ORIENT EXPRESS: CASA ASIA in BETEVÉ Oct-Nov 2024

This period goes from October 3rd to Novmeber 28th, 2024.

PROGRAMME

Thursday 3rd of October at 22.30h

Australia

In remote Pilbara country in Western Australia, troubled 16-year-old Indigenous girl, Murra, finds herself abandoned after an explosive incident with her drug-fueled mother. On the cusp of being lost in the ‘Child Protection’ system, an unusual lifeline is thrown her way by her uncle Ian, a local cop. Before Murra knows it, she is careening down a dusty highway with a minibus full of ‘at risk’ teenagers and two charismatic team leaders. Will this be the lifeline Murra needs or the catalyst for her downfall?

Jub Clerc is a Nyul Nyul/Yawuru woman from the Beagle Bay and Broome regions of the Kimberley in Western Australia. A graduate of the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts, Jub has been a theatre performer for many years and is currently writing her first play, Dust. She has worked in film and television as a casting director, extras casting coordinator, dramaturge and associate producer on award-winning productions. Most recently, Jub performed as a soprano in the world’s first Aboriginal opera, Pecan Summer.

Thursday 10th of October at 22.30h

Indonesia

Nine days after his death, Abraham has not been buried, in order to fulfil Abraham’s last message: “There is no funeral before Martha returns.” The return of Martha from Sabah, Malaysia is of course a special joy for the family, especially Orpha the mother and Bertha her sister. However, after two years abroad, Martha falls completely depressed due to the rape she was the victim of while working as a labourer on a palm oil plantation. As the head of the family, Orpha must also be a tough woman. However, due to the unfavourable environment, Martha again became a victim of sexual harassment.

Jeremias Nyangoen was born in Pontianak in 1968. He is an alumnus of the Jakarta Institute of Arts, and has worked as a film producer, actor, and screenplay writer. His scripts include those for Denias, Singing in the Cloud (2006) and The Beetle Soldiers (2011). Women from Rote Island is his directorial film debut.

Thursday 17th of October at 22.30h

India

The plot follows a Kashmiri Hindu college student, raised by his exiled grandfather and shielded from the knowledge of the circumstances of the death of his parents. After his grandfather’s death, the student, who had come to believe at college that the exodus was benign, becomes driven to uncover the facts of his family’s deaths. The plot alternates between the student’s quest in the present time, 2020, and his family’s travails of thirty years before. The film depicts the exodus and the events leading up to it as a genocide.

Vivek Ranjan Agnihotri is an Indian film director, screenwriter and author who works in Hindi cinema. As of 2022, he is a member of the board of India’s Central Board of Film Certification and a cultural representative of Indian Cinema at the Indian Council for Cultural Relations. Agnihotri made his directorial debut with the crime thriller Chocolate (2005) and has directed multiple films since which failed to propel his career forward until The Tashkent Files (2019) which emerged as a commercial success and earned him the National Film Award for Best Screenplay – Dialogues. He also wrote and directed The Kashmir Files (2022) which emerged as one of the highest-grossing Indian film of 2022.

Thursday 24th of October at 22.30h

Japan

Alienated by friends and family due to her lack of ambition, 29-year-old Misha finds a dangerous connection in an 18-year-old athlete who mistakes her for a fellow student.

A queer writer, filmmaker and circus producer, Zoë Eisenberg creates stories and spaces in and about her home on Hawai’i Island. She co-founded and served as Executive Director of the Made in Hawai’i Film Festival and co-founded and presently serves as Creative Director for Aerial Arts Hawai’i, a queer and allied circus performance collective and community training space. Chaperone (2024), awarded at several festivals, is her solo feature length directorial debut.

Thursday 31st of October at 22.30h

Philippines

The Guy is trapped in the solitude of his luxurious apartment in his forties during the most chaotic period of the COVID-19 pandemic, until a new circle of friends becomes part of his life. Organizing illegal parties, he meets Rose Marie, a worker at the apartment where he resides, who ends up being the key to a life change. When This Is All Over is a portrait of Generation Z and the social class conflict in the Philippines.

Kevin Mayuga (Manila) is a young film director and screenwriter, who studied a bachelor’s degree in communication at the Ateneo de Manila (2012). He started his career as a director with the short films Ate O.G. (2021) and The Juans: Sabik (2021). When This Is All Over (2023) has been well received at international festivals such as the Udine Far East Film Festival, the Cinemalaya Independent Film Festival and the Society of Filipino Film Reviewers.

Thursday 7th of November at 22.30h

Iran

As the title suggests, this film takes us to a small rural village suffering from a demographic challenge. In the past, in the absence of a logical explanation for the lack of births in the town, women were blamed. Intrigued by the mystery, filmmaker Kazem went to the town and made a documentary based on this story, but it never saw the light of day. Two decades later, the true cause of the demographic problem was discovered. In his wisdom and accompanied by his assistant, the director returns to the town with a firm intention: to decrypt the truth and, this time, to change the dignity of women in the construction of history.

Reza Jamali (Arbedil, Iran 1978) is a graduate filmmaker who, after a substantial output of short films presented and awarded at national and international festivals, debuted with his first feature film Old Men Never Die in 2019. His first feature film won the “Spirits of Asia Award” at the Tokyo International Film Festival and was introduced to more international festival screenings and distribution. A Childless Village (2022) is the second film written and directed by the Iranian director.

Thursday 14th of November at 22.30h

China

When Jin, a retired mother in a small town, is diagnosed with a brain tumor, her two children take divergent positions. Her daughter Jenny, head of an English language training center in Shanghai and struggling with her second marriage, insists on seeking the best treatment for her mother. However, Jenny’s younger brother Qing, who works as a tour guide, believes that a fatal outcome is inevitable. Jin spends the last months of her life surrounded by her relatives, while Jenny and Qing rediscover their hometown. The film vindicates the rural environment beyond being considered an idealized tourist enclave and as a palliative in the face of instability and family dispersion.

Xiaoyu Chen is a Chinese screenwriter and director who debuted with his first feature Let’s Go in 2012. His second project, Gone With The Boat, was released in 2023.

Thursday 21st of Novemberat 22.30h

Pakistan

Going viral means that a piece of content, such as a video, an image, a post or an idea, is quickly shared and spread across the Internet and social media, reaching many people in a short period of time. One Of a Kind (Wakhri) (2023) tells the story of a widowed teacher from Lahore who goes viral overnight when her opinions, accidentally shared on social media, reach a wide audience. Her newfound fame as an opinion leader gives her a platform from which she can express herself both physically and digitally. This new belligerent position in a social world restrictive of women proves difficult to reconcile with raising her ten-year-old son.

Iram Parveen Bilal is a Caltech graduate who is a screenwriter and filmmaker. She is known for telling socially impactful and provocative stories. She has been a significant voice in the Muslim community and global cinema, driving important changes in perceptions of gender equality. Iram founded QALAMBAAZ, Pakistan’s first professional screenwriting lab, and played a crucial role in establishing Pakistan’s Oscar committee. As a mentor, she supports women in the film and technology sectors. She is a board member of Film Fatales and has received multiple awards from Women in Film. Her work has been featured by media outlets such as the New York Times, NPR, and BBC.

Thursday 28th of November at 22.30h

Uzbekistan

In Rehearsal (2023) we meet Orzu, a theater actress who, unable to reconcile her career with caring for her sister with functional diversity, decides to send her to a boarding school for children in similar circumstances. The film employs meta-theatricality through the play Orzu works on, exploring human decadence and spiritual quest. Initially given completely to her role, this experience leads her to a new understanding of art and truth in the world. Inspired, Orzu redirects her life to a humanitarian cause. She finds in the children’s home where her sister resides an ideal place to begin her new mission: to heal the broken hearts of the world.

Khusnora Rozmatova, 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 5th of December at 21:45h

Cambodia

Suon Rottana is a teenage Khmer Rouge rebel, Cambodian Army soldier, prisoner of war, and has an amputated limb from stepping on a land mine. Suon becomes a wounded man who seeks reconciliation with everything around him. The forced reflection that his circumstance imposes leads him to share his story with the viewer, working as a tour guide in several war memorial museums. Broken Courage is a film about memory, history and reconciliation. This personal journey will remind us of all what it means to find the way back home.

Nathanael Draper is a director, writer and editor known for Yellow Can (2016), Shiraz (2018) and Broken Courage (2021). David Peck is a writer, speaker, entertainer, academic and social change consultant. He holds a master’s degree in philosophy from the University of Guelph and has completed postgraduate work in International Development.

Thursday 12th of December at 21:45h

India

In a remote town in Bihar that lacks electricity lives Shoma, a housewife who keeps dreaming of the one who was the love of her life, Bedey Da. Although she is currently married to Sunanda, she lives with a melancholy that consumes her. She continues to fulfill her duties at home, but she still writes letters to Bedey for months with the hope of getting an answer one day.

Anuraag Pati is an Indian director and writer. He directed his first short film The Divine Sex in 2016, which won the Phoenix Film Awards in Melbourne. This was followed by Dure Kothao, The Surprise Gift and a small tribute to Satyajit Ray, Apu Kajaler Goppo, in 2018, which won seventeen National and International Awards.

Thursday 19th of December at 21:45h

Kazajstán

Masked figures with machine guns march into the secondary school in Karatas, take the pupils hostage, and execute one of them. They make no demands. Silent terror is their modus operandi. Seeing as the army will take two days to arrive due to a snowstorm, math teacher Tazshi decides to assemble his own assault team: his ex-wife, the gym teacher, the cowardly school principal, an alcoholic night watchman, the village idiot, and an incompetent chief of police.

Adilkhan Yerzhanov (1982, Kazakhstan) trained as a filmmaker at the Kazakhstan National Academy of Arts. Yerzhanov has twice participated in the Official Program of the Cannes Film Festival with The Owners (2014) and The Gentle Indifference of the World (2018). The Plague at the Karatas Village had its world premiere at IFFR 2016. Yerzhanov won the Asia Pacific Screen Award for Achievement in Directing for his A Dark, Dark Man (2019).