Pitching du Réel – Selected Projects 2019

Dreamers

by Stéphanie Barbey, Luc Peter 

Switzerland | 80’
Luc Peter - Intermezzo Films
Expected release: July 2020

At the age of 9, Carlos arrives illegally in Chicago with his Mexican family. The day he turns 18, his future becomes uncertain : in the eyes of the law he is now undocumented. The American Dream turns into a nightmare.
 

Epic of a Stone

by Sean Wang

Netherlands, China | 85’
Jia Zhao - Muyi Film | Zijian Wang - Black Fin Production
Expected release: June 2020

A piece of white marble stone mined in Greece re-embarks its Odyssey journey along the “food chain” of globalized industrialization. The film attempts to depict the underlying global phenomenon of “Chinanism”, through meaningful details and twists at different levels along this chain.
 

Four Journeys

by Louis Hothothot

Netherlands | 90’ / 54'
Pieter van Huystee - Pieter van Huystee Film
Expected release: November 2020

I was illegal due to China’s One Child Policy. I was the second-born child. I travel back home to revisit my illegal childhood and the guilt I feel towards my parents, who paid a high price for my birth. I’m trying to fix our broken relationship, they are pushing me to have children.
 

Meril

by Victoria Verseau

Sweden | 72’
Malin Hüber - HER Film
Expected release: February 2021

What are the conditions for love and intimacy when you exist outside of the norm? Meril is an investigation of the fluid state of transition and identity. Told from the point of view of transpersons, this is a story about new voices, new bodies and new ideals.
 

National Pride

by Sven Augustijnen

Belgium | 100’
Marie Logie - Auguste Orts
Expected release: May 2021

Using re-enactments and testimonials, National Pride takes the viewer along on a travelogue of geopolitical upheavals, characterized by many revolutions and counterrevolutions - a violent history in which Belgian weapons built by Fabrique Nationale d’Herstal have been mixed up with, to this day.
 

Ostrov - The Island

by Laurent Stoop, Svetlana Rodina

Switzerland | 90’
Sonja Kilbertus - DokLab GmbH
Expected release: April 2020
 

Ostrov - The Island is a metaphor for today’s Russia, where fantasy and real- ity often intertwine. The islanders, abandoned by the state, survive by poaching. Influenced by TV propaganda, they carry on believing in Putin and the restored greatness of Russia, even though the country is becoming ever increasingly isolated.
 

Pornomelancholia

by Manuel Abramovich

Argentina | 80’
Gema Juarez Allen - Gema Films
Expected release: May 2020

“Why do you want to make porn?” somebody asks Lalo during his audition. “Because I like to fake pleasure.” Pornomelancholia takes pornography as a starting point to reflect about the construction of intimacy as a show. Porn is the context to discuss sex in a world where the self is performed for others in an ever-connected reality.
 

Realm of Satan

by Scott Cummings

USA | 67’
Caitlin Mae Burke
Expected release: February 2020

An experimental exploration and celebration of one of America's oldest and most diabolical counterculture organisations - the Church of Satan.
 

Segovia

by Diana María Bustamante Escobar

Colombia, Mexico | 90’
Diana María Bustamante Escobar -  Burning Blue
Expected release: February 2020

Segovia is a collage of images, repetitions, and memories, assembled with content from Colombian news archives from the 1980’s and 90’s. It reconstructs a story linked to a generation - my generation – who grew up normalised to violence in the face of these images.
 

The Flame

by Arfan Sabran

Indonesia | 70’
Gita Fara - Cineria Films | Rim Cine Production
Expected release: February 2020

This is a story about 77 year-old Iber Djamal. He is risking the remaining years of his life in order to stand up against the palm oil companies threatening to take his land and ancestral forest. Iber’s family believes that he is too old for the fight and that the chances of success are very narrow. Nevertheless, Iber refuses to give up.
 

The Flats (Once we Were Terrorists)

by Alessandra Celesia

France, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Italy | 90’
Jean-Laurent Csinidis - Films de Force Majeure | John Mc Ilduff – Dumbworld | Jeremiah Cullinane - Planet Korda | Capra Enrica - Graffiti Doc
Expected release: May 2020

New Lodge, a small Catholic area in the heart of Belfast, paid dearly for the conflict in Northern Ireland. More than twenty years after the cease-fire, what has become of its residents? Miraculously, these larger-than-life characters have stood upright and keep going, with a touch of theatre that enables them to represent all of us, with our fears, our failures and our hopes.
 

The Mother of All Lies

by Asmae El Moudir

Morocco, France, Belgium | 90’ / 52'
Lucie Rego & Pauline Tran Van Lieu - Hutong Productions | Asmae El Moudir - Insight Films | Savage Film
Expected release: January 2021

A young Moroccan woman’s search for truth becomes entangled in a web of lies from her family history. As a daughter and filmmaker, Asmae fuses personal and national history as she reflects on the 1981 Bread Riots, drawing out connections to contemporary Morocco.
 

To Sail Close to The Wind

by Gregoris Rentis

Greece, France | 90’
Vicky Miha - asterisk* | Clément Duboin - Good Fortune Films
Expected release: May 2020

Since the peak in piracy incidents off the coast of Somalia, the business of maritime security installed itself in the region. The film explores a narrative of good and evil, following characters who live in the grey zone, spending the better part of their lives waiting to face a threat that may never manifest.
 

Whitewash

by Ahmet Necdet Cupur

France | 75' / 52’
Delphine Morel - TS Productions
Expected release: June 2020

In a village in southern Turkey, a young man, Mahmut wants to divorce the wife he has recently married. At the same time, his sister, Zenep, a teenager, decides to end her engagement and gets a job in a factory. As the younger generation rebels, a factual portrayal of traditional family values and child marriage in Turkey emerges.