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Eleven Feature Narratives, Including US and World Premieres,

Contend for $15,000 New
Directors Prize

San Francisco, CA – The
54th San Francisco International Film
Festival (April 21–May 5) will
award close to $100,000 in total prizes this year. The New Directors Prize of $15,000 is given to a narrative first
feature that exhibits a unique artistic sensibility and deserves to be seen by as
wide an audience as possible. Seventeen countries contributed to the production
of the 11 films in this year’s competition. An independent jury will select the
New Directors Prize winner, to be announced at the Golden Gate Awards Wednesday,
May 4.

Official Selections 2011 New Directors Feature Competition

Autumn, Aamir Bashir, India 2010

Mourning the
disappearance of his older brother, a young man tries to make a life for
himself in his violence-ridden home of Kashmir in this powerful depiction of
the loss and psychological decay caused by 20 years of violent conflict.

Circumstance, Maryam Keshavarz,
USA/France/Iran/Lebanon 2011

This debut
feature is a riveting political drama and love story, and a Sundance Film
Festival Audience Award winner, about a burgeoning romance between two young
Iranian women and the fraught allegiances of a single Tehrani family.

The High Life, Zhao Dayong, China 2010, US
Premiere

Combining
street realism and surprising artifice, the first fiction feature by the
Chinese independent filmmaker of acclaimed documentaries Street Life and Ghost
Town depicts hustlers, migrants, prisoners and others on the shabby
outskirts of Guangzhou, where everyone is on the move but nobody seems to be
getting anywhere.

The Journals
of Musan, Park Jung-bum, South Korea 2010

North Korean
defector Seung-chul is an unwanted refugee living on the harsh edges of Seoul.
Bewildered by exploitative employers and cynical urbanites, he’s no good for
business, just barely for church. A powerful realism underscores this prizewinning
feature debut about the struggle to survive in a strange new world.

Kinyarwanda, Alrick Brown, USA/Rwanda 2010

Kinyarwanda tells the tale of genocide
and reconciliation in Rwanda in the early to mid-’90s through a series of
parallel and overlapping narratives from a variety of Tutsi and Hutu
perspectives.

My Joy, Sergei Loznitsa,
Germany/Ukraine/Netherlands 2010

A taciturn
truck driver hits the pitted asphalt road for a journey into rural Russia and
encounters with peculiar folk—an old man still plagued by the Great War, a
teenage prostitute who shuns kindness, a trio of tramps who wander the
wasteland like an unholy trinity—in this gripping and surprising guignol about
a republic in decline.

The Place in
Between, Sarah Bouyain, France/Burkina Faso 2010

In this
simple but moving story of global displacement, a young biracial woman raised
in France travels to Burkina Faso in search of the mother she hasn’t seen in
many years. Having felt the outsider in Paris, Amy is now equally adrift in the
city of her childhood. Meanwhile in Paris, an émigré from Burkina Faso who
makes her living as a cleaner teaches the Dioula language to a white, middle-class
office worker. 

The Salesman, Sébastian Pilote,
Canada 2010

Featuring a
remarkable central performance, The
Salesman immerses us in the world of Marcel Lévesque, a quick-witted car
salesman in a small, industrial Quebec town. Marcel has been salesman of the
month for the last 16 years at the dealership where he has spent his career so
he enthusiastically soldiers on despite the imminent shutdown of the local
paper plant that employs most of the town’s residents.

She Monkeys, Lisa Aschan, Sweden 2011

While trying
out for the equestrian vaulting team, Emma befriends the slightly older Cassandra,
but almost immediately their friendship is complicated by misunderstandings,
jealousies and escalating struggles for power in this provocative examination
of emergent sexuality and adolescent female friendships.

Tilva Rosh, Nikola Lezaic, Serbia 2010

Bor, in
eastern Serbia, was once home to the largest copper mine in Europe. Now it’s
just the biggest hole in the ground. This astutely observed coming-of-age film
expertly captures the pitfalls of the adult world, where idealism and hope no
longer seem to have a place, as two teen skateboarders come to realize they
have no choice but to grow up.

Ulysses, Oscar Godoy, Chile/Argentina
2011, World Premiere

The emotional
life of a Peruvian immigrant in Chile is the subject of this nuanced character
study of a man uprooted from home by economic necessity and suffering
overwhelming loneliness and dislocation. He strives to improve his lot, but
higher wages can’t fill the void created by separation from everything that is
dear to him.

In addition to these 11 films in competition, the New Directors
section of SFIFF54 includes 17 out-of-competition films, which will be
announced at the Festival’s press conference Tuesday, March 29.