ORIENT EXPRESS: CASA ASIA in BETEVÉ Jan-Mar 2025

This period goes from January 2nd to March 27th, 2025.

PROGRAMME

Thursday, January 2nd, at 21:45h

Mongolia

Enkhmaa proposes a trip to bring Ankhaa, a 13-year-old kid, closer to his stepfather. Before the trip, the child loses his beloved dog, and he will have to find it within three days. Ankhaa’s family is focused on his little baby sister and their upcoming trip. During his search he befriends some street dogs, and it coincides with the municipal program that aims to remove dogs without a home, so he will have to hurry to recover his pet.

Garamkhand Bayarjargal is a Mongol director and producer that, after graduating in the Children and Youth Theatre Studio and College of Cinematic Arts, enrolled in the Film National Academy. She is the founder and CEO of various film and TV production companies, and among her most highlighted works are Funny Day (2015), The Faith (2016), Above All (2017), Love Hustle (2020), Zorig (2020), Between Heaven and Earth (2021) and her last success Lost Days (2023).

Thursday, January 9th, at 21:45h

Kyrgyzstan

One day, Nazar walks into the study of his partner’s ex-husband, Arsen. He looks at his computer and finds a file that changes his life. Nazar discovers the secret of Arsen, who is an artist who creates fictions in which the world disappears. She resembles a Chinese artist who did a painting, entered it, and disappeared forever from the real world. The confrontation between reality and imagination is served.

Marat Sarulu (Kyrgyzstan, 1957) is a screenwriter and film director. He graduated from the philosophy faculty of the National University of his country in 1980. Later, he studied at the Moscow Film Academy. As a screenwriter he has written for more than ten films of his own and others. In addition, he has directed five feature films, four short films, five documentaries and one animated film. He is one of the founders of the New Wave of Kyrgyz cinema since the early 1990s.

Thursday, January 16th, at 21:45h

Mongolia

A happy and wealthy couple discovers that the husband has stage three cancer. As it was discovered late, there is a very little chance that the patient will survive the treatment. The wife totally refuses to give up and does everything in her power to save her husband. However, despite even going abroad in search of other professionals and undergoing surgery, he will not achieve his goal. While he tries to survive, however, he can, the victim remembers his happy times, his first love, his wife and his family. The word Gergi means wife in a literal translation, but the root and structure of the word mean “One who lights up the home.”

Sengedorj Janchivdorj graduated in film directing from the University of Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. Among the awards he received it includes the Mongolian Academy Best Director Award in 2016. His latest film, Life, won the Best Feature Award at the Ulaanbaatar International Film Festival in 2018 and premiered at the Ulaanbaatar International Film Festival of Dhaka in 2019.

Thursday, January 23rd, at 21:45h

Pakistan

A personal family epopee in which the Pakistani director Anita Mathal Hopland reviews the history of both of her families. Moosa Lane is the street name of Pakistan’s capital, Karachi, where half of Hopland’s family lives, while the other half lives in Denmark. The documentary’s author also brings forward an intimate vision of the lives of the three younger family members and their experience with life and death. The filmmaker explores the generation of youth her age in Pakistan, trying to show at the same time the personal experience of those who live between two cultures, as it is her case. However, her circumstances allow her to discover what connects and separates her from her country and culture of origin and realise that she is not as far away as it seems at first sight.

Anita Mathal Hopland (Kanachi, 1981) graduated from the National Film School of Denmark in 2011 with the short film she presented on her graduation, Underneath the Dark. Hopland made her debut as a feature film director in 2017 with the documentary On the Edge of Freedom, followed by Lost Warrior in 2018 and finally by Moosa Lane in 2022.

Thursday, January 30th, at 21:45h

Iran

After getting infected with COVID-19, a 57-year-old Iranian painter, single woman, Mitra, goes into a coma. In this trance, she starts a journey to different pieces of her memories through her unconscious mind. Mitra’s spirit comes back home to pack an imaginary luggage full of bittersweet memories. Moments before her last travel, just like Lot’s wife, she looks back at her, her friends, and her generation’s lives regarding what they have done, what they have built and what they have ruined.

Manijeh Hekmat is an Iranian film director. She has worked since 1980 as an assistant director and production designer in over 25 films. She directed her first feature film Women’s Prison (Zendān-e Zanān) in 2002. This film has been shown at over 80 international film festivals and has received seven prizes. Hekmat has produced five noted films which include the award-winning feature films The Girl in the Sneakers and A Bunch of Grass, the latter a German-produced film made in the Iranian Kurdistan. In her The Old Road (2008), Hekmat addressed the social problem of violence against women.

Thursday, February 6th, at 21:45h

South Korea

The film follows a man and a woman going through a mid-life crisis who meet in a peaceful seaside village where, despite their different backgrounds, classical music unites their lonely and wounded souls.

Yoon Seok-ho born in 1957, first majored in Korean Language and Literature before completing a master’s degree in Journalism at Yonsei University (1995). He is a South Korean television drama director. Starting with Autumn Fairy Tale (2000), he directed a large number of seasonal series dramas such as Winter Sonata (2002), which caused a great resonance not only in Korea but also overseas, and played a leading role in the Korean Wave.

Thursday, February 13th, at 21:45h

Pakistan

When the killer of an adolescent labor activist is acquitted, journalist Shahbaz Bhatti sees glaring loopholes in the verdict and begins a quest for justice. But each of the leads he follows contradicts the one before, and the twisted story reveals the ugly truth of child labor in 1990’s Pakistan.

Shoaib Sultan is a well-known Pakistani engineer, director, actor & writer. He worked for some short films and other audiovisual mediums projects. But Darya Kay Iss Paar (This Bank of The River) was his debut project as a film director.

Thursday, February 20th, at 21:45h

Iran

A middle-aged couple, Amir Ali and Marjan, lead a quiet life until Marjan, who aspires to be a mother, meets Mahrouz, a woman who is trying to raise money for her son’s kidney transplant. When Marjan insists on renting a womb and this surrogate mother enters their life, they unintentionally go through different tests and face moral dilemmas unknown to them. The controversy surrounding subrogation is put on the table, showing the consequences of a yet not enough legislated practice.

Born in 1983 in Tehran, Seyyed Morteza Fatemi, writer, director, producer and TV host, is a graduate in Petroleum Engineering and PHD student of Political Philosophy. He started his career as a journalist, and he worked as chief editor in various weekly newspapers and press agencies. Afterwards, Fatemi entered Iranian Television and pursued his career as creator of Talk Shows and TV Series – including Dark Intelligence which won the Best TV Crime Drama Award in Moscow International Festival DetectiveFEST.

Thursday, February 27th, at 21:45h

Japan

One day, Haru, who works as a bookstore clerk, reunites with Takeshi, whom she first met a few years prior, when she stopped him from jumping in front of a train. Takeshi offers Haru a job. Another day, Haru is worried about Yukiko who is sitting on a bench in front of the station and talks to her. This leads them on a small journey together. Haru takes along a cassette recorder left behind as an inheritance by her mother. The circumstances will lead Haru to confront guilt and regretful feelings once again for not having been able to help avoid the illness to give an end to her mom’s life.

Kyoshi Sugita, born in 1977, had his first feature film One Song selected for the Tokyo International Film Festival in 2011 and its theatrical debut in 2012. His second feature film, Song of Light, was selected for the 2017 Tokyo International Film Festival and the 2018 Jeonju International Film Festival. The film received high praise in major newspapers and the film magazine Kinema Junpo. He has also published the novels Kawa no Koibito/River Lovers and Hitotsu no Uta/One Song and participated as a photographer in the fourth poetry collection Uta Long Long Short Song Long by the poet Koichi Masuno.

Thursday, March 6th, at 21:45h

Australia

A 12-year-old girl’s life is upended after she witnesses a rape and murder. She has a caring father, who is desperate to help, but there are no easy answers. The situation is immensely trying, particularly as Blaze was the only witness and her testimony is crucial. To cope with the trauma, she summons an imaginary dragon to help process her anger and protect her on her journey into womanhood.

Del Kathryn Barton is an Australian artist, widely recognized as one of the leading figurative painters of her generation. She began drawing at a young age and studied Art & Design at the University of New South Wales (UNSW). She soon became known for her psychedelic fantasy works in solo and group exhibitions across Australia and overseas. Despite being a widely recognizable figure among the artists of her generation, in 2022 her debut movie Blaze was finally released. Del Kathryn Barton was the director and a co-writer of the script.

Thursday, March 13th, 2025

Uzbekistan

Unhappy Groom (2023) explores Turkestan’s past through the history of Uzbekistan at the dawn of the 20th century, during the rule of the Russian Empire. The film highlights the contrast between ancient religious thought and the governmental incompetence of imperialist regimes. Amidst these tensions, two lovers face the difficulties of a life marked by social conventions, heresies and ambiguous traditions. In parallel, the drama of Salih, a salaried actor, is affected by the inability to meet the ambitious demands of Rahima’s family in order to marry her. This narrative strikingly reflects the parallels with Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, where despite the lovers’ attempts to remain aloof from social scrutiny, they cannot avoid their toxicity.

Khusnora Ruzmatova, a film director born in Uzbekistan, has received international recognition by winning the “For Humanism” award at the 19th Kazan International Muslim Film Festival. Uzbek cinema has experienced unprecedented visibility in recent years, not only because of the growth of its film industry, but also because of the international awards it has received. In 2023, Uzbek filmmakers won 15 international awards, highlighting the country’s growing influence on the global film scene.

Thursday, March 20th, 2025

India

With the help of some neighbours and leaving behind a life that she must abandon a young woman returns home to deal with her mother’s dementia and the scars of her childhood, with the objective too to find her place in the world.

Pushan Kripalani is a cinematographer and director. His first film, The Threshold (2015) was acclaimed in its short festival run, receivin awards at MAMI and the NFDC Film Bazaar, and obtaining Best Actor and Best Actress at the New York Indian Film Festival. As a cinematographer, he has filmed several feature films, commercials, documentaries and short films. He has worked on over thirty productions for stage and radio, in roles ranging from director to actor, designer, musician and producer. Goldfish (2023) is his second feature film.

Thursday, March 27th, 2025

Iran

When Yasmin was six, the same age as her son now, her family migrated to Berlin. Now she has to come back to Iran due to her father’s death. Her son is autistic, and it makes it difficult for her to travel easily. Travelling to Iran Yasmin, who hardly knows her father, is astonished to find about the heritage he left her. Her short and unwanted accommodation in her father’s hometown, however, will change many of Yasmin’s ideas about the place where she was born and about life and death in general.

Born in 1979 in Mashhad, Behrooz Shoaibi has been active in different fields of cinema. As an actor, he started his career with Ebrahim Hatamikia’s The Glass Agency (1998) and gained critical and public attention with Homayoun Asadian’s Gold & Copper (2010). His TV movies and series include: The Sloe Garden (2005); Wings Of Hapiness (2008); Abandoned (2009); Somewhere Between Staying and Going (2010); and Secluded (2014) With his debut feature film, The Corridor (Shoaibi) won the best first film award from Fajr 2013.