WORLD CINEMA PRODUCED BY FRANCE
Each year, several films around the world are developed, produced or co-produced by French production companies. COLCOA dedicates an evening to these films to highlight the support of French industry to World Cinema.
In 2013, Ziad Doueri’s The Attack was part of this program and won the COLCOA Audience Award, the COLCOA Critics Special Prize as well as the Coming Soon Award.
This year, the series is scheduled on Wednesday, April 23 in the TRUFFAUT Theater.
5:30 pm
U.S. Premiere • France, Switzerland • COLCOA.doc
A modest Athens apartment has become a terminal of lost souls to a steady influx of illegal Iranian immigrants seeking transit to a better life in the West. Hosted by the generous Amir, himself an immigrant, these shipwrecked men and women are marooned in a dehumanizing limbo while they try to obtain the forged documents and smuggler contacts that will allow them safe passage to their ultimate destinations. Most started out able-bodied, educated and with some means, but false promises and outright swindles have left them stranded in a hostile situation where a trip to the grocery store could cost them their freedom, or even their lives. Filmmaker Kaveh Bakhtiari went underground with nothing but a digital camera to make an intimate portrait of Amir, the boarding house “Papa” who watches over his flock of economic refugees.
7:45 pm
North American Premiere • France, Algeria
Set against sea and sky, the distant rooftops of Algiers are a picture of beauty and serenity, but a closer look reveals a world simmering with contradictions, chaos, and corruption. In a single day, five cleverly linked stories take place on these historic rooftops, which have been colonized by the city’s undesirables. Recalling Short Cuts from filmmaker Robert Altman, the stories are united by the five daily calls to prayer echoing over the city from loudspeakers. From squatters and lowlifes to bigoted film directors and radical singers, a tapestry of contemporary Algeria is woven together. On one rooftop, a man is waterboarded by thugs, but he is no terrorist. On another rooftop, a madman kept in chains raves to a young girl about the heroic War of Independence. Later he is simply covered up when the space is needed for those seeking a new kind of war. The new film of veteran writer/director Merzak Allouache ,The Rooftops, may occasionally despair at its subject, but with its vitality and its rhythms, it never loses hope, or its sense of humor.
10:00 pm
A STRANGE COURSE OF EVENTS (Le Cours étrange des choses)
North American Premiere • France, Israel • After 10 Series
This intimate, easygoing French-Israeli co-production, co-written and directed by Raphaël Nadjari, charts a solitary man’s course back to life after a difficult divorce. Needing a break from his job working the night shift admissions desk at a hospital, thirty-something Shaul heads for the coastal town of Haifa, where his father Shimon lives. The two men have been estranged since the death of Shaul’s mother many years earlier, and the mutual resentments have piled up. But resolving old grudges is put on hold while Shaul first comes to terms with Bati, Shimon’s New Age girlfriend. Before long, Shaul’s grumpy exterior is being put to the test with a battery of therapeutic oils, healing stones, and yoga. But his self-imposed isolation is dealt a real body blow when his young daughter turns up for a visit.
