Editor
Some time after a mysterious weather event caused a cloud of sand from a faraway desert to settle over an unnamed city, this miasma of dust shows no sign of lifting. Clogging up the eyes and choking off the horizon, it has become a fact of everyday life. In a nondescript apartment somewhere in the city, a woman convenes a gathering at which a group of young people are present. Like every young generation, they are a repository of hope for the future – albeit a future that seems equally murky and obscured.
Editor
Our protagonists are taken captive aboard a gigantic cargo ship, whose megalomaniacal captain Ismael entertains biblical pretensions. Ben is made to ‘pay his passage’, while a ghostly Yasmine stalks the empty corridors of the ship. Whales and whaling become a key subject – interrogating colonial and indigenous politics in the process.
Editor
Ben and Yasmine continue further south to the Moroccan coast, where they are attacked by Jamila and her group of parasitic bandits. The ethics of survival and predator-prey relationships in both human and marine species are explored, as members of another group intervene. But is this out of the frying pan and into the fire for the protagonists?
Editor
Ben and Yasmine arrive at a strange and enigmatic community based on an island in the lagoon of Venice. They engage in scavenging raids to the mainland and partake in the group’s Bacchanalian orgies. Their gluttonous sexual vagrancy is paralleled with images of overfishing and unnecessary cruelty in the fishing industry of the Mediterranean.
Editor
A haunting, deeply moving documentary set among terminally ill cancer patients. The titular island of Steven Eastwood’s feature documentary is the Isle of Wight, where the filmmaker befriended a handful of individuals facing a terminal cancer diagnosis. Following them as they approach the end – through hospital appointments, time with family – this is a stark portrait, acutely attuned to the consoling rituals and stark realities of the dying process. Combining observational footage of his subjects with contemplative shots of the surrounding coastal landscapes through the changing seasons, this deeply felt meditation on the passage from life to death is imbued with an unsensational matter-of-factness and resonant lyricism. A necessarily harrowing film, revealing through scenes of unblinking duration the final stages of the disease’s progress on its sufferers, The Island is also a film of enormous delicacy, made in a spirit of tender respect for every one of the people involved.
Editor
In the heart of Sicily, where the Mafia still rules, one man and his family-run TV station, has become the lone voice against corruption and organized crime.
Director
In the heart of Sicily, where the Mafia still rules, one man and his family-run TV station, has become the lone voice against corruption and organized crime.
