Introducing the Kinoscope programme of the 30th Sarajevo Film Festival

 

France, India, Netherlands, Luxembourg, 2024, 115 min.

Director: Payal Kapadia

Cast: Kani Kusruti, Divya Prabha, Chhaya Kadam, Hridhu Haroon, Azees Nedumangad

 

In Mumbai, Nurse Prabha’s routine is disturbed when she receives an unexpected gift from her estranged husband. Her younger roommate, Anu, tries in vain to find a spot in the city to be intimate with her boyfriend. A trip to a beach town allows them to find a space for their desires to manifest themselves.

 

Japan, USA, United Kingdom, 2024, 102 min.

Director: Shiori Ito

 

BLACK BOX DIARIES follows director and journalist Shiori Ito’s courageous investigation of her own sexual assault in an improbable attempt to prosecute her high-profile offender. Unfolding like a thriller and combining secret investigative recordings, vérité shooting, and emotional first-person video, Ito's quest becomes a landmark case in Japan, exposing the country’s desperately outdated judicial and societal systems.

 

China, 2024, 110 min.

Director: Guan Hu

Cast: Eddie Yuyan Peng, Jia Zhangke, Liya Tong, Yi Zhang, Hong Yuan

 

On the edge of the Gobi desert in northwestern China, Lang returns to his hometown after being released from jail. While working for the local dog patrol team to clear the town of stray dogs before the Olympic Games, he strikes up an unlikely connection with a black dog. These two lonely souls embark on a new journey together. Lang decides it is time to take action, not only to save as many stray dogs as he can, but also to fight for the redemption of his soul.

 

France, Senegal, Benin, 2024, 67 min.

Director: Mati Diop

 

November 2021. Twenty-six royal treasures of the Kingdom of Dahomey are about to leave Paris to return to their country of origin, the present-day Republic of Benin. Along with thousands of others, these artefacts were plundered by French colonial troops in 1892. But what attitude to adopt to the homecoming of these ancestors in a nation that has had to forge ahead in their absence? The debate rages among students at the University of Abomey-Calavi.

 

Canada, France, Ukraine, 2024, 95 min.

Director: Oksana Karpovych

 

Ukrainian intelligence services have intercepted thousands of phone calls Russian soldiers made from the battlefield in Ukraine to their families and friends in Russia — calls that paint a stark picture of the cruelty of war with dizzying emotional tension. Juxtaposed with images of the destruction caused by the invasion and the day-to-day life of the Ukrainian people who resist and rebuild, these voices of Russian soldiers – ranging from being filled with heroic illusions to complete disappointment and loss of reason, from looting to committing more horrible war crimes, from propaganda to doubt and disillusionment – expose the full scope of the dehumanising power of war and the imperialist nature of the Russian aggression in Ukraine.

 

Belgium, Sweden, 2024, 100 min.

Director: Leonardo van Dijl

Cast: Tessa Van den Broeck, Grace Biot, Alyssa Lorette, Ruth Becquart, Koen De Bouw, Pierre Gervais, Claire Bodson, Laurent Caron

 

As she is the star player at an elite tennis academy, Julie’s life revolves around the game she loves. When her coach comes under investigation and is suddenly suspended, all of the club's players are encouraged to speak up. But Julie decides to keep quiet.

 

France, Spain, Portugal, 2024, 102 min.

Director: Alain Guiraudie

Cast: Félix Kysyl, Catherine Frot, Jacques Develay, Jean-Baptiste Durand, David Ayala

 

Jérémie returns to his hometown for the funeral of his former boss, the village baker. He decides to stay for a few days with Martine, the late man’s widow. A mysterious disappearance, a threatening neighbour, and a priest with strange intentions make Jérémie’s short stay in the village take an unexpected turn.

 

Dominican Republic, Namibia, Germany, France, 2024, 122 min.

Director: Nelson Carlos De Los Santos Arias

Cast: Jhon Narváez, Sor María Ríos, Fareed Matjila, Harmony Ahalwa, Jorge Puntillón García, Shifafure Faustinus, Steven Alexander, Nicolás Marín Caly

 

A voice that claims to be that of a hippopotamus. A voice that does not understand the structural perception of time. A voice that, in a trance, goes across the languages of a historical event. “Is that my sound that comes out of my mouth?” Or, specifically, "What is a mouth? The only thing he knows for sure is that he is dead. The first and last hippopotamus killed in the Americas. Between encounters and misunderstandings, epiphanies and sadness, we arrive in a world full of stories replete with more stories; images and sounds that narrate, in a serious, playful, authentic, and false way the overwhelming orality of these towns that, like Pepe, were made up of beings who died without ever knowing where they really were.

 

United Kingdom, India, France, Germany, 2024, 120 min. 

Director: Sandhya Suri

Cast: Shahana Goswami, Sunita Rajwar

 

A government scheme sees newly widowed Santosh inherit her husband’s job as a police constable in the rural badlands of northern India. When a lower-caste girl is murdered, Santosh is pulled into the investigation by Sharma, a charismatic, feminist inspector. In this crime story, an ordinary woman moves from housewife to policewoman in one of the nation’s most corrupt forces. As she investigates, she begins to experiment with her newly found power within a web of misogyny, casteism, and prejudice.

 

Germany, Switzerland, 2024, 94 min.

Director: Willy Hans

Cast: Leo Kuhn, Alva Schäfer, Shadi Eck, Felix Maria Zeppenfeld, Darja Mahotkin, Malene Becker, Charlotte Hovenbitzer, Lasse Stadelmann

 

After escaping gym class, Simon finds himself on the banks of a river with a group of teenagers. In the heat of the summer day amid all the pointless chatter, time passes as sluggishly as the waters of the river. When Marie appears, and she and Simon are catapulted into the forest near the river by an unexpected incident, the two escape the lethargic group and enter the timeless intermediate realm of the enchanted landscape.

 

France, 2024, 92 min.

Director: Boris Lojkine

Cast: Abou Sangare, Nina Meurisse, Alpha Oumar Sow, Emmanuel Yovanie, Younoussa Diallo, Ghislain Mahan, Mamadou Barry, Yaya Diallo, Keita Diallo

 

As he pedals through the streets of Paris delivering meals, Souleymane repeats his story to himself. In two days, he has to go through his asylum application interview, the key to obtaining papers. But Souleymane is not ready.

 

Lithuania, 2024, 99 min.

Director: Saulė Bliuvaitė

Cast: Vesta Matulytė, Ieva Rupeikaitė, Giedrius Savickas, Vilma Raubaitė, Eglė Gabrėnaitė

 

Abandoned by her mother, thirteen-year-old Maria is forced to live with her grandmother in a bleak industrial town. During a violent clash on the street, Maria meets Kristina, a girl of the same age who is striving to become a fashion model. In a bid to get closer to Kristina, Maria enrolls in a mysterious modelling school, where the girls are preparing for the biggest casting event in the region. Her ambiguous relationship with Kristina and the intense, cult-like environment of the modelling school launch Maria on a quest to discover her own identity.

 

 

France, 2024, 107 min.

Director: Caroline Poggi, Jonathan Vinel

Cast: Théo Cholbi, Erwan Kepoa Falé, Lila Gueneau

 

Pablo, a small-time dealer, and his teenage sister Apolline have forged an unbreakable bond through their shared obsession with the online video game Darknoon. When Pablo falls for the mysterious Night, he gets swept up in their liaison, abandoning his sister to deal with the impending shutdown of their digital haven on her own. As Pablo’s reckless choices provoke the wrath of a dangerous rival gang, the end of their virtual life draws near, upending their reality.

 

France, Belgium, 2023, 104 min.

Director: Céline Rouzet

Cast: Mathias Legoût-Hammond, Elodie Bouchez, Jean-Charles Clichet, Céleste Brunnquell, Laly Mercier

 

The day they move into a new neighbourhood, the Feral family members plan to appear as normal and friendly as possible. But their son, Philemon, is not an ordinary teenager. When he gets closer to his new neighbour, Camila, his thirst for blood grows and his difference becomes impossible to hide.

 

Norway, Sweden, Greece, Denmark, 2024, 97 min.

Director: Thea Hvistendahl

Cast: Renate Reinsve, Anders Danielsen Lie, Bjørn Sundquist, Bente Børsum, Bahars Pars

 

On a hot summer day in Oslo, the dead mysteriously awaken, and three families are thrown into chaos when their deceased loved ones come back to them. Who are they, and what do they want? One family is faced with the mother’s reawakening before they have mourned her death; an elderly woman gets the love of her life back the same day she buried her; a grandfather rescues his grandchild from the gravesite in a desperate attempt to help his daughter out of her depression. Based on a book by John Ajvide Lindqvist, HANDLING THE UNDEAD is a drama with elements of horror about three families—a story about grief and loss, and also about hope and the understanding of what we cannot comprehend or control.

 

Canada, 2023, 92 min.

Director: Ariane Louis-Seize

Cast: Sara Montpetit, Félix-Antoine Bénard, Steve Laplante, Sophie Cadieux, Noémie O'Farrell, Marie Brassard

 

Sasha is a young vampire with a serious problem: she’s too sensitive to kill. When her exasperated parents cut off her blood supply, Sasha’s life is in jeopardy. Luckily, she meets Paul, a lonely teenager with suicidal tendencies who is willing to give his life to save hers. But their friendly agreement soon becomes a nocturnal quest to fulfill Paul’s last wishes before day breaks.

 

SAD, 2023, 90 min.

Režija: Francis Galluppi

Uloge: Jim Cummings, Jocelin Donahue, Sierra McCormick, Nicholas Logan, Michael Abbott Jr., Connor Paolo, Alex Essoe, Robin Bartlett

 

A travelling knife salesman is stranded and forced to wait at a rural rest stop. Suddenly, he finds himself in the middle of a violent hostage situation upon the arrival of two bank robbers who are on the run after a recent heist.

 

France, 2023, 103 min. 

Director: Sébastien Vaniček

Cast: Théo Christine, Sofia Lesaffre, Jérôme Niel, Lisa Nyarko, Finnegan Oldfield

 

Kaleb is a young adult who makes a living with petty jobs. Fascinated by exotic animals, he finds a poisonous spider at a bazaar and brings it back to his flat. It only takes a moment for the creature to escape and reproduce, turning the place into a dreadful web trap. Meanwhile, the police lock down the building where the residents have been ambushed. Kaleb and his mates must find a way out if they are to survive.

The 30th Sarajevo Film Festival will take place from 16th to 23rd of August 2024.