The East End Film Festival is a large multi-platform film festival which showcases a diverse programme of premières, hosts industry masterclasses, free pop-up screenings and immersive live events. The schedule is packed full of an eclectic array of the best new independent films from around the world, showcasing over 70 feature films by new directors. The festival takes place between 1st – 12th July in several venues around east central London.
Some of the highlights of this year’s festival include:
Above and Below
Far, far away and out of sight, that’s where April, Dave, Cindy, Rick and the Godfather are creating life on their own terms. From the depths of the flood channels under Sin City, to a reclaimed military bunker in the middle of the dusty, heated Californian nowhere land to beyond the stratosphere where Mars now lives on earth. Each individual has been flung into periling circumstances on this rollercoaster ride called life. Through the hustle, pain, and laughter, we are whisked away to an unfamiliar world where we discover its inhabitants to be souls not unlike our very own.
Diary of a Teenage Girl
Like most teenage girls, Minnie Goetze (Bel Powley) is longing for love, acceptance and a sense of purpose in the world. Minnie begins a complex love affair with her mother’s (Kristen Wiig) boyfriend, “the handsomest man in the world,” Monroe Rutherford (Alexander Skarsgård). What follows is a sharp, funny and provocative account of one girl’s sexual and artistic awakening, without judgement.
Cartel Land
With unprecedented access, Cartel Land is a riveting, on-the-ground look at the journeys of two modern-day vigilante groups and their shared enemy – the murderous Mexican drug cartels.
In the Mexican state of Michoacán, Dr. Jose Mireles, a small-town physician known as “El Doctor,” leads the Autodefensas, a citizen uprising against the violent Knights Templar drug cartel that has wreaked havoc on the region for years. Meanwhile, in Arizona’s Altar Valley – a narrow, 52-mile-long desert corridor known as Cocaine Alley – Tim “Nailer” Foley, an American veteran, heads a small paramilitary group called Arizona Border Recon, whose goal is to stop Mexico’s drug wars from seeping across our border.
Ghadi
In a small neighborhood of a traditional Lebanese coastal town, Leba (Georges Khabbaz),a music instructor, marries his childhood sweetheart Lara.
To the dismay of his family, neighbors, and friends, he has a first baby girl and then a second one. Lara is pregnant for the third time and yes, it’s a BOY!
However, medical tests show that the boy will have special needs. Will Leba and Lara keep the baby? Will little Ghadi become a burden on the family; or its pride and joy? Expect strange phenomena to affect the behavior and beliefs of that little town’s population.
The Russian Woodpecker
Young, eccentric Ukrainian artist Fedor Alexandrovich was just four years old when the Chernobyl disaster struck, but the event had a profound effect on him. In seeking to learn more about what happened at the nuclear plant, Fedor becomes fascinated with the Duga—a massive, Soviet-constructed radio antenna near the Chernobyl site that remains shrouded in mystery.
Salad Days
Salad Days: A Decade of Punk in Washington, DC (1980-1990) is a comprehensive, honest and insightful look at the DC punk scene from the early 1980s to the decade’s end. The film will include exclusive archival photographs, concert footage and interviews with dozens of bands, artists, label owners, fanzine publishers and others who helped mold and nurture DC’s underground community during this inspired decade of music.
God Loves a Fighter
Told by a vagrant, the film profiles several characters and their fight to live in their community of east Port Of Spain. Their circumstances effect their decision making; leading to moments of triumph and moments of tragedy.
Lee Scratch Perry’s Vision of Paradise
A thrilling, poetic narration with the legendary Lee Scratch Perry, this movie is a unique project in many ways: it’s not a biography but rather a fairytale documentary! The director followed Lee Perry for 13 years and discovered a story that is almost impossible to believe: a revelation, told about and with one of the major protagonists of contemporary music. The movie can be seen as a guide for how to change the world with music – with a positive attitude, mindset or, as Lee Perry calls it: “vibration”.
For more information about the festival and to purchase tickets, visit the website.
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