MARTINIQUE FILMFESTIVAL

The Martinique International Film Festival is a quarterly online film festival meant to showcase innovative independent cinema from around the world by up-and-coming artists.

The festival hopes to be the voice and representation for films with a unique voice and message, regardless of how low the budget might be.

Aiming to inspire, motivate and award new talent.

Now in it's 8th edition, the Martinique International Film Festival announces an exclusive partnership with the leading Brussels Independent Film Festival. The deal includes the screening of the very best of the Martinique film festival during the 39th edition of the Brussels film festival (February 2018). As of now all selected film will also receive a waiver to enter their work for the Brussels film festival.

Being an online film festival doesn't imply that your film will be distributed online. We'll only showcase the selected films by posting information on the films (incl. trailers, photos). The Martinique IFF is one of several online festivals that uses other festival directors as jury members. This guarantees not only a quality selection, it also helps filmmakers to find their way into other festivals (with physical screenings). Most of the selected films were picked up by other festival as a result of a selection at Martinique IFF.

The 2017 Winter selection will be announced on December 22nd, 2017.

Narrative Short Film
Martinique Snake Award
Gretchen at the spinning wheel (Austria) by Magdalena Chmielewska

What is pure imagination and what reality? Magdalena Chmielewska’s dream-like portrayals Gretchen’s spinning and brooding in her love to Faust make it nearly impossible to differentiate. Her love is a constant toing and froing between pure passion and panic desperation, between slowing down and accelerating – the principle upon which Schubert’s masterpiece rests. Made under the auspices of Michael Haneke at the National Film and TV School in Vienna Filmakademie Wien.

Best Narrative Feature Film
Pa'am hai'ta yalda (Israel) by Natalie Kaplan

NOA has   unconventional relationships with  her doctor, with  her  neighbor and with a young soldier. Sleepless, she wanders around,  trying to find her place in the world, willing to do anything to get some warm attention.

Best Documentary Feature Film
The Orphanage (France) by Haag Matthieu

Grandson of a Slovakian immigrant who came to France on foot, I don’t feel at home anywhere . Whilst wandering in Vietnam I met Monsieur Vu Tiên, a foster father to many, who entrusted me with his life-story even though I could not speak his language. There started a journey of discovery about my place as a man and as a father through encounters and revelations.

Best Documentary Short Film
The Crossing (United Kingdom) by Shreepali Patel

This emotionally charged multi-screen digital installation investigates the exploitation of hope and the black market economy of human trafficking. The Crossing explores the story of a young girl sex trafficked into an organised industry through the ‘lover boy’ technique. Her story unfolds through four interconnected screens with perspective shifting visuals and an intimate binaural sound design. The project itself sits within an increasingly complex climate of hardening public opinion; moral self-questioning and a $150 billion dollar world trade in people. As such the film takes as its starting point the concept of ‘hope’ and its gradual unfurling reality into an exploitation of trust to perpetuate a violent and organised industry trading in 21 million people, a third of which are children. The result is an intense, exploration of the destructive consequences of human trafficking through a heightened audio-visual experience. Defined as ‘adding an amazing piece of work to this battle against the worst of crimes’, The Crossing has been described as ‘ambitious and deftly executed’ and a project ‘that pushes the boundaries of film and communication’.

Best Animated Short Film
Blue Light (United Kingdom) by Harriet Francis Croucher

Emergency service personnel talk about the realities of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and its impact on their lives and their families.

Best Experimental Film
Litost (United States) by Rachel Silveria

Litost is a film about a young man perturbed by the strange goings on outside his home. He soon realizes all was not as it seemed and seeks to learn more about the source of his former plight, only to discover it was much ado about nothing - or was it?

Best Caribbean & Latin American Cinema Now
Interference (Colombia) by Gabriel Muelle

She just can't get over her husband's death. She doesn't know how to keep on going, where to start. Until he decides to give her a hand.

Narrative Feature Film
Run / Flucht (Germany) by Frank Blau

Germany. The situation has changed from democracy to a kind of military dictatorship. L., a woman age30, mother of two little children is being blackmailed by the department of homeland-security: She has to hand over a so called terrorist. B. is on the run. She is forced to leave Germany. L. finds B. in the forrests, they walk together.After some time L. realises, that she and B. are in the same desperate situation. Run- a movie about trust, loneliness and the morality of betrayal.

Documentary Feature Film
Enemy of Islam? A Meeting With Nouri Bouzid (Italy) by Stefano Grossi

Nouri Bouzid is the most important Tunisian film director. He has shown in his films everything that seems impossible to show inside an Arab country: homophobia, torture, political repression, patriarchy, religious fanaticism, antisemitism, sexual pathology. He has neglected nothing while remembering that in the cinema (as in real life) style is the most important thing: you must tell the stories that you dearly want to tell in the most prodigious way possible so that the spectators do not want to listen to anything else.

Documentary Feature Film
God is American (France) by Richard Martin Jordan
Since the end of World War II, the people of Tanna, a remote island in the South Pacific in the archepelago of Vanuatu, idolize an American prophet. His name is John Frum. The islanders believe he is an American pilot that returned to the United States after the war, and will come back to Tanna with riches from the US that they call « the Cargo ». They pray to an American flag, awaiting his return. One man, Isaac the Last One, chief of the « Cargo cult », claims he is Frum’s son. He has formed an army of GI’s to celebrate the return of the prophet John Frum.

Narrative Short Film
Breaker (Japan) by Philippe McKie

In tomorrow's Tokyo, the technologically-enhanced body of a young mercenary hacker is overrun by a sentient data weapon. Wanted, the parasitic A.I becomes her only ally as she is chased across the city by those seeking to salvage it.

Narrative Short Film
Ophelia (United States) by Jamie Sims

What happens when grief becomes the third party in a relationship? What exists in the silence of the silent partner when the other descends into self-destruction? OPHELIA attempts to sound that depth by refocussing a classic story of mourning and madness through the lens of Shakespeare’s unsolvable puzzle - the inexplicable Ophelia. With her as witness, we experience Hamlet’s chaos, and perhaps come to know her own turmoil, as well. Can love serve as a life raft for her partner in distress, or will she be pulled under by it?

Narrative Short Film
Conversations Centered Around Black Bodies: Black Lives Matter (United States) by Christopher Conti

Two strangers intersect at a park bench and initiate an intimate conversation about the Black Lives Matter movement. This is the first of a series of vignettes featuring people of different perspectives relating to race relations in America. Conversations Centered Around Black Bodies aims to foster community and start a dialogue about real issues as it explores the intersections of identity.

Narrative Short Film
Personal (Iran, Islamic Republic of) by Sonia K. Hadad

Personal is a narrative short movie depicting an immanent crisis in the life of a young Iranian woman who carries on a secretive modeling career. The story, which takes place against the backdrop of Tehran, a dizzying modern day metropolis, portrays the struggles of women living under an Islamic theocracy.

Narrative Short Film
New Neighbors (United States) by E.G. Bailey

How far will a Mother go to protect her children? A 2017 Sundance Official Selection, New Neighbors is a story about a mother and her two sons who move to a new neighborhood, and because of all the killings and assaults on Black lives she is determined to keep her family safe. She takes to the neighborhood with kids in tow. A clever, resourceful, and unique approach to the BLM dialogue.

Documentary Short Film
Sherry (United States) by Eliane Lima

Sherry is an experimental documentary film which witnesses the private life of Robert, a 75 years old gentleman from Orange County. Every day, Robert transforms himself into a living doll, Sherry. Info: This project began in Fall 2014 when Lucrecia Martel (visiting filmmaker) took a group of CalArts' students to Robert Sherry's house.

Animated Short Film
Sunny and Gerd in Spring Cleaning (Canada) by DaCosta Bayley

A whistle blows, signalling break time. Gerd sits in his favourite spot to enjoy his break and catch up on some reading. Unbeknownst to Gerd, his best friend Sunny is about to deny him any respite from the day’s grind. Things go from zero to “wha’-tha’?!” when Sunny finds himself in a tight spot and Gerd has to rescue his little buddy. Some quick thinking and a little hacking just might save the day.

Experimental Film
All About You ( United States) by Allison Beda

This strange and joyful music video unleashes the work of choreographer Tara Cheyenne Friedenberg and four of Canada’s most exciting dancers/performers onto the streets of Vancouver with their weird and cool interpretation of The Royal Oui’s song “All About You”. Dancers wearing suits and running shoes perform a quirky and distintive modern dance piece (somewhat interactive with passerbys/onlookers) consisting of “pedestrian” movements and gestures that moves them in and around the city, rendering the pedestrian surreal.

Experimental Film
Ramona (United States) by Susan DeLeo

"Ramona" is an homage to the filmmaker's late mother, a journey through 8mm home movies obsessively watched as a child and now reimagined. It is a calling on the light of memory and love.

Caribbean & Latin American Cinema Now
So Long (Mexico) by Maria Berns
Migration for women has other meanings. Renata is at a hotel on the Mexican side in the US-Mexican border waiting for her contact to cross to the other side. In the meanwhile she has doubts and she imagines that she returns to Veracruz after working in the United States. But it seems as if she had not gone, not even his family has noticed his absence. And , she imagines Natalia who is waiting for her husband who migrated North. While Renata seeks to leave again, Natalia rejects the man who has arrived from the North and seeks to settle down while he completes the construction of her house. Both women will create their own version of migrating across the border. Story is one of the main surfaces of a narrative film. Yet in So Long, the story is distorted by overlapping yet interrelated images. The distortion created a different effect like memories or a parallel world from the sentimental story that sought to be told, that the audience will experience several stories of the film character only in a single frame.

Caribbean & Latin American Cinema Now
Alatriste (Mexico) by Ruben Colin Gama

A little boy looks for his missing wing while discovering the cruelty in the world he lives in.

Caribbean & Latin American Cinema Now
Jager (Mexico) by Manuel Ortiz Hunger

At the sunset, a hunter chases his prey into the woods, only to realize who the real prey is.

Caribbean & Latin American Cinema Now
A Friday Night (Uruguay) by Bruno Cancio

Diego and Matín, two strangers, find each other on a friday night. Both are suffering a moment of bewilderment. Inadvertently, through a strange conversation, they will speak of their sorrows and rethink their partner issues.

Caribbean & Latin American Cinema Now
The two halves (Argentina) by Gwenn Joyaux

Aristotle, Cleopatra and Darwin considered earthworms essential, even sacred creatures. But the only thing we learn about earthworms it's that if someone cut them in half, they will regenerate. This story demystifies that belief. This is a story about someone who was cut in two when she was born, but only one half made it through. The half with the head survived, as earthworms do.

Caribbean & Latin American Cinema Now
Not so friends: an island between them and him (Brazil) by Emy Lobo
A road movie that shows the expectation for an Obama's historic visit to Cuba by the Cuban women's look. Shooted by a woman that traveled alone and cross more than eight cities of the comunist island.

Caribbean & Latin American Cinema Now
Off Track (Chile) by Antoine de Bujadoux

A dropout has lost someone he loved. His life won't be the same anymore after that departure.

Caribbean & Latin American Cinema Now
The earth still moves (Mexico) by Pablo Chavarría Gutiérrez

The earth is still moving under the serpent’s torsion. “La Tierra Aún Se Mueve” ('The Earth Is Still Moving') is a quite different field from the narratives built to make plots, because what instigates is the modulation of the visual and auditory aspects in search of the experimentation of multiple sensations.

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