LITTLE JAFFNA
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40 ACRES
Director: R.t. Thorne
Danielle Deadwyler shines as the invincible gun-toting matriarch Hailey, a Black military veteran determined to protect and preserve her family and their land in the wake of a man-made apocalypse. A few years before, all animals on Earth were killed by a viral epidemic. Since then, there has a been a breakdown in global food supplies: only those cultivating the land can hope to survive, provided they can ward off roving militias looting the remaining farms. Hailey communicates only with other farmers via CB radio; her four children are walled in with their parents, taught to trust nobody, but when lonely young Emmanuel meets Dawn, a wounded young woman in the woods, Hailey’s regime threatens to break down from within.
TO A LAND UNKNOWN
Director: Mahdi Fleifel
Palestinian cousins Chatila and Reda have fled a Lebanese refugee camp for Athens. Their sights are set on Germany but, with no money or passports, they are stuck in an underground limbo living off scams and petty crime. For Chatila, who has discovered a ruthless streak, anything is justified – even ripping off their fellow refugees – but Reda hates what he has become, a shame he smothers with drugs, squandering the little money they have. Things look up, however, when they meet Malek: a young boy who says his aunt will send him money to bring him to Italy. Working in a style between documentary and fiction, director Mehdi Fleifel brings home the reality of desperation with poignancy and warmth.
AÏCHA
Director: Mehdi M. Barsaoui
Aya is the sole survivor of a bus crash on a mountain road. When she realises that nobody knows she is alive, she makes a snap decision to escape her dead-end village existence and become someone else. In thriving, liberal Tunis, she calls herself Amira, a thrilling change until one of those men is murdered and the investigating police start to question “Amira”’s sketchy life story. Fatma Sfar is vivid and immediately sympathetic as Aya/Amira, while narrative twists and nested details gradually reveal that she isn’t the only trickster with something to hide. Aicha was judged Best Mediterranean Film from the Academy of Fine Arts at this year’s Venice Film Festival.