Biography

Born in 1959, Homayoun Asadian attended KANOON’s filmmaking courses since 1974 and then entered Tehran’s College of Dramatic Arts and studied Film Directing WHERE? . He was a still photographer for more than 20 feature films and worked as an assistant director on15 films. He also writes scripts and has made four TV series, two tele-dramas and seven feature films.

Synopsis

Seyed Reza is a young clergyman who travels to Tehran in order to complete his education and attend a master of morals’ classes. His wife’s MS, changes his life as he is forced to quit his theological courses and take care after his wife and his two babies.

Biography

Documentary filmmaker, publisher and photographer Seifollah Samadian was born in 1954. For his Bachelor’s he studied English Literature. In 1968 he started photography and then in 1978 started making documentary films. ‘The White Station’(1999) , ‘Tehran, The 25^th Hour’ (1999) , ‘The Art of Killing’ (2003) , ‘Bam, The 3^rd day, The 10^th day’ (2004) , “Once Upon a Time in Marrakech’ (2006). He was a director, a cameraman, and an editor for his own films. Seofolah worked  with Abbas Kiarostami on some films (ABC Africa, etc.)

He has been a member of the jury for international film festivals, like Milan Film Festival, Fajr Film Festival, European Short Film Biennial. Participated at various film festivals – Tribeca, San Francisco, Amsterdam etc.

Seifollah Samadian is a director of TASSVIR Film Festival since 2004 and also publisher and editor in chief of TASSVIR magazine.

Synopsis

In the autumn of 2005, 16 film students from NYC and Morocco converged on Marrakech as guests of the Tribeca Film Institute, Tribeca Film Festival, and the Marrakech International Film Festival Foundation to study under Abbas Kiarostami (joined at one point by Martin Scorsese). 

 A camera crew was on hand to record the meeting between these young artists and the veteran director, and Once Upon A Time In Marrakech is a documentary by Seifollah  Samadian which observes the cultural differences between Kiarostami's charges, as well as the love of an art form that brings them together. Featuring highlights from the films made by the students and an appearance by Martin Scorsese, Once Upon A Time In Marrakechreceived its North American premiere at the 2006 Tribeca Film Festival.

Biography

Pegha Ahangarani born 1984, Arak, Iran.  She is an actress and documentary film-maker. She has been playing in many feature film since she was 16. She has made two documentary films. Her mother Manijeh Hekmat is a film-director and producer. She won the best actress award for The Girl in Sneakers from 23rd Cairo International Film Festival and Best Performance award for The Girl in Sneakers from 14th Isfahan International Film Festival.

Sunopsis

A lyrical exploration of the short life of a young woman writer. 

Biography

Bhansali is one of the most well known film directors that Indian cinema has ever known.  His movies usually have a strong emotional appeal and are known to leave the audience spell bound with their extravagant sets and beautiful portrayal of characters.  He completed a course in film editing at the Film and Television Institute of India before he turned a director. Bhansali started his film career as an assistant to Vidhu Vinod Chopra. He has  won several awards including Filmfare Awards and a National Award for Wholesome Entertainment. In 2002, Bhansali achieved another milestone with the release of Black. This film won 11 Filmfare Awards including a National Award and was based on the life of Helen Keller.

Synopsis

Black is the story about a blind girl who is also deaf and dumb. A teacher brings a hope of ray in her life by teaching her all the things. He struggles a lot to teach a blind, deaf and dumb girl. His ambition is to see his student as a graduate holder. He gives his utmost support to her in all her way. Finally the blind girl achieves what she desired. She becomes a graduate. The climax speech by blind girl is heart-winning.

Biography

Film and Drama Director, scriptwriter. After graduating from Georgian State Institute of Theatre in 1981, works with director T. Abuladze as assistant. In 1984 she was music designer and screenplay at the fiction Repentance . In 1994 by Janelidze has written the script and directed feature film Lullaby. This fiction was awarded by State Prize of Georgia for this Film, Moscow Youth XV6 International Film Festival’s Jury’s Special Prize, Yalta Film Forum’s “XX Century Film” grand-prize: “Silver Nail”, Pezaro (Italy) Film Festival’s Grand prize – “Premio del Trentenalle”, Lagov (Poland) Summer Film Festival’s “Lagovo – 94” prize – “Silver Grape”, “Silver Knight” at the International Film Festival – “Golden Knight” 1995.

Synopsis

Based on historical documents and with the help of historians, a film dedicated to the Georgian Chant.The Knights of Georgian Chant is a short narrative attempt to restore the events that took place in 1811-1912.  At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Russian Empire abolished the independence of the Georgian kingdom and the autocephaly of the Georgian Church.

To save the tradition of Georgian choral singing, the music needed to be transcribed into conventionally notation. This was successfully done by Philimon Qoridze, a soloist at La Scala known in Italy as Philippo Coreggio, who managed to transcribe 5,500 chorals over a period of 28 years. After his death, the job of caring for and protecting the music, as well as carrying out additional transcription, was taken up by printer Estate Kereselidze.

This period coincided with the Bolshevik revolution in Russia, bringing in the era when the Communists sought to eradicate everything that was related to religion. Estate Kereselidze suffered a series of misfortunes. He had to hide his volumes of notated choral music a number of times, copy and even restore them. Finally he packed 40 volumes of music into iron boxes and buried them in the ground...

Pierre Goetschel

After starting career as first assistant director on feature films for cinema and advertisements for ten years, he began to work on documentaries both for TV and for radio in Europe and Africa. The most important part of his work is focused on cultures of the world, and for ten years now mainly on the former soviet republic where I do also documentary workshops for professional journalists.

Irma Inaridze

Irma Inaridze actively collaborated with French Radio and Cinema since 1999. From 1999 to 2005 she partnered with Pierre Goetschel on French radio “France Culture” to make several radio documentary films: “Ukraine – Empire of Silence – 2003, “And it was Revolution Three Times” – 2005. In 2002 she worked as an assistant for  the French Production Company Les Films Di Poisson on Julie Bertuccelli’s film “After Otari Left”.  

“Georgia In the Name of Wine” is her and Pierre Goetschel’s first mutual documentary film, which was financed by French Television Chanel “Arte”. Currently she is working on a new documentary film about Georgia financed by “Arte”. She is a producer of several cultural projects between Georgia and France.

Synopsis

In Georgia, which is the former cellar of the Soviet empire, wine is a true marker of the country’s history. Four years ago, the Kremlin enforced an embargo on the very symbol of Georgian identity. Through the activities of three cellars in the amazing landscape of Caucasus, that of an old peasant, that of a cooperation of wine-producers and a brand new luxurious plant in these strained circumstances, the film weaves the narrative of a country undergoing a full metamorphosis, as it is torn between a thousand year old tradition, the Soviet heritage and a rapid evolution towards free-market economy.

Biography

Born in 1974 in Tabriz, Amin Farajpour is a graduate of Film Directing from Tehran’s University of Art. He assisted Massoud Kimiai on two films. Between 2000 and 2005 Farajpour made four short films. Running Among the Clouds is his first feature film. 

Synopsis

Brought up by a single mother Milad, a rebellious teenager is unwillingly involved in drug dealings, which causes problems at home and school.    He is in debt with the drug dealers trying to escape them. Meanwhile, he’s asked by his teacher to take part in a running race.

Biography

Born in 1956. In 1978 graduated from the faculty of physics of Tbilisi State University, in 1986 – from the faculty of cinematographers of the Georgian State Institute of Theatre and Filn (workshop of Levan Paatashvili), and in 1994 – from the film-direction faculty of the same institute  (workshop of Merab Kokochashvili). Director of Photography and director of fictions and documentaries.

Synopsis

The documentary “FINDING “KETO AND KOTE” represents a video-diary of the filmmaking process. In 2008

director Merab Kokochashvili made “HOUSEOF JOY” – a film dedicated to the XIX century Tbilisi and the first

Georgian musical film - “KETO AND KOTE”.

“FINDING “KETO AND KOTE” describes the process of creating a film. It is the 3-rd full-length documentary

about masters of Georgian art, made by D. Gujabidze. Previous films: “Some Pictures of Theatre’ Life or

Interview with Chola” and “Diffused in Dance” dedicated to Georgian theatre and Georgian national dance.

Biography

Born 1978 Shiraz (Iran). She has BA in Computer Science at RMIT University (Melbourne, Australia, 2002). Azadeh studied History of Contemporary Art at Mahe Mehr Institution (Tehran, Iran, 2008) and various courses in cinematography/photography at Mahe Mehr Institution, Tehran, Iran, 2008.

During her professional carrier, Azadeh worked with various film directors as assistant Director - with Manijeh Hekmat (2007), Abbas Kiarostami (2004 – 2007). Azadeh is Director of  “Film School of Hossein Sabzian” (2005), which was screened at numerous Film Festivals such (Pusan International Film

Synipsis

The film is about artist Hossein Sabzian (main actor in Abbas Kiarostami’s film Close-up, 1991), now tragically near death in a Tehran hospital. Interviews with Sabzian's friends and family reveal divided feelings ("He was a true poet!" "We were all ashamed of him!"), but the film finds greater truths in diversions, like a flirtatious conversation with a young woman, a reunion with an old friend, or a nocturnal visit to Sabzian's abandoned house, which he romantically dreamed of turning into a film school. The question, "What does it mean to be in love with cinema?" has never had a more heartbreaking answer.

Biography

He was born in 1972, in munich. He took up studies in philosophy, psychology and Russian. From 1992 he studied at Munich College of Television and Film. In 2001 he received an Oscar for his short graduation film, "Quiero Ser", about children living on the streets in Mexico.

Synopsis

China stood in flames as a German businessman, far from his homeland, would become a reluctant hero. In 1937, as the Imperial Japanese Army attacked China, with undreamed of brutality against the civilian population of the then capital Nanking, John Rabe takes action. Together with a small group of international business people, doctors and missionaries who remain in the city, he managed, under great personal danger, to set up a safety zone for civilians, in which 250,000 people survived, what would enter the history books as, the "Nanking Massacre".

Biography

Born in 1968 in Gera, German Democratic Republic. He started shooting his own amateur movies since the late '70s. After receiving his university-entrance diploma, he worked as a sound engineer at the theater in Schwerin and completed a traineeship at the DEFA Studio for Feature Films where he also worked as an assistant director to his later mentor Günther Reisch. From 1986 until 1991 Dresden studied directing at the "Konrad Wolf" Academy of Film and Television in Potsdam-Babelsberg. Since 1992, he has been working as a freelance author and director. He lives in Potsdam.

Synopsis

The actor Otto Kullberg is a man women love and men like. Sometimes he drinks a little too much. When his excessive drinking leads him to miss a day on the set of his new film and it seems like he's about to blow the whole thing, a younger actor is hired to shoot all the scenes a second time as a backup solution: Leo the producer is not willing to lose any money. Otto, a man of fast wit and driven by his need to be at the center of attention, finds himself forced to assert his role on the set, and to redefine his role in his own life. 

Biography

He was born in munich 1965, 10 November, in Germany.  He studied at the Ludvig Maximilian University of Munich, where he studied Legal Sciences. Then he was writing radio plays. Since 1990, he works as a director and scriptwriter. Since 2002 he is reading lectures at the Munich Television University. 

Synopsis

After a flirt in a boutique, wanted impostor Frank is arrested and sent to jail. When he is released from prison, he tries to earn his living in an honest way. One day, he meets the woman from the boutique again. For her, he would do anything. It does not bother him that she works as a prostitute. But soon Frank cannot help but fall back into his old ways and more and more loses his sense of reality.

Biography

Director and actress Nino Kirtadze was born in 1968 in Tbilisi, Georgia. After graduating with a degree in literature, she has worked as a consultant to the Georgian president and as a journalist covering armed conflicts in the Caucasus. Her acting carrier started by playing the main role in a film Les Mille et Une Recettes du Cuisinier Amoureux (Chief in love), by Nana Djordjadze.

Kirtadze’s cinematic debut firmly established her intense visual sense, powerful storytelling and metaphorical approach. Her camera turns the natural into the supernatural and the reverse. Many of her full-length documentaries have won prestigious international prizes. Many of her full-length documentaries have won prestigious international prizes and brought her recognition. Her credits include “Tell my friends that I’m dead” (2004), awarded in France by Golden Fipa and by the Cinema du Réel Prize, “Pipeline next door” (2005) winner of the European Film Academy Best Documentary award. Her last documentary “Durakovo - village of fools“won Best director award at Sundance film festival (2008), and Best documentary of the year in France.

Synopsis

The film is a political fable that depicts the frail equilibrium of the world and questions the values of international politics.  It takes us through a critical and violent year in the life of Georgian state - from the presidential election of January 2008, when everything seemed possible, to the chaos of the August war with Russia and the sobering aftermath - and raises questions about political responsibility and the morality of international affairs. The story is told through its main actors:  the Georgian president, the Georgian government, the political opposition, foreign leaders , international delegations and organizations and, most of all, the ordinary Georgian people. It intimately captures the human and political drama of those months, when Georgia found itself briefly and unhappily at the centre of global attention, and poses searching questions about the modern world and its values, a world in which hope for the smallest always lies but a step away from despair.

BIOGRAPHY

The director Siddiq Barmak was born in Afghanistan in 1962 and studied filmmaking in Moscow. He had written screenplays and made a few short films before shooting his  first feature film Osama  in Afghanistan  in 2003. The film won prizes on many international film festivals,  including Cannes, Golden Globe and Pusan. Between 1992 and 1996 he was the director of the Afghan Film organization and after the establishment of the new government he was once again chosen to manage it.  

He is also director of the Afghan Children Education Movement (ACEM), an association that promotes literacy, culture and the arts, founded by Iranian film director Mohsen Makhmalbaf, who has also received the Fellini Medal.  

Synopsis

A 12-year-old Afghan girl and her mother lose their jobs when the Taliban closes the hospital where they work. Feeling she has no choice, the mother disguises her daughter as a boy. Now called Osama, the girl embarks on a terrifying and confusing journey as she tries to keep the Taliban from finding out her true identity. 

Biography

Levan Koghuashvili was born in Georgia in 1973. After finishing school, he began to study at the State Institute of Film and Theatre in Tbilisi, but one year later a civil war broke out in Georgia and he began to work as a journalist for an independent television broadcaster and later as a director.

After having worked for television for two years, he began to study at the All-Russian State University of Cinematography (VGIK) in Moscow, where his teacher was the famous film director Marlen Khutsiev. After graduating, he worked in Tbilisi as a film director for advertising, television and documentaries. In 2002, he began his postgraduate studies at the New York Film School. During his studies there he made several short films and documentaries. In 2008 he returned to Georgia to start filming his first feature film - "Street Days", which he finished in 2010 and was nominated at many international film festivals.

Synopsis

The main character is a 45-year year old junkie from Tbilisi, who has to make the most important choice in his life, when a corrupted policemen push him to inform on his friend’s 16-year-old son.  If he does not cooperate, the junkie will be imprisoned for 10 years. It seems as if he made his decision, but in the last moment his conscience awakes.

Synopsis

A man wakes up and starts his day before going to work. A surrealist dream turns into a horrible reality, shown in a special way, from an uncommon point of view, such as tooth-brushing seen from the inside of the mouth cavity. The colours are also strange, different from what they look like to the human eye. Things are larger, as if seen through a looking glass, repulsive, and represent a symbolic image of the overwhelming reality.

Synopsis

A simple story of a man in a red coat and hat who leaves his house to get something done in an office. He goes by bus and on his way steps into a bookshop to buy a book. The office is closed. He comes back three times, meets a friend and spends a short while with her in a cafe, finally going back home. Rybczyński's experiment involves splitting the screen into nine parts so that the spectator can simultaneously watch all nine town locations. All of them are critical to the story even though the protagonist, the man in the red coat, may not be there, for there is always some action happening in his absence.  

Synopsis

A story of a monster which, moving at an enormous speed, devours whatever comes across on its way: people, animals, cars, buildings. The speed accelerates every minute, the objects falling into the monster's mouth at a break-neck speed. The massacre has been filmed using the so-called subjective camera and the viewers watch it from the point of view of the monster, it remaining unseen.

Synopsis

Thirty-six characters from different stages of life , representations of different times , interact in one room, moving in loops, observed by a static camera.

Synopsis

The Orchestra is an interminable procession: it begins with the notes of Chopin’s funeral march, with dozens of electronic ghosts that take turns at the keys of a piano, and finishes with the rising rhythm of Ravel’s Bolero, on a flight of stairs that represents the long march of communism, until its inevitable and definitive collapse. 

Synopsis

In Steps everything was made live, there was no post-production. Rybczynski had seven film cameras, four video cameras, and an infinite numbers of cables and wires. As he says the most interesting thing was seeing these images during filming. Thus, using this and other technologies, he was a part of the past despite the fact that the images were connected to the present.” 

Synopsis

The Fourth Dimension begins with a reference to the Bible: a large open book unfolds its wings, wrapping itself around a candle, a symbol of the primordial light, born of the word Creators (And God said Let there be light). Then a primitive mass, which unfolds itself slowly. Later, a man walks around a rock. The woman around the man. Then the light around the original  couple. Soon afterwards, their twists conjure up serpentine movements, hence the Evil One, he who divides. And the apple of betrayal, in a corner of the frame, shows that we have not made a mistake  that we have returned to the earlier era of the original sin.”

Synopsis

With Kafka his most dramatically complex work, Rybczynski has already perfected the motion control mechanism. The visionary capacity of the Polish artist is the translation of the places and the literary archetypes of the Prague writer.  “When I read Kafka, I not only had ideas, but images,  Why did I choose Kafka from among the themes offered to me? Because he is the most visual writer of this century”. said Rybczynski. 

Biography 

Born on the 22nd of June, 1940 in Teheran. From 1960 to 1968 he started his cinematographic career designing credits and directing advertisements. With a friend in 1969, Kiarostami founded the Cinematographic Department of the Institute for Children and Young Adults Intellectual Development (Kanun) that, in the course of the years, has produced a relevant number of high quality Iranian movies, by directors such as: A. Naderi, B. Beyzaï, D.Mehrjui, E. Forozesh, Sobrah Sh. Saless... By 1970 Abbas Kiarostami directs numerous short films and then features. He prefers to work with non-actors in natural surroundings. His work is marked by a keen Chekhovian sense of humour, tinted with poetry. At the end of the 1980s Kiarostami obtains well-deserved international recognition. In 1992 he won the Rossellini Prize at Cannes for his career; in 1997 "The Taste of Cherries" obtained the Golden Palme at the Cannes Film Festival; "The Wind Will Take Us Away" won the Grand Jury Prize of the Venice Mostra in 1999. On the 13th of November, 1997 Unesco bestowed upon him the "Fellini" medal.

SYNOPSIS

Close-up is based on the true story of Hossein Sabzian, a man whose delusional love of cinema compelled him to impersonate filmmaker Moshen Makhmalbaf. Sabzian passed himself off in this manner to the members of the Ahankah family. He promised them roles in a film. He even rehearsed scenes with them. As a reward for his deeds, Sabzian was arrested and tried for fraud.

Biography

Born on the 22nd of June, 1940 in Teheran. From 1960 to 1968 he started his cinematographic career designing credits and directing advertisements. With a friend in 1969, Kiarostami founded the Cinematographic Department of the Institute for Children and Young Adults Intellectual Development (Kanun) that, in the course of the years, has produced a relevant number of high quality Iranian movies, by directors such as: A. Naderi, B. Beyzaï, D.Mehrjui, E. Forozesh, Sobrah Sh. Saless... By 1970 Abbas Kiarostami directs numerous short films and then features. He prefers to work with non-actors in natural surroundings. His work is marked by a keen Chekhovian sense of humour, tinted with poetry. At the end of the 1980s Kiarostami obtains well-deserved international recognition. In 1992 he won the Rossellini Prize at Cannes for his career; in 1997 "The Taste of Cherries" obtained the Golden Palme at the Cannes Film Festival; "The Wind Will Take Us Away" won the Grand Jury Prize of the Venice Mostra in 1999. On the 13th of November, 1997 Unesco bestowed upon him the "Fellini" medal.

SYNOPSIS

Uganda, March 2000. At the request of the UN’s International Fund for Agricultural Development, Abbas Kiarostami and his assistant, Seifollah Samadian, arrive in Kampala. For ten days, their DV camera captures and caresses the faces of a thousand children, all orphans, whose parents have died of AIDS. It records tears and laughter, music and silence, life and death. It attests to Africa’s sunny resilience to so much suffering and disease.

Synopsis

Roads of Kiarostami, a documentary that reflects on the power of landscape, combining austere black-and-white photographs with poetic observations, engaging music with political subject matter.

Biography

William Karel was born in 1940 in Tunisia. After studying in Paris, Karel emigrated to  Kibbutz,Israel where he remained for 10 years. He returned to France in 1981 and for over a decade he worked as a photo-reporter for several agencies like Gamma (1972-1976) and Sygma (1976-1983). His documentaries are frequently screened by the Arte and France 3 channels. He has also photographed French and American politicians -- Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, François Mitterrand, Jean-Marie Le Pen, John F. Kennedy and George W. Bush.

His education in the United States constitutes an important part of Karel's work. After The Men of the White House (2000), a film about the American presidents during periods of crisis, he explored the secrets of the CIA in  Secret Wars (2003). He is also the author of, what some insist, is a mockumentary Dark Side of the Moon (2002). In The Empire State Building Murders (2008)  

Synopsis

In 1929 William Karel examines the biggest stock market crash in history, which occurred on the New York Stock Exchange 80 years ago – Black Thursday, October 24, 1929. In this film, a wide range of economists and historians take turns discussing the causes of the crash and its economic and political consequences. These included acute poverty and the rise of the extreme right, both of which were to have a considerable impact on the decade to come. 1929 uses a wealth of black-and-white archive footage to illustrate what the experts have to say. Part One, The Crisis, analyzes the year in which the crash took place. In the build-up to Black Thursday, we get cheerful music from the 1920s, women dancing in lineups, and the latest car designs being paraded through the streets of New York.

Biography

French newcomer Céline Danhier made her transition into film after receiving a master's degree in Law from the Sorbonne. Danhier became involved in producing while working at Paris-based independent production house, Les Enragés. She was a member of the avant-garde theater group La Compagnie Vapeur.. After moving to New York in 2006, Danhier moved between fashion and film before starting up her own production. Her grasp of the various aspects of film extends from the practical to the purely aesthetic, and she brings a unique individualist approach to everything she does. This has all been brought to bear on her feature directorial debut.

Synopsis

Today, Manhattan is a byword for overpriced property, overexposed landmarks and overdressed fashionistas. In the late 70s, however, it was rat-infested, crime-crippled, cheap and nasty - somewhere for America to dump its immigrants, poor people and artists. Music, art, fashion and filmmaking burgeoned, fueled by drugs, dares, fads, feuds, and a fair helping of madness.

Biography

ROB LEMKIN is the founder and director of Old Street Films. He has produced and directed over 50 documentaries for BBC, Channel 4, ITV, Sky, The History Channel (US) and Arts & Entertainment. He has won numerous awards in Britain and abroad, and his work has appeared in major documentary strands for C4, BBC and ITV. He has made several films about the history and politics of Asia including The Real Dr Evil (BBC/Arts & Entertainment 2003), Who Really Killed Aung San? (BBC2 1997), Malaya: The Undeclared War (BBC2 1998), China: Handle with Care (C4 2001) Bearers of the Sword (C4 2002)  

Synopsis

A journalist whose family was killed by the Khmer Rouge spends a decade making friends with the people who perpetrated the Killing Fields. He obtains ground-breaking accounts from the notorious Brother Number Two and grassroots killers and gains a new and terrifying perspective on the genocide. But the truth he discovers comes at a price.

Biography

Steven Soderbergh was born on January 14, 1963, in Atlanta, Georgia, USA.  While still in high school, around the age of 15, Soderbergh enrolled in the university's film animation class and began making short 16-millimeter films with second-hand equipment, one of which was the short film "Janitor." After graduating high school, he went to Hollywood, where he worked as a freelance editor. His time there was brief, and shortly after, he returned home and continued making short films and writing scripts.

His first major break was in 1986 when the rock group Yes assigned him to shoot a full-length concert film for the band, which eventually earned him a Grammy nomination for the video Yes: 9012 Live (1985) (V). Following this achievement, Soderbergh filmed Winston (1987), the short-subject film that he would later expand into Sex, Lies, and Videotape (1989), a film that earned him the Cannes Film Festival's Palme d'OrAward, the Independent Spirit Award for Best Director, and an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay.

In 1998, Soderbergh made Out of Sight (1998), his most critically and commercially successful film since Sex, Lies, and Videotape (1989). Then, in 2000, Soderbergh directed two major motion pictures that are now his most successful films to date: Erin Brockovich (2000) and Traffic (2000). These films were both nominated for Best Picture Oscars at the 2001 Academy Awards and gave him the first twin director Oscar nomination in almost 60 years and the first ever win. He won the Oscar for Best Director for Traffic (2000) at the 2001 

 Synopsis:

AND EVERYTHING IS GOING FINE provides an intimate portrait of master monologist Spalding Gray, as described by his most critical, irreverent and insightful biographer: Spalding Gray. Director Steven Soderbergh, who collaborated with Gray on GRAY’S ANATOMY (1996), has sifted through rare and revealing footage to construct a riveting final monologue. There are glimpses of Gray’s father, and of his son Forrest (who provides soaring music for the end credits), but mostly this is an inspired one-man show, a bittersweet display of Spalding’s playful and embattled intelligence, his gift for tracking universal truths by looking himself squarely in the eye.

 Biography

Gia Diasamidze was born in Batumi in 1971. In 1977-1985 he attended Batumi 22^nd High School. After graduating from high school he went to Batumi Maritime Academy and from 1985 to 1989. Later in 1989 he studied at Batumi State University in the department of Foreign Languages. After 1990 he continued his studying at Independent University of Tbilisi, from which he graduated in 1994. He studied Film Directing at Moscow Film Institute from 2000 through 2004.   Films:   2010 – Insight, 2010 – Waiting, 2009 – How the Animation is Made, 2007 – Following Art-Gene, 2006 – Adila, 2005 – Travel in Folklore 

Synopsis

The documentary film “Insight " tells the story about popular Georgian singer Nino Katamadze’s and the band “Insight" music and life. In the film are used materials shooting during the last ten years and it is shown their musical path. The film introduces the musicians and their art.

Biography

Bartosz Konopka was born on September 8, 1972 in Myslenice, Poland. One of the most often awarded young Polish filmmakers, Konopka graduated from Film Science in Jagiellonian University Cracow, Krzysztof Kieslowski Film Department in Katowice University and Andrzej Wajda Master School of Film Directing. He makes both documentaries and features. Konopka received over 30 awards for his films .

Synopsis

The film tells a story about wild rabbits, which lived between the Berlin Walls. For 28 years Death Zone was their safest home. Full of grass, no predators, guards protecting them from human disturbance. They were ‘trapped’ but happy. When their population grew to thousands, guards started to remove them, to no avail. Unfortunately one day the wall fell down and the rabbits had to abandon their comfort zone. They moved to West Berlin and have been living there in a few colonies since then. They are still learning how to live in the free world, same as the citizens of Eastern Europe.

Biography

Regev Contes was born in 1976. He graduated from the Bezalel Academy of Art in Jerusalem. His first short film Chapter 10,953   won the First Prize at the Israeli First Channel Short Films Festival (WHEN?) and was also a the recipient of the main prize at the Jerusalem International Film Festival (YEAR??) . Contes also made films for The Moments Project for Jerusalem International Film Festival – Wanted (Moments 2004), The Souvenir Shop (Moments 2005).

Synopsis

Three divorced middle-aged men with glasses work together in a small, failing insurance agency located in the rented apartment of the manager. The film begins on December 31, the last day of the year – and the most stressful one for an insurance company. Although highly intelligent, holding a strong sense of humor, and well educated, the threesome (led by the father of the director himself) have absolutely no idea about running a business. Their company is losing a good deal of money and is continually on the verge of bankruptcy. A personal documentary that is also an endearing father-son journey.

Bioghraphy

Agnieszka Wojtowicz-Vosloo is a filmmaker and writer. She studied film at Tisch School of the Arts in New York, where she graduated summa cum laude in 2003. Her debut short film Pâtépremiered at the Sundance Film Festival and won several prestigious awards including NYU's Wasserman Award, the Fielle d'Or at the Beverly Hills Film Festival and The Grand Jury Prize at the WorldFest Houston International Film Festival.  “Filmmaker Magazine” named Wojtowicz-Vosloo as one of the 25 New Faces of Independent Film. Agnieszka Wojtowicz-Vosloo's first feature film After.Life, a psychological horror thriller starring Liam Neeson, Christina Ricci and Justin Long, was released on 23 October 2009.

Synopsis

After a horrific car accident, Anna (Christina Ricci) wakes up to find the local funeral director Eliot Deacon (Liam Neeson) preparing her body for her funeral. Confused, terrified and feeling still very much alive, Anna doesn't believe she is  dead, despite the funeral director's reassurances that she is merely in transition to the afterlife. Eliot convinces her he has the ability to communicate with the dead and is the only one who can help her. Trapped inside the funeral home, with nobody to turn to except Eliot, Anna is forced to face her deepest fears and accept her own death. But Anna's grief-stricken boyfriend Paul (Justin Long) still can't shake the nagging suspicion that Eliot isn't what he appears to be. As the funeral nears, Paul gets closer to unlocking the disturbing truth, but it could be too late; Anna may have already begun to cross over the other side. 

Biography 

Dmitri Mamulia (b. 1969, Tbilisi) graduated from the humanities department of Tbilisi State University in 1993, where he became a lecturer. He was editor-in-chief of Logos, a literary philosophical almanac published in Russia and Japan and a study entitled Three Times Hesse(Dreimal Hesse), which came out in Germany. He has published the collections of Anal Rosesand a study on Muscovite romantic conceptualism. Mamulia studied at the Higher Courses for Scriptwriters and Directors and shot the following short films: The Indescribable Association(Neopisuyemoye soobshchestvo, 2006) and Silence of Sirens (Molchaniye siren, 2006). Moscow(2007), a pseudo-documentary Mamulia made with Bakur Bakuradze, focuses on a Kirghiz family trying to make their living in the capital.  Another Sky is Mamulia’s feature debut.

Synopsis

Ali and his 9-year old son wander through the vast, deserted spaces of Central Asia with the herds of sheep. Ali and his son decide to find the boy’s mother who left them for a better life in Moscow, which now offers Ali and his son the fate of the gastarbeiter: occasional income and a hand-to-mouth existence. Ali patiently bares all insults as he continuously searches for his wife, dead or alive in the labyrinths of the big city. The film documents, without bias, the life of a man on the edge, in foreign surroundings that essentially force him to communicate intuitively. Just as he fails to notice dramatic world events reported on the television news, the outside world does not notice his internal drama, while both co-exist simultaneously.

Biography 

Katarzyna Roslaniec was born in Poland in 1980 and studied economics and law at Gdańsk University, before pursuing studies in filmmaking at the Warsaw Film School and the Andrzej Wajda Master School of Film Directing. In 2006, Mall Girls was originally directed as a short film, which earned her the Special Award at the Polish Film Festival in Gdynia. Mall Girls (2009) is her first feature film that won the Best Debut at the ERA New Horizons Film Festival in Wroclaw in 2009.

Synopsis

14-year old Alicja finds herself on the fringes of a trendy, sexualised group of teens who pass for 18 and have attitude and gear to flaunt.  Rude and crude they make her life hell before slowly inviting her to join their world, hanging round shopping malls hitting on guys who pay them for sexual favours with cash or fashion accessories. A huge box office hit in Poland, Mall Girls considers the fate of a generation exposed to too much too soon.

Biography 

Born in Istanbul in 1960, Reha Erdem graduated from Cinema Department of the University of Paris VIII, where he obtained an M.A. in Fine Arts. He shot his first feature-length film Oh Moonin 1989 as a French-Turkish co-production, which received awards at the Nantes Film Festival. Many of Erdem’s films were screened at international film festivals, such as Locarno, Moscow, Vancouver and Dunkerque.  

Synopsis

Kosmos is a thief who arrives in this timeless border town from the wilds weeping, as though a fugitive. No sooner is he there than he rescues a small boy from drowning in the river, and is recognised as a man who works miracles. Kosmos   never appears to eat nor sleep. One of his more striking skills is the ability to scale the tallest trees with uncommon agility. He is also frank in declaring his wish that startles the townspeople: he is looking for love. Soon Kosmos and Neptün, the teenager sister of the rescued boy, grow closer in the most bizarre of ways: imitating the screech of birds in trees and on rooftops.

Following Kosmos’ arrival, there’s a sudden rash of robberies among the town’s smaller stores. Robberies and miracles follow in quick succession, and in a short time the townspeople learn that Kosmos has a gift for curing people. But Kosmos’s destiny will change with a series of unpleasant incidents which will lead him out of town.

Biography  

Agustí Vila was born in1961 in Barcelona. He has directed a variety of TV programms, including “New Fiction” (“Nova ficció”, Part 1, 1997),  “Alice and the Parrot” (“Alícia i el lloro”, episode from a TV series, 1997), and “Paid to Laugh” (“Pagats per riure”, 6 parts of a TV series, 2001). His other films include  Man of Glass (El hombre de cristal, 1993), Bench in the Park (Un banco en el parque, 1999), based on his own script. He also made the documentary 3055 Jean Leon (2006).

Synopsis

 Maria suffers from Alzheimer's disease. Luis, Maria's fifteen-year-old grandson,   doesn’t say very much and shuts himself off in his own silent world to escape his parent’s marital crisis. He spends his time picking up stray cats and dogs off the street. His father, Miguel, wants to put a stop to his son’s eccentric behaviour, but his protective mother Alice indulges him. Meanwhile, the animals begin to appear at home in increasing numbers...

“The characters in the film believe that the only thing they should be afraid of are the mosquitoes. They are convinced that if they set boundaries in their lives, they’ll achieve happiness. Except that happiness stagnates, it’s like standing water. And stagnant water starts to become putrid. That’s when the mosquitoes could turn into wolves”, says director Agustí Vila of his film.

Biography

Urszula Antoniak has graduated from both Polish (Film/TV Production) and Dutch (Film Directing) Film Academies. Her film Bijlmer Odyssee (2004) was one of the few TV Dutch productions that sold in many territories in and outside of Europe. Her comedy about integration in Holland Dutch for non Advanced (2007) has drawn attention of both the audiences and the critics. Nothing Personal is Antoniak’s feature film debut and international co-production, featuring Stephen Rea. The film was shot in Ireland, Holland and Spain. Like her other pictures Nothing Personal is a combination of poetic images with light irony.

Synopsis

A young female rebel and an old sage challenge each other in a story about personal freedom and attachment. She is a young Dutch woman, who after throwing away all her possessions becomes a vagabond by choice and finds the solitude she was looking for in an austere landscape of Irish Connemara. He is an old man who lives a solitary life in a secluded house in Ireland. She is radical and uncompromising. What connects them is solitude they both see as freedom. A young travelling woman and an older educated, solitary man close a deal: food in exchange for work. But there is one condition: no personal contact, no questions. Their simple life follows the cycle of days and nights, slowly bringing the two of them closer to each other. Who will be the first one to break the deal and admit the personal interest?

Biography

Lee Daniels is a film producer and director whose movie Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire earned Oscar nominations for best picture and for best direction in 2010. Raised in Philadelphia, Daniels left college after two years to pursue a career in Los Angeles as a screenwriter.  His first film as a producer was the critically acclaimed 2001 film Monster's Ball, starring Billy Bob Thornton and Halle Berry; the film's screenplay earned an Oscar nomination, and Berry's performance brought her an Oscar for best leading actress. Daniels then produced The Woodsman (2004, starring Kevin Bacon), and produced and directed Shadowboxer (2005, starring Helen Mirren and Cuba Gooding, Jr.). Including Precious, Daniels is known for dark dramas, as well as for unusual casting choices, including  P. Diddy(Monster's Ball), Mos Def (Monster's Ball and The Woodsman), Mo'Nique (Shadowboxer and Precious) and Mariah Carey(Precious and the Daniels-produced 2008 movie Tennessee). 

Synopsis

Precious Jones (Gabourey Sidibe) is a high-school girl with nothing working in her favor. She is pregnant with her father’s child—for the second time. She can’t read or write, and her schoolmates tease her for being fat. Her home life is a horror, ruled by a mother (Mo’Nique) who keeps her imprisoned both emotionally and physically. Precious’s instincts tell her one thing: if she’s ever going to break from the chains of ignorance, she will have to dig deeply into her own resources.

Biography 

A screenwriter, director, and producer, Chingiz Rasulzade, was born in 1972 in Baku, Azerbaijan. He graduated from the Azerbaijan State Institute of Arts in 1998 and attended Moscow’s VGIK film school, graduating in 2004. He made two short documentary films:MIMoZHIZNI (2003) and the award-winning Gestures. Reconciliation… (2005). The Dolls is his debut feature.

Synopsis

Baku, Azerbaijan, 1989. The fall of the empire is at hand. A group of young men works at a seaside park disguised as Mickey Mouse and other cartoon characters, so that passersby can have their photographs taken with them. These masks symbolize the transition to adulthood, as these young men search for their true identity, while the maelstrom of historical events ruthlessly impact on their lives. The Dolls is a nostalgic tale of Rasulzade’s own generation’s coming of age. With subtle humor, the film bears witness to the distressful fate of ordinary Azerbaijanis, affected by the socio-political changes of the last 20 years.

Biography

Fardin Saheb Zamani (b. 1963, Tehran) graduated from Tehran’s University of Art. He has shot three short films and established himself professionally as a sound designer. The dramaThere Are Things You Don’t Know is his writer-director debut.

Synopsis

Late-shift taxi driver Ali works the “mean streets” of Tehran and in the process he encounters a wide variety of people. The taciturn, disconsolate man meets the owner of the last traditional café in the city, Denis, and the lovely Leila, both of whom start to play an important role among his customers. Ali gets closer to the secretive young woman due to their similar personalities and deep internal isolation. Behind banal conversations full of unfinished sentences, the protagonists’ pasts betray deep traumas which have deflected them from their original paths in life.... With a nod to Scorsese’s Taxi Driver (1976), debut director Fardin Saheb Zamani’s melancholy, disquieting drama tells of alienation and the various roles which people assign themselves and others.

Biogpraphy

Jim Jarmusch  was born in 1953, Akron, Ohio. He is at the forefront of American independent cinema, and European film has had a great influence on his work. After his successful debutPermanent Vacation (1980), he shot Stranger Than Paradise (1984), winning awards at Cannes, Sundance, and Locarno. Mystery Train (1989) and Dead Man (1995) screened at Karlovy Vary, as did Broken Flowers (2005), which took the Grand Prize of the Jury at the Cannes IFF. In the 18th episode of "The Simpsons” 19th season, Jarmusch, who lives and works in New York, said that his films are about "social misfits experiencing the dark side of the American dream.”

Synopsis

A lone man with no name travels the Spanish countryside meeting mysterious people for coffee and collecting information. What are his intentions and what does he write down on the flaps of match packs? Jim Jarmusch has returned to prove that he is not a creator of one style or a recurring theme. Despite the presence of several favorite actors (Bill Murray, Tilda Swinton, and above all Isaach De Bankolé), his latest movie is a surprising work even considering the famed moviemaker’s varied filmography. This time around he has hooked up with renowned cameraman Christopher Doyle (In the Mood for Love) as well as Boris, a band of rough Japanese drone rockers. The director contemplates: "What would it be like if Jacques Rivette remade John Boorman’s masterpiece Point Blank? Or what if Marguerite Duras remade Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le Samouraï?” He adds that during shooting he thought about European crime dramas of the 1970s and 1980s, including the work of Francesco Rosi. 

Biography

Roman Polanski was born on 18 August, 1933 in France. He is a Polish film director, producer, writer and actor. He left the People's Republic of Poland in 1961 to live in France for several years, then moved to Britain, where he collaborated with Gérard Brach on three films, beginning with Repulsion (1965). In 1968 he moved to the United States and  immediately gained recognition and status with the groundbreaking Academy Award winning horror filmRosemary's Baby.

Polanski's first feature-length film, Knife in the Water (1962), made in Poland, was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. He has since received five more Oscarnominations, and in 2002 received the Academy Award for Best Director for his film, The Pianist. He has also been the recipient of two Baftas, four Césars, a Golden Globe and thePalme d'Or.

Synopsis

When a successful British ghostwriter (Ewan MacGregor) agrees to complete the memoirs of a former British Prime Minister Adam Lang (Pierce Brosnan), his agent assures him it is the opportunity of a lifetime. But the project seems doomed from the start, not least because his predecessor and Lang's long-term aide, died in an unfortunate accident. Resonating with topical themes, this atmospheric and suspenseful political thriller is a story of deceit and betrayal on every level--sexual, political and literary. In a world in which nothing, and no one, is as it seems, The Ghost quickly discovers that the past can be deadly--and that history is decided by whoever stays alive to write it.

Biography

Considered the French equivalent of Steven Spielberg, filmmaker Luc Besson has a reputation for creating fast-paced, ultra-stylish, and hugely budgeted films with mass appeal. The son of two scuba instructors, he was born in Paris on March 18, 1959, and spent most of his youth following his parents on the club Med circuit between Greece and Yugoslavia. spent the first years of his life following his parents, scuba diving instructors, around the world. His early life was entirely aquatic. He already showed amazing creativity as a youth, writing early drafts of The Big Blue (1988) and The Fifth Element (1997), as an adolescent bored in school. He planned on becoming a marine biologist specializing in dolphins until a diving accident at age 17 which rendered him unable to dive any longer. He moved back to Paris and then  moved to America for three years, then returned to France and formed Les Films de Loups - his own production company, which later changed its name to Les Films de Dauphins.

Busy writing and producing other people’s films, it took long time before Besson’s next movie, Angel-A (2005) was released. It received mixed reviews and because it was in French, was not a hit at the North American box office.

Meanwhile, Besson had begun to write fantasy books for youngsters, based on a boy named Arthur and his voyage into the world of the Minimoys. s. Besson worked it into a screenplay and filmed it as part live action, part animation as Arthur and the Invisibles (2007), starring Freddie Highmore in the title role. 

Synopsis

The year is 1912. Adèle Blanc-Sec, an intrepid young reporter, will go to any lengths to achieve her aims, including sailing to Egypt to tackle mummies of all shapes and sizes. Meanwhile, in Paris, it's panic stations! A 136 million-year old pterodactyl egg on a shelf in the natural history museum has mysteriously hatched, and the bird subjects the city to a reign of terror from the skies. But nothing fazes Adèle Blanc-Sec, whose adventures reveal many more extraordinary surprises...    Set in the carefree world before World War I, Adèle Blanc-Sec's adventures see the brave young woman fearlessly battling crooks, corrupt politicians, demon worshipers and mad scientists.