Foreign Language Film Submissions 2020

2000 Songs of Farida from Uzbekistan is quite a rare film that concerns itself with the little-known history of Central Asia. The story takes place during the civil war that followed the Russian Revolution of 1917 and spilled into the Russian colonies in Central Asia.

Latvian director Dzintars Dreibergs’ feature Blizzard of Souls.

Rosa is a 45-year-old seamstress working in the wardrobe department of a film production, currently shooting a wedding scene. Besides the pressure of her job, she’s also besieged from all sides by the demands of family members: her widowed dad, Antonio, who insists he’s moving in with her; her divorced brother Armando, who has financial problems; her sister Violeta and her young daughter Lidia who is living with a musician in Manchester and raising twin babies and doing favors for friends and neighbors.

This Chilean entry for the Golden Globes is an odd movie that defies categorization. Memo Garrido (Jorge Garcia – whom many viewers will recognize from the hit TV series.

Despite a strong tradition of film realism in Iran, Ahmad Bahrami’s The Wasteland turns an obsolete brick factory and its milieu into an allegorical tale. The secret love of Lotfollah (Ali Bagheri), the 40-year-old keeper, for Sarvar (Mahdieh Nassaj), a female worker, remains unrequited as their Kafkaesque world spirals through monotony down to its predictable demise.

This is the film that made it against Covid, earning $500 million on worldwide screens to become the highest-grossing film of 2020.  The Eight Hundred is already a winner as it helped to keep open some of the cinemas around the entire world.

Under the Open Sky follows the journey of Madao Mikami, released after serving thirteen years in prison for murder. Sporting an unfashionable rice bowl haircut, the sunken cheeked, hollowed eyed ex-felon marches out of prison into the snowy, cold world, swearing to leave his yakuza life behind and start a new life.

The original title of Twilight’s Kiss is Suk Suk (Chinese Title叔. 叔).

Buladó.

Filmed in Mumbai, India, Harami, written and directed by Shyam Madiraju, tells the story of a sixteen-year-old orphan, Pachpan (played by Rizwan Shaikh), a skilled pickpocket who is part of a gang of orphans – identified only by a number – under the strict rules of the cruel and merciless Sagar Bhai (Emraan Hashmi). One day, Pachpan steals a wallet loaded with money, and when curiosity brings him to the address listed on the ID in the wallet, he discovers the tragic truth: that his theft had driven his victim, a father of two, to commit suicide.