Program 2021

Flying Film Festival 4th edition

Baba

Directed by
Sarah Blok and Lisa Konno

Synopsis 
Captivating portrait of one of the first Turkish immigrants in the Dutch cultural sector, interviewed by his daughter amid a colourful fashion collection inspired by his life. About the complexity of migration, revolving around a migrant who never thought migrating was complicated.

Directors’ bio
Sarah Blok graduated from the HKU University of the Arts in Utrecht in 2015 and is based in Amsterdam. She creates theatre shows (on location) and wrote the screenplay for the short film Het Hele Verhaa, directed by Teddy Cherim. Together with Lisa Konno, she started the ongoing project about non-stereotypical migration stories. The first part, Nobu, was finished in 2018. The second part of the short documentary trilogy is Baba.


Ethnography of Factories

Directed by 
Anastasiya Ksenofontova

Synopsis
One day in the life of a fabric factory in the depths of Russia. Sounds, textures, mysterious machines and mysterious people.

Director’s bio 
Anastasiya Ksenofontova lives and works in St. Petersburg, was born in 1986. Actively engaged in the promotion of documentary films in society.


Huntsville Station

Directed by
Jamie Meltzer and Chris Filippone

Synopsis
Inmates released from penitentiary take in their first moments of freedom with phone calls, cigarettes, and reflection at the bus station.

Directors’ bio
Jamie Meltzer’s feature documentary films have been broadcast nationally on PBS and have screened at numerous film festivals worldwide. He teaches and is the Program Director of the M.F.A. Program in Documentary Film at Stanford University.

Chris Filippone is a documentary filmmaker whose works have screened in the Berlinale, Visions du Réel, SXSW, and Ann Arbor Film Festival. He is a graduate of Stanford  University’s M.F.A. Documentary Film Program.


Il genio

Directed by
Silvia Poeta Paccati

Synopsis
Eugenio Carrara, known as “IL GENIO”, carried on his father’s typography, never adjusting to the rise of the digital printing techniques. The odor of ink have vanished, the sound of the machines cannot resonate anymore: there’s just somebody that asks too many questions to a typographer that, reluctant to answer, forces us to ignite the machine of abstract thinking.

Director’s bio
Silvia Poeta Paccati was born in the winter of 1982. She never finished the DAMS Cinema degree in Turin, in favour of the biennal editing course at the Civic Cinema School of Milan. Besides reckless activity in the commercial field, her research stretches between field recording, relational art and creative documentaries. The main focus is somewhere in between storytelling techniques, geography and metalanguage.


Loose Fish

Directed by
Pato Martinez and Francisco Canton

Synopsis
Tired of the dull repetitiveness of the port life and at the same time maybe concerned about his own future, Ismail sets out to save enough money to try something else in a city nearby, far away from the ocean and the smell of fish.

Directors’ bio 
Pato Martinez and Francisco Canton are two directors from Buenos Aires, Argentina. Together they have worked in crafting several shorts such as Woza, a film about a young African surfer, and are now working on Nada De Todo Esto, their next short to be shot in Argentina at the end of this year.


Painter & Mum

Directed by
Forest Ian Etsler and Young-mi Kim

Synopsis
A daughter and her mother use painting as a means of mutual understanding and as an avenue for expansion.

Directors’ bio
Forest Ian Etsler mixes his current Korean surroundings, his Midwest American gardener viewpoint, and his Soul music sensibilities to create a unique, cinematic cocktail. 

Personal vulnerabilities and painful parts from her past have been central to Young-mi Kim’s paintings. Now, she explores these familiar themes through a different medium. “Painter & Mom” is her first film collaboration.


Shanzhai Screens

Directed by
Paul Heintz

Synopsis
Shenzhen at night, copyist painters recount their daily lives and their craft. Their acts shift alternately between an artistic and blue-collar imagery, from new technology to classical techniques. Here, another history of painting is being drawn.

Director’s bio
Paul Heintz was born in 1989 in Saint-Avold (France). He is a Fine Arts graduate from Beaux-Arts de Nancy, Arts Décoratifs de Paris and Le Fresnoy. His work goes through object, sound, video, installation and films. His films were screened in many festivals such as IFFR, FID Marseille, Dok Leipzig, Indie Lisboa or RIDM. Paul’s field of action is a bizarre set of cases where what is real is largely imbued with fiction, and where social normativity also makes its weight entirely felt.


Some kind of Intimacy

Directed by
Toby Bull

Synopsis
In the British countryside, director Toby Bull observes the sheep that live on the land where his parents were buried several years ago. Talking to his brother on the phone, they start a conversation about the means of communication between the animal kingdom, that of the living and that of the dead. An original perspective on bereavement, tackled with humour and tenderness.

Director’s bio  
Toby Bull is an English filmmaker currently making a series of films about his parents’ untimely deaths and their participation in a secretive psychotherapy movement. Previously, Toby studied at the UK’s NFTS and directed “Welcome to Harmondsworth” (2019), which premiered in competition at Big Sky and screened at Full Frame. Previously, Toby studied English at Cambridge & worked in the music industry, directing an imprint of Moshi Moshi Records.


The Blue Star

Directed by
Valentin Noujaïm

Synopsis
One night, a Brown Man – sad and lonely – hears a Blue Star far away in the sky, promising him a new world. The Brown Man dreams to leave forever.

Director’s bio
After graduating from La Fémis (film school old Paris) in screenwriting department, Valentin Noujaïm wrote and directed three films dealing with diaspora, anti-racism, utopia and revolution.


The Fourfold

Directed by
Alisi Telengut 

Synopsis
Based on the ancient animistic beliefs and rituals in Mongolia and Siberia, an exploration of the indigenous worldview.

Director’s bio
Alisi Telengut is a Canadian artist of Mongolian origin. Her works received multiple international awards and nominations, including the Best Short Film at Stockholm Film Festival (Sweden), Best Animated Film at Mammoth Lakes Film Festival (USA) and the Jury Award at the Aspen Shortsfest (USA). 


Tiger and Ox

Directed by
Seunghee Kim

Synopsis
The life of a single mother and her daughter showing what divorce means to women in Korean patriarchal society.

Director’s bio
Seunghee Kim has pursued her career as an animation filmmaker since 2014.  Also, she is an invited artist for Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris, France, and Samsung Cultural Foundation supported her residency in 2018. Her latest work, Tiger and Ox, has been presented as The New York Times Op-Docs Series.


Y’a pas d’heure pour les femmes

Directed by 
Sarra El Abed

Synopsis
Tunis, November 2019. A group of women is gathered at Saïda’s, the hairdresser, on the eve of the presidential election. The salon is transformed into a town square, mirroring the internal turmoil of the country. In this female sanctuary, we get an intimate look at the county’s teenage democracy.

Director’s bio
Sarra El Abed finished her degree in film direction at UQAM in 2018, where she was awarded the best fiction prize for her graduation project. “Y’a pas d’heure pour les femmes” is her fourth film. Flirting between fiction and documentary filmmaking, she likes to breathe whimsy into the ordinary and comedy into dramatic situations.


Yvonne

Directed by
Anna Blom

Synopsis
A theatre play, family photographs and films from the 1960s open a window into Yvonne’s remarkable life, showing how love helps her triumph.

Director’s bio
Anna Blom is a Finnish-Swedish filmmaker living in Helsinki. She is a director and writer focusing on both documentary and fiction films. Anna has been running her own production company ja! media production since 2004. Her background is in journalism, and she takes a special interest in issues concerning human rights, children and youth. She has made numerous critically acclaimed documentaries. Some of her more prominent works are the documentaries The Silent Singer and Remembering Lampedusa – Grief and the short fiction film Permission to Operate.