Africa, Asia and Latin America at the BFI International Film Festival
Daniel Nelson
Full-length films with African, Asian and Latin American connections at the BFI International Film Festival (6-17 October) include:
* 4 Feet High, episodes 1-6 of an Argentinian web series following Juana who is determined to lose her virginity and not let her wheelchair hold her back
* A Cop Movie, documentary drama that follows two Mexico City police officers on the beat
* A Hero, Asghar Farhadi’s drama follows gentle-mannered Rahim who is imprisoned for an unpaid debt to his former brother-in-law.
* All About My Sisters, Wang Qiong goes to the heart of her unresolved family trauma and asks critical questions about privacy and permission in documentary practice
* Ahed’s Knee, an Israeli political drama/satire about a filmmaker coming face-to-face with his conscience and the state of a nation’s culture
* A River Runs, Turns, Erases, Replaces, observational portrait of Wuhan that offers a poetic reflection on the pandemic, set against the ever-changing Yangtze
* A Tale of Love and Desire is a French Algerian Tunisian tale of – well, love and desire
* Azor, conspiracy thriller about a Swiss banker and an Argentinian dictatorship where disappearances have becoming a worrying fact of life.
* The Alleys, depicts – an Amman neighbourhood where gossip circles mercilessly and reputation is everything
* Anachronic Chronicles: Voyages Inside/Out Asia, an inventive rewriting of the filmmakers’ home videos
* Bantú Mama, a French-Cameroonian woman runs from a drug deal gone wrong in the Dominican Republic
* Clara Sola, iconoclastic celebration of the power of difference in Costa Rica
* Container, immersive film project that shows how closely modern forms of economic enslavement compare with earlier forms that ‘civilised’ society claims to have cast aside
* Costa Brava Lebanon, in a Lebanon of the near future where the refuse crisis has made Beirut uninhabitable, the simmering tension of unresolved disputes contrasts with the electricity of first love
* Faya Dayi, portrait of the city of Harar and the intimate rituals of Ethiopia’s most lucrative produce, khat
* The Gravedigger’s Wife follows a man desperately seeks help for his ailing wife in Djibouti
* Flee, is an interview between film director Jonas Poher Rasmussen and his school friend Amin, years after they first met, which blossoms into an extraordinary story of love, survival and resilience
* Freda, a strong-willed woman struggles to decide whether to leave the violence of Haiti for the chance of a better life
* Hellbound, first three episodes of mini-series in which South Korea is in the grip of a strange epidemic where people are receiving text messages announcing the exact date and time at which they are going to hell
* Historya Ni Ha, Lav Diaz’s sharp political fable about exploitation, channelled through a ventriloquist’s puppet who embodies art’s redemptive potential.
* Hit the Road, a tender, quirky and funny road movie from debut Iranian film director Panah Panahi
* The Hole in the Fence, a coming-of-age tale exposing the fault lines of contemporary Mexico
* Humidity Alert, farcical, perceptive satire of South Korea’s indie film scene
* Invisible Demons, an unsettling documentary detailing the profound impact of pollution and climate change in New Delhi
* Juju Stories, portmanteau film that presents an alternative Lagos through the modern interpretation of folk tales
* Lingui, the Sacred Bonds, acclaimed African filmmaker Mahamat-Saleh Haroun’s humane and visually ravishing drama about a woman caught between her faith and her love for her daughter
* Little Palestine (Diary of a Siege), Abdallah Al-Khatib records the 2013 brutal siege of the Syrian Yarmouk Camp
* Maya and the Three, four episodes of series by Jorge R. Gutiérrez, a ‘love letter to Mexican culture
* The Medium, supernatural mockumentary that centres on Nim, a shaman who has served as physical host for the benevolent goddess Ba Yan
* Memoria, Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s rumination on memory and the human condition is about a woman visiting her sister in Bogota who becomes obsessed with finding an explanation for a mysterious sound
* Memory Box, teenager Alex covertly goes through her mother’s memorabilia that reveal a difficult adolescence in Beirut
* Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon, a girl has the psychokinetic ability to control the actions of others
* Money Has Four Legs, a journey to the turbulent centre of the Burmese film world
* Nudo Mixteco, triptych of stories centred on indigenous women in the fictional location of San Mateo
* Neptune Frost, an anti-capitalist sci-fi musical entirely shot in Rwanda and made with an entirely Rwandan and Burundian cast and crew, the film explores economic inequality specific to this mining region
* Noah’s Raft, Nigerian filmmaker Joel Kachi Benson’s VR documentary shows how one person with a vision can transform a whole community by means of education
* Omar Amiralay: Sorrow, Time, Silence, moving portrait of a pioneer of Arab non-fiction cinema
* Our Men –drama that explores life for those in the Foreign Legion
* Pedro, a drunken outcast Indian villager accidentally kills a cow and sets off a revelatory chain of events that pits him against his entire community
* Prayers for the Stolen, a coming-of-age story at the centre of a rural community in Mexico blighted by drug cartels
* Queen of Glory, a Ghanaian-American woman’s life is thrown into disarray when she inherits her mother’s Christian bookshop
* Rehana, Abdullah Mohammad Saad’s gripping feminist drama from Bangladesh
* Ripples of Life, tender tale of an indie film crew shooting in a small Chinese town that explores questions of home, celebrity and authenticity
* Sambizanga, (in the Treasures section) neorealist testimony to Angola’s anti-colonialist struggle, not screened there until after independence
* Samsara, Hsin-Chien Huang’s latest work blows your mind with extraordinary visualisations of human existence in an ecstasy of colour and form
* The Sea Ahead takes the pulse of present-day Beirut to prescient and chilling effect
* Small Body, the odyssey of a young mother as she tries to save her baby’s soul
* Two Friends is a portrait of childhood set after the destruction of India’s Babri Mosque
* Vengeance is Mine, All Others Pay Cash, Indonesian director Edwin’s dizzying adaptation of Eka Kurniawan’s novel about an impotent aspiring assassin
* White Building , delves into the impact of gentrification in Phnom Penh
* When a Farm Goes Aflame, Jide Tom Akinleminu unravels the complex history of his Nigerian family
* Welcome to Spain, Spain from the eyes of recently arrived immigrants
* Wood and Water, compassionate and precise record of a woman exploring Hong Kong and awakening to a new side of herself
This list is not complete. Missing films include a large programme of shorts, and films in the categories of Immersive Art and Extended Reality. https://whatson.bfi.org.uk/lff/Online/default.asp?BOparam::WScontent::loadArticle::permalink=filmsevents Full programme.