Phạm Ngọc Lân, Blessed Land (still), 2019. 19 min

Programme 11

My father has a gun (2019)
Director: Ana Mendes
United Kingdom
Narrative | 7 min
English with English subtitles

When the director was born, her father had gone to war in Guinea-Bissau, a former Portuguese colony, or province, as dictator Salazar used to say. When her father returned from the war, he brought two things with him: a gun and a monkey. The monkey died, but the gun is still in her home in Portugal. She has always wondered why her silent father has a gun.

Reprisal (2017)
Director: Mike Malajalian
Lebanon
Narrative | 9 min
Arabic with English subtitles

A woman becomes anxious after learning of the return of her husband, who had disappeared during the Lebanese civil war 30 years before.

Tartarus (2019)
Director: Omar Elhamy
Egypt
Narrative | 20 min
Arabic and Greek with English subtitles

This film explores the moral complexities of male relationships in which camaraderie, death, hauntings and the unalterable path of a code of conduct pull a lost man into oblivion. An exhausted gangster encounters a spectre from his past, a presence without censure or warning that bears a message of inevitability.

Blessed Land (2019)
Director: Phạm Ngọc Lân
Vietnam
Narrative | 19 min
Vietnamese with English subtitles

In the dune landscape of a cemetery (or is it a golf course?), past and present converge in the search for a grave.

Far in Night (2018)
Director: Syed Maisam Ali Shah
India
Narrative | 24 min
Hindi and Tamil with English subtitles

A group of adolescent boys travel by train to their football match.