Sharjah Art Foundation’s annual film festival, Sharjah Film Platform (SFP), returns for its second edition from December 14 to 21. Featuring more than 50 featured by local, regional and international filmmakers as well as talks and workshops, the eight-day event will also hand out awards in various categories.
Here are Gulf News tabloid!’s top films not to miss.
Film: Children of the Lake
Director: Emerson Reyes
Country: Philippines
Running time: 17 minutes
Language: Tagalog with English subtitles
When: December 14, 8pm.
Where: Mirage City Cinema
Lele and Bella are playing cops and robbers near the lake. Their innocent pastime turns into a deadly game of cat and mouse when they meet a lone soldier who is being hunted down for conspiring to take over their land. The two young children struggle to decide between righteousness and duty as they search for a way out of the conflict.
Film: From the Mountain
Director: Faisal Attrache
Country: USA
Running time: 21 minutes
Language: Arabic with English subtitles
When: December 14, 8.38pm
Where: Mirage City Cinema
In 1922, a charismatic and fiery Syrian farmer and local leader must decide whether to fight for the dignity and freedom of the nation he is striving to build or for the safety and security of his community and family.
Film: That Cloud Never Left
Director: Yashaswini Raghunandan
Country: India
Running time: 65 minutes
Language: Bengali with English subtitles
When: December 15, 6pm
Where: Al Hamra Cinema
In a village, people use discarded reels of film to make loud toys such as rattlers, whistles and whirligigs. Every day, they make a few hundred toys, and for every hundred toys, they splice, slit and rip strips of film. As they follow this routine monotonously, a few narratives leak out of the shredded analogues of film and fill the surroundings with phantasmagoria.
Film: Above Us Only Sky
Director: Arthur Kleinjan
Country: The Netherlands
Running time: 29 minutes
Language: English
When: December 15 at 8.15pm
Where: Mirage City Cinema
This film begins with an investigation into a plane crash in communist Czechoslovakia, which only one woman survives. This event becomes the point of entry into a dense web of seemingly unrelated events, and viewers become unsuspecting witnesses to political defiance and reprisals. The past informs the present, and natural, political and technological disasters are followed by tales of survival.
Film: Permission to Land
Director: Ieva Saudargaite Douaihi
Country: Lebanon
Running time: 17 minutes
Language: Arabic and Lithuanian with English subtitles
When: December 15, 8.44pm
Where: Mirage City Cienma
Shot in various locations that used to serve as landing strips or airports, this film explores Lebanon’s forgotten aeronautical history while soaring through a parallel narrative in a foreign tongue with a protagonist who is looking for a place to land.
Film: Letter to my Son
Director: Dhia Jerbi
Country: France
Running time: 26 minutes
Language: Arabic with English subtitles
When: December 16, 6.07pm.
Where: Al Hamra Cinema
This documentary film focuses on a letter from a father to his son, whose birth leads to questions of paternity, inheritance and exile. A small apartment becomes a meeting place for three generations torn between Tunisia and France.
Film: Dead Horse Nebula
Director: Tarik Aktasş
Country: Turkey
Running time: 73 minutes
Language: Turkish with English subtitles
When: December 16, 8pm.
Where: Mirage City Cinema
Seven-year-old Hay found a dead horse in an open field and watched his father and other adults struggle to get rid of it. Unsure of this memory, he is nonetheless very influenced by the incident, and when he cuts himself during a sacrificial rite, everything comes rushing back. Step by step, Hay goes down an inevitable spiritual path where he confronts the relationship between humans and nature and the unity of life and matter.
Film: Liyana
Directors: Aaron and Amanda Kopp
Country: Eswatini
Running time: 77 minutes
Language: English and SiSwati with English subtitles
When: December 17, 4pm.
Where: Al Hamra Cinema
An animated African tale, this documentary sees five orphaned children in Eswatini, who collaborate to tell a story of perseverance drawn from their darkest memories and brightest dreams. The journey of their fictional character, a Swazi girl on a dangerous quest to rescue her young twin brothers, is interwoven with poetic documentary scenes.
Film: An erased filmic memory — a long way to nowhere
Director: Omnia Sabry
Country: Egypt
Running time: 7 minutes
Language: Arabic with English subtitles
When: December 17, 6.56pm.
Where: Al Hamra Cinema
This film explores and questions the limitations of the materialities of light-sensitive surfaces and their ability to document our experiences and realities. Using the same surfaces that are being questioned, through analogue, digital and self-made sensors, An erased filmic memory — a long way to nowhere tries to reconstruct personal memories and events from a period of time that the artist herself cannot fully remember.
Film: Intentional Sweat
Director: Chrystele Nicot
Country: Hong Kong
Running time: 67 minutes
Language: English with Arabic subtitles
When: December 17 at 8pm.
Where: Mirage City Cinema
In Hong Kong in 2030, a Korean drama actress, Chinese art collector, French banker, Hong Kongese dumpling maker, British jockey and Indian agronomic doctor are participating in what appears to be a speed dating party. They become the last six people remaining after a climate catastrophe and are under pressure to engage with the members of the other ethnic groups to ensure the future of humankind.
Film: Boral Pather Panchali
Director: Alex Cunningham
Country: USA
Running time: 12 minutes
Language: No dialogue
When: December 18, 8pm.
Where: Mirage City Cinema
Alex Cunningham travelled to India to find the shooting location of Satyajit Ray’s 1955 masterpiece, ‘Pather Panchali’. Once a rural village, Boral is now a bustling suburb with electricity, running water and densely packed paved roads — the signs of any modern Indian town. However, in many ways, Boral remains the same. The town knows and is proud of its place in cinematic history, but life goes on uninterrupted.
Film: Split
Director: Ghassen Mejri
Country: Tunisia
Running time: 10 minutes
Language: Arabic with English subtitles
When: December 19, 8.15pm.
Where: Al Hamra Cinema
After a painful experience, a man becomes a scavenger in the streets of Tunis. This status revives existentialist thoughts from his past.
Film: Dunya’s Day
Director: Raed Alsemari
Country: Saudi Arabia
Running time: 14 minutes
Language: Arabic with English subtitles
When: December 19, 9.02pm.
Where: Mirage City Cinema
Dunya’s perfectly planned graduation party spirals towards disaster when she is abandoned by all her household help.
Film: Another Point of View
Director: Bilal Al Khatib
Country: Palestine
Running time: 15 minutes
Language: Arabic with English subtitles
When: December 19, 8pm
Where: Mirage City Cinema
Siblings Fadel and Najeeba have an exceptional relationship. Fadel has a so-called ‘mental illness’, and Najeeba perceives reality in her own way — not in response to her brother’s situation, but rather because life, as she sees it, is much simpler than it seems, simple enough that it does not matter how people in their village judge her and her brother.
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Ticket details
Tickets can also be purchased at the box office in the Sharjah Art Foundation’s Information Centre at Al Mureijah Art Spaces throughout the festival. Cinema tickets can also be purchased at Al Hamra Cinema box office one hour before the screenings. They are priced Dh15 for students, Dh20 for general admission. Dh100 will get you an all-access pass.
