MADRID INTERNATIONAL DOCUMENTARY FILM FESTIVAL 2013

Here are some of the official selection feature length features films from the Madrid International Documentary Festival 2013.:

 "THE MAYOR - EL ALCALDE"
A Film by Carlos F. Rossini, Emiliano Altuna, Diego Enrique Osorno
Produced by: Bambú Audiovisual, IMCINE / FOPROCINE

The documentary explores the common practice by the drug cartels of murdering municipal mayors in order to control local territories. The film tells the story of Mauricio, wo presents himself as a polemical Mayor that takes justice by his own hand in the wealthiest and safest municipality in Latin America. “The Mayor” analyzes the complex plot that is weaved between the exercise of power and modern politics immersed in a stage plagued with violence, strong economic interests and a blunt discredit of the political class.

"ELENA"
Director: Petra Costa
Cast|: Elena Andrade, Li Ann and Petra Costa
Production: Busca Vida Filmes

Elena is explores the life of two young Brazilian sisters who goes to New York to become a movie actress and to leave behind a childhood memory spent hiding during the years of the military dictatorship.

Elena, a young Brazilian woman, travels to New York with the same dream as her mother, to become a movie actress.  She leaves behind her childhood spent in hiding during the years of military dictatorship.  She also leaves Petra, her seven year old sister.

Two decades later. Petra also becomes an actress and goes to New York in search Elena.  She only has a few clues about her. 

"FALLEN CITY"
A film by Zhao Qi

The Sichuan earthquake took 90,000 lives and 5 million families homeless.  Beichuan, once a beautiful valley town was entirely destroyed. But the Chinese construction in an effort to miraculously rebuilt the city in three year became the journey to modernization devoid of any trace of its past. The survivors of the China’s worst natural disaster speak for today’s Chinese generation thrust into the nation’s relentless pursuit of progress and violently uprooted from their past.

Director Zhao Qi follows three families for the earthquake in 2008 to the completion of the new city of Yong Chang. 

Fallen City zooms in on the family lives of three survivors, who are marked by painful memories and deep sadness. Mr. Peng is a devoted father who lost his daughter in the rubble. The trauma that he and his wife are suffering stands in the way of rebuilding their life. Divorcee Mrs. Li explains that she lives only for her paralyzed mother and for her job as a district chief. Fourteen-year-old Hong lost his father in the earthquake and has to struggle through high school, distanced from his less-than-loving mother. Both the inhabitants of Beichuan and the city itself are torn between life as it used to be and modernity. Peng and his wife are stopped by soldiers when, as part of a traditional ritual, they want to burn money where their daughter died, while Hong's mother is annoyed by the video games her son is playing. Meanwhile, several miles from where the rubble has piled up like a garbage dump, a new city is being built at breakneck speed - a city that is supposed to offer the survivors a better life.

 

 "GOOGLE AND THE WORLD BRAIN"

Director: Ben Lewis

Executive Producer: Charles Brugueras

Producer: Bettina Walter

The story of the most ambitious project ever conceived on the internet, ant the people who tried to stop it.  In 1937 HG Wells predicted the creation of the “World Brain”, a giant global library that contained all human knowledge which would lead to a new form of intelligence.  Seventy years later the realisation of that dream was underway, as Google scanned millions and millions of books for its Google website.  But over half of those books were still in copyright, and authors across the world launched a campaign to stop them, climaxing in a New York courtroom in 2011.  A film about the dreams, dilemmas and dangers of the Internet, set in spectacular location in China, USA, Europe and Latin America.

In this film the central story of Google Books is woven into the broader fabric of the Internet, with its issues of data-mining and privacy, downloading and copyright freedom and surveillance.