Pettring

Language and landscape as a gate into a new life. A young Galician filmmaker emigrates to Sweden, where he performs different part-time jobs. His learning of a new language and fascination for the Swedish landscape become a driving force against the difficult life conditions. As he learns about the culture, society and lifestyle, he develops a new identity.

Filled with vitality, humor and unexpected situations, Hamada paints an unusual portrait of a group of young friends living in a refugee camp in the middle of nowhere. Western Sahara is known as “the last colony in Africa” and this conflict is the longest and one of the least known ongoing disputes in the continent, but the Sahrawi people refuse to become invisible.

Diego works the night shift in an isolated gas station close to the Galician-Portuguese border. His work is solitary, silent, monotonous, somniferous. One night, two unexpected visitors show up and unsettle the routine of the place.

Each year in Galicia, one of the oldest forms of carnival is celebrated. Characters wear spectacular costumes, which include showy masks and a belt from which hang large and sonorous cowbells, and they run through the village, beating the visitors with their whips.

Santi is a teenage father who lives in a small coastal town. During the day he has a job as a fisherman, while at night he smuggles seafood. While his girlfriend Lucia takes care of their baby all by herself, Santi, absent and overwhelmed by responsibility, seeks refuge and redemption in the sea.

A deserted, snow-covered landscape. An unknown place and time. An anonymous, timeless man slides into a devastated industrial building. He is enclosed by ruins and rust, witnesses of time. He advances among shadows and debris, following a ritual as precise as it is cryptic. Polyphony of materials. The past resonates at every step. Echoes of a presence. A solitary figure fluctuates on an abyss.

Intimate portrait of the first summer, fall and winter in a strange country.

The camera wanders around old spellbinding cars in the Sahara desert. Two playful and witty little boys show up and alter the course of events. From then on, Hamdi and Ali will take the reins of this film.

Two close friends and fellow filmmakers maintain an intimate, transoceanic filmic correspondence between Galicia and Colombia over the course of three years. In these filmed letters both authors are open and familiar, meditative and confessional, making us participants in a sincere friendship.

A child showing a stranger the pleasure of throwing pebbles into the wilderness. Behind them, the sun sets behind the wilaya.

“No pain, no gain”. Sailor scenes of a castaway country.

The penultimate week of each year, the sun exceeds the horizon of Fauske, in the Arctic Circle, for just an hour a day. This film celebrates those brief moments of light.