Where censorship rules, the hour of the metaphor has come. The Arab Spring in Egypt didn’t change much about this. The traditional roles assigned to women are still the same. Four young female artists from Cairo are cautiously exploring this thin line between poetry and prohibition in their works. They still have to hide their longing for creativity and self-realisation as well as their own ideas of sexuality and physicality under headscarves. The film translates this dichotomy between being and appearing into oscillating images that make us feel some of the fear and tension these women experience.
The Czech-born Canadian director Petr Lom and the Dutch filmmaker Corinne van Egeraat met the four theatre, photo and video artists at a workshop. They have been working together on this project since 2011, not just as actors, but also as co-authors. Their artistic objects and performances unfold a kaleidoscope of associations that dominate the film’s visual world. Past master Ryūichi Sakamoto provided the discrete but effective score. Ultimately, “Ana Ana” is a poem that couldn’t be more political.
Cornelia Klauß

Kuba is 13 years old, his brother Mikołaj is seven. Kuba wakes his brother up, asks him to eat breakfast, the boy refuses. They go out to together to buy some crisps and walk home hand in hand. At night they sit at home and play computer games. There’s something missing in this daily routine: where are the adults?
Kuba’s and Mikołaj’s parents are not in the same country as their sons. Their father works in Scotland, their mother in Austria, while the sons are waiting in Poland for one of them to come home. At school Kuba is not allowed to tell that the two boys are alone, and the construction seems indeed to be tottering only when Kuba reaches his limits and behaves conspicuously.
The film is a disconcerting demonstration of how responsibilities have shifted with the labour markets and how economic problems can lead to passive violence against the weakest members of our society.

A seven-year-old girl, the daughter of a modernist architect’s family, wants an ordinary family, ordinary for 1960s Norway. But her father has a beard – the only man in the whole town.

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Mephisto 97.6 Audience Award 2014