We Are One: Global Film Festival | What to watch and when
David Farnor | On 26, May 2020
This Friday sees the launch of We Are One: A Global Film Festival, bringing together 21 major festivals from around the world for a free onine showcase of cinema.
Who’s involved:
The 10-day festival, produced and organised by Tribeca and YouTube, will featuring programming from the London Film Festival, Berlin International Film Festival, Cannes Film Festival and Venice Film Festival, among others. Over 100 films in total will be co-curated from 35 countries, giving audiences an opportunity to experience different cultures through an artistic lens – each official selection was handpicked for inclusion to highlight the singularities of each participating festival, while also providing a voice to filmmakers on a global stage.
The festival aims to provide not only entertainment for audiences but also opportunities to give back through donations to the World Health Organization (WHO), UNICEF, UNHCR, Save the Children, Doctors Without Borders, Leket Israel, GO Foundation and Give2Asia, among others.
What’s showing:
The event will include a lot of archive picks from festivals gone by, but also 13 world premieres, 31 online premieres and 5 international online premieres. It spans 23 narrative and 8 documentary features, 57 narrative and 15 documentary short films, 15 archived talks and 4 festival exclusives plus 5 VR programming pieces.
Film highlights include Ricky Powell: The Individualist, a documentary about legendary street photographer Powell featuring interviews with Natasha Lyonne and LL Cool J; the online premiere of Eeb Allay Ooo!, a unique satire about professional “monkey repellers” and winner of the Mumbai Film Festival’s Golden Gateway Award; and the world premiere of Iron Hammer, a compelling documentary feature directed by Joan Chen about legendary Chinese Olympic volleyball star Jenny Lang Ping, a true trailblazer who forged connections across the globe.
Update: The Iron Hammer has been removed from the festival line-up and replaced by 2017 documentary Copwatch
Audiences will have access to over 50 narrative and documentary shorts with exciting entries such as the world premiere of Japanese narrative short Yalta Conference Online, created exclusively for the festival by Director Koji Fukada; the global premiere of the Third Eye Blind documentary short Motorcycle Drive By, as well as the first short pieces made by Dreamworks Animation, Bilby, Marooned and Bird Karma. A world premiere also goes to TV show Losing Alice, an Israeli female-led neo-noir psychological thriller.
You can read our guide to the best short films to stream here.
A number of specially-curated talks will also be hosted on the YouTube hub, both archived from past festivals and brand new discussions, that will offer viewers a chance to revisit important moments in film. Talks will feature Francis Ford Coppola with Steven Soderbergh, Song Kang-ho and Bong Joon-ho, Guillermo del Toro, Jane Campion and Claire Denis. 360 VR selections will feature Emmy-nominated documentary Traveling While Black and Atlas V, a sci-fi narrative starring Bill Skarsgard, as well as additional titles with notable talent including John Legend, Oprah Winfrey and Lupita Nyong’o. There will also be special musical performances, including a 30 minute DJ set by Questlove.
How it works:
Each film or programme is free to watch on the We Are One YouTube channel and will have a first screening at a scheduled time. Some of them will be available on-demand throughout the 10 days, but several of them won’t. The festival runs from 29th May to 7th June.
The full schedule is available at www.weareoneglobalfestival.com/schedule. Read on for our guide to what feature films are streaming when – and which ones to watch – plus highlights from the interview and panel line-up.
29th May
Electric Swan
Curated by: Venice Film Festival
An apartment building in Buenos Aires begins to tremble and provokes an otherworldly nausea throughout the city in this magical realist skewering of its class divisions.
Time: 1pm
Panel / Interview: Cinema Cafe with Jackie Chan
Recorded live from the Sundance Film Festival, each Cinema Café invigorates the culture of conversation. Our informal chats round up special guests for thought-provoking discussions between Festival filmmakers and journalists.
Time: 2.30pm
Recommended: Losing Alice (TV series)
Curated by: Jerusalem Film
Fascination spirals into Faustian bargain after an ambitious female film director meets—and obsesses over—a younger femme-fatale screenwriter.
Time: 3.45pm
Last chance: Crazy World
Curated by: Toronto International Film Festival
Pint-sized kung fu masters face off with the evil Tiger Mafia in this action flick from Uganda’s no-budget, gonzo super-studio, Wakaliwood. If that description hasn’t got your attention, the film certainly will.
Time: 7pm – available until 5th June 2020
Recommended: Rudeboy: The Story of Trojan Records
Curated by: BFI London Film Festival
Featuring Jamaican reggae and ska legends like Lee “Scratch” Perry and Marcia Griffiths, Rudeboy chronicles a multicultural revolution on the dancefloors of late ’60s and early ’70s Britain.
Time: 8.30pm
30th May
Recommended: Eeb Allay Ooo
Curated by: Mumbai Film Festival
A young migrant is hired to shoo away rampaging monkeys from New Delhi government buildings by mimicking aggressive langurs—their natural enemies—in this charmingly absurd social farce.
Time: 12pm
Love Chapter 2
Curated by: Jerusalem Film Festival
Love: Chapter 2 pulses with livewire choreography, a thrumming electronic score, and the chaos and confusion of love.
Time: 2.45pm
Mugaritz Bso
Curated by: San Sebastian International Film Festival
Recipes and soundscapes intertwine in this glimpse of a daring—and mouthwatering—multimedia collaboration between San Sebastian chef Andoni Luis Aduriz and musician Felipe Ugarte.
Time: 4pm
Late Marriage
Curated by: Jerusalem Film Festival
Dover Kosashvili’s Ophir Award-winning film from 2001 is a clever dramedy about a bachelor who becomes involved with a single mother against the wishes of his traditional Georgian family.
Time: 7.45pm
Recommended: Ricky Powell: The Individualist
Curated by: Tribeca Film Festival
Ricky Powell boasts a quintessential New York story, rising to fame as a street photographer in the 80’s and 90’s and touring with the Beastie Boys, capturing some of the wildest moments in popular culture.
Time: 10.30pm
31st May
Panel / Interview: Guillermo del Toro
Curated by:Marrakech International Film Festival
Recorded at the 2018 Marrakech International Film Festival, Academy Award®-winning director Guillermo del Toro sits down for a career-spanning discussion, moderated by Kim Morgan and presented as part of the festival’s “Conversation With” series.
Time: 12pm
Bridges of Sarajevo
Curated by: Sarajevo Film Festival
On the centenary of World War I, a varied group of European directors gives voice to the modern ghosts and historical echoes of the Bosnian capital.
Time: 2.30pm
1st June
Ticket of No Return
Curated by: Berlin International Film Festival
A solitary woman purchases a one-way ticket to Berlin to indulge her greatest passion—binge drinking—in Ulrike Ottinger’s flamboyantly provocative classic of New German Cinema.
Time: 2pm
Panel / Interview: Cinema Cafe with Tessa Thompson and Jane Campion
Curated by:Sundance Film Festival
Recorded live from the Sundance Film Festival, each Cinema Café invigorates the culture of conversation. Our informal chats round up special guests for thought-provoking discussions between Festival filmmakers and journalists. Cinema Café with Tes…
Time: 6.45pm
45 Days in Harvar
Curated by: Guadalajara International Film Festival
Plastic artist-director César Aréchiga recreates his living room and studio in a Mexican maximum-security prison, in which fifteen inmates learn about paper production, clay modeling, sculpture and painting.
Time: 9.15pm
2nd June
Recommended: Sisterhood
Sei moved to Taiwan 15 years ago with her husband, but a searing melodrama of cultural alienation unfolds when an unexpected death conjures her tangled past in pre-handover Macau.
Time: 1pm
Recommended: Shiraz: A Romance of India
Curated by: BFI London Film Festival
Franz Osten’s epic silent feature, featuring a specially commissioned score by Anoushka Shankar, tells the ravishing tale of one of the world’s most beautiful monuments to love: the Taj Mahal.
Time: 5.15pm
Beyond The Mountain
Curated by: Guadalajara International Film Festival
A typist must confront his suppressed past when he finds his mother lying dead, clutching a letter addressed to the father who abandoned him.
Time: 9.15pm
Panel / Interview: Tribeca Talks: Francis Ford Coppola and Steven Soderbergh
Curated by: Tribeca Film Festival
From the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival, Francis Ford Coppola and acclaimed filmmaker Steven Soderbergh have a conversation to discuss the huge undertaking of restoring Apocalypse Now Final Cut and why the time was right for Coppola to do this now.
Time: 11.15pm
3rd June
Kmêdeus
Curated by: International Film Festival Rotterdam
Enigmatic whispers shroud a homeless eccentric in mystique—some called him a lunatic, others an artist and philosopher—and inspire this contemporary dance piece about his life on Cape Verde.
Time: 2pm
Volubilis
Curated by: Marrakech International Film Festival
In this tale of love and beauty among the ruins, recently married Abdelkader and Malika struggle to make ends meet, but a violent incident turns their destiny upside down.
Time: 3.15pm
Mary is Happy, Mary is Happy
Curated by: Venice Film Festival
Based on an anonymous Twitter feed, a candid coming-of-age story blooms from the fantasy world of a Thai teenager.
Time: 7.20pm
Panel / Interview: Bong Joon-ho and Song Kang-ho
Curated by: Locarno Film Festival
Conversation between Song Kang-ho and Bong Joon-ho moderated by Olivier Père, in occasion of the 2019 Excellence Award to Song Kang-ho.
Time: 9.45pm
Beautiful Things
Curated by: Venice Film Festival
Solitary men in oil rigs and supertankers, isolation chambers and waste plants, coalesce in a riveting global symphony of material production and consumption.
Time: 11.25pm
4th June
Wrath of Silence
Curated by: International Film Festival & Awards Macao
When his son disappears while tending to the family’s sheep farm, a mute miner (Song Yang) seeks vengeance against the land tycoons who wring his rural village dry.
Time: 12.30pm
Dantza
Curated by: San Sebastian International Film Festival
An energetic and hypnotic Basque musical offers a poetic song to northern Spain, with both an affection for tradition and a forward-thinking universality.
Time: 5.15pm
Grab
Curated by: Sundance Film Festival
This intimate portrait follows three families as they prepare for the annual Grab Day tradition on the Laguna Pueblo reservation, an event that has evolved for over 300 years.
Time: 7.15pm
Ice Cream and the Sound of Raindrops
Curated by: Tokyo International Film Festival
After their opening night show gets cancelled, a theater troupe decides to rehearse anyways. Over the course of a 74-minute single take, their real lives merge with their roles.
Time: 8.30pm
Recommended: The Epic of Everest
Curated by: BFI London Film Festival
Filming in brutally harsh conditions with a hand-cranked camera, Captain John Noel captured the Everest expedition of 1924 with a breathtaking beauty freshly restored by the BFI National Archive.
Time: 10pm
Recommended: Wake Up: Stories From the Frontlines of Suicide Prevention
Curated by: We Are One: A Global Film Festival
Four gripping, unique stories from the frontlines of suicide prevention—those of American veterans, the LGBT community, university students, and gun owners—weave together into a call to action.
Time: 11.45pm
5th June
SEE Factory Sarajevo mon amour
Curated by: Sarajevo Film Festival
Five uniquely moving films about motherhood—bubbling up in the grocery store, the cemetery, or even a car ride—come together in this omnibus film set in Sarajevo.
Time: 2pm
Los Pasos Dobles
Curated by: San Sebastian International Film Festival
Painter François Augiéras believed that the best way to escape without a trace is to walk backwards, in your own footprints—this conceptual reimagining of his life retraces his steps.
Time: 3.15pm
Amreeka
Curated by: We Are One: A Global Film Festival
When a Palestinian single mom and her teenage son immigrate to small-town Illinois, their dreams of an exciting future clash with the racism they encounter there in this dramedic FIPRESCI prizewinner.
Time: 6.15pm
Tremble All You Want
Curated by: Tokyo International Film Festival
For the past decade, Yoshika has had a secret crush on her middle school classmate. Her life is thrown into chaos when a colleague asks her out.
Time: 8.15pm
Panel / Interview: Ang Lee in Conversation with Kore-eda Hirokazu
Curated by: Berlin International Film Festival
Nine-time Academy Award®–winning Ang Lee and Kore-eda Hirokazu (Shoplifters) discuss the state of film art today.
Time: 10.30pm
6th June
A City Called Macau
Curated by: International Film Festival & Awards Macao
In the gambling underworld of early 2000s Macau, a casino VIP client servicing manager is swept up into a high-stakes melodrama amid epic-scale historical change.
Time: 12pm
Nasir
Curated by: Mumbai Film Festival
An ordinary day unfolds for a warmhearted street salesman in southern India, as he tries to make a loving home for his family while warding off the anti-Muslim sentiment of his neighbors.
Time: 2.30pm
Air Conditioner
Curated by: International Film Festival Rotterdam
When air conditioners in Luanda begin to mysteriously fall from building windows, a security guard embarks on a pleasantly surreal, jazz-inflected journey through the Angolan capital.
Time: 4.45pm
Recommended: Adela Has Not Had Supper Yet
Curated by: Karlovy Vary International Film Festival
On a visit to Prague from New York, the renowned private detective Nick Carter must solve a mysterious disappearance…and face off against a music-loving, flesh-eating plant.
Time: 11.25pm
7th June
Recommended: Mystery Road
Curated by: Sydney Film Festival
Indigenous cowboy detective Jay Swan (Aaron Pederson) returns to his outback hometown to solve the murder of a teenage girl whose body is found underneath a trucking route.
Time: 1pm
Recommended: Copwatch
Curated by: Tribeca Film Festival
Copwatch is the true story of We Copwatch, an organization that films police activity as a non-violent form of protest and deterrent to police brutality. In her feature film debut, director Camilla Hall crafts an intriguing and timely profile of citizen-journalist-activists- including Ramsey Orta who filmed Eric Garner’s fatal arrest- who seek to disrupt the ever-present challenge of police violence.
(This has replaced Joan Chen’s documentary The Iron Hammer in the festival line-up.)
Time: 9.45pm