THE СALM TEMPEST

The lighthouse keeper’s son tries to escape from an island that once was a prison. Meanwhile, one of the few fishing boats that still remains in this island sets off to work for the last time, her last night before being dismantled. Suddenly a storm breaks out. When it’s over, the twelve members of the crew stay calm, pondering an unsure future: theirs, their trades, their island’s. The calm tempest tells speaks of a change of cycle, the end of things. It deals with the fear of what might come next and how to face it. To this effect, the film reverses the common conventional narrative order: it first introduces the space and then portraits the characters. We grasp them through the facts we have already seen and heard. Little by little we venture into an oneiric passage which is a merging of the divine and the human.

OMAR A. RAZZAK

 

Omar Razzak is a filmmaker from the Canary Islands with Sirian origin. He trained in Paris and Montreal and holds a degree in Communication Studies from Complutense University of Madrid and a Masters in Creative Film, TV and Interactive Media from Rey Juan Carlos University of Madrid. Paradiso (Art and Research Award in Screenwriting 2010) is his first feature film. Released in 2014 was very well received for both public and critics. The film won Rizoma Award 2013 and was selected in more than 50 international film festivals: Transilvania Film Festival, Doc Point Helsinki, Las Palmas Film Festival, Malaga Film Festival and New York Indie Film Festival, amongst others. La Tempestad Calmada is his second film, selected by EURODOC (Media) and IBERDOC (Ibermedia), and supported by Ponza Council (Italy), Málaga CREA (Malaga Film Festival, Spain), the Basque Government Funds and Fundación Autor SGAE (Spain). Author of films Paradiso (2014), The calm tempest (2016), Torpe (In postproduction).

The calm tempest is a cinematographic apostolate that takes inspiration from the paintings of Ribera as well as the Italian neorealism. The calm tempest coordinates itself around the portraits of twelve present sailors, on an island named after Pontius Pilate: Ponza. And the title refers to the biblical story told by Matthew in which Jesus calms the sea during a strong storm shouting: “You of little faith, why are you so afraid?”.

 

The calm tempest tells speaks of a change of cycle, the end of things. It deals with the fear of what might come next and how to face it. To this effect, the film reverses the common conventional narrative order: it first introduces the space and then portraits the characters. We grasp them through the facts we have already seen and heard. Little by little we venture into an oneiric passage which is a merging of the divine and the human. 

 

It all happens inside an odd asynchronism in which the sound gives us some information about each seaman, but not enough to know if they are their thoughts, something that has already happened, or a premonition. Voices in an unknown dialect meanwhile the sea remains calm.

 

• Las Palmas Film Festival, Spain 2016 
• Malaga Film Festival, Spain 2016 
• DocumentaMadrid, Spain 2016 
• Cineuropa de Santiago, Spain 2016 
• MiradasDoc, Spain 2016 
• PNR Film Festival – Critics Award, Spain 2016 
• Insularia – Best Documentary, Spain 2016

 

Main Competition 2017