Parallel Section - Foreign Participations
Can you Die in Heaven/ Kan man de i Himlen
Erlend E. Mo │ Denmark │2005 │ 58 mins
Synopsis: Can You Die in Heaven? Jonathan is 11 years old. When Jonathan was 8 years old, his father committed suicide. Not long after the suicide, Jonathan is diagnosed with bone cancer. With courage, humour, vitality and frankness, Jonathan, his mother, and two brothers, pull together to work their way through grief and illness. Τhe director Erlend Mo has followed the family’s mental and physical struggle for over a year, creating an unusually attentive and life-affirming portrait of the healing process.
Bio: Erlend Mo has worked as director, producer on several documentaries. Amongst others he received awards for his feature length documentaries “Welcome to Denmark” (Odense International Film Festival 2003) and “My eyes” (Odense Festival 2005).
Awards - Recognition: Best Film award, juvenile jury, Odense Film Festival, 2005. Best Children’s Doc, Best Sound, GoldDok 2005. Best Children’s Doc, Pärnu International Documentary and Anthropology Film Festival, Estonia, 2006. Nominated ‘Best Long Documentary’, Danish Academy Award, 2006. Nominated ‘Best Children and Youth Programme’ Danish TV Festival Award, 2006. Best Danish Film, Kolding Handicap Film Festival, 2006.
Unworthy of Living/Lebensunwert
Robert Krieg | Germany | 2005 | 45 mins
Synopsis: Shame never silenced Paul Brune. One of hundreds of thousands declared "unworthy of living" under Nazi racial laws, he is one of the very few to fight publicly for his rehabilitation. For psychiatrist Dr Heinrich Stolze, member of the National Socialist Party, the fact that Paul's mother was declared a "mentally ill epileptic", was enough to conclude: "Because of markedly anti-social behaviour, it is not possible for him to remain in the school and the orphanage." Stolze "selected" the afflicted and was responsible for the transports to the extermination camps of the "Euthanasia Campaign". Paul Brune survived. By focusing on Paul Brune's story, the film reveals a dark chapter in German psychiatry, which didn’t exactly end in 1945.
Bio: Robert Krieg, academic, author and co-founder of Palestine’s first official radio station has established with Monica Nolte an Authors’ Association and a production company for films, TV and radio.
Awards - Recognition: 4th International Human Rights Film Festival Germany.