Tapalín, la película

Poet, agricultural engineer and revolutionary Amílcar Cabral was born in Guinea-Bissau to Cape Verdean parents. After studying in Portugal, he emerged as the charismatic leader of the anti-colonial struggle against Portuguese rule. With his utopian ideas, he sparked a cultural and an armed uprising that went on to inspire other African liberation movements.

Somewhere on the internet is a land where communities pretend to live out a survivalist fiction. The avatars of the directors of Knit’s Island spent 963 hours there, creating a fascinating film resulting from their encounter with these communities. The “players” reveal their fears and fantasies, in an at times unsettling blurring of the real and the virtual.

The Ave Valley is, for more than a century, a territory seized by an imposing industry. Amongst ruins and operating factories, we descend the river on a journey alongside the banks of the present, unveiling the marks of the past.

Honing a quiet strength, Lata, a 23 year old domestic worker, navigates her way through an upper class home in South Mumbai. Doors consistently open and close, giving Lata selective access to the various contending realities that occupy this space.

Province of Ciudad Real, Spain, December 29, 1990. During the annual march to the Herrera de la Mancha prison, held in support of the members of the terrorist gang ETA imprisoned there, the Basque rock band Negu Gorriak holds a concert, which is recorded, edited on video and turned into a tool of vindication. Decades later, a film crew tries to elaborate a personal essay around this event and its meaning.

Twelve men go on a retreat together during a weekend to a country house, in order to face a personal and collective transformation. They are twelve wounded men that try to gain back their relationship with other men with less masks and blocks, to trust each other again and get in touch with their vulnerability.

Winter turns to summer that turns to winter and, maybe, to summer again, for a group of elderly people living together in a grand old building in Reykjavík - an institution, but also a home. Some have lived a lifetime that spans almost a century.

Three Armenias are sketched out here, brilliantly and with delicacy, through four protagonists aspiring to fulfil their dream. There is the lift operator in a hospital who wants to travel into space, the farmer in search of a perfect wife, and the young queer couple who simply want to live out their love story… while awaiting the demonstrations and hopes of the revolution.