Silu Seppälä

An actress, three months post-partum, reads through fragments of the archive of Suzanne Césaire as she prepares to perform excerpts of the writer's work. A post-biopic about Caribbean surrealist Suzanne Césaire, deconstructing the process of bringing an actually-lived life to film. The film examines her relationship with her husband, French politician Aimé Césaire, and famed surrealist André Breton. Filmed on the grounds of a palm tree archive in South Florida, a small group of filmmakers and actors consider the "paradise" of historic and political memory. The film takes place primarily in the space of the film set itself where actors and crew confront the history of this writer in her youth, and then stage scenes from her life. The Ballad of Suzanne Césaire is writer-director Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich's first feature and stars César-award-winning actor Zita Hanrot and Motell Gyn Foster. Inspired by the structures of Césaire's own writing, which often took a colonial convention and unraveled it, the film deconstructs the narrative period biopic genre, moving between a conventional cinema and deconstructed experimental scenes. With a soundtrack by singer Sabine McCalla, The Ballad of Suzanne Césaire plants us firmly in the darkness and desire of its subject matter while acknowledging the impossibility of resuscitating a legacy partially lost to time. —Official site

The Cowboys are lured from Mexico to Coney Island by their former manager who disappeared at the end of Leningrad Cowboys Go America. He believes he is the reincarnation of Moses, sent to lead them back to the promised land - Siberia.

A woman's terribly dull life is upended by a one-night stand pregnancy, causing her to seek retribution. Iris has a dead-end job in a match-factory, lives with her dour and forbidding parents, and her social life is a disaster. But when she is made pregnant after a one-night stand by a man who thought she was a prostitute, she decides that enough is enough and plans her revenge... —Michael Brooke <michael@everyman.demon.co.uk> Iris leads a bleak existence. She has a dead end job working on the assembly line at a match factory. What meager wages she earns all goes toward supporting her mother and stepfather, with who she lives in a small, crowded house. They largely ignore her unless she does something against their sensibilities, which leads to them exacting emotional and physical abuse toward her. And Iris is also ignored socially, because of her overall somber demeanor and the fact that she has no money to make herself look more attractive to men. She believes her life will change with her chance meeting with well-off businessman, Aarne. However, what she believes is the start of a possible relationship with Aarne was solely a one-night stand for him, he who has no intention of ever seeing her again. The aftermath of this encounter with Aarne leads to Iris making some decisions of how she will deal with her bleak life. —Huggo

The story concerns the exploits of an extremely inept but dedicated troupe of accordian musicians, ''The Leningrad Cowboys''. These eight Finnish lads head off for New York. There they encounter yet another wise guy, who sends them off to Mexico by car to play at his cousin's wedding. Along the way, they get bookings wherever they can, learn American music styles, and get along fabulously.