This year the Debut Competition of the Festival was held online from 24 to 31 of May. Winners will be selected by our viewer audience.
The competition is over! Please see the results here.
IN SEARCH OF A BORORO MR. RIGHT
Flávia Kremer
UK/Brazil, 2018, 43’
In Search of a Bororo Mr. Right is an experimental rom com, in that it seeks to introduce the romantic comedy genre as a novel tool for an ethnographic analysis of kinship. The rom com genre explores the topics of love, marriage and women’s issues with the biological clock. This ethnographic film deals with the search for love and explores the character’s concerns with finding Mr. Right, conciliating love and career, as well as the ticking of the biological clock. It can only be understood as a rom com in the context of ethnographic film. The mythology of Bororo people designs specific paths of marriage for each clan. It prescribes the path one should take on the moral village plan in order to find their true husband or wife. 
The film navigates Bororo myth, telling the story of two Bororo girls who set out in search of their mythical Mr. Right.
Flávia Kremer holds a PhD in Social Anthropology with Visual Media awarded by the Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology, University of Manchester. In Search of a Bororo Mr.Right is her debut film.
BASHKIR SECRET CHILDHOOD
Luisa Adamyan
Russia, 2018, 18’
The film is dedicated to the secret places of Bashkir children. It was shot in an expedition that took place in the summer of 2017 in out of the world villages Kildigulovo and Kulganino of the Burzyan district, Republic of Bashkortostan. Through the characters of main heroes (Nailya, Ilyuza and Ildar) the film shows only some aspects of the existence of there secret places in the village spaces. The camera, as an intermediary between the culture of the child and the researcher, allowed us to enter this world and fix its existence in the form in which it exists among children. The children
invite to visit the places that are significant for them, but forbidden to visit by adults: a garbage dump, a space of abandoned sheds and farms, and grave for cattle, etc.
Luisa Adamyan is a psychologist by basic education. In 2018 graduate the master program Visual Anthropology of the Childhood. This film is her master work.
TO MAKE A CROSSING
Evan DesRosiers, Maria Casas
United Kingdom, 2018, 12’
In the remote hills of central Wales, the Devil’s Bridge presents three periods of local history. Its legend, shared by bridges around the world, blends the demands of tourism with the magic of a landscape. In this film about time, travel, and folklore, three locals take us on a journey through the origin and the future of the bridge and its stories.
María Casas is a graduate of the Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology (University of Manchester). She has produced two feature-length documentaries such as Where Things Remain, part of the official selection of Guadalajara International Film Festival and International Documentary Sample of Bogotá (MIDBO); and Off The Road (in production).
Evan DesRosiers is a filmmaker, multimedia storyteller, and ethnographer with an MA in Visual Anthropology from the University of Manchester, and BA from Sarah Lawrence College with a concentration in Cultural Anthropology.
DA HILLSOOK WEDEEN
Hope Strickland
Shetland, 2018, 16’
Shetland is a place of wild, unforgiving landscapes, supernatural beliefs and a soundscape barely altered over time. The film explores storytelling and social imagination in Shetland. The folklore tale, Da Hillsook Wedeen, has a timeless quality: unfolding from historical trauma forward through generations of women’s voices. What does it mean to be a woman left on the shore?
Hope Strickland is a filmmaker and visual ethnographer from Manchester. Da Hillsook Wedeen is Hope’s first film and the final film for the MA in Visual Anthropology from The University of Manchester. Hope is currently working on a series of participatory videos with the local Caribbean community in Manchester. Interests include archival response, feminist film practices and an experimental approach to critical blackness.
THANGAM
Sarai Ramírez-Payá, Emma Harris
Netherlands, 2018, 40’
How can we create more inclusive societies? In rural Tamil Nadu, South India, a small group of people are collaborating on creating a community where everyone’s abilities are being taken into account and nourished. This film is a visual expression of everyday practices and relationships of this community, an intimate insight into an innovative way to approach disability in an area that faces a lack of governmental support.
Sarai Ramírez Payá, from Spain, holds a BA in Occupational Therapy, Social Cultural Anthropology and a MSc in Visual Ethnography from Leiden University, Netherlands. The present project has been influenced by her previous works as an Occupational Therapist in India. She wanted, through her MSc to deeply examine and explore the manifold and unique individual experiences of disability. She has been involved always in audiovisual projects with low budgets and independent filmmakers. She has been part of several courses in the UK and Spain which had helped her to develop a deeper knowledge on the field of documentary filmmaking. Sarai’s aim is to employ visual ethnographic field research and participatory video to explore the field of health inequality, gender, childhood and youth, identity, and disability. She believes faithfully in the power of documentaries as a means of action (and reaction) and as an instrument for social change.
Emma Harris, from Denmark, has completed her BA in Anthropology at the University of Copenhagen, and currently is studying an MA in Visual Anthropology at Granada Center, University of Manchester. She has done fieldwork in Denmark, Sweden, Armenia, UK, Colombia, and India, on themes such as identity, sense of belonging, post-conflict nation-building, activism performance and community media. Always bringing a camera, she is interested in using visual anthropology to explore the relationship between art and science. She wishes to combine anthropology and participatory filmmaking in the fields of community media, conflict resolution, and peace-building. But most important, Emma wants to take academic knowledge to wider audiences, to the big screens.
THE HOST
Mircea Sorin Albutiu
Romania, 2017, 40’
The tough life of Cossack Vasile Serghevici Serbov, who lives among the 40 remaining Lipovan Russians in the desolate village Sfiştofca in the Danube Delta. Since he does not have a steady income he occasionally works as a carpenter in construction. All fishing he does is for his own needs only. Sometimes he barters fish for wine and throughout winter he gets paid for taking care of a friend’s cattle. He has organized seven editions of the White Gull Chess Cup.
Mircea Sorin Albutiu born in 1968, in Romania. Albutiu is a documentary photographer and filmmaker. He started his work in 2011, documenting the life of the dancers behind the scenes of Cluj Napoca’s Opera House. At the same time he approached the Jazz musicians, photographing them mostly during the soundchecks. He has a master degree in documentary filmmaking at the Faculty of Theatre and Television Cluj Napoca (2015-2017). The Host is his first film in 2017, as master practical project.
NANI
Roman Stocker
Switzerland, 2017, 30’
Nani resonates about aging and dying by sensibly approaching the perspective of the filmmaker’s grandmother, giving her and her memories the time and the space to unfold in front of the camera. The resulting images transport a sense of trustful dialogue beyond generations and beyond the family ties between the filmmaker and the protagonist. The film was shot during one year, showing an intimate portrait about the process Nani is going through after the death of her husband, the chores of her everyday routine living now alone and her reflections about being near at the border between life and death.
Roman Stocker was a Bachelor student at the Institute of Social Anthropology at the University of Bern, Switzerland, with special interest in audio-visual ethnography and documentary filmmaking. “Nani” is his debut documentary and was made in connection with a Bachelor thesis about ageing and dying. Currently he is working freelance as a videographer. His films: Nani (2017), Вruno Manser – Fasting for the Rainforest (2017); Kwacakworo (work in progress).
LOOKING FOR DÉNI
Déni Pitsaev
Belgium, Kazakhstan, Russia, 2018, 20’
Deni is in search of own identity. He makes the way through snow-covered landscapes of Kazakhstan, following his children’s memoirs. In the apartment decorated with thick draperies and carpets he meets his Chechen family and their patriarchal culture. In the mosque and in the boxing hall of Denis finds people from his own clan. But for Deni it is very difficult to find his own place in this world.
Deni Pitsaev was born in Chechnya, and grew in Almaty, St. Petersburg and Paris. Today he lives between Brussels and Paris. Received the bachelor’s degree at faculty of history in Sorbonne. Works as the director-director at National Institute of Cinema of Belgium (INSAS). In 2017 received the master’s degree in the field of audiovisual arts (School of Arts of LUCA, Saint-Lucas, Brussels).
CHLOE COMMA
Chloé Gayraud, Andrianne Martin
Canada, 2019, 26′
On the eve of her thirtieth birthday and her application for Canadian citizenship, Chloe is questionning her identity, and the place she would like to have in society. To help her find answers, she decides to travel from Montreal to Vancouver, hitchhiking. Brandishing her travel camera, to reveal each person’s identity quest as she encounters them on the road, Chloe introduces us to a variety of characters on the Trans Canada highway, popping social bubbles.
Andréanne Martin: In recent years, I have focused my work on sound creation, video and mostly documentary filmmaking. Having a collegial’s degree in Arts, Literature and Film Studies as well as a Bachelor’s degree in Visual Art and Media, I attempt to combine those two disciplines in my projects. Interested by the documentary arts, I am doing a Master’s degree in Communication (research and creation). My researches focus on ethnography, direct cinema and the intersection between visual arts, performing arts and documentary. Advocating hand-held camera and reduced production teams, I hitchhiked with Chloé Gayraud across Canada, in order to test her topic of research, questionning people on their identity quest. Chloé Virgule (Chloe Comma) is a result of that adventure.
Chloé Gayraud: I start as general manager of Dulcinea Langfelder & Co., a performing arts international touring company. Then I specialize as an artist agent, for dance and multimedia companies. In order to maximize the societal impact of the shows, I create The Victoria’s Project and The Seniors & Caregivers’ day, which brings the medico-social population into the theater halls. In 2017, after years of touring, I start a research to make a film about identity quest: Know thyself, fine but how? (2020) With Andréanne Martin, we go and test the subject on the Trans-Canada Highway, an adventure that gives birth to Chloé Comma.
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