AFI PROJECT: 20/20 is a program designed to enhance cultural exchange, understanding, and collaboration through filmmakers and their films from around the world. It launched at AFI FEST 2006 presented by Audi.
In an unprecedented alliance with the President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities, the U.S. Department of State, the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Institute of Museum and Library Services, AFI FEST created this program to foster cross-cultural understanding and respect while nurturing filmmaking excellence. This is a part of the U.S. Government's Global Cultural Initiative. The goal: developing ways these artists and their films can promote cultural awareness and understanding and challenge stereotypes, while presenting a fresh, clear vision of the common values people share.
By screening their films for audiences here and abroad, AFI PROJECT:
20/20 will encourage understanding and appreciation of values such as freedom of expression, tolerance and rights in intellectual property.
Through workshops, seminars and appearances at film festivals, cultural centers, museums and other community, educational and cultural venues in the US and abroad, AFI PROJECT: 20/20 filmmakers will promote mutual understanding through film.
|
Alberto Arvelo (Venezuela) TO PLAY AND TO FIGHT
Once a modest plan to expose rural children to the wonders of music, the Venezuelan Youth Orchestra System has become one of the most remarkable social experiments in Venezuela, linking musicians in many of the country's towns and villages. Among the featured guests are Placido Domingo, Claudio Abbado, Simon Rattle, Giuseppe Sinopoli and Eduardo Mata.
Click here for more info.
|
|
David Boyle (USA) BIG DREAMS LITTLE TOKYO
BIG DREAMS LITTLE TOKYO is the story of Boyd, who aspires to succeed in the world of Japanese business, but finds himself mostly on the outside looking in. His roommate Jerome is a Japanese American who has always felt too American to be Japanese, but too Japanese to be American. Together they struggle to find their place in a world where cultural identity is seldom what it seems.
Click here for more info.
|
|
Hilary Brougher (USA) STEPHANIE DALEY
When 16-year-old Stephanie Daley (Amber Tamblyn) is accused of murdering her newborn, she claims she never knew she was pregnant and that the child was stillborn. A forensic psychologist, Lydie Crane (Tilda Swinton), is hired to determine the truth behind Stephanie's state of denial.
Click here for more info.
|
|
Jay Craven (USA) DISAPPEARANCES
Set in the Prohibition-era, this whiskey-running adventure based on the award-winning novel by Howard Frank Mosher, takes place along the Vermont-Canadian border. With a unique magical realism style, the film features a standout performance from cinematic legend Kris Kristofferson.
Click here for more info.
|
|
Goutam Ghosh (India) JOURNEY
Young aspiring filmmaker Mohan meets renowned novelist Dasrath Joglekar traveling by train to receive a prestigious literary award. They strike up a conversation and before long they are delving into the lives of fictional characters, triggering past memories in Dasrath's real life. This begins a nostalgic journey for Dasrath as he tracks down the friends and people from his past that inspired the characters in his novel-a journey where fact and fiction collide.
Click here for more info.
|
|
Marwan Hamed (Egypt) THE YACOUBIAN BUILDING
The famous Yacoubian Building was erected in downtown Cairo in 1934 to house the city's upper crust. In its heyday it housed wealthy pashas, government ministers and foreign diplomats. After the military-backed coup in 1952, rich foreigners fled the country abandoning the once stately building. Today the tenants of its spacious apartments are a bit tattered and its rooftop laundry rooms are converted into homes for the poor.
Click here for more info.
|
|
Zhang Jiarui (China) THE ROAD
Young mainland actress Zhang Jingchu (PEACOCK, SEVEN SWORDS) looks set to become the next Zhang Ziyi with her amazing performance in THE ROAD, an epic tale of a provincial bus driver and his assistant spread across 40 years of recent Chinese history.
Click here for more info.
|
|
Danny Lerner (Israel) FROZEN DAYS
Meow is a young woman roaming the streets and nightclubs of Tel Aviv. She lives in empty apartments and surfs Internet chat rooms. When she decides to meet Alex, her chat buddy, a suicide bombing prevents their meeting, putting him in the hospital in a coma and her in his empty apartment. When the other tenants start referring to her as Alex and she assumes his identity, she finds herself sinking into a dangerous deluded reality.
Click here for more info.
|
|
Chad Lowe (USA) BEAUTIFUL OHIO
Directed by Chad Lowe and starring William Hurt, Rita Wilson and Julianna Margulies, set in the 1970s, a15-year-old boy lives in the constant shadow of his older brother, a free-spirited and enigmatic mathematics genius. The family's coming of age culminates in an event that will affect both brothers and their family forever.
Click here for more info.
|
|
Norman Maake (South Africa) HOMECOMING
Charlie comes home to South Africa in 1996, after twenty years in exile. Welcomed back by his family and childhood friends, Peter and Thabo, all seems well until the past starts to catch up with him. While Charlie meets the family of his dead comrade in arms Boetie, and his relationship with Boetie's wife Carol and her child blossoms, Peter's investigations lead him to implicate Charlie in his friend's death.
Click here for more info.
|
|
Mohammed Naqvi (Canada/Pakistan) SHAME
In 2002, following the tribal custom of "honor for honor," a young woman, Mukhtar Mai, was gang-raped and then publicly paraded for a crime her younger brother committed. Mai set out to seek justice. SHAME is her transformative journey from a simple peasant woman into a world human rights icon-who gave the village that shamed her two schools and a Women's Crisis Center.
Click here for more info.
|
|
Ngozi Onwurah (Nigeria/UK) SHOOT THE MESSENGER
A highly provocative comedy about a young black man's feelings on what it’s like to be a person of color. Shocking, disturbing and funny, this film throws a spotlight on racial attitudes in our world in a way that is anything but politically correct. From award winning young black writer Sharon Foster and Director Ngozi Onwurah, SHOOT THE MESSENGER is a startling and comic look at an extremely controversial subject.
Click here for more info.
|
|
Jafar Panahi (Iran) OFFSIDE
Six Iranian girls disguise themselves as boys to enter Tehran's Azadi Stadium and watch the 2006 World Cup Asian zone qualifier between Iran and Bahrain. However, their presence is discovered and they are arrested one by one.
Click here for more info.
|
|
J.B. Rutagarama (Rwanda/UK) BACK HOME
BACK HOME is the first film about the Rwandan genocide made by an actual survivor. The true story of director J.B. Rutagarama, who was adopted by reporters as he fled the killings and given a new life, Rutagarama takes us along as he returns to his homeland to confront what happened there.
Click here for more info.
|
|
Julie Stevens (USA) LIFE AFTER TOMORROW
Reuniting more than 40 former "orphans" and "Annies", this showbiz documentary takes a candid look at the highs and lows of being a child star. With revealing conversations about the impact on their families, friendships and the futures, the former Annies wax nostalgic about their glory days and life afterwards, including appearances from the creators of the musical, Sarah Jessica Parker and Martha Byrne (AS THE WORLD TURNS), MSNBC anchor Dara Brown and actress Allison Smith.
Click here for more info.
|
|
Yukihiko Tsutsumi (Japan) MEMORIES OF TOMORROW
Experiencing headaches and unable to find the words he is looking for, Saeki (Ken Watanabe) is diagnosed with an early onset of Alzheimer's disease. This emotionally touching story questions what it is to love and share a life with someone who has lost his memory.
Click here for more info.
|
|
Lucy Walker (UK) BLINDSIGHT
Erik Weihenmayer accomplished the unthinkable when, despite his blindness, he climbed the peak of Mount Everest. His feat impressed Sabriye Tenberken, a blind educator and adventurer who established the first school for the blind in Lhasa. Together they concocted a plan of astonishing courage-or insanity- to lead six blind teenagers on an ascent of the 23,000-foot Lhakpa Ri peak on the north side of Everest, with director Lucy Walker (DEVIL'S PLAYGROUND) along for a harrowing and inspiring journey.
Click here for more info.
|
|
Amie Williams (USA) NO SWEAT
An all-American tale about an all-American garment-the T-shirt-this documentary takes a wild ride into the bowels of the Los Angeles garment industry. Mostly undocumented workers at American Apparel and SweatX are offered better wages, benefits, even a shot at worker-ownership. But what's really behind the label?
Click here for more info.
|
