A film that pivots around a court case about its own making, buried treasure documentary “A Band of Dreamers and a Judge” features hints of allure that eventually wane. Shot in Iran, where unauthorized excavations remain illegal, Hesam Eslami’s chronicle of a group of treasure hunters is an occasionally intense process piece that often loses steam, especially during its attempts at intimate portraiture. The movie’s grave-robbing subjects lead full and complex lives, but it seldom depicts them with the richness they deserve.
Eslami’s framing device is unique. The story begins with his cross-examination by a female judge, who questions his motives in filming footage a year prior, of a band of middle-aged friends obsessed with finding lost antiquities in the mountains of Savadkooh. This year-old footage makes up most of the movie’s runtime, plenty of which is dedicated to the group’s personal lives. Unfortunately, the...
Eslami’s framing device is unique. The story begins with his cross-examination by a female judge, who questions his motives in filming footage a year prior, of a band of middle-aged friends obsessed with finding lost antiquities in the mountains of Savadkooh. This year-old footage makes up most of the movie’s runtime, plenty of which is dedicated to the group’s personal lives. Unfortunately, the...
- 4/30/2024
- by Siddhant Adlakha
- Variety Film + TV
Croatia-based SplitScreen has picked up worldwide sales excluding Spain to The Undergrowth (La Hojarasca) ahead of today’s (February 16) world premiere in Berlinale Forum.
The documentary from Canarian filmmaker Macu Machín follows the lives of three sisters on the Canary Islands in the aftermath of a volcanic eruption. Tenerife-based producer El Viaje Films holds Spanish rights.
SplitScreen’s Berlin-based Canarian executive Lorena Morin and Zagreb-based Marcella Jelic have assembled an EFM slate that includes worldwide rights on recent IDFA acquisitions Manu. A Visual Album (Ecu-usa) directed by Alexandra Cuesta, and Hesam Eslami’s A Band Of Dreamers And A Judge...
The documentary from Canarian filmmaker Macu Machín follows the lives of three sisters on the Canary Islands in the aftermath of a volcanic eruption. Tenerife-based producer El Viaje Films holds Spanish rights.
SplitScreen’s Berlin-based Canarian executive Lorena Morin and Zagreb-based Marcella Jelic have assembled an EFM slate that includes worldwide rights on recent IDFA acquisitions Manu. A Visual Album (Ecu-usa) directed by Alexandra Cuesta, and Hesam Eslami’s A Band Of Dreamers And A Judge...
- 2/16/2024
- ScreenDaily
Also programmes IDFA on Stage events, plus Paradocs and queer programme.
International Documentary Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) has selected 35 feature films across its Luminous and Frontlight sections, including new films from Albania, South Africa and Panama.
The Luminous section includes non-fiction titles with a range of styles and formalistic approaches, and consists of 23 films, 22 of which are world or international premieres and 20 of which are features.
Titles include Zikethiwe Ngcobo and Chloe White’s South Africa-uk co-production 1001 Days, about the young mothers struggling to raise their children amid unemployment, poverty, disease and domestic violence in Johannesburg. The film, with Zulu and English-language dialogue,...
International Documentary Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) has selected 35 feature films across its Luminous and Frontlight sections, including new films from Albania, South Africa and Panama.
The Luminous section includes non-fiction titles with a range of styles and formalistic approaches, and consists of 23 films, 22 of which are world or international premieres and 20 of which are features.
Titles include Zikethiwe Ngcobo and Chloe White’s South Africa-uk co-production 1001 Days, about the young mothers struggling to raise their children amid unemployment, poverty, disease and domestic violence in Johannesburg. The film, with Zulu and English-language dialogue,...
- 10/10/2023
- by Ben Dalton
- ScreenDaily
After a year of grounded flights, video conference calls, and countless other workarounds to help the global film industry through the coronavirus pandemic, the organizers of the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival are ready to roll out the red carpet for the 23rd edition.
With travel restrictions in Europe and across much of the globe easing in recent weeks, this year’s hybrid edition will include roughly 100 industry guests taking part in the activities of the Agora, the festival’s industry arm, which will host events both online and onsite in Thessaloniki from June 25-July 4.
The organizers have made the most of recent experience. Last year, as the pandemic began spreading across Europe, the festival was forced to hastily pivot to an online edition, livestreaming the pitching forum of the annual Agora Doc Market just days after the festival’s 22nd edition was postponed. “Everything was coordinated in three days,” says Agora head Yianna Sarri.
With travel restrictions in Europe and across much of the globe easing in recent weeks, this year’s hybrid edition will include roughly 100 industry guests taking part in the activities of the Agora, the festival’s industry arm, which will host events both online and onsite in Thessaloniki from June 25-July 4.
The organizers have made the most of recent experience. Last year, as the pandemic began spreading across Europe, the festival was forced to hastily pivot to an online edition, livestreaming the pitching forum of the annual Agora Doc Market just days after the festival’s 22nd edition was postponed. “Everything was coordinated in three days,” says Agora head Yianna Sarri.
- 6/22/2021
- by Christopher Vourlias
- Variety Film + TV
The plethora of misconceptions, lack of proper information and almost racist state of mind that dominates public opinion about mental patients include a tendency to forget that these individuals, like all of us, also have needs that revolve around romantic companionship and sex.
The Marriage Project screened at the 22th Thessaloniki Documentary Festival
This concept has been in the mind of the head of Ehsan House, a privately funded mental institute in Tehran, which has been taking care of patients for 20 years. More than 400 patients have lived in separate male and female quarters in that time, with no hope of ever leaving or sexual relations. However, as the documentary begins, the aforementioned has just secured a donation to fund the construction of a building of marital facilities for patients who would marry within the institute. Most of the members of the board, who are actually experts, are against this idea,...
The Marriage Project screened at the 22th Thessaloniki Documentary Festival
This concept has been in the mind of the head of Ehsan House, a privately funded mental institute in Tehran, which has been taking care of patients for 20 years. More than 400 patients have lived in separate male and female quarters in that time, with no hope of ever leaving or sexual relations. However, as the documentary begins, the aforementioned has just secured a donation to fund the construction of a building of marital facilities for patients who would marry within the institute. Most of the members of the board, who are actually experts, are against this idea,...
- 5/21/2020
- by Panos Kotzathanasis
- AsianMoviePulse
The 22nd Thessaloniki Documentary Festival goes online and presents 210 documentaries from all over the world, original tributes and a series of live open discussions.
From Tuesday May 19 to Thursday May 28, users from Greece will be able, with a simple registration to the website www.filmfestival.gr to watch the documentaries of the 22nd Tdf for free. Every documentary will be available for 400 screenings. The festival includes several documentaries from across Asia including:
The Marriage Project by Atieh Attarzadeh, Hesam Eslami
Encourage the patients to engage in relationships, get married, and lead a family life. That’s the groundbreaking and rule-changing idea of the head of a mental clinic. Not in Scandinavia or Canada, but in the suffocative and repressive milieu of Tehran. As the first marriages between couples selected by a committee take place, a series of intriguing questions arise. An in-depth glance at the unseen structures and the unwritten laws of a closed-circuit community,...
From Tuesday May 19 to Thursday May 28, users from Greece will be able, with a simple registration to the website www.filmfestival.gr to watch the documentaries of the 22nd Tdf for free. Every documentary will be available for 400 screenings. The festival includes several documentaries from across Asia including:
The Marriage Project by Atieh Attarzadeh, Hesam Eslami
Encourage the patients to engage in relationships, get married, and lead a family life. That’s the groundbreaking and rule-changing idea of the head of a mental clinic. Not in Scandinavia or Canada, but in the suffocative and repressive milieu of Tehran. As the first marriages between couples selected by a committee take place, a series of intriguing questions arise. An in-depth glance at the unseen structures and the unwritten laws of a closed-circuit community,...
- 5/18/2020
- by Adam Symchuk
- AsianMoviePulse
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