EnergaCAMERIMAGE: Documentary & TV series line-ups announced

EnergaCAMERIMAGE have announced the line-ups for their Documentary Features Competition and their TV Series Competition.

Documentary Features Competition 2022 line-up

The aim of the competition is to recognize the art of documentary filmmaking as creative interpretation of reality. Putting emphasis on the visual and aesthetic aspects of the selected nonfiction entries, the jury awards the best cinematographers in the competition.

All That Breathes
As legions of birds fall from New Delhi’s darkening skies, and the city smolders with social unrest, two brothers race to save an unintended casualty of the turbulent times: the black kite, a majestic bird of prey essential to their city’s ecosystem.
Director: Shaunak Sen
Cinematographers: Ben Bernhard, Riju Das, Saumyananda Sahi
Produced by: Rise Films
Country and year: India, UK, 2022

Kash Kash
The city of Beirut is nowadays torn apart by a corrupt political elite, anti-government protests, and one of the biggest explosions of the 21st century. But above the roofs of the city, you can find an unexpected bearer of hope: the pigeon game of chance „Kash Hamam”. Every evening, in the golden sun above the labyrinth streets of Beirut, the sky populates, and all over the city swarms fly out of their cages. Their flight follows the choreography of an ancient tradition. Each player holds their own flock and lets it circle above his house, with the chance to lure the pigeons of the neighbours onto his roof, in order to catch it and expand his flock. The film observes the city in turmoil from the perspective of three pigeon players and a young girl fighting to release her own birds.
Director: Lea Najjar
Cinematographer: Jonas Schneider
Produced by: FFL Film und Fernseh Labor Ludwigsburg
Country and year: Germany, Lebanon, Qatar, 2022

Landscapes
The cold winter finds the Ukrainian poet Tamara Zhurba bedridden in a lost village in the middle of the oppressive jungle. Valentyna, her only daughter, takes care of her and the few animals on a small farm while drawing her memories on loose sheets. Fate seems to be blurred, as well as the memories of an old poem that is hidden in the landscapes.
Original title: Los paisajes
Director: Hernán Fernández
Cinematographer: Mariano Maximovicz
Produced by: Maca Herrera Bravo
Country and year: Argentina, 2022

The Pawnshop
A moving story, full of crazy humour, depicting people who struggle to survive while helping those in bigger need. Jola and Wiesiek are an eccentric couple from Bytom, tied up in love as well as in business. With the help of three employees, they run what is probably the largest pawnshop in Europe. However, its glory days passed once the local mines closed and unemployment began to rise. Left destitute, the inhabitants of ‘the Polish Detroit’ bring zillions of absurd and useless objects to pawn for cash. Neither Wiesiek’s ridiculous marketing ideas, nor the good heart of Jola, who offers kind words, hot soup and a warm coat to her impoverished customers, will save the crumbling business. Even though the pawnshop loses money, it becomes an important centre of social life for the local community. Soon, it goes nearly bankrupt, while the relationship of Jola and Wiesiek is put to the test. With a disaster looming on the horizon, the owners make the final attempt to save their company and couple.
Original title: Lombard
Director: Łukasz Kowalski
Cinematographer: Stanisław Cuske
Produced by: 4.30 Studio
Polish distributor: Against Gravity
Country and year: Poland, 2022

Sansón and Me
During his day job as a Spanish criminal interpreter in a small town in California, filmmaker Rodrigo Reyes met a young man named Sansón, an undocumented Mexican immigrant who was sentenced to life in prison without parole. With no permission to interview him, Sansón and Reyes worked together over a decade, using hundreds of letters as inspiration for recreations of Sansón’s childhood-featuring members of Sansón’s own family. The result is a vibrant portrait of a friendship navigating immigration and the depths of the criminal justice system, and pushing the boundaries of cinematic imagination to rescue a young migrant’s story from oblivion.
Original title: Sansón y Yo
Director: Rodrigo Reyes
Cinematographer: Alejandro Mejia
Produced by: Su Kim, Rodrigo Reyes
Country and year: Mexico, USA, 2022

Sons of Cain
A film set in a small village in northern Albania. In this place time is suspended and the severe rules of an old code (Kanun) still dictate life and death of the inhabitants. A group of seven children obliged to live under this code, meet and discuss the story of Cain and Abel. Creating their own dream space, partially consciously and partially not, they create an analogy between their own stories and the biblical fables. Stuck somewhere on the fine line between reality and oblivion, this is one of the few chances they have to face their own traumas and emotions.
Director: Keti Stamo
Cinematographer: Stefano Usberghi
Produced by: Anima Pictures, Margo Films, Young Films
Country and year: France, Albania, Italy, 2021

Sophia
Sophia chronicles David’s pursuit to create empathetic robots that can help solve some of humanity’s most pressing issues. For him, Sophia is more than a machine. She offers deep connection, and a glimpse at what the shared future between AI and humans might look like. As he works tirelessly in his lab, shaping Sophia’s lifelike face and building her intelligence, pressures from the outer world are growing. When his mother’s health takes a turn for the worse, and investors begin to question his vision, David’s unwavering belief in Sophia is all that stands between him and failure. With time running out and resources dwindling, will David and Sophia find their place in the world?
Director: Jon Kasbe, Crystal Moselle
Cinematographer: Jon Kasbe
Produced by: Give Thanks, Impact Partners, Kasbe Films, Somesuch
Country and year: USA, 2022

Tolyatti Adrift
Tolyatti, the Russian city that was once a symbol of progress and socialist pride, is now the poorest large city in Russia. Famous for being home to the Soviet automobile industry, with its legendary LADA car, Russia’s Detroit is today a decadent place, frozen in time and with the highest youth unemployment rate in the country. It is in this context of desolation that the “Boyevaya Klassika” emerges, a movement of teenagers who rescue the old cars from the local factory to turn them into vehicles of fun, rebellion and expression of hope, thus giving a second chance to this icon of the national splendour they never experienced. The film follows Slava, Misha and Lera for a year on their journey to find a way to survive in this city, to face adulthood and to rewrite their destiny.
Director: Laura Sisteró
Cinematographer: Artur-Pol Camprubí
Produced by: Boogaloo Films
Country and year: Spain, France, 2022

TV Series Competition line-up

1899: The Ship
The eight episodes follow the mysterious circumstances around the voyage of an immigrant ship from Europe to New York. The passengers, all of different backgrounds and nationalities, are united by their hopes and dreams for a new century and their future abroad. When they discover a second ship adrift on the open sea that has been missing for months, their journey takes an unexpected turn. What they find on board will turn their passage to the promised land into a nightmare-like riddle, connecting each of the passenger’s pasts through a web of secrets.
Director: Baran bo Odar
Cinematographer: Nikolaus Summerer
Production: Dark Ways
Distribution: Netflix
Country and year: Germany, USA, 2022

Becoming Elizabeth: Keep your Knife Bright
Becoming Elizabeth is the untold story of England’s most iconic Queen, long before she ascended to the throne. Henry VIII’s death throws a young orphan, Elizabeth Tudor into the unpredictable and dangerous English court. As her 9-year-old brother is crowned king and the great families of England and the powers of Europe vie for control of the country, Elizabeth can become either pawn or player.
Director: Justin Chadwick
Cinematographer: Adolpho Veloso ABC
Production: The Forge
Distribution: Starz
Country and year: UK, 2022

Black Bird
Inspired by actual events: when high school football hero and decorated policeman’s son Jimmy Keene (Taron Egerton) is sentenced to 10 years in a minimum-security prison, he is given the choice of a lifetime – enter a maximum-security prison for the criminally insane and befriend a suspected serial killer Larry Hall (Paul Walter Hauser), or stay where he is and serve his full sentence with no possibility of parole. Keene quickly realises his only way out is to elicit a confession and find out where the bodies of several young girls are buried before Hall’s appeal goes through. But is this suspected killer telling the truth? Or is it just another tale from a serial liar? This dramatic and captivating story subverts the crime genre by enlisting the help of the very people put behind bars to solve its mysteries.
Polish title: Czarny ptak
Director: Michaël R. Roskam
Cinematographer: Natalie Kingston
Production: Apple Studios
Distribution: Apple TV+
Country and year: USA, 2022

The Dreamer: Becoming Karen Blixen
The Dreamer – Becoming Karen Blixen is a six-part drama series set in the 1930s and tells the story of how Karen Blixen became a world-famous writer. Connie Nielsen plays Out of Africa author Karen Blixen. The series is the story of one woman’s struggle to find her place in life while freeing herself from the expectations of family and society. The series takes place in the 1930s and follows Karen Blixen’s return to her childhood home in Denmark after many years in East Africa. Penniless, sick, divorced and with her dreams in ruins, the series shows Blixen’s journey from her lowest point to becoming a renowned writer. The series includes visualizations of her deepest thoughts and the magical universe of Blixen’s stories as well as flashbacks to her years in East Africa
Original title: Drømmeren – Karen Blixen bliver til
Director: Jeanette Nordahl
Cinematographer: Aske Alexander Foss
Production: Zentropa Episode
Distribution: TrustNordisk ApS, Viaplay Group
Country and year: Denmark, 2022

Gaslit: Will
Gaslit is a modern take on the Watergate scandal through the long-neglected lens of the lesser-known but no-less-key players involved in the downfall of America’s 37th president – from Nixon’s bumbling, opportunistic subordinates, to the deranged zealots aiding and abetting their crimes, to the tragic whistleblowers who would eventually bring the whole rotten enterprise crashing to the ground.
Director: Matt Ross
Cinematographer: Larkin Seiple
Production: Esmail Corp., Universal Content Productions
Distribution: Starz
Country and year: USA, 2022

Landscapers
Inspired by real events, Landscapers tells a unique story of a seemingly ordinary couple, Susan and Christopher Edwards, misfits on the run from reality, who cast themselves as Hollywood heroes in a love story tainted by a secret buried in the garden. Landscapers tells a unique love story involving a seemingly ordinary couple who become the focus of an extraordinary investigation when a couple of dead bodies are discovered in the back garden of a house in Nottingham. Mild-mannered husband and wife Susan (Olivia Colman) and Christopher Edwards (David Thewlis) have been on the run from reality for over 15 years. When Christopher makes a startling call home to his step-mother, their role in a terrible crime that remained undiscovered for over a decade begins to emerge into the light. As the investigation moves forward, inspired by Susan’s obsession with old Westerns and classic cinema, the fantasists cast themselves as Hollywood heroes in narratives of their own invention.
Polish title: Ogrodnicy
Director: Will Sharpe
Cinematographer: Erik Alexander Wilson BSC
Production: Cactus Films
Distribution: HBO Max
Country and year: UK, USA, 2021

The Lord of the Rings – The Rings of Power: A Shadow of the Past
Prime Video’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power brings to screens for the very first time the heroic legends of the fabled Second Age of Middle-earth’s history. This epic drama is set thousands of years before the events of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, and will take viewers back to an era in which great powers were forged, kingdoms rose to glory and fell to ruin, unlikely heroes were tested, hope hung by the finest of threads, and the greatest villain that ever flowed from Tolkien’s pen threatened to cover all the world in darkness. Beginning in a time of relative peace, the series follows an ensemble cast of characters, both familiar and new, as they confront the long-feared re-emergence of evil to Middle-earth. From the darkest depths of the Misty Mountains, to the majestic forests of the elf-capital of Lindon, to the breathtaking island kingdom of Númenor, to the furthest reaches of the map, these kingdoms and characters will carve out legacies that live on long after they are gone.
Polish title: Władca Pierścieni – Pierścienie Władzy: Cień Przeszłości
Director: J.A. Bayona
Cinematographer: Oscar Faura AEC
Production: Amazon Studios
Distribution: Prime Video
Country and year: USA, 2022

The Man Who Fell to Earth: Hallo, Spaceboy
Inspired by the Walter Tevis novel of the same name and the iconic David Bowie film, The Man Who Fell to Earth follows a new alien character (Chiwetel Ejiofor) who arrives on Earth at a turning point in human evolution and must confront his own past to determine our future. Naomie Harris plays Justin Falls, a brilliant scientist and engineer who must conquer her own demons in a race to save two worlds.
Director: Alex Kurtzman
Cinematographer: Tommy Maddox-Upshaw ASC
Production: CBS Studios
Distribution: Paramount Global Content Distribution
Country and year: USA, UK, 2022

Pachinko
Epic in scope and intimate in tone, the story begins with a forbidden love and crescendos into a sweeping saga that journeys between Korea, Japan and America to tell an unforgettable story of war and peace, love and loss, triumph and reckoning.
Director: Kogonada
Cinematographer: Florian Hoffmeister BSC
Production: Media Res
Distribution: Apple TV+
Country and year: USA, South Korea, Canada, 2022

Pistol – Track 1: The Cloak of Invisibility
Pistol is a six-episode limited series about a rock and roll revolution. The furious, raging storm at the centre of this revolution are the Sex Pistols – and at the centre of this series is Sex Pistols’ founding member and guitarist, Steve Jones. Jones’ hilarious, emotional and at times heart-breaking journey guides us through a kaleidoscopic telling of three of the most epic, chaotic and mucus-spattered years in the history of music. Based on Jones’ memoir Lonely Boy: Tales from a Sex Pistol, this is the story of a band of spotty, noisy, working-class kids with “no future,” who shook the boring, corrupt Establishment to its core, threatened to bring down the government and changed music and culture forever.
Director: Danny Boyle
Cinematographer: Anthony Dod Mantle BSC DFF
Production: FX Network
Distribution: Disney+
Country and year: USA, 2022