PROGRAM 2022
“In the end I began to understand. There is such a thing as absolute power over narrative. Those who secure this privilege for themselves can arrange stories about others pretty much where, and as, they like. Just as in corrupt, totalitarian regimes, those who exercise power over others can do anything.”
― Chinua Achebe, Home, and Exile
“We tell ourselves stories in order to live. We live entirely… by the imposition of a narrative line upon desperate images, by the ideas with which we have learned to freeze the shifting phantasmagoria which is our actual experience.”
―Joan Didion
Celebrating its 5th anniversary, Nova Frontier Film Festival (NFFF) in partnership with the Billie Holiday Theatre, returns in person from June 24th to June 26th, 2022. Centered around the theme of Exile and “Belonging,” this year’s selection of films (spanning from Narrative to Experimental to Documentary works, short and feature-length) grapple with existential questions related to experiences of uprootedness, departing, returning, belonging, motherhood, and home as a metaphor and extension of Mother Earth; timely, political, reflective, and riveting.
The 2022 edition of the NFFF includes conversations, panels, and performances led by filmmakers, academics, activists, and teeming minds in-tune with the spirit and ethos of the festival.
Additionally, NFFF is excited to collaborate with the Bronx Documentary Center, a non-profit gallery and educational institute that will program a selection of films and a panel highlighting their works from the Bronx community.
Egyptian-Australian documentarY filmmaker Rendah Haj curates a selection of short films in the “Her Lens” program, navigating motherhood and womanhood through the intimate experiences of four young African women. In the streets of Cairo and Dakar, the heroines each grapple with the complexities of a kept secret, as they try to break free from the ever-present patriarchy and domestication confining them, and pursue a sense of agency over their lives and identity.
Through the lens of Queer African, Latin, and Muslim filmmakers, “I Am Here” program, curated by Chilean artist and activist, Matías Alvial, poetically explores the complexity of emotions surrounding being Queer, and the search for love, belonging, and identity in homophobic societies and offer an insight into resiliency and futurity.
We are very excited about the inclusion of 5 powerful films in our program from the Francophone regions of Martinique, French Guiana, Cameroon, Reunion Island, and France, poetic, and soul-stirring narratives that are an ode to the Black diaspora experiences, and at once a celebration of Creole language and Creolization.
NFFF makes its return in-person to the Billie Holiday Theatre - which is celebrating its 50th anniversary and five decades of excellence and innovation.
On the precipice of celebration for both Nova Frontier and The Billie alike, the spirit of forging ahead and anticipating a brighter future is exemplified by our filmmakers (hailing from the global African Diaspora, Latin America, and the Middle East), They show us through their cameras not only their compelling experiences and perspectives of the world but also their boundless tenacity to frame meaningful and complex narratives despite a global pandemic and compounding obstacles.”
OPENING NIGHT
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OPENING NIGHT 〰️
FRIDAY JUNE 24TH
Opens with four short films that portray our overarching themes and zeitgeist of NFFF, through stories by filmmakers focusing their lens on themselves or people caught up in the maelstrom of their seemingly ordinary lives: dreams, work, rituals, love, and the in-between.
7:00 PM
PLEASE CLICK ON THE FILM’s TITLE and director’s NAME TO VIEW THEIR TRAILERS AND LEARN MORE ABOUT THEM.
Director Laura Gauch (Chile/Switzerland) 2021
Documentary | 17 Mins | Rated PG
The filmmaker takes us on an explorative journey to find out more about her mother’s family. Part of them had to flee Chile in 1973 during the Military Coup, since they had a close connection to the former president Salvador Allende. Through fragmented memories, we accompany her cousin Lua, who faces the uncertainty of who she is and asks questions about the family’s history. How does this generation deal with the past and how does it continue to shape their identity?
Director Ramata-Toulaye SY ( /France/Senegal) 2021
Drama | 24 Mins | Rated PG
It’s October, the end of the rainy season in Fouta, an isolated region in the north of Senegal. Astel (13) accompanies her father every day in the bush. Together, they look after their herd of cows. But one day, in the middle of the desert, the meeting between the young girl and a shepherd disrupts the peaceful daily life between Astel and her father.
Director Rodrigo Sena (Brazil) 2019
Documentary | 25 Mins | Rated PG
Produced in the year 2007, a photographic essay realized in recognition of the indigenous roots, portrayed twelve adolescents belonging to Eleutério do katu, RN Brasil. Twelve years later the photographer returns to katu in search of these protagonists, now adults, to know about his personal trajectories and his world views.
Mijo
Director Mazdey Snob (Mexcico) 2021
Documentary | Experimental | 5 Mins | Rated PG
Mijo is a young dreamer, suddenly blessed with the gift of King Midas. However, his ability has a unique twist: whatever and whoever he touches is stylishly pimped up.
RUNNING TIME: 1h15mns
12:00 PM - SATURDAY JUNE 25TH
Director Stany Coppet & Ashim Balla (French Guiana) 2022
Drama | 15 Mins | Rated PG
French Guiana, South America: When two armed men enter the Amazon rainforest on a clandestine mission, one of them emerges with a darker soul.
Director Arlette Pacquit (Martinique) 2021
Documentary | 68 Mins | Rated PG
Retired from the world and living in the foothills of the Vauclin mountain (Martinique), Monchoachi writes every afternoon after his morning walk in forests of the island. Poet (he says that one should pronounce this word while trembling), philosopher and essayist, he tries to build a thought that he claims to be wild. A thought detached from the occident, therefore eminently free. Many have drawn from his work a strength of resistance, creation and survival in the face of the violence of contemporary society. A journey with Monchoachi is a way to find echoes of our inquiries about our place in the world, in relation to Nature, the Word and the Sacred.
A Q&A will follow the screening by the Filmmaker Arlette Pacquit Moderated by Sandra Venite, Cultural Ambassador and CEO from the French Caribbean islands of Martinique and Guadeloupe.
RUNNING TIME: 1h23mns
HER LENS -
HER LENS -
2:00 PM - SHORT FILM PROGRAM 1 Curated by Rendah Haj
Her Lens is a curation of short films navigating motherhood and womanhood through the intimate experiences of four young African women. In the streets of Cairo and Dakar, the heroines each grapple with the complexities of a kept secret, as they try to break-free from the ever-present patriarchy and domestication confining them, and pursue a sense of agency over their lives and identity.
Each film beautifully captures an ordinary and transient moment in the heroine's lives, with rhythm that slowly builds and meticulously unfolds to reveal hidden familial and societal tensions that compel courage, independence and truthfulness. But at the forefront of the journeys, notions of innocence, desperation, naivety and rebellion are illuminated as seemingly unflinching decisions lead to profound and unseen consequences. A PANEL WILL FOLLOW AFTER SCREEnING.
Director Morad Mostafa (Egypt) 2021
Fiction | 25 Mins | Rated PG
Mariam goes to a public hospital with her husband and daughter; bleeding and suffering from a severe pain in her abdomen. After the medical examination things escalate between Mariam and her husband.
Director Ahmed Abdelsalam (Egypt/UK) 2021
Fiction | 17 Mins | Rated PG
Hours before her one-way trip out, Nour‘s last night in cairo turns to be a troublesome journey of struggle with a patriarchal society and a fight within to keep her hidden secret.
Ser Bi
Director Moly Kane (Senegal) 2020
Drama | (20 Mins | Rated PG
Tomorrow, Zuzana is getting married. From now on, every minute counts to erase her past and become the woman expected of her.
Director Morad Mostafa (Egypt/France) 2021
Drama | 20 Mins | Rated PG
Khadiga, young mother of 16 lives alone with her baby after her husband left for work in a remote city; in an ordinary day she makes her way through the hustle of Cairo streets to do some visits where she feels uncomfortable with the surroundings.
TOTAL RUNNING TIME: 1h22mns
3:30 PM Panel Discussion
Her Lens: Identity & Belonging
Join Rendah Haj, Australian-Egyptian documentary filmmaker and curator of “Her Lens” program in a hybrid panel and conversation, speakers (tba), discussing the films AND HER curatorial choice, the cultural, political, and social landscape of the films; the complex, timely issues surrounding women in the region.
I’M HERE - QUEER LENS -
I’M HERE - QUEER LENS -
4:00 PM — SHORT FILM PROGRAM 2 Curated by Matías Alvial
Through the lens of Queer African, Latin, and Muslim filmmakers, NFFF’s “I Am Here” program poetically explores the complexity of emotions surrounding being Queer, the search for love, belonging and identity in homophobic societies. The panel is moderated by Chilean artist and activist, Matías Alvial, who will be conversing with the filmmakers of UNSAID, Ayodeji Otuyelu and Ashleigh Ashton, and aRTIST AND ACTIVIST Liam Neupert. — will focus on the art of generating and nourishing interpersonal relationships within the queer community. How can storytelling serve as a tool to take up space and create family and friendship? While the films grapple with delicate topics, this program wishes to refute misconceptions of life in homophobic societies and offer an insight into resiliency and futurity. THE PANEL WILL FOLLOW AFTER THE SCREENING.
Trigger warning: content includes and is not limited to self-injure, violence, and homophobia.
Director Carlos Ormeño Palma ( Peru) 2021
Drama | 19 Mins | Rated PG
In a Peruvian city corroded by an eternal and indifferent winter, a young androgynous man with indigenous roots reaches the depths of abandonment as his lover tries to survive an unknown disease and his memories fade into oblivion and sorrow.
Sometimes I wish I was on a Desert Island
Director Eli Jean Tahchi (Canada) 2021
Documentary | Experimental | 11 Mins | Rated PG
As the world learns to live again in the midst of the pandemic, for many Arabic-speaking LGBTQ+ people living in Montreal, this is just a period of time like any other. When you’ve fled homophobic violence in your home country and endured a painful migratory journey, or you still face social prejudices stemming from intercultural and intergenerational conflicts, surviving social isolation is nothing new
Director Carrie Hawks (USA) 2021
Documentary | 15 Mins | Rated PG-13
Relays the story of three BIPOC folks who self-injure, then find new ways to cope
Director Ayodeji Otuyelu (USA) 2021
Drama | Experimental | 19 Mins | Rated PG
Unsaid is a visual adaptation of poems from the book Words In My Head, which explore emotions surrounding gender, sexual orientation, blackness and feminism through the eye of a gay director from a homophobic African country Nigeria. It tells a story of people who are seen as voiceless or a minority in life, film, and poems, with dignity and beauty.
TOTAL RUNNING TIME: 65 MINS
5:15 PM
I’M HERE - QUEER PANEL/DISCUSSION Moderated by Matías Alvial
TOTAL RUNNING TIME: 45 mins
6:15 PM
Director Joseph Dégramon Ndjom (France/Cameroon) 2021)
Documentary | 55 Mins | Rated PG
While they were still prisoners, my uncle Detyr and his companion Adèle made a promise to each other: to start a new life together once they will be free. Today, they are living in the village of Nkonga (Cameroon), and their will to marry is facing my family’s opposition…
Director Rokhaya Marieme Balde (Senegal, Switzerland) 2021
Documentary | 27 Mins | Rated PG
Rokhaya, a young director, returns to her home in Senegal to make a film about a local historical figure. Throughout her research, which consists of interviews with local personalities, discussions with her team and fictional scenes shot on location, we discover the story of Aline Sitoe Diatta.
TOTAL RUNNING TIME: 82 Mins
8:30 PM
Director Ivan Herrera (Dominican Republic) 2021
Drama | 1H 17 Mins | Rated PG
Emma a French woman of African descent manages to escape after being arrested in the Dominican Republic. She finds shelter in the most dangerous district of Santo Domingo, where she is taken in by a group of children. By becoming their protégée and maternal figure, she will see her destiny change inexorably.
Emma is (played by Clarisse Albrecht who is also a co-executive producer and co-screenwriter of the film).
1 PM — SUNDAY JUNE 26TH
SPECIAL PROGRAM - RESTORATIVE FAMILIES -
SPECIAL PROGRAM - RESTORATIVE FAMILIES -
Restorative Families, presented by the Bronx Documentary Center: 5 short documentary films about families without fathers overcoming adversity through introspection and love and 1 short documentary about a man on work release from prison, finding a way to heal himself. The series celebrates the human will to find a way forward. PANEL TO FOLLOW AFTER SCREEnING WITH FILMMAKERS, MODERATED BY BDC.
Ebony
Director Sean Josahi Brown (USA) 2022
Documentary | 17 Mins | Rated PG
A single mom raising six children in a transitional housing program in Brownsville, Brooklyn, Ebony aims to create a better life for her children by moving them into permanent housing. The abundance of love is a lesson for all of us.
In the Body
Director Samantha Alvarez (USA) 2022
Documentary | Experimental | 8 Mins | Rated PG-13
With their relationship at near breaking point, a mother and daughter attempt to close the void between themselves by examining a trauma from years before. A bold experiment in healing that will leave us all with newfound courage.
No Hablo Español
Director Adiana Rivera (USA) 2022
Documentary | 13 Mins | Rated PG
Finding herself feeling voiceless without the Spanish language, Adiana Rivera uses her camera to explore her Puerto Rican culture, attempting to locate where and when her family started losing their heritage.
Tú te Quedaste
Director Daniela Amézquita (USA) 2022
Documentary | 20 Mins | Rated PG
The story of eleven women, including the director, talking about absent fatherhood and shared trauma. In an effort to heal, the film engages the oppression, violence, and adversities women face raising children on their own.
Hustle
Director Xavier Cousens (USA) 2022
Documentary | 10 Mins | Rated PG
A verité documentary inside the world of Anthony Johnson, a work release recipient, who spends his days as a courier in New York City and his nights incarcerated.
TOTAL RUNNING TIME: 1 H 8 Mins.
FOLLOWED BY A PRESENTATION BY BRONX DOCUMENTARY CENTER AND A CONVERSATION WITH FILMMAKERS.
CLOSING FILMS - EXILE AND BELONGING -
CLOSING FILMS - EXILE AND BELONGING -
2:30 PM
Director Erika Etangsalé (Réunion, France) 2021
Documentary | 51 Mins | Rated PG
Jean-René is a retired workman who has lived in Mâcon, France, since emigrating from Reunion Island at the age of 17. Today, for the first time ever, the quiet man recounts his story to his daughter. His journey is interspersed with enigmatic dreams and pains that are rooted in the wounds of the French colonial past.
Director Fan Sissoko (Iceland) 2021
Animation Doc | 4 Mins | Rated PG
A young Black woman goes swimming in the Icelandic sea and reflects on her experience of raising a child in a country that feels nothing like home. As she enters the freezing water, she relives her traumatic pregnancy. Being in the wild and facing her fears is helping her heal.
Director Brian Gonzalez (USA) 2021
Documentary | Experimental | 11 Mins | Rated PG
Illustrated as an ongoing visual study “Invisible Violence” becomes a visual requiem for the Mexican farm workers who were burned alive or wounded in the routine gasoline baths at the Mexican border nearly a century ago, who have still not been properly memorialized.
Director Sana Malik (USA) 2021
Drama | 15 Mins | Rated PG
10-year-old Ayah follows her father to New Mexico after leaving the refugee camp in Pakistan where she was born and raised. Forced to go on a camping trip organized by a local youth worker, Ayah leaves the campsite after a misunderstanding. As she gets lost in the mountains, she connects to a memory she didn't know she had. Somehow, as she explores this foreign place, she comes closer to finding her own story.
TOTAL RUNNING TIME: 1 H 22 Mins
4 PM
PANEL - EXILE AND BELONGING -
PANEL - EXILE AND BELONGING -
this panel discussion aims to explore and challenge the polarized debate about diaspora, exile, transnationalism, borders, and migration happening today; our understanding of one's sense of place and belonging from multiple, Global perspectives, offered up by filmmakers in this selection narrating and navigation experiences OF exile and belonging, PERSONAL AND COLLECTIVE.
moderated by Nathalie Etoke, Associate Professor of Francophone and Africana Studies at the Graduate Center, CUNY. She is the author of L’Écriture du corps féminin dans la littérature de l’Afrique francophone au sud du Sahara and of Melancholia Africana the Indispensable Overcoming of The Black Condition which won the Frantz Fanon Prize from the Caribbean Philosophical Association. In CONVERSATION WITH Brian Gonzalez, FILMMAKER AND ARTIST, professor of Immersive Storytelling at the School of Visual Arts, and director of INVISIBLE VIOLENCE. AND Sana Malik, Pakistani-Canadian fILMMAKER AND writer AND dIRECTOR OF AWay Together.
5 PM - CLOSING CEREMONY
5 PM - CLOSING CEREMONY
MEET OUR JURIES
Richard B. Pierre is an award-winning multiracial Black filmmaker whose films have been broadcast and screened globally at over 100 festivals. His work tackles a range of genres and subject matter; most recently focussing on race.
Richard’s professional experience includes writing, producing and directing. His first feature-length script 'Crooked' was a quarter-finalist for the 2009 Nicholl Fellowship.
His first dramatic 35 mm short 'The Toboggan,' funded by the Ontario Arts Council, premiered at the 2011 Chicago International Children’s Film Festival. In 2012 his interactive short 'Far From The Heart' was nominated for a Golden Sheaf Award and he was named a ReelWorld Film Festival 2012 Emerging 20 Filmmaker.
His first documentary 'What Are You?' was nominated for a 2020 Golden Sheaf Award and premiered on TVO. His newest short, 'An Uninvited Guest' funded by the Ontario Arts Council won Best Thriller at the 2020 HollyShorts Film Festival and had its broadcast debut on CBC.
Tatiana Lohmann is a Brazilian director, editor and screenplayer. She has made short and feature films, as well as TV series (MTV, Nat Geo) and installations for museums and theater. Her features, the documentaries ‘Solitude & Faith’ (2010), ‘SLAM: Sworded Words’ (2017) and ‘My Fortress’ (2019), won importante prizes in Brazil and received mentions in international festivals. She’s a member of the collective Manifesto Impromptu, which investigates intersections between theater and cinema and has produced the fiction series ‘Life Begins At’ and ‘Unspoken Tales’. The collective is developing the screenplay of their first feature. She’s also directing two feature documentaries: a musical collaboration between an international renowned artist and Brazilian indigenous peoples during the hard times of the genocidal government that we face today in Brazil, and the other is the story of Aretha Duarte, first black latin woman to reach the summit of the Everest. Tatiana is also vice president of APACI (São Paulo Filmmakers Association), which fights for public policies for audiovisual and foment the public debate.
Juan Pablo is a lifelong artist. He was born beside the Pacific Ocean in Vina Del Mar, Chile. At an early age, Juan Pablo became fascinated with taking an image of his surroundings, and giving voice to what was unspoken. It was the sound of the sea and the wind, and a subversive human story that developed his artistic voice. Juan Pablo’s voice evokes a feeling of sacredness and familiarity, it is otherworldly and grounded in hope. His voice remains relevant today, years after the rule of Chile’s dictatorship.
Juan Pablo is a filmmaker and photographer. He has shown his work at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Santiago, Chile, and in multiple solo exhibitions in Chile the past 10 years. In 2015, Juan Pablo shot a series of portraits of the punks in Valparaiso, Chile.
He has created installations integrating Pablo Neruda’s poetry and film, and his most recent work, “The Squat” is a short documentary about the Colombian immigrants living in Santiago.
Juan Pablo has worked for numerous brands as television commercial director and photographer. His clients include Levi’s, H&M, Nike, Netflex, Peugeot, . He has shot portraits for Sean Lennon, Gael Garcia Bernal, Helen Fisher, Pedro Lemebel, Daniela Vega, Joan Collins, Bobby Gillespie of Primal Scream, and Colombina Parra. in 2005 Juan Pablo received awards at the London International Advertising Festival and at the Mallorca Festival in Spain.
After 7 years living in NYC, Juan Pablo currently lives in Santiago, Chile.
Amanda Valle is a multidisciplinary artist born in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, in 1984.
Her latest work, the short film "Back in the Island" has been selected at more than 15 festivals winning the Award for Best Generation at the Berlin Commercial festival, Best Photography at Le Femme filmmakers festival in UK and Best Dominican Documentary in Dominican Republic and at the Milan Fashion Film Festival.
Since 2019 she lives and works between Dominican Republic and New York developing new ways of expression through painting, installation, video and, recently, digital art and NFTs.
Art Basel Miami 2017, Salone del Mobile Milan 2018 (Nilufar Gallery), Group show, Molin Corvo Gallery, Paris, 2020, Art Basel Miami, Latent Life, Art Installation, 2021, Solo Show, Human Encounters, Molin Corvo Gallery, Paris, 2022Group show, collateral event Anima Mundi, Venice Biennale, Italy, 2022
