Five Caravan Films at ZAGREBDOX

Auk Nr 8 , Estonia, Ukraine, 2010, 95 min, HD, Creative, Personal View, Social Issues

In the heart of a once thriving Ukrainian coal-mining region everybody digs – retirees, unemployed miners and even the children. Years ago, the town's desperate residents decided to start mining illegally; they excavate everywhere!!! The story focuses on the Sikanov family, which has three children. 15-year-old Yura, the grandson of a powerful Soviet plant director, is the head of the family working as a miner in the illegal pit. Most Jura wants to run his own cafe somewhere far from home, but the responsibility for the two sisters and looming economic crisis pushes his dreams in the distant future.

Ģimenes lietas , Latvia, 2010, 58 min, HD, Drama doc, Portrait, Social Issues

"Family Instinct" is a film about incest - an illegal act, social taboo and a violation of religious norms. Zanda is a 28-year-old woman, worn out by hard work. Surrounded by poverty and despair, she is trying to survive with her two children in a god-forsaken Latvian village. Her hardships can be traced back to living in a relationship with her brother Valdis. When Valdis is put in jail, the local community forces her to make a difficult choice: to stay with him or with her children. Despite her ill fortune, she manages to express her love for the children, still hoping to save her family. The film offers a tragicomic but highly authentic insight into the bleak reality of Latvian countryside today.

Pa Rubika Celu , Latvia, 2010, 30 min, Digi Beta, Creative, Experimental

If the entire world can be reflected in a single drop of dew (and it can!), then why couldn’t it fit onto a single bicycle road in Latvia? A film about a world that walks, runs, crawls, sits, rides, flies. And falls. A world alive.

Vše pro dobro světa a Nošovic , Czech Republic, 2010, 82 min, 35 mm, Creative, Personal View, Social Issues

An original portrait of a Czech village that houses a giant car plant built by South Korea's Hyundai. Before the village turned into an industrial zone, many of the landowners had no intention of selling their plots of land... Not until many of them faced pressure from their neighbours who had accepted approx. EUR 4000 in compensation and not until they received death threats. Using nine protagonists, the film paints a portrait of a village changed beyond recognition. A humorous yet compelling film about a field that yields cars.

Cinematerapie , Czech Republic, 2010, 108 min, 35 mm, Portrait, Society

Living in the age of reality TV, in a society hungry for sensation, it is easy to feed on the highly emotional stories of people whose futures are being shaped by dozens of professionals. "Cinematherapy" takes a slightly different approach. A commercial aired on Czech Television invited viewers to attend a casting and tell their stories. Later on, eleven of them underwent cinematherapy – provided by the camera as an intermediary between them and the outside world. Blurring the lines between feature film, documentary and reality show, the film does not offer the participants a plastic surgery or a reunion with a long lost friend but lets them witness their often bizarre lives and thus move forward in dealing with their issues.

Katka , Czech Republic, 2010, 90 min, 35 mm, HD, Creative, Longitudinal, Portrait

Helena Třeštíková's film is a remarkable documentary tracing fourteen years in the life of a young junkie and her futile battle with drug addiction. Why did she start taking drugs? She claims she wanted to be different. The year is 1996 and 19-year-old Katka lives in the Sananim therapy community in the town of Němčice with hope for a normal life – she dreams of having a boyfriend and even a family, some day. But there's no happy ending. The director records Katka's descent over the years into a spiral of theft, prostitution, physical and psychological deterioration – a spiral that is broken only by brief flashes of hope and resolutions to stop taking drugs. Katka's desire is sincere, but in the end drugs always win. Will Katka finally find the strength when she becomes pregnant and motherhood offers her life-sustaining motivation?