Friendship in Iceland, teenage rebellion in the Himalayas, and many other interesting stories to be found in the ON AIR section. Let us present to you the films included in the Main Competition!
Below you will find titles of the nine films that are going to compete for the Grand Prix Prize of the festival , i.e. the Golden Angel Award in the Main Competition of the Tofifest International Film Festival. Kujawy Pomorze Region – the ON AIR International Competition for début and sophomore feature films.
The ON AIR Competition is definitely the most important section of the Tofifest IFF. Kujawy Pomorze Region, in which our audience will have a chance to watch première screenings of many rebellious films, on the big screen. Every year, we meticulously select films from all around the world, which tell stories that are out-of-the-ordinary, either in their form or content. This year, we have chosen such films as ‘Je'vida’, ‘All About the Levkoviches’, ‘78 days’, ‘Elbow’, and ‘Solitude’. Their directors, namely Katja Gauriloff, Adam Breier, Emilija Gašić, Jamila Wenske, and Ninna Pálmadóttir, respectively, are going to visit Toruń and meet our audience, after each individual screening. The section also includes feature débuts by filmmakers from France, India, or Iran. The winner of the competition (a female or male film director) is going to be selected by a jury comprised of the following people: Kinga Dębska, Katarzyna Figura, Damian Kocur, Wojciech Urbański, and Zbigniew Zamachowski.
‘78 Days’ is shocking story about the bombings of Serbia by the joined NATO forces. When the father of three girls gets drafted, the family struggles to keep a semblance of normal life.
‘All About the Levkoviches’ is a story about a conflicted Jewish family. People from three different generations try to rebuild their relations, after the wife of one of them dies.
In ‘Elbow’, you meet Hazel, who has already sent countless job applications, but nobody has yet invited her for a formal interview. One day, she decides to leave for Istanbul.
In ‘Girls Will Be Girls’, you see Mira, who goes to a boarding school in the Himalayas. The girl is very talented, which both the teachers and her parents find pleasing. One day, Mira becomes particularly fond of a handsome boy, Siri. This pushes her to revolting against the rigorous rules of the school.
In ‘Je’vida’, you see an aunt and her niece coming to Lapland, in order to prepare a house they had inherited for sale. When both women build a bond between them, they learn to appreciate themselves for who they really are, and respect their own origin. This is the first film ever made in which the Skolt Sámi language of Lapland is spoken. This language is now used by merely 300 people in the world.
The film ‘Me, Maryam, the Children and 26 Others’ is story about a woman, who decides to rent her house to a film crew. It only takes a few days for her peaceful and secluded life to turn upside down.
In ‘Solitude’, a quite farmer moves from the Icelandic countryside to the capital city of Reykjavik, where he establishes a peculiar thread of understanding with a young boy.
In ‘Rapture’, the main protagonist Lydia gets mixed up in a very complicated situation. She meets Milo, an attractive man, and their casual one-night affair is a beginning of a series of lies. They all start, when Lydia pretends that the child she helped her friend deliver, is in fact Lydia’s child she has with Milo.
‘The Lost Boys’ is a very emotional portrayal of love, sensitivity and sexuality, which fits very well into the contemporary social genre. The film takes place in a juvenile detention centre.
Included in the section:
- 78 Days, dir. by Emilija Gašić, Serbia, 2024, 82’
- All About the Levkoviches, dir. by Ádám Breier, Hungary, 2024, 85’
- Elbow, dir. by Aslı Özarslan, Germany, 2024, 86’
- Girls Will Be Girls, dir. by Shuchi Talati, India, France, 2024, 117’
- Je’vida, dir. by Katja Gauriloff, Finland, 2023, 99’
- Me, Maryam, the Children and 26 Others, dir. by Farshad Hashemi, Iran, Germany, Czech Republic, 2024, 101’
- Solitude, dir. by Ninna Pálmadóttir, Iceland, Slovakia, 2023, 75’
- The Lost Boys, dir. by Zeno Graton, Belgium, France, 2023, 83’
- The Rapture, dir. by Iris Kaltenbäck, France, 2023, 97’
