Today will see two more world premieres of remarkable films in the Proxima Competition section.
First to present her feature-length debut will be Subhadra Mahajan. The screening starts at the Municipal Theatre at 4 pm. Second Chance tells the story of young Nia, who returns to her family home in the Himalayas after the first major trauma she experienced in her life. Time, nature and the unexpected friendships she makes there will help her to give herself a second chance. Like Nia, the director herself grew up between the Himalayas and the city. She used her personal experiences and encounters in making the film about the healing process that reminds the divided world of the things that unite us all. She shot the film in winter and solely with local actors. Mahajan, who has a previous filmmaking experience from her collaboration with director Pan Nalin, uses black and white images with high light-and-shadow contrast.
Anja Kreis, a native of Siberia who studied film and art in Cologne, will present her second film, The Alienated, at the Municipal Theatre at 7 pm. The film follows two sisters, who represent the opposite sides of the same personality. One is a philosophy professor teaching her students about the death of God. The other is a gynaecologist who hides an embryo of alleged Antichrist at home. “The Alienated is a haunting story about our dark and mysterious inner world, about the piece of our personality we are ashamed of and try to hide from ourselves,” says the director, who spent a great portion of her childhood in the gynaecologist office where her mother worked. The film echoing Nietsche, Cain and Abel, and the Pre-Raphaelites art takes the audience into the turbulent depths of the complex human consciousness.
