Produced and organized by Tribeca Enterprises, We Are One joins together over 20 of the world’s premier film festivals, including Cannes, Berlin, Venice, Sundance, Toronto, and Tribeca, in celebration of some of the world’s most talented voices, and in a central effort to provide entertainment and relief to people globally, at a time when they need it most.
The digital festival provides audiences the opportunity to immerse themselves into new cultures, viewpoints, and perspectives from around the world that they wouldn’t typically be exposed to. We’re excited to share these voices with the world and would love your support.
The programme includes several films by female directors from across the globe. Here are the Asian titles directed by females in the online festival:
IRON HAMMER / CHINA / Premieres June 7 at 4:30pm ET
- Synopsis: In her rousing and personal documentary debut, director Joan Chen charts the inspiring life and career of “Jenny” Lang Ping, a fearless volleyball star who embarked on one of the most remarkable journeys in modern Chinese history. She became an international icon not just as an outstanding player—the film’s title, and her nickname, comes from her trademark, pulverizing spike—but also as an assured, fearless coach who led her national team to an historic gold medal at the 1984 Olympics. But she didn’t settle there: when Lang Ping moved abroad to the United States to coach their Olympic team, she continued to break new ground while her players cinched multiple international championship titles. Brimming with never-before-seen footage, personal interviews, and (obviously) exhilarating volleyball, The Iron Hammer explores how Lang Ping’s success coaching both Team USA and China ratcheted up the bar for female empowerment and the global ambitions of a country at a crossroads. Presented by the Olympic Channel.
- Director: Joan Chen
LOSING ALICE / ISRAEL / Premieres May 29 at 10:45am ET
- About: World Premiere. An Israeli female-led neo-noir psychological TV thriller. Losing Alice was chosen for the official competition at the 2020 CANNESERIES Festival.
- Synopsis: An erotic, psychological neo-noir drama thriller inspired by Faust’s tale that tells the story of Alice, an ambitious 47 year old female film director who becomes obsessed with 24 year old femme-fatale Sophie and eventually surrenders all moral integrity in order to achieve power, success and unlimited relevance.
- Director: Sigal Avin
LOVE CHAPTER 2 / FRANCE & ISRAEL / Premieres May 30 at 9:45AM ET
- About: Special presentation premiere from France and Israel. Feature Film.
- Synopsis: The winner of the FEDORA – Van Cleef & Arpels Prize for Ballet, Love: Chapter 2 pulses with the chaos and confusion of love. Six dancers, propelled by Ori Lichtik’s thrumming electronic score, circle each other with a livewire fluidity choreographed by Sharon Eyal. “A sense of disaster,” as she puts it in her artist’s statement, “crawls like an illness via the dancers’ bodies. Now that there are no limits, we are dangerous to ourselves.” As the dance escalates to its breaking point, the performers surrender to its energy—as Eyal puts it, they “give themselves to the blast”—as a group effort to purge their anxious alienation. Louise Narboni’s filmed version of Eyal’s performance keeps the intensity intact within this adrenaline rush of a show that faithfully whips up the confusion of a lonely heart.
- Director: Louise Narboni
- Creator: Sharon Eyal
- Co-Creator: Gai Behar
SISTERHOOD / MUCAU / Premieres June 2 at 8am ET
- About: Online Premiere. Feature Film.
- Synopsis: In a sleepy small town somewhere in Taiwan lives Sei (Gigi Leung), a warm and beautiful innkeeper in her late thirties. 15 years ago, she left behind her native Macau with her husband (Lee-zen Lee). One day, Sei happens across a missing person ad in the newspaper that mentions her name: her best friend from Macau, Ling, has just passed away, and old friends hope to track down Sei so that she can attend the funeral. With the conjuring of Sei’s tangled past in pre-handover Macau, a searing drama of cultural alienation unfolds in Tracy Choi’s first feature. A flood of memories overtakes Sei as she flashes back to her younger days (with her teenage self played by Fish Liew), when she and Ling (Jennifer Yu) worked together as masseuses in the ’90s before the influx of casinos transformed the city. And soon after Sei returns to Taiwan, she learns that Ling has kept a promise she’d long suppressed.
- Director: Tracy Choi
