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FREEDOM WAY
Director: Afolabi Olalekan
When two young software engineers set up EasyGo, a ride-sharing scheme for commercial motorcyclists in hectic Lagos, it is a godsend to riders like Abiola, who is soon depending on its customers to support his family. The success of the app, however, attracts the attention of corrupt police and government ministers who contrive to get it banned. Other stories – one about a doctor wrestling with his conscience, one about two police officers at loggerheads over the common practice of shaking down young people in the street – show that this kind of low-level violence is everywhere.. Like Lagos itself, the melodramatic storylines are fast and intense; as the characters’ stories start to dovetail, as if the city itself were pushing them together.
LITTLE JAFFNA
Director: Lawrence Valin
“You’re not in Paris any more. You’re in Little Jaffna.” During the civil war in Sri Lanka that raged from 1983 until 2009, Tamils in the Parisian district of Little Jaffna were forced to contribute towards buying arms for Tamil Tigers. Aya, ostensibly a grocer, leads the ruthless extortion gang that bleeds the community dry. Michael, a straight-shooting young police officer with Tamil roots, is sent to infiltrate the organization but as he befriends the gang’s members at terrible risk to himself, he starts to see the issue in a more nuanced way and feels his loyalties shifting. Valin combines the theatricality of Tamil movies with the hard edge of new French cinema, using largely non-professional actors, in this spectacular thriller.
STATE OF SILENCE
Director: Santiago Maza
Four Mexican journalists who risk their lives to report on their country’s violent “narco-politics” talk in depth about their experiences, the dangers they face and the crucial importance of independent journalism. Mexico has been the frontline of the so-called “war on drugs” for two decades, where the line between law and crime is blurred – the continuing threats against journalists have effectively created dangerous zones of silence. Jesús Medina, Juan de Dios García Davish, María de Jesús Peters and March Vizcarra are committed to breaking that silence, reporting on local corruption, the theft of water from farmers by the drug lords and cartel-related shootings. Medina describes his job as being an “amplifier” for ordinary people who, without a free and committed press, have no voice.
BLACK DOG
Director: Guan Hu
While China buzzes in anticipation of the Beijing Olympics, Lang returns from a decade in prison to his home town to find it largely deserted, its crumbling concrete blocks being torn down to make way for a new industrial city. The exodus of humans means that the area is now overrun with stray dogs; Lang, needing a job, joins a hastily assembled extermination team supposed to round them up but, when a dog suspected of having rabies adopts him, he realizes his real mission is to save the animals, including the ones at the nearly deserted local zoo.. In a riveting, almost wordless performance, Eddie Peng shows Lang recover his humanity, even as the landscape around him becomes increasingly desolate.