Category Archives: Film Festivals

Umge’s War will open at EKOIFF on July 8, 2010

Inaugural Eko International Film Festival Opens Wednesday July 7 in Lagos

The inaugural Eko International Film Festival (EKOIF) opens Wednesday July 7 at the prestigious Genesis Deluxe Cinemas at The Palms in Lekki, Lagos.

Award winning filmmakers from Germany, UK, Spain, France, Albania, Kenya and Nigeria are participating in the film fiesta with over 25 films including the thrilling Glamrock City and the King of Palma.

The thrilling tale of the femme fatale, “ART ET DECES aka Glamrock City,” written and directed by Christophe Kourdouly and Stéphane Jauny, opens the film festival and to be followed by the screening of other films from Wednesday to the closing day at the weekend.

The following is the list of the selected films.
1. The Man in the Ground
Director:Jesus Risueno
Duration:19minutesSynopsis:winter,every nigh in the city streets, on unknown person is brutally murdered. There is no relation between the victims, no purpose no evidence.

Year:2010
Country: Spain
2. El Forjador De Historias(The Storymaker)
Director: Jose Gomez Gaugo
Duration:15 minutes
Synopsis: For better or worse, Nothing escapes my will.

Year 2009
Country: Spain
3. The Cortege(Elr Cortejo)
Director ;: Marina Sereseky
Duration: 14 minutes
Synopsis:
Cap is the oldest to grave digger in the cemetery. Used to working amidst the suffering of others and the jokes of his colleagues there is only one person capable of taking him out of his daily routine. Every month for the last couple of years he has waited for months to take flowers to the groove of her husband. She is his last hope.

Year:2009
Country :Spain
4.Thunderbolt And The Mermaid
Director: Diego Sanchidrian Rubio
DURATION:11minutes
Synopsis: It is said that dreams are unreachable for they are far away,hiding beyond the stars. But in order to make them come true you do not have to know where they hide, you just do not have to be bold enough to

5. Balcony Boy
Director: Pilar Palomero
Duration: 10 minutes
Synopsis: Balcony Boy, poor balcony boy. His fault?

Having big ears. His bad habit? Putting his head where he shouldn’t have.

Year: 2005
Country: Spain
6. Fearful John (Juan Con Miedo)
Director: Daniel Romero
Duration: 11 minutes
Synopsis: During the holidays at his grandparents village, John meets Mary, a mysterious girl who tells the terrifying legend surrounding the peasant’s old house. John, unlike the character in the tale is fearful, Mary is not.

Year: 2010
Country: Spain
7. Antena
Director: Geatian Rexhep Koci
Duration: 19 minutes
Year: 2010
Country: Albania
8. Jinx in a Jiffy
Director: Geatian Rexhep Koci
Duration: 18 minutes
Year: 2010
Country: Albania
9. Trope Zones
Director: David Macian And Eduardo Molinari
Duration: 6 minutes
Synopsis: He’s crazy about food; she’ll do anything to please him. A perfect romance as long as something is in the fridge.

Year : 2010
Country: Spain
10. La Union
Director: Carlos A. Sambricio
Duration: 18 minutes
Synopsis: Sara encounters her boyfriend Fran, who died in a car crash six months earlier. A mysterious and breathtaking develops as Fran employs a hypnotic seduction game in order to convince Sara that he is real and that they can be together again.

Year: 2008
Country: Spain
11. Out Of Here
Director: Chino Moya
Duration: 8 minutes
Synopsis: After a dispute, a young woman leaves her older boyfriend’s comfortable apartment.

She has nowhere to go, so she wanders the streets aimlessly, eventually ending up in a café where she has a random encounter.

Year: 2010
Country: Spain/UK
12. Weightless
Director: Oliver Krafcht
Duration: 10 minutes
Synopsis: 18th Century: Five children spend the day outside in a mysterious garden. When they try to fly a kite, they discover a tree full of red berries. The oldest girl Elsie warns that these fruits are poisonous, but the children don’t listen and try them. They are sweet, but soon the poison begins to work…

Year: 2010
Country: Germany
13. Dolls
Director: Rosa Marquez
Duration: 14 minutes
Synopsis: Ana wakes up in an old abandoned stable; next to her, there is a mysterious girl who seems to have been there for a long time, but the only thing she can find out about her is her name: Irina. Ana will try desperately to get Irina’s help to escape from their captor.

Year: 2009
Country: Spain
14. Ansiedad (Anxiety)
Director: Eduardo Casanova
Duration: 25 minutes
Synopsis: Violeta Largertija is a great prima donna with social phobia. Violeta can neither speak nor relate by anybody that knows her, with her lovesick character, she survives feeding on tranquillizers.
Bertlo is crazy in love with Violeta, but he knows her problem and has a plan to know her.

Nigerian filmmaker wins Best Film Prize at 14th Ecrans Noirs Film Festival in Cameroun

Chike Ibekwe’s Eternal shared the best film prize at the 14th annual “Ecrans noirs” Film Festival in Yaounde (Cameroon) last Saturday.

Chike Ibekwe’s Eternalshared the Golden Screen best film award with “An Unusual Woman” by Burkinabe director Abdoulaye Dao.

Abdoulaye Dao.’s film is a melodramatic story about a wealthy businesswoman in an unfortunate marriage to a man who was unfaithful, slothful and brutal and who decided to take a second wife.

Chike Ibekwe’s Eternal was the only Nigerian film in competition with other outstanding features from France, Haiti, and other countries but it came out tops.

Eternal, the 94 minutes film tells the unforgettable story of Dozie and Chima, two faithful Nigerian friends who were soldiers with the ECOMOG mission in West Africa and after returning from the peacekeeping operation in Sierra Leone, they went to a social event. But on the way back, Chima was struck by a car and died on the spot. Dozie was heartbroken as he mourned the loss of his dearest buddy until one day the ghost of his faithful companion Chima inhabited his body to continue their eternal bond.

Chike got funding support from France to shoot Eternal. The film was selected and screened at Film festival d’armiens in France in 2008 and also at ZUMA Film festival in Nigeria in 2008. He is currently working on his second film Letter to the Professor featuring Prof. Wole Soyinka, the first African Nobel laureate in Literature.

Chike Ibekwe is a hardworking filmmaker/producer and writer. He created, produced and directed OFF CAMPUS a TV Sitcom series.

Curtain comes down on the 63rd annual Cannes Film Festival.

© 2010 Reuters Entertainment

The 63rd Cannes Film Festival ended last night and Supple magazine is looking forward to the 64th edition in 2011.

The Cannes Film Festival is the world cup finals of the film world attracting thousands of filmmakers, lovers of movies and tourists to Cannes every May, but unlike last year Nigeria did not have a pavilion and only few Nigerian journalists were there. The Guardian, The Nation and Supple magazine were the major Nigerian news media.

Well, Cannes will always get better with over 25, 000 film professionals, over 5, 000 journalists and thousands of tourists thronging the French Riviera to watch the best movies in and out of competition and of course the popular Cannes market premieres with millions of other viewers watching on TV and Internet. As Thomas Sotinel, the Movies Section Editor of the prestigious Le Monde said, that Cannes Film festival is where you see the interpretation of global changes in the eyes of the film industry, attracting the gaze of the five continents. Filmmakers do not only tell our stories, but also capture history in the making.

Senegal and South Africa competed for the top prizes and one of the most moving and touching Films was Life, Above All, a movie on the stigma and trauma of AIDS in South Africa. Many of the viewers left the theatre in tears after seeing it. But the question is; where is Nigeria? We need to work harder to compete with the best in the film world. Nigeria has ambitious directors, daring producers, outstanding actors and actresses who can excel at every film festival in the world.

See you next May.

The 63rd Cannes Film Festival ended with the thai filmmaker, Apichatpong WEERASETHAKUL winning the Palme d’Or, the highest prize for his film “LUNG BOONMEE RALUEK CHAT (Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives)”.

If Thailand can go as high as winning the most coveted prize at the Cannes, then Nigeria can produce the films that can qualify for competition and win top prizes. What is the benefit of producing thousands of movies since 1992 to date and not a single Nollywood movie has even qualified for the Official Selection of the Cannes Film Festival? Nigerian filmmakers must step up to compete with the best in the world or go and dump their mediocre movies in the Atlantic Ocean before coming to the Côte d’Azur and get dazed and fazed by the outstanding filmmakers from all over the world.

Congratulations to all the worthy winners.

SYNOPSIS:

Suffering from acute kidney failure, Uncle Boonmee has chosen to spend his final days surrounded by his loved ones in the countryside. Surprisingly, the ghost of his deceased wife appears to care for him, and his long lost son returns home in a non-human form. Contemplating the reasons for his illness, Boonmee treks through the jungle with his family to a mysterious hilltop cave — the birthplace of his first life…

Complete List of the Winners at the 63rd Cannes Film Festival

Feature films

Short Films