THE WATER MURMURS
Genre
Fantasy and Drama
Running time
15 minutes
Year
2022
Language
Mandarin and Yue (inc. Cantonese)
Subtitle
English
Country
China
Director
Diam Chen
Bio
Producer
Li Xiaoyuan
Cast
Annabel Yao, Taiwen Zhang, Rongxi Li
Scriptwriter
Xiaozi Muhua
Chinese filmmaker Jianying Chen won the Palme D’Or at Cannes for the best short film with this post-apocalyptic genre story, which follows a young woman through a town about to be devastated by rising waters. An asteroid has hit the earth, leading to underwater volcanic eruptions. As the inhabitants of a small riverside town start to flee inland, Nian makes her way to her friend’s house to say goodbye. As she does so, she is assailed by memories.
Other movies
AGORA
Director: Ala Eddine Slim
A blue dog and a black crow narrate the strange story of three revenants – people who are not quite dead, but not alive either – who resurge in a remote town, reviving the unsolved mysteries around their respective disappearances. Fathi, the local police inspector, is on the case, assisted by his friend Amine, the local doctor. What begins as a conventionally recognisable crime thriller, however, becomes more of a mood piece once Omar, a police investigator from the city, arrives to shine a light on what has happened and is overwhelmed by the irrationality of the chain of events. At once absurd and disturbing, Agora gradually reveals itself as both poetic fable and a political commentary on the state of Tunisia.
YALLA PARKOUR
Director: Areeb Zuaiter
One of Zuaiter’s strongest memories of her mother is her radiant smile as a young woman on the beach in Gaza on one of the family’s regular holidays to Palestine. Her cousins would mock Areeb’s “outsider” accent, but according to her mother, this was where she belonged. From her current home in the US, Zuaiter combs the web for images that evoke something of her mother and finds teenager Ahmed Matar and his friends, a parkour team who use the ruins of Gaza’s bombed buildings as obstacle courses, laughing for joy against a background of explosions. She tracks Ahmed down online and the two become friends; meanwhile, he is determined that parkour will be his route out of the prison their shared homeland has become.
THE LEGEND OF THE VAGABOND QUEEN OF LAGOS
Director: James Tayler
The Agbajowo Collective bring a lively mix of legend and community struggle to a fable grounded in Nigeria’s real-life mass evictions. In 2017, the state government and corrupt police colluded to burn out and bulldoze the waterside shanty town of Otodo-Gbame, leaving thousands homeless. Those who resisted were beaten, jailed or worse. In the fictionalised version - called Agbojedo - young mother Jawu, living in the floating slums on the lagoon that gives Lagos its name, is compelled by the spirit of the great warrior king Egbaezen to stand firm against these forced evictions, unifying her poor but loyal community behind her in an epic multi-genre adventure containing a stash of extorted money and a magical African Grey parrot.
HOLES
Director: Abdulmohsen Aldhabaan
Rakan and his wife Rim are looking for an apartment to rent instead of living with his aged mother. It seems they have found the right spot, except for the hole in the wall that looks as if someone bashed it with a hammer. Rakan seems strangely unengaged, however, barely speaking to his wife. Gradually, as we slip from present to past, we piece together the story that explains his barrage of unwanted calls, chance encounters with shady characters and outbreaks of violence. When his mother’s home is burgled and she is attacked, he is confronted by the person he least wants to see.
