Bermuda International Film Festival 2009

A highly stylised and dark story about Jack contracting the ‘funk’ – although in this case, the funk has nothing to do with the music of James Brown, but more in common with Kurt Cobain.

A city of 18 million people, Cairo had no city-wide waste disposal system for years. Instead, residents relied on 60,000 Zaballeen, Egypt’s indigenous garbage workers, to collect their trash. Long before recycling became trendy, the Zaballeen were actively separating and recycling the tons of garbage collected each day to earn a living. These entrepreneurial garbage workers recycle 80% of the garbage they collect – arguably the world’s most efficient waste disposal system. Over four years, filmmaker Mai Iskander followed three teenagers – Adham, Osama and Nadil – who grew up in this garbage village. We see the impact on their life when the city decides to replace the Zaballeen by contracting with multinational garbage disposal companies. The change in policy threatens the Zaballeen livelihood and the survival of the community. As this crossroad is reached, each teen must choose his future. More than a story about garbage, the filmmaker has created an intriguing, multi-layered film that observes the culture of the Zaballeen and provides a window to their hopes, dreams and fears.

Cindy Sherman is a well-known Contemporary Artist whose art primarily focuses on photographing herself in a series of different self-constructed persona of women that exist in film, magazine and history. Her work becomes a deconstruction of stereotypical public identities in the gaze of her audience - layers of identities one can strip off and put back on. The documentary is about Paul H-Q’s ‘Cinderella’-like encounter with Sherman and his consequent identity struggle. He loses his existing identity along with ‘the shoe’ during his relationship and fails to reinvent one that is compatible to Cindy’s celebrity’ existence. The documentary gives an authentic portrayal of New York contemporary art scene along with Sherman’s work and the cou-ple’s relationship.

Opening with an ecstatic, vibrantly coloured celebration marking the impending nuptials of Chand (Bollywood star Preity Zinta, who delivers one of the year's finest and most courageous performances), Deepa Mehta's powerful and visceral Heaven on Earth quickly shifts gears. The minute its heroine gets off a plane in Toronto to meet her new husband, Rocky (Vansh Bhardwaj, who's impossibly good in his first film role), the colour scheme greys, and virtually all scenes (even outdoor ones) appear to be lit by fluorescent lights. This twilight world is fitting, because there's something off-putting about Rocky's family. Deepa Mehta has always had a particular gift for portraying unique families and their subtle power dynamics. Still, Heaven on Earth may be her strongest work to date because of her insistence on the collective liability for the acts of a lone individual. Rocky's coldness and horrific temper may be the primary causes of Chand's unhappiness, but he has numerous – albeit often passive – accomplices, most importantly his domineering mother. Simply put, this is a brilliant work by one of the most daring filmmakers, humanist and empathetic even toward its villains, yet at the same time a universal indictment, refusing to let any of us off the hook.

Hunger is an extreme cinema work that follows the last days of IRA hunger striker, Bobby Sands’ life in the Maze prison during 1981. The movie starts with scenes of the prisoners’ revolt: bold images of faeces-painted bodies, urine washed cells and beaten to bath prisoners. Visual Artist Steve McQueen conveys raw but powerful images to expose an ugly, almost forgotten period in British and Irish history. The film introduces Sands when announcing his decision to start the hunger strike during a sharp philosophical conversation with a Catholic priest. Michael Fassbender’s performance of the decomposing Sands is an outstanding contribution to the controversial Hunger scenes. Every single scene in Hunger is powerful and stunning; it is a movie with a committed vision.

In 1979 Iran was in chaos, Ayatollah Khomeini was en route from his exile in Paris. The old, failed regime was in tatters, its backers fled, packs of trigger-happy thugs tortured and killed in their desperate attempts to capture a CIA operative known as Cronus. An edge of the seat thriller – and astonishingly, a true story.

The Invocation is a quest to look for the notion of God and Peace around the world and through Religion, Spirituality, Science, History, Politics, Philosophy and Entertainment. We travel from South Africa to Asia to India to Europe to Bermuda to America and Mexico to meet and be inspired by the most important leaders on the planet. Let yourself be enlightened by the wise words of Desmond Tutu, The Dalai Lama, Deepak Chopra, Dean Radin, Stewart Copeland, Ervin Laszlo, Oliver Stone and many more. The Invocation is an urgent message of Peace in critical times of doubts and worries around the world. It is a message of hope and unity so that we can dream, plan and build a better future for us all.

Ibrahim delivers a terrible school report safe in the knowledge that his Arab father cannot read French. Unfortunately the young boy does not anticipate the reaction to his little white lie. A funny and beautifully crafted film, it will leave fathers with food for thought.