Gold Coast: Art & Culture

It hasn't been so very long since rich tourists from around the world came to stay in the luxury hotels of Sharm El Sheikh. But the Arab Spring and the confusion of the post revolutionary period quickly robbed the southern tip of the Sinai Peninsula of its charm as a go-to summer resort. An Egyptian filmmaker and a visual artist from Germany demonstrate that partially staging their work needn't be at odds with authenticity. In their documentary, saturated with elements of surreal fiction, they set out to visit the last inhabitants of the shimmering city of ghosts - resort employees who feverishly dream among the abandoned hotel suites. How hard is it to balance a traditional lifestyle with the unbridled liberalism of a place in a Middle Eastern wasteland where an island of Western razzle-dazzle is slowly sinking?

2009. Tunisian Nine-year-old Zaineb lost her father. Her mother will rebuild her life with a man in Canada. But she wants nothing to do with this new country, because Zaineb has decided to hate the snow.

Dawn vibrates in New York as it extends on a body waking up. Half-covered by sheets, it's a body which will never disclose itself entirely, even when caught in the midst of the sexual act: Em is an escort girl and, what's more, a heroine addict: just the right elements which Jeffrey Dunn Rovinelli's first film presents so as to get rid of them as fast as possible. From New York to Los Angeles via Pittsburgh, Em's daily life is revealed, at first, as an antithesis of pre-conceived ideas about her, questioning the spectator's desire in relation to documentary film. Do we have to look at Em the way she looks at the people passing by down the street, through her hotel window? Drugs are invisible, at least in words, and sex is no more than a Pop-Shakespearian performance filmed in HD. Around work, steps to go in and get out of it: shifts, makeup, waiting... Em's true life and a certain portrait of the United States rise out of this daily routine seemingly punctuated by slow times. Her confessions reveal dreams of independence and the presence of what is far away, of attraction and disgust towards others. If, in the end, this 16mm picture seems to welcome the character's secret liberation, the spectator will surmise that it is Em who has seized the film: from now on, it is she who will be re-modeling it.

We don't really play for fun. Mostly, we play for work. It's the same for other jobs where you have to survive in competition. This work just happens to be a game.

The Catalpa Rescue is the extraordinary story of the daring rescue of six Irish rebels from a notoriously brutal penal colony in Fremantle, West Australia in 1876.

In the shadow of a De Beers diamond mine, a remote indigenous community lurches from crisis to crisis, as their homeland transforms into a modern frontier. Rosie Koostachin delivers donations to families who live in uninsulated sheds, overgrown with toxic mold. She is determined to raise awareness, believing that if only Canadians knew, her hometown's dire situation would improve. Over five years, filmmaker Victoria Lean follows Attawapiskat's journey from obscurity and into the international spotlight twice - first when the Red Cross intervenes and again during the protest movement, Idle No More. Weaving together great distances, intimate scenes and archive images, the documentary chronicles the First Nation's fight for justice in the face of hardened indifference.