A border is much more than a line where a place ends and the other starts: this is the motto for the 14th edition of FEST - New Directors | New Films Festival. So it only made sense to choose a top of films that approach the theme borders, both as a place of divergence and as a place of search for equality.
10 | Frozen River
Courtney Hunt | USA | 97’
In all of the international political overview, when it comes to north american borders, we automatically think in the problems of illegal immigration that exist between the United States and Mexico. But in this movie the crime occurs in very peculiar circumstances, in an american border which is not usually considered a problem.
9 | Boy With the Stripped Pijamas
Mark Herman | GBR, USA | 94’
Some old borders still have some impact in today. The way they were overcomed can be moving, especially when it implies the innocence of two children who do not understand why this barrier exists and who form a friendship despite everything that distinguishes them.
8 | Cinco Dia Cinco Noites
José Fonseca e Costa | PRT | 100’
During Salazar’s dictatorship, this was a reality for many Portuguese families, being forced to leave everything behind and run to France. A movie about “the jump” and a thick border that left big scars in Portuguese culture.
7 | No Man’s Land
Danis Tanovic | FRA, BIH, ITA, BEL, GBR, SVN | 98’
Two soldiers from opposing forces are caught between lines in a no man’s land. A Bosnian and a Serbian, both hurt, continue to struggle with their differences as they discover what unites them.
6 | Pan's Labyrinth
Guillermo del Toro | ESP, MEX, USA | 118’
On a frontier between fiction and reality, a child imagines a fairy world as she tries to figure what surrounds her.
5 | Sicario
Denis Villeneuve | USA | 121’
With more and more relevance to the international political scene, this film deals with the themes of trafficking and invasion by the Mexican cartels as well as the underworld of Mexican immigration. In a perspective more regularly approached by American cinema, but still in very particular circumstances.
4 | Soy Nero
Rafi Pitts | DEU, FRA, MEX, USA | 117’
For the children of Mexican immigrants that are born in the United States, life is marked by borders, decisions that exceed them but which have a direct influence on their life and the need to search for their own identity.
3 | Rabbit Proof Fence
Phillip Noyce | AUS | 94’
One of the things we aim in this year’s FEST edition, is to bring to discussion the image of borders as something negative with only one possible approach. In this case, a berrier will help the main characters to find their way home.
2 | Underground
Emir Kusturica | MKD, FRA, DEU, BGR, CZE, HUN | 170’
Always in an underworld, a group of people lives in an illusion, afraid of a perpetuating lie and without questioning the barriers they are imposed on.
1 | Babel
Alejandro G. Iñárritu | FRA, USA, MEX | 143’
Borders are all created by the human being, either by bigger organizations, like the borders between two countries, or in a more natural way, like the borders we create between us and them. Sometimes, this personal borders prove to be harder to overcome than the physical barriers imposed in an organized way.
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