ALTIPLANO
International Premiere: Semaine de la Critique Cannes 2009

War photographer Grace, devastated by a violent incident in Iraq, renounces her profession. Her Belgian husband, Max, is a cataract surgeon working at an eye clinic in the high Andes of Peru. Nearby, the villagers of Turubamba succumb to illnesses caused by a mercury spill from a local mine. Saturnina, a young woman in Turubamba, loses her fiancé to the contamination. The villagers turn their rage on the foreign doctors, and in the ensuing riot Max is killed. Saturnina takes drastic measures to protest against the endless violations towards her people and their land. Grace sets out on a journey of mourning to the place of Max’s death.
ALTIPLANO is a lyrical and probing film about our divided but inextricably linked world.
A film by Peter Brosens & Jessica Woodworth. In Coproduction with ZDF/Arte, VRT, Bo Films (BE), Entre Chien et Loup (BE), Lemming Film (NL), Cinecorp (Peru). Production supported by Mitteldeutschen Medienförderung, Medienboard Berlin Brandenburg, Vlaams Audiovisueel Fonds, French Community of Belgium, Wall-Images, Dutch Film Fund and Eurimages. Development supported by Rotterdam CineMart, Marché du Film Cannes, Kodak, MEDIA Programme of the European Union. Distributor: farbfilm verleih. World Sales: Meridiana Films. (35mm, 105min, colour)

Love in India

International Premiere at Hot Docs 2009

India is the birthplace of love. There’s nowhere else in the world where so much is dedicated to the idolizing and immortalizing of the concept of romance. India was one of the first civilizations to recognize the human need for love and give cultural expression to that, in poems, pictures and monuments. LOVE IN INDIA looks at how the concept of love has evolved and changed over the centuries. From the Kama Sutra to Shak Rukh Khan’s Bollywood movies, the viewer is treated to a voyage of discovery looking into love’s promises and deceptions right up to the modern day.

A film by Q. Steps India in co-production with ma.ja.de. filmproduktion, ZDF / ARTE and Overdose, in association with YLE Teema and SBS. World Sales: Deckert Distribution (DV, 58’/90’, colour)

The untold story about wild rabbits which lived between the Berlin Walls. For 28 years Death Zone was their safest home. Full of grass, no predators, guards protecting them from human disturbance. They were closed but happy. When their population grew up to thousands, guards started to remove them. But rabbits survived and stayed there. Unfortunately one day the wall fell down. Rabbits had to abandon comfortable system. They moved to West Berlin and have been living there in a few colonies since then. They are still learning how to live in the free world, same as we – the citizens of Eastern Europe.

A film by Bartek Konopka and Piotr Rosolowski. In Co-production with MS Films (Poland), TVN (Poland) and MDR in co-operation with RBB, Lichtpunkt (Belgium), YLE (Finland), VPRO (Netherlands). Funded by Polish Filminstitute. Distributor: Neue Visionen Filmverleih, World Sales: Deckert Distribution (DigiBeta, 55min, colour and b/w)

Sergej in the urn

Charismatic, erratic, egocentric, tragic, almost forgotten...
Sergej Stepanowitsch Tschachotin (1883-1973) is, like the times he so well personifies, a difficult man to describe let alone to understand and portray. Now, at the calm eye of the storm, a quiet observer and researcher, he is then an energetic and prodigious pacifist and political activist caught up in the whirl of events, impelled by circumstances and his own passions and convictions to criss-cross Europe. His private life was also extraordinary: five marriages, eight sons.
Four sons of eight, separated by great distances tell for the first time the life story of their father, exclusively for the purposes of this film. Looking between the time of the Russian revolution and the beginning of the 21st century Sergej’s great-grandson, Boris Hars-Tschachotin explores how their individual lives were intertwined.
As in Tschachotins life, the path of his urn was restless and full of fascinating and unexpected turns. It was his wish to be buried in Corsica at the edge of a small village. During the shooting Boris Hars-Tschachotin found SERGEJ IN THE URN on top of a cupboard in the living room of his great-uncle Eugen Tschachotin. For this reason the film shall end with the burial of the urn by the four brothers under an olive tree on the edge of the Corsican cliffs. Will this happen?

A Film by Boris Hars-Tschachotin. . Liquid Blues Production in co-production with ma.ja.de. filmproduktion, in Association with 3sat und YLE (Finland). Funded by Kulturstiftung des Bundes, Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg and Mitteldeutsche Medienförderung. World Sales: Deckert Distribution (HDCam, DigiBeta, 103 min)