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The 16th International Festival
Signes de Nuit
Bangkok
Thaïland
June 2 - 10, 2018
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AWARD CELEBRATION
Documentary Competition
June 2 - 10, 2018
Thai Film Archive
Reading Room
Bangkok / Thailand
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Documentary Competition
Main Award
The Congo Tribunal
Das Kongo Tribunal
Milo Rau
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ASIA PREMIERE |
The Congo Tribunal
Das Kongo Tribunal
Milo Rau
Germany, Switzerland
2017 | 1:40:00
The war in Congo has caused more than six million deaths over the last twenty years. The population is suffering, but the offenders stay with impunity. Many people see this conflict as one of globalization’s crucial economic distribution battles because the country has major deposits of many high-tech raw materials. Milo Rau, one of Europe’s most acclaimed theatre directors, succeeds in gathering victims, perpetrators, observes, and analysts of the conflict for a unique civil tribunal in eastern Congo. The documentary film brings these spectacular court trials to life on the big screen and creates an unvarnished portrait of the largest and bloodiest economic war in human history.
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Jury Statement :
A monumental project and a fine example of how art can
influence politics and the world, thanks to passion and professional
film-making technique of the filmmaker.
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Special Mention
The Cleaners
Hans Block, Moritz Riesewieck |
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THAILAND PREMIERE
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The Cleaners
Hans Block, Moritz Riesewieck
Germany, Brasil
2018 | 1:28:00
Enter a hidden third world shadow industry of digital cleaning, where the Internet rids itself of what it doesn‘t like. Here we meet five “digital scavengers”, among thousands of people outsourced from Silicon Valley, whose job is to delete “inappropriate” content of the net. In a parallel struggle, we meet people around the globe whose lives are dramatically affected by online censorship. A typical “cleaner” must observe and rate thousands of often deeply disturbing images and videos every day, leading to lasting psychological impacts. Yet underneath their work lie profound questions around what makes an image art or propaganda and what defines journalism. Where exactly is the point of balance for social media to be neither an unlegislated space nor a forum rife with censorship? THE CLEANERS struggles to come to terms with this new and disconcerting paradigm. Evolving from a shared social vision of a global village to a web of fake news and radicalization, the film charts the rise and fall of social media’s utopian ideology. A typical “cleaner” must observe and rate thousands of often deeply disturbing images and videos every day, leading to lasting psychological impacts We already knew that fake news gets pumped around. And also that our online behaviour determines what gets shown on everyone’s timeline on social media. But that thousands of Filipino content moderators are actively deciding every day what actually gets seen on the web, so that our timelines are pleasant or at least non-violent? This fact was hidden until recently.
Propaganda or free newscast? With hardened eyes and continually learning about sex terms and jihadist flags, this immense workforce decide on thousands of newly placed videos and pictures. In their revealing debut documentary The Cleaners, Hans Block and Moritz Riesewieck infiltrate this shadow industry.
The internet is not as neutral and democratic as it pretends. High-placed tech experts and (ex-)cleaners speak about the need for and practice of these actions. From conversations with victims of this censorship, it seems that cleaners help steer the course of history.
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Jury Statement :
Much anticipated topic of what is really going on behind a
giant platform such as Facebook and Google is selected, treated and
processed in an extremely professional manner. A must-see for everyone
who uses or doesn't use internet.
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Signs Award
The Magnitsky Act - Behind the Scenes
Andrey Nekrasov |
| The Signs Award for Documentary honors films, which express in a
surprising way sensible and perturbing aspects of reality.
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THAILAND PREMIERE
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The Magnitsky Act - Behind the Scenes
Andrey Nekrasov
Finland, Denmark, Norway
2016 | 2:05:00
What started as a drama about a Russian police plot to steal a billion
dollars from a US financier and to murder his faithful tax lawyer
Sergei Magnitsky, has become a real life investigation of
contradicting versions of the crime. The Magnitsky Case is central for
the policy of blacklisting bad guys from Putin's Russia ("Magnitsky
List"), which was then adopted by the West in retaliation for Russia's
actions in Ukraine. Shockingly for the film's director, dissident and
Putin basher Andrei Nekrasov, the official Western story turns out to
have serious flaws.
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Jury Statement :
‘The Magnisky Act” represents an extension of cinematic styles, a tendency toward future filmmaking, that hardly will distinguishes fictional making-of and documentary. Nekrasov’s film transforms itself from fiction into a documentary through a mix-matching to create a unique assemblage.
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Special Mentions for Signs Award
Cause of Death : Unknown
Anniken Hoel
Dusk Chorus - Based on Fragments of Extinction
Alessandro D'Emilia, Nika Saravanja (David Monacchi) |
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Cause of Death : Unknown
Anniken Hoel
Norway
2017 | 1:27:00
After her sister died suddenly and unexpectedly while being treated
with prescription antipsychotics, director Anniken Hoel begins a
global investigation into the crimes of the pharmaceutical industry,
the unheralded growth of psychiatric diagnoses and medication, and the
corruption of the government regulatory agencies that have failed,
repeatedly, to protect us. Made over a ten-year period, the film is
simultaneously personal and investigative as it follows Anniken as she
seeks answers regarding not only the death of her sister, but of the
tens of thousands worldwide who have also met a similar fate. Deaths
and damages that until now have been all but ignored. Beginning in a
small town in Norway, and journeying through Scandinavia, the EU and
the US, the chilling documentary-thriller CAUSE OF DEATH: UNKNOWN
exposes the inner workings and motivations of a powerful industry that
continually puts profits before people, and has been far too
influential in defining who is normal and who is "ill".
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Jury Statement :
In the near future we can expected a very promising future of the documentary « Cause of Death: Unknown » extended and expanded into areas than anyone have expected, arousing awareness not only in the professional pharmaceutical circles but also in the general public, who routinely consume medicaments like meal. Hoel shines us torchlight of hope. Her masterpiece will move those, who believed uncritical in medical institutions, without presuming self-made solutions would be the adequate way to act. Films and home videos become valuable documentations of life. Hoel points out the ongoing conspiracy of the pharmaceutical industry in cooperation with corrupted politicians. The audience watched the film with emotional empathy. You could experience a sympathy flow, like watching a live telecast report, but evidently this was only one of the central points in a complex documentary.
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ASIA PREMIERE
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Dusk Chorus - Based on Fragments of Extinction
Alessandro D'Emilia, Nika Saravanja (David Monacchi)
Italy
2017 | 1:02:00
Follow the eco-acoustic composer David Monacchi on his quest to
register a pure continuos 3D soundscape in the far away forgotten
world of Ecuadorian primary rain-forests. A unique experience of
listening to the imprints of the disappearing sonic heritage of
millions of years of evolution.
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Jury Statement :
A significant qualification of a masterpiece is to be inspired and shaded by another art form. The initial prototype should be worthwhile, so that the documentary can become outstanding, as it is the case in Monacci’s truly great creation, co-created by another great artist, the Amazon rain forest. The reason why « Dusk Chorus » - surpass a common traditional type of 'let' s protect our natural resources' are the efforts in recording nature sounds and synthesizing them into graphic displays, to present them as visual art and installations, as Monacci succeeded to do. His work then is adapted as a remarkable documentary by two filmmakers. We never would know how an authenticity state of nature in the Amazon would look like, as well as it sounds, unless Monacci recorded it.
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Night Award
Boli Bana
Simon Coulibaly Gillard
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| The Night Award for Documentary honors films, which represent reality
in an ambivalent and enigmatic way, avoiding stereotypes of
representation and simple conclusions. |
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ASIA PREMIERE
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Boli Bana
Simon Coulibaly Gillard
Belgium
2017 | 01:00:00
Mila Zhluktenko, Sylvain Cruiziat
Germany
2017 | 0:19:00
Of Huge and Small / Artem Funk / Germany / 0217 / 0:25:00 The film portrays a young human rights activist in russian Murmansk, who shares her thoughts and feelings about her “active life position” in the current days. The Eternals (Les Éternels) / Pierre-Yves Vandeweerd / Belgium, France / 2017 / 1:15:00 We call those who suffer from the melancholy of eternity, eternals.Convinced that death cannot triumph over their lives, they believe thatthey are doomed to wander in anticipation of the day when they will befreed from their existence.This film is a story of wandering and fleeing, on the borders of Nagorno-Karabakh, an Armenian enclave in Azerbaijan...
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Jury Statement :
Though problematic in some aspects, the film is skillfully made and
undeniably splendid. Also in spite of its serenity, the film could
provoke passionate conversation afterward. An important film to watch
and to think with.
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Director Statement :
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Edward Snowden Award
Find Fix Finish
Mila Zhluktenko, Sylvain Cruiziat
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| The Edward Snowden Award honors films, which offer sensitive (mostly)
unknown informations, facts and phenomenons of eminent importance, for
which the festival wishes a wide proliferation in the future. |
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Find Fix Finish
Mila Zhluktenko, Sylvain Cruiziat
Germany
2017 | 0:19:00
"Find Fix Finish" delves into the accounts of three military drone pilots as they tell the intimate story of the lives they observe on a day-to-day basis. The voyeuristic ocular perspective from a military drone can reduce people to pixels on a screen and a certain decontextualisation is almost necessary to deal with the fact that people can be killed on a push of a button. “Have you ever stepped on an anthill and not given it a second thought?"
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Jury Statement :
Find Fix Finish avoids usual convention and, instead, opts for more
creative tools to tackle the urgent and crucial issue of our
contemporary time. Letting the audiences see through the eyes of
drone, the film laudably gives us a glimpse of an example of how it
looks and feels like being in control of the large size of population
which later could be a valuable reflection of how our lives are
invisibly monitored, put under hypersurveillance. People are seen as
not people but statistical number. The final result is shockingly
frightening without any bomb exploded onscreen.
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Director Statement :
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