Jean Perret

Having Cuba as a background, decadent and in crisis, in a black-and-white lacerated by the Caraibic swinging rain, Alex and Edith, a couple in their 30s, live their love story made of small daily gestures, stories from the past, nostalgia, and a deep intimacy.

In an island on the south of Spain, a lone man collects olives from a landscape made of water and dry branches.

Mixing images of contemporary Romania, archive films and the fascinating files of the Romanian secret services compiled during the Cold War, Sophie Dascal draws a mixed portrait of her mysterious grandfather; sketching out a wider reflection on identity, memory and the transmission of the traumas originating out of a totalitarian political regime.

After the death of her father, Selina Weber seeks refuge in Pompei, a city still crossed by phantoms of those struck by the eruption of Vesuvius two thousand years ago. He had filmed her as a child, as a teenager. She had filmed him in the prime of life. In her thoughts, images of their trips surface—brilliant and precious fragments of summers spent together—but also those of the illness, in the cold light of the hospital. Filmed archives and streams of consciousness seem to become one.

A memory that intertwines with a reflection on the courage to be oneself and the colour pink.

Having come from the sea, two young sportswomen are paddling their canoe with all their strength on a vast plain. They meet some of the inhabitants, whose activities and narratives evoke a human story of its own. A committed film, like an on-sight navigation in quest of a realistic fable.

A man is eating McDonald's burger on a beach populated by penguins and sea lions. Suddenly a sea lion begins raping a penguin. The man quickly finishes his cheeseburger before intervening.

In the industrial city of Kawasaki, on the corner of the street where my grandparents used to live, bettors of keirin — a cycling race developed in post-war — gather in a tiny bar busy drinking, chatting and gambling at the velodrome nearby. Most are old men who struggle to make a living for themselves; most have lived in this town their whole lives. This film frankly captured with a fixed camera, gives voice to the lives of the elderly men who have been left behind by Japan's economy.

Three places in which men meet, share a moment, filling the emptiness of Tbilissi's daily life. At the baths, at the barber's or in an empty house haunted by three swallows, speech flows in enclosed spaces. The director observes and captures the intimacy of the words, the obviousness of the gestures and the unexpectedness of the events. A metaphor for liberty, the absolute dream of contemporary Georgia.

Chaima, a 25-year-old woman of Maghreb origin, lives with her parents in a popular neighbourhood on the outskirts of Geneva. It's her day off, she pretends to go to work in her uniform and retrieves her bag under the stairwell. She joins her friend and accomplice Leila. Together, they go off to party.

Gabriel, a young Georgian man, has a love relationship with a transgender woman Amaia, who lives in the Tbilisi suburbs. Embedded in the reality of Georgia, their relationship is threatened. They are given over to the sheer strength of their feelings and are fragile in a violently hostile environment. A narrative of exemplary discreetness.

Recién salido de la cárcel, Sombra (Pedro Ferreira) vuelve a su trabajo como traficante de drogas en el barrio criollo de Lisboa. Entre el dinero que ha prestado y no le pueden devolver, el dinero que debe, una iguana imaginaria, una pequeña niña agresiva y el cabecilla de su banda que empieza a desconfiar de él. Sombra empieza a pensar que quizá estaba mejor en la cárcel que de vuelta en su mundo. (SENSACINE)

Two young men are playing in a bathtub. Then a third and fourth slip in to join them. They are called Émile and they are looking for their “perfect mother” when a fifth man arrives, the Émile who reconciles them all.

Reel 38 of Gérard Courant’s on-going Cinematon series.