Synopsis

Retiree Halit lives a quiet life with his daughter in a mountain village in Turkey. His son Mustafa, merving another eight months as a soldier on a front that is not described in further detail, calls every Thursday at 5 p.m. sharp. Hearing his son’s voice gives Halit new vigour each time. The camera rarely leaves the protagonist’s side while he walks from his favourite cafe to his house and back to his fields; and each time he rips off another leaf of the calendar, counting the days and hours until the weekly phone call. The camera work with its calm cinemascope imagery feigns a false romanticism of deceleration. A touching story about the effects of war, far away from the actual front lines.

The film will be presented within the frame of SHORT FILM COMPETITION 2 together with the following productions:

Maria’s Episode (Marijina epizoda)
SRB/CAN 2014 | 25 min.
Language: Serbian w. Engl. ST
Director: Sanja Živković
After having lived in exile for many years, Maria visits her grandmother in Serbia. However, the old woman confuses her granddaughter with a fictive character from her favourite soap opera. A touching family story between reality and TV fiction.

February
RUS 2014 | 26 min.
Language: Russian w. Engl. ST
Director: Ruslan Magomadov
Chechnya, February 1944. Thanks to an unsuccessful hunt after a wolf, two brothers escape the deportation of their entire village through the violence of the USSR. A gripping story about inhumanity and fraternal strife.

Soft Rain (Lágy eső)
HUN/BEL 2013 | 29 min.
Language: Hungarian w. Engl. ST
Director: Dénes Nagy
The orphan Dani gets adopted by a pig farmer. He falls in love with his classmate, but is incapable of expressing his feelings for her. Acts of destruction of himself as well as of others take the place of empathy in his emotional repertoire.

The Heat (Żar)
POL 2013 | 24 min.
Language: Polish w. Engl. ST
Director: Bartosz Kruhlik
For the first time ever, the adolescent Michael meets a girl, who should become his new girlfriend. What starts as an innocent story ends in a psychologically gruelling breakout of violence. Forget about teen spirit.

Pandas (Pandy)
SVK/CZE 2013 | 11 min.
Director: Matúš Vizár
Based on the evolution of pandas, Matúš Vizár creates an animated reckoning, that is critical of civilisation. He reveals our perverted (mis)understanding of nature by showing how poorly humans treat it.

The Execution (A kivégzés)
HUN/ROU 2014 | 14 min.
Language: Romanian w. Engl. ST
Director: Petra Szőcs
“Playing Ceausescu” is common among the children of Cluj in 1990 – a game, which entails enacting a brutal execution. A precisely staged view onto a school yard as a place of subversive and direct violence.