Films Directed by Women

Bird droppings on a work shirt lead to extreme unintended consequences.

A group of innocent people is charged with human trafficking and thrown into prison. The authorities announce they’ve dealt a blow to organised crime; the public is reassured. “Pagadores” are what the victims of such procedures are called in Mexico. In her second feature documentary, Tatiana Huezo has a young mother recount her journey through hell: innocent, robbed of her liberty, she’s handed over to those for whom she’s being made to atone – in a private prison controlled by the Gulf Cartel.
Tempestad is a road movie: 2000 kilometres by bus from Matamoros to Cancún, through a blustery, overcast, bleak country. Inspections by martial-looking men armed to the teeth, omnipresent fear. A country mired in an invisible war whose front lines are equally invisible. The viewer never sees the protagonist but just hears her voice. The images create space for our own imagination and help us digest the monstrosity of the account. When they create identification, they’re deceiving us, for they’re inviting us to think of other stories, other destinies. The film itself recounts one of these, the story of a circus performer who has lost her daughter. A necessary cut in a film of tremendous force. berlinale 2016

To walk into the jungle-shrouded village of Cinquera, El Salvador, is to enter a world where ghosts walk, passing back and forth between the past and present. During the 1980–92 civil war, Cinquera was invaded by the National Guard, which targeted it as a potential haven for guerrillas of the FMLN opposition. Cinquera was literally wiped off the map, disappearing temporarily from official charts in a conflict that resulted in 80,000 deaths with tens of thousands more disappeared. Here, decades after a brutal civil war annihilated the village, survivors return to bury their dead and rebuild the community from the ashes. Award for the best feature documentary film from the Documentary Film Festival Visions du Réel (2011).

《水泥之夜》讲述了赫尔辛基贫民社区一单亲家庭一天的故事。14岁少年西门敏感迷惘，其母亲有心理问题需要服药不能独处，其哥哥因为贩毒被抓一天后要进监牢。这特别的一天始于西门梦见自己乘坐的火车脱轨沉入水底，河水四面涌入，无处逃生……
《水泥之夜》首映于2013年多伦多电影节大师单元，在2014年芬兰胡西学院奖获得最佳影片、导演等6项奖。今年67岁的女导演皮尔乔·汗卡萨罗拍摄了大量纪录片，比如《三个忧郁的房间》，最近的两部剧情片《吞火人(1998)》《水泥之夜》都改编自Pirkko Saisio的小说。

岁月无声，天地不仁，战地小孩见的只是一张苦脸。芬兰电影悍将韩嘉莎露深入连记者也禁足的车俄战场，瞄准了俄罗斯孤岛军校、车臣首府破房子、战地临时孤儿院，三地小孩背负战争的仇与恨，灵魂体都受伤了。军校十岁小诗人的理想其实不是杀敌，而是做普希金；曾遭俄兵在车臣强暴、十二岁的阿斯朗不认自己是俄罗斯人。时而凌厉的黑白影像，时而挽歌般的长镜头，在一片薄雾宠罩下，仿似人类探索看不见的未来，以为美丽却只找著丑恶。塔可夫斯基与安斯罗普洛斯的灵光乍现，威尼斯影展连夺三奖，全年最佳纪录片之一。

This biographical film celebrates the little-known life of the Finnish novelist and revolutionary Maiju Lassila (Asko Sarkola), born in 1868. Lassila's early years are briefly shown, then the film richly details his active and paradoxically reclusive adult life, beginning with his sojourn in St. Petersburg, working as a businessman. Unable to stay away from politics, he caused the assassination of a high-ranking Czarist and as a result, had to run back to Finland to hide. Once established in the comparative safety of a small village, he taught school in order to support his real vocation as a writer. Always living on the edge of poverty, if not square in the middle of it, Lassila continues to avoid public contact - he keeps his identity low-key and camoflages it by publishing under a variety of pseudonyms.

A biographical documentary following the life of a young Japanese priest and bar-owner.

1985 film by Pirjo Honkasalo

1991 documentary film directed by Pirjo Honkasalo

A documentary about Tanjuska who is a 12-year-old White-Russian schoolgirl, with a face like an icon. Two years ago she stopped eating, then talking and finally she stopped growing. The village priest in Estonia has explained to the family that seven devils have made a home inside Tanjuska. These devils are giving her orders and only a daily ceremony can force the devils to leave the girl.

一对孪生姐妹，从小被母亲抛弃，由外婆抚养长大，外婆过世后姐妹俩被孤儿院收留。她们的母亲靠跟着不同的男人过活。某一日母亲与在马戏团的男友突然在孤儿院中出现，他是来自马戏团内表演秋千的艺人，第一眼就看中灵巧、身体柔韧的姐姐，想带她离开。而孤儿院要求他们把妹妹一起带走。在马戏团内严厉的训练下让姐姐心生厌烦，一日在表演中从高高的秋千上掉下来，其实身体并没有受到很大的伤害，但她的内心却从此尘封了起来，不跟人说话。马戏团巡回表演到匈牙利，母亲与两个女儿对于男友而言已毫无利用价值，在一次共产党叛变的混乱中，男友也离她们而去。母亲又凭着一贯的伎俩，利用一位俄国军官，带着两个女儿撘上火车到了芬兰。在火车上，妹妹发现自己偷偷地学会了吞火的技巧，也因此得到母亲的赞赏，她们三人搭乘一辆老旧的巴士，在芬兰北部地区巡回演出，她表演吞火，妈妈和姐姐当助理，所有男客贪婪的眼光都盯着她那近乎半裸的身体不放。有一天表演之后，两姊妹发现母亲又和一个老男人在床上，姐姐再也无法忍受母亲这种水性杨花的个性，她冲向树林跳入冰冷的河水中，妹妹奋不顾身的将她救上岸来，但是最后无情的命运终究还是拆散了她们。

1997 documentary film directed by Pirjo Honkasalo

Docudrama about the Soviet occupation of a Finnish village in the fall before the Winter War.

Bahman Mohassess was a celebrated artist at the time of the Shah. Trained in Italy, he created sculptures and paintings in his homeland. But audiences often took offence at the pronounced phalli on his mostly naked bronze figures and his work was regularly censored. All traces of him were lost after the revolution. It was said he destroyed his remaining paintings and disappeared.

Filmmaker Mitra Farahani portrays love and sex in today’s Iran. One part fiction and one part documentary, the film was shot secretly and is banned in its native country.

Story of a couple on the second night of their wedding and how things unfurl in their lives.

Eager to taste the world, Teresa relocates from her native Portugal to move in with a longtime friend and fellow expat in Brazil. A nuanced, sensitive exploration of place, home and the shifting sands of friendship. Winner: Best Film, Director, Actress, Supporting Actor, Brasília.

In the Espinhaço Mountains one winter, a group of small-town Brazilian girls are experiencing the end of their youth. Impossible romances leave marks on their bodies and the surrounding landscape. Each of the friends finds her own particular way to overcome the loneliness and to live within a tangle of uncertainty.

Brazilian outback, cowboys preserve their age-old customs, communicating with their cattle in a form of plaintive singing known as Aboio. The chant resounds an improvised, ancient form that is an entrance to the life and the imaginary of the ancient Brazilian cattle drivers.

After thirty years living in Angola, the Portuguese ethnologist Acácio Vieira, along with his wife Conceição, moves to Brazil bringing with him an extensive archive of the life of people of Angola and Portuguese colonizers. Weaving memories, images and personal stories, the film embarks on an affectionate journey of the couple’s past, while reconstructing a link of the three countries in which they lived.