The !f istanbul International Independent Film Festival – the region’s premier high profile festival dedicated to cutting edge contemporary cinema- has announced the line-up for its !f Inspired competition ahead of the festival’s 11th edition which unspools February 16-26, 2012. In its fifth year, !f Inspired aims to highlight films by emerging directors which show technical innovation, bold narrative choices and courageous storytelling.
The competition programme will be judged by a jury headed by acclaimed Turkish director Yesim Ustaoglu and includes the Egyptian filmmaker, actor and activist Khaled Abol Naga, Mark Adams, chief critic for Screen International, American writer-director Jonathan Cauoette, and Andrea Picard, curator of the Wavelengths section of the Toronto Film Festival.
The competition carries a $15,000 award for the ‘Most Inspired’ director.
The films in competition are:
Two Years At Sea documents the solidarity existence of Jake, a man who lives in isolation in the middle of a forest. The director Ben Rivers sculpts a devotional form where the camera immerses itself in the pure temporal and spatial everydayness of Jake’s hallucinatory environment.
You Hurt My Feelings tracks the growth of the relationship over four seasons. Steve Collins captures the complexity of emotions throbbing with acuity, and manages to deliver an indescribably poignant and minimalist take on modern romance.
Nana is a brilliant love letter to the childish underside of objects and how the world is being sculpted through the eyes of a child. Valerie Massadian’s debut film is a journey into the night of childhood.
Machete Language is a film of poetic terrorism, moving between eulogia and anathema. Kyzze Terrazas tells the story of an underground punk star from Mexico City and an anarchist, just trying to get by.
Innocent Saturday depicts the Chernobyl tragedy on its 25th anniversary. Aleksandr Mindadze masterfully emphasizes the feeling of urgency and characters’ hallucinative mood in the total innocence of Saturday.
Gandu is described as a ‘rap-musical’ but if so it’s a kind that has never been seen before. Gandu and his friend Rickshaw take a tour around the margins of life, featuring explicit language, drug abuse and scenes of hardcore sex.
Sur la Planche is a striking Moroccan debut about a young woman’s struggle to break free. Leila Kilani’s first feature follows four young women through the dark underbelly of Tangier.
Back To Stay is a coming of age story, a poignant study of loss and how it affects people differently, and a character-based film that achieves deep psychological and emotional insight. Milagros Mumenthaler manages to capture sisterly relations in all their warmth, grudges and complication.
