Winner of the Grand jury award at SXSW, Symbiosis is part of the Adelaide Film Festival 2020 Animation Shorts program. It screens alongside French language short-film Genius Loci.

FROM: France, Hungary

No dialogue

 

AFF 2020: Film with a French theme

 

Phil Liggett: The Voice of Cycling

https://adelaidefilmfestival.org/event/phil-liggett-the-voice-of-cycling/

Phil Liggett has delivered commentary of 47 Tours de France and 15 Olympic Games.

This documentary from duo Eleanor Sharp and Nickolas Bird is the follow-up to their other cycling work MAMIL in 2017. In Phil Liggett: the voice of cycling they ask “how much longer can Phil continue to be the voice of cycling?”

 

AFF 2020 Tickets

AFF 2020 has a number of ticketing options available to cater to those who want to see one or a few films right up to those who want to go to see every single film at AFF 2020.

 

INDIVIDUAL TICKETS

Individual ticket prices are $20 plus booking fee for adults ($17 plus booking fee for concession card holders or film industry and $10 plus booking fee for youth.

 

MULTI-PASSES

Then there are 3, 7 and 10 film multi-passes which range from $50 plus booking fee to $120 plus booking fee for adults.

 

GOLD AND PREMIUM PASSES

The AFF 2020 Gold Pass costs $299 plus booking fee and gets you 1 ticket to every standard screening and an official AFF 2020 lanyard. While the Platinum pass, which costs $499, gives you the following additions: 1 ticket to each of the Opening nights and Galas, Party invitations, special events, concierge service to help you book tickets on your pass.

 

You can purchase the various passes or tickets via this link:

https://adelaidefilmfestival.org/passes/

 

AFF 2020 PROGRAM

You can view the entirety of the Adelaide Film Festival 2020 program here https://adelaidefilmfestival.org/program/

 

Which films are you going to see at Adelaide Film Festival 2020?

 

Subscribe

Enter your email to subscribe to new article notifications about all things French and francophone in Australia

Cats, detours and natural disasters- short films at BIFF 2020

Reading Time: 6 minutes

For the French language short films at BIFF, cats, detours and natural disasters are the themes.

All three French language short films showing at BIFF 2020 are completely different in theme and in style.

 

There is the Australian production in French of A man and a cat (Un homme et un chat), the Malian film N’diajnemo and the French production Sororelle.  Below we give you brief reviews of these films.

 

BIFF 2020 Short film strands/beats

BIFF has divided its short films into categories or what they call “beats”:

  • Heart Beats
  • Life Beats
  • Mind Beats
  • Off Beats
  • Short beats
  • Wild beats

The short films we review below screen with other films in the same “beat”.

 

courts-metrages en français au BIFF

A man and a cat (Un homme et un chat)

A man and a cat is a film from director Kevin Spink. It is a Screen Queensland Short Film Award Nominee. It’s screening in the Heart Beats short film strand at BIFF 2020. 

 

From the opening scene in which Thomas Cocquerel’s character is giving a presentation, we are immersed into the surreal world in which this man lives. The walls of the room are covered from ceiling to floor and wall to wall in colourful post-it notes.

 

On arriving home he finds an angry-looking ginger cat on his doorstep, who makes itself at home upon the door being opened. 

 

The interior of this house is perhaps just as surreal. All of the portrait prints adorning the walls are not of humans, but animals, but dressed like humans. Is this perhaps an inkling that we are in an animal’s house, not a human’s house? The cat certainly seems to act like it owns the place – but then again don’t all cats?

 

Cocquerel’s movements are mime-like and exaggerated which offer a dream-like quality to the film. Perhaps an ode to the likes of Jacques Tati and Marcel Marceau from times gone by. This together with the colourful, animal dominated setting bring a sense of the whimsical to A man and a cat

 

It’s quite rare to find a French language film shot in Australia, let alone directed by an Australian director. The French language against the Brisbane backdrop both let us be whisked away while bringing us back to the familiar quintessential Australian suburbia. 

 

A delightful short film for cat-lovers and cat-haters alike. 

🥐🥐🥐🥐🥐

5 CROISSANTS

A man and a cat: https://biff.com.au/event/a-man-and-a-cat/

Director: Kevin Spink

Year: 2020

Duration: 13 minutes

Cast: Thomas Cocquerel, Bryan Probets, Hugh Parker

A man and a cat is screening in the Heart Beats short film strand at BIFF 2020. 

Courts-metrages en français au BIFF

 

 

courts-metrages en français au BIFF

N’diajnemo

N’diajnemo is the latest short film from director Habib Yazki. Yazki has not only worked on his own short films but has produced advertisements and short documentaries for the likes of Longchamp, Nike, Biotherm, Starbucks and National Geographic.  His previous short film Bamako Chicken was part of the official selection at a number of film festivals including St. Louis International Film Festival, Brooklyn Film Festival, Helsinki African Film Festival, and Ethnografilm.

 

Shot in grainy, documentary style, N’diajnemo takes us on a wild comedic ride through two days with David (David Joël Konaté) and Cheick (Cheick Nomoko). David, sensible, preparing for an audition, which could take him to the USA, is the complete opposite to care-free, reckless Cheick. On the eve of the audition, David wants to buy a CD but wants to do so without Cheick’s usual “petits detours”. What follows is exactly the kind of detours and adventure that David is not looking for. 

 

The film opens with vehicles, and a lot of cows, on the busy streets of Bamako, Mali. Yet much of the film actually takes place in the secluded alleyways of the city. Quite a contrast to the chaotic world in which Cheick lives

 

Frustrating as it must be to be poor David, at the whim of Cheick’s detours of the day, you can’t help but like Cheick as a character. 

 

Remarkably, in these 13 minutes, Habib Yazdi has made a film in which there are laughs, some tense moments and even redemption.  

 

Injuries, being on the run, childhood memories, vengeance and regrets, N’Diajnemo has it all!

🥐🥐🥐🥐🥐

5 CROISSANTS

N’diajnemo

Director: Habib Yazdi

Year: 2020

Duration: 13 minutes

Cast: David Joël Konaté, Cheick Nomoko, Nafissatou Traoré, Alhassane Ly

N’diajnemo is screening as part of the Life Beats strand at BIFF 2020.

 

—-

courts-metrages en français au BIFF - Sororelle

Sororal (Sororelle)

Sororal, meaning sisterly, centres on three sisters located deep inland who are warned a flood is coming by someone fleeing for higher ground. 

 

Directors Frédéric Even and Louise Mercadier are self-taught directors. Frederic graduated from Paris’ Sorbonne University with a Literature degree, whereas Louise studied sculpture and animation at the “Ateliers des Beaux Arts” in Paris. “Sororal” is their second short film following their initial stop-motion short Metamorphose.

 

Screening as part of the Short Beats short film strand at BIFF 2020, Sororal has already won the directors a number of prizes in film festivals around the world. These include the Warsaw International Film Festival 2019, International Film Festival of Guayaquil 2019, International Animation Film Festival of Paris 2019, Xiamen Cybersousa 2019, Findecoin Festival 2020 of Puerto La Cruz, National Animation Film Festival 2020 in Rennes, Golden Ger International Film Festival 2020 in Ulaanbaatar, and at the Budapest Short Film Festival 2020.

 

Visually Sororal is very impressive. The characters are portrayed by incredible puppets, made of resin.  Their faces were sculpted after a 3D modelling and printing process. The joinery lines on the face and limbs are not hidden but rather add a realness and perhaps a fragility to the characters the puppets embody. 

 

Lighting provides a sombre mood matching that in which the sisters find themselves upon hearing the news of the pending natural disaster. 

 

The desolate landscape matches the women’s appearance as they struggle with the news given by the fellow villager. The women also begin to match the changing landscape. Two of the sisters feeling the impacts of the approaching flood start to have sore fleshy wounds appear on their skin.  The third sister, for some reason unknown to the viewer, and perhaps even the sisters themselves, does not have the same wounds.

 

While visually extremely impressive, this short film is not one in which a lot happens. Rather, Sororal is a contemplative, visual delight. 

 

🥐🥐🥐🥐

4 CROISSANTS

Sororal (Sororelle)

https://biff.com.au/event/sororal/

Directors: Frédéric Even, Louise Mercadier

Year: 2019

Duration: 15 minutes

Image: https://www.simonfilliot.fr/sororelle.html

 

TICKETS

N’diajnemo is screening as part of the Life Beats stream on 10 and 11 October. You can find out more about the films it is screening with and purchase your tickets here:

https://biff.com.au/event/short-films-life-beats/ 

 

A man and a cat is screening as part of the Heart Beats short-film stream on 4 and 9 October at BIFF 2020. You can find out more about the films it is screening with and purchase your tickets here:

https://biff.com.au/event/short-films-heart-beats/ 

 

Sororal is screening as part of the Short Beats stream at BIFF 2020 on 6 and 10 October 2020. You can find out more about the films it is screening with and purchase your tickets here:

https://biff.com.au/event/short-films-short-beats/ 

 

Tickets cost $16.50 for adults and there are discounts available for concession card holders, QAGOMA Members and children.

 

To find out about other films in French showing at BIFF, click here.

 

To view the entire BIFF 2020 program, check out their website here: 

https://biff.com.au/ 

 

What’s your favourite short-film in French?

 

Subscribe

Enter your email to subscribe to new article notifications about all things French and francophone in Australia