Laura Coppens

The traces of a family, and the entanglements of two dictatorships.

On September 22, 1998, the Iranian poet Hamid Hajizadeh and his nine-year-old son Karun, whose name symbolically refers to Iran's longest river, were brutally murdered in their home in Kerman. The documentary film, based on the statements of the survivors, tries to sensitively reconstruct one of the many terrible motivated events that took place in Iran at the end of the previous century and draws us into the fateful day with the help of detailed shots of the objects in Hamid's study.

The workers of a self-managed tea factory decide to go against the grain and play by their own rules. The problem is, how can you plan, work and survive in a world driven by ruthless competition? One day at a time, for instance. In a world ruled by profit and dominated by the exploitation of the weaker ones, the film literally offers an alternative set of ways about how to think our future and the means and tools to work for it. It is not an easy job but, as Taste of Hope carefully and precisely shows, there is still a lot that can be done if we change our relationship to production and labor. Instead of making grand gestures or political statements, the filmmaker works with the camera and with a thoughtful editing in order to understand how to weave together new possibilities of communal existence.

The mythical figure of Srikandi, a female figure from the Indian Mahabharata epic that changes gender to live and fight as an equal among men, is the inspiration and role model for this anthology of stories on the state of alternate sexualities in Indonesia, the country with the largest Muslim population in the world. The result is eight highly personal and profound perspectives on lesbian, bisexual and trans-identity life in Islamic Indonesia.