TIEFF 2015

In rural Nicaragua, deaf young adults Dulce Maria and her brother Francisco have lived their entire lives without any access to language — spoken, written, or signed — until Tomasa, a deaf sign-language teacher, arrives determined to teach them their first words. Sure to stir debate, this hauntingly beautiful film is both emotionally engaging and philosophically challenging.

AFTERMATH is the story of young people from an ancient tribe who are driven into a new world by the Tsunami of 2004 from one day to the other. Overwhelmed by history´s biggest wave of aid and development soon after, they are now searching with pride and humour for their own, self-determined life in a globalized world.

Eriss Khajira (1987) grew up on the largest dumpsite of East Africa: the Dandora dumpsite. Thousands of people live on and around this dumpsite, scavenging through the waste of Nairobi’s residents. Khajira goes back to the place of her youth and she portrays five dumpsite inhabitants. Among them are her good friend Textbook who is soon to be a father,

Dana and Amit met when they were 25, they married and had 2 children. Soon after their second child, Amit turned ultra-orthodox. Dana stayed secular. They are still very much in love. Will their love be able to overcome the growing gaps between them?

Kyrgyzstan Tokon, a retired teacher from south of Kyrgyzstan writes poetry during his spare time. Every summer his daughter Gulzat comes from Russia to visit him and help him out on the farm. This year’s misfortunes make Tokon focus more than usually on his daughter’s departure. With the dismissal of his assistant and the absence of his wife, his world

Small Small Thing begins at JFK Hospital in Monrovia, the capital of Liberia. Olivia Zinnah is 9 years old, and suffering from a life threatening condition. Believing her injuries to be the result of witchcraft, Olivia’s mother had been hiding her for years. The doctors conclude her condition is the result of a brutal rape that took place when Olivia

For hundreds of years, this island, Taiwan, has been under different rules. From the Dutch, the Spanish, the Japanese, and nowadays Republic of China, each regime left their footprints on this island. During these periods, only the indigenous people of this island truly experienced of the process. As being ruled, indigenous peoples were labeled in different names and self-cultures had

In 2015, writer Chung Chao-cheng was 90 years old! In Taiwan, 90 years of memories includes experiencing: 2 countries, 3 different regimes, and 4 mother tongues… Writing unceasingly throughout his life, in the wake of regime change, he became regarded as a national treasure… At the end of Japanese colonial rule, writers who had originally used Japanese were suddenly denied

Dong-gang, a fishing village in the southern part of Taiwan, is a place where exceptional historical traces of a past mysterious ritual are still alive. One of the most important characteristic of being part of the Dong-gang community is joining a ritual that takes place every three year, They call the ritual as “Yi-Wang”. Performing this ritual, the people show

Deng Nan-Guang was one of the most important photographers in Taiwan at 1930s. This film is talking about his pictures and his home town, Bei-Pu where he loved the most. It has been four decades, after Deng Nan Guang passed away. The small town changed a lot. The director imitated the eye sight of Deng Nan Guang and observed the

When Director Laway was small, his father began working as crew on fishing boats out of the port of Kaohsiung. All through his youth, Laway’s mother took him by Kinmen bus from Taitung to Kaohsiung to visit his father every year or two.

The meaning of “Hunungaz” from Bunun language is “a place full of Artemisia Capillaris”. Zhou Feng is a small elementary school in Hanagus, only 23 students, they close as family because of the mini-sized school, also filled anxiety of cutting-down/merging of the same reason. The specialty of students is singing, mainly from Zhou Feng’s tradition and born gift of Bunun,

A life documentary of a woman who was shunned for being possessed by spirits as a girl, oppressed for following superstitions as an adult, how she grows to be a great shaman who embraces the pain of all people, and how she comes to be honored as a national treasure of Korea with her outstanding artistic talents throughout Korea’s tumultuous

Hunter-gatherer, artist, philosopher, teacher, one-man-band and loving husband and father, the versatile and irrepressible Han Shwe is something of a Burmese ‘Renaissance man’. This uplifting documentary follows him as he works tirelessly to scrape together a living for his wife and his children and incredibly still finds time to promote democracy in his rural locality in transitional Myanmar.

Gongbo is an ordinary peasant living in Tibet whose life is simple and plain. He works, provides for the whole family and raises children. Just like anyone else living in the world, Gongbo has to sustain various pressures from the life, such as his expectation of another son after his wife’s bearing six daughters consistently, his anxiety for the debt

Wulubutie is an Oroqen settlement in the northern reaches of Inner Mongolia; the name means “Lost Mountain” in the Oroqen language.

Bitter Honey offers a dynamic, intimate, and emotionally charged portrait of three polygamous Balinese families. Shot over a four-year period on the island of Bali, Indonesia, this feature-length film draws attention to the plight of Balinese women in polygamous marriages—which are frequently characterized by psychological manipulation, economic hardship, infidelity, and domestic violence. Due to a societal structure where men predominate

During deeply intimate conversations with the filmmaker after she learns she is going to die, Kazuko challenges cultural and social norms speaking candidly about her own life and death while she grapples with what it means to be honest and live happily. As she nears the end of her life, through observations about love, money, marriage and death, Kazuko develops

How do the Palestinian and Israeli (Arab and Jewish) education systems teach the history of their nations? The film follows several Israeli and Palestinian teachers over one academic year. Through observing their exchanges and confrontations with students, debates with the ministries curriculum and its restrictions, the viewers obtain an intimate glimpse into the profound and long lasting effect that the

A Place for Everyone explores the human geography of a Rwandan village two decades after the genocide. In the light of the 20th commemoration period, survivors and killers live again next to each other, while a new generation of young Rwandans has grown up in a society meandering through a fragile reconciliation process. Filmed over four years, A Place for

It is only the second time that Indonesians can vote for their own president. Two charismatic women, however, are not satisfied with mere elections. Grandma Dela, who lives in a slum of the tropical megacity, and the intellectual Wardah Hafidz are setting out to collect 1.5 million signatures of the poorest, who are constantly threatened by the local arbitrary justice

Southeast Asian Cinema When the rooster crows is a voice of diversity reaching for change. Brillante Mendoza, Eric Khoo, Garin Nugroho, Pen Ek Ratanaruang give voice to a region rich with traditions, ethnic groups, languages, politics, and religions. It is cinema, at its purest form, fighting for freedom of expression, documenting real lives of ordinary people, giving voice to the

Forty years after its people were promised freedom by departing Spanish rulers, the Western Sahara remains Africa’s last colony. While an UN-brokered ceasefire put an end to armed hostilities in the territory in 1991, the Sahrawi people have continued to live under the Moroccan armed forces’ oppressive occupation, and what peace exists in the area is fragile at best. Tens

Each Floral-belt Dai village has a male “Commune-head” who take charge of annual collective ceremonies as “Village Sacrifice” and “Village Exorcism”. These are purification rituals and fete for the village’s god “Buzhaoshe”. Besides, there’s a “Village’s Chief Witch” who’s responsible for communication with the god through trance. This man and woman compose the traditional hierarchy of a Dai village. The

Dreadlocks Story opens up the history of Rastas in a new light. It shows the spiritual history behind the criticized dreadlocks hairstyle and the roots of the Rastafari culture, which is entangled with the Hindu tradition in Jamaica. Although some accommodations have been made towards Rastas, the struggle against prejudice and discrimination are still prevalent.

“The Chinese make things, the Malagasy fix them.” Just for the time of a film, let’s have fun reversing roles… Let’s imagine it isn’t for the economists anymore to demonstrate their growth model, but for the farmers, artists, craftsmen, and streetwise sellers of all kind to showcase their skills. There are those who recycle tires into shoes, those who make

Deep in the forests of Sumatra, a Finnish sea captain seeks an elusive banana. In a Kolkata kitchen, Bengali chefs prepare scrumptious banana stalk curries. As the sun blazes in Kuala Lumpur, a Chinese exorcist calls forth an evil banana spirit… Embarking on an international journey through the vibrant world of human-banana relationships, MONDO BANANA explores the personal, cultural, and

A non-traditional road movie exploring a Moroccan perspective on the entwined relationship between Hollywood and The Arab World.

In the 1950s the anthropologist David F. Pocock conducted fieldwork in Sundarana, central Gujarat, with a focus on the Patidar community. Sixty years later we returned to see what changed. Focusing on a young men’s search for a bride, this documentary is about a village’s intertwining with international forms of migration, seen from the perspectives of those who fail and

“Live From UB” shows Mongolia through the eyes of its boldest musicians from the 1970s to today. Rock music was the catalyst for freedom, the vehicle for international curiosity, and now, the medium for Mongolian nationalism. It follows the story of today’s most promising independent band, Mohanik, as they create a new sound for their country and discover what it

Filmed over a span of 8 years, this film is based on dialogue between Zulay Saravino, an indigenous Otavaleña of Equador, and Mabel Preloran, an Argentine anthropologist living in Los Angeles. The Otavalo Indians are industrious landowners and farmers who have also transitioned somewhat to a textile-based economy, selling handwoven garments to tourists at markets in Quito The film shows

The Image Man is an ethnobiography of Hermogenes Cayo, a self-taught woodcarver and painter who lives on the high Andean plateau of Argentina. The film portrays Hermogenes, his wife Aurelia Kilpe, and their children in their Andean lifestyle, as well as Hermogenes’ passion for painting, carving, building, and his devotion to the Virgin Mary. The film does not follow a

Eighty years ago, the Seediq people living high in Taiwan’s mountains rose up against the oppressive rule of the Japanese government in what went down in history as the “Wushe Incident.” The Seediq launched an attack on the Japanese in the sports meet of an elementary school. The Japanese rulers sent in the police and the armed forces to subdue

This documentary is about director Tang’s Tao (Lanyu tribesman) friend, Mamuno. Through Mamuno’s experience of returning to his origin and Tang’s examining of his own life, the film shows how the two people interact and their brotherly caring for each other. Tang and Mamuno, coming from different backgrounds, share the same passion towards the ocean. We see what Mamuno went