The Competition Programme for the 6th World Cinema Amsterdam festival has been announced! This year, we will screen nine films from nine countries which will compete to win the World Cinema Amsterdam Jury Award. Four of the nine nominated films are first features.
The winner of the World Cinema Jury Award will be granted a cash prize s/he can use for his/her next film project. All competition titles will be screened in Rialto and De Balie.
The nominees
Nine films from nine countries have been nominated for the World Cinema Jury Award 2015:
IXCANUL (Jayro Bustamante, Guatemala, France, 2015) Opening & NL Première*
Mayan people play a subordinate role in Guatemalan society. This is reason enough for director Bustamante to give them a voice. He does that with this award-winning coming-of-age drama about 17-year-old Maria. She is about to be married off to Ignacio, the plantation foreman. Maria though secretly desires coffee cutter Pepe, who shares her dream of starting a new life elsewhere.
THE BODA BODA THIEVES (Donald Mugisha, Uganda, South Africa, Kenya, Germany, 2015) – NL Première
An African view on a famous film classic BICYCLE THIEVES. Unemployed teenager Abel finds himself forced to take after the work of his father, who is a motorbike-taxi driver in Kampala, capital city of Uganda. Things go very wrong and the boda boda ends up being stolen. All Abel can do is go looking for it in the big city.
CABALLOS (Fabián Suárez, Cuba, 2015) – World Premiere*
The lonely Robi gets entangled in a love triangle with the sick Salomon and the mysterious singer Galaxia. With few resources, but with lots of artistic audacity, Cuban director Suárez proves himself with this original black and white gem inspired by the work of American photographer Robert Mapplethorpe and singer Patti Smith.
MUSTANG (Deniz G. Ergüven, Turkey, France, Germany, Qatar, 2015) - NL Première*
The setting is Turkey, a Black Sea coastal village. School's just out and the five orphaned sisters Lale, Nur, Ece, Selma and Sonay join a couple of boys from their class to have fun and fool around on the beach. Seeing the girls with the boys, a curious, meddlesome neighbour immediately reports them to their extremely conservative guardians. All hell breaks loose and their home literally becomes a prison.
NECKTIE YOUTH (Sibs Shongwe-La Me, South-Africa, The Netherlands, 2015) - NL Première *
Drugs, alcohol and anti-depressives dominate the lives of the kids growing up in Sandton, a posh suburb of Johannesburg, the wealthiest part of Africa. And here's where 19-year-old Emily kills herself. But why does she do this? Emily's friends react to her suicide. The first post-apartheid generation has problems of its own.
OUR LITTLE SISTER (Kore-eda Hirokazu, Japan, 2015) - NL Première
The three sisters Sachi, Yoshino and Chika attend together to the funeral of their father, a man who walked out on them 15 years ago. There they find out that they have a 13-year-old half-sister called Suzu. As Suzu's mother is unable to care for her daughter, her three half-sisters offer to take her in. Things turn out not to be so simple in practice.
QUE HORAS ELA VOLTA? (Anna Muylaert, Brazil, 2015) - NL Première
Val works as live-in housekeeper for a wealthy family in São Paulo. One day she receives news from her daughter Jessica, who asks if she can come stay with her for a while. And of course she is welcome. But Jessica has ideas of her own, an soon she will refuse to conform to the status quo that reigns in the house.
REFUGIADO (Diego Lerman, Argentina, 2015) - NL Première
Buenos Aires: 8-year-old Matias' mother Laura ends up in the hospital after she's beaten up by her husband. Once recovered, she decides that it has been enough, and so she takes refuge together with her son in a battered women's shelter. She is still not safe though, as her violent husband refuses to leave her alone and keeps looking for her. Laura and Matias flee.
DHEEPAN (Jacques Audiard, France, 2015) – Closing Film & NL Première
Winner of the Golden Palm in Cannes 2015. As the civil war in Sri Lanka is coming to its end, Tamil Tiger Sivadhasan decides to flee. He assumes the identity of a dead man, Dheepan, and finds a woman and young girl to form a fake family, as families have a better chance of finding political asylum in Europe. Eventually, the "family'" ends up in Paris, where the discover that they are not far better than in Sri Lanka.
(* First feature film)