Evelyn documents the story of a family overcoming the unthinkable. On a walking odyssey across the United Kingdom, they confront a past they’ve been unable to talk about, whilst simultaneously repairing the fractures in their own relationships. 

Director of Oscar-winning documentary ‘White Helmets’ Orlando von Einsiedel turns the cameras on himself, as he and his parents and siblings embark on a journey in remembrance of their brother and son, Evelyn, who took his own life over a decade ago. 

Part quest film, part road-trip, part memoir, Evelyn seeks to address the past, in order to find some peace in the present, and look to the future. 

As societies worldwide are waking up to the the fact that suicide – especially among young men – is tragically quotidian, Evelyn uses its lofty, awe-inspiring imagery of the UK and raw personal elegance to convince the viewer that we must talk more about mental health. 

Run time: 92 minutes

Speakers:

Orlando von Einsiedel is the multi award-winning director of the Oscar® winning Netflix short documentary, THE WHITE HELMETS. His first feature VIRUNGA, received both a BAFTA and Oscar® nomination, going on to win over 50 awards internationally included an EMMY, a Peabody, a Grierson and a duPont-Columbia Award for outstanding journalism. Orlando is drawn to telling inspiring human narratives from around the world, frequently combining intimate personal stories with powerful visual aesthetics and in-depth investigations. He has worked in every continent, often in impenetrable and difficult environments, from pirate boats to war zones. Formally a professional snowboarder, Orlando is co-founder of UK award-winning production company, Grain Media.

Joanna Natasegara is a British film producer best known for the Academy Award® winning Netflix Original short documentary, THE WHITE HELMETS. Joanna also produced BAFTA and Oscar® nominated documentary, VIRUNGA, which won over 50 international awards including an EMMY, a Peabody, a Television Academy Honor, a Grierson and a duPont-Columbia Award for outstanding journalism. Joanna has led some of the world’s most impactful global film campaigns, including Doc Impact Award winners VIRUNGA and NO FIRE ZONE; films which focus on some of the most difficult social change issues of our time. Her work is global in scope, collaborating with organisations and international leaders across the political spectrum, as well as the business, arts and philanthropic worlds. Joanna founded award-winning UK production company, Violet Films. 

From 7 – 21 March, the Frontline Club and the Scottish Documentary Institute are teaming up to present New Scottish Documentary, a series showcasing some of the the boldest and most innovative new works produced in Scotland.  Featuring one screening per week, we’ll be celebrating the richness of Scottish nonfiction filmmaking, including discussions with veteran documentary makers and up-and-coming directors to watch.  The programme includes Scotland on Screen, an evening of short films produced with assistance from the Scottish Documentary Institute and showcasing the diverse beauty of the Scottish landscape.

This screening will be followed by a Q&A with director Lou McLoughlan.

This remarkable BAFTA nominated film from the new Scottish school of documentary filmmaking follows a convicted murderer over four years as he struggles to grapple with rebuilding his reputation in a remote Highland village while caring for his father. Though the film controversially gives the protagonist space to protest his innocence, an incredible four years of footage investigate his character – and the shattered hopes his pattern of recidivism leaves behind him.

16 Years Till Summer represents part of an exciting new wave of documentary filmmaking sweeping international festivals from Scotland; as such, it’s as bold in it’s subject matter as it is sceptical of finding ‘truth’ only in traditional forms of documentary film language. Prepare to have your preconceptions challenged.

Lou McLoughlan was one of BAFTA’s 2011 Brits to Watch, an initiative showcasing new British talent to the international industry. Her short, Caring For Calum, won two BAFTAs in the Scotland New Talent awards. 16 Years Till Summer is her newest feature. The film had its world premiere at Visions du Reel 2015, and was selected for Sheffield Doc/Fest‘s 2015 ‘Best of British’ documentary series.

Directed by: Lou McLoughlan
Country: United Kingdom
Year: 2015
Runtime: 80′

The Frontline Club and Theatre Royal Plymouth in association with Sputnik Theatre present four nights of new Russian drama. Featuring exciting and topical plays by British theatre directors and cast – translated into English by Sputnik’s artistic director Noah Birksted-Breen. Each evening will touch upon various aspects of life in Russia covering an array of issues, from the clampdown on theatre and freedom of speech to growing social tensions and immigration.

Grandchildren. The Second Act by Alexandra Polivanova and Mikhail Kaluzhsky

Running time: 55 mins

How do the grandchildren of prominent Stalinists feel when they find out who their beloved grandparents really were? Interviewed by the playwrights over the last couple of years, the protagonists’ grandparents were from Stalin’s inner circle – or members of the Soviet Communist Party or NKVD – and their testimonies bear witness to the very human desire to forgive those we love, even when we know their worst crimes.

Chaired by Gabriel Gatehouse, BBC foreign correspondent who has extensively covered the Ukrainian – Russian crisis. In June 2015, he conducted an exclusive interview with former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovich in Moscow for Newsnight.

The panel:

Alexandrina Markvo is an art advisor and entrepreneur, and a leading figure in the arts sector in Moscow. She was forced to flee to the UK in April 2014 following persecution by the Russian government – her application for political asylum is currently under consideration by the UK authorities.

Vladimir Ashurkov is executive director at the Anti-Corruption Foundation, a non-profit established in 2011 by prominent Russian opposition politician, Alexey Navalny. On 1 December 2015, the Anti-Corruption Foundation released a film titled Seagull, accusing the general prosecutor Yuri Chaika’s sons of large-scale corruption and connections to organised crime. The film has made waves in both public and political circles and has garnered over 3.5 million views on YouTube to date.

Prior to pursuing civil and political activities, Ashurkov had a career in finance and served as a director at one of Russia’s largest investment groups, Alfa Group Consortium. He was granted political asylum in the UK in April 2015.

Oliver Bullough is a prize-winning writer, broadcaster and journalist, who has written in, around and about the former Soviet world for the last decade and a half. His book The Last Man in Russia: And the Struggle to Save a Dying Nation is about the effect of Stalinism on future generations. Bullough is currently investigating fraud, money-laundering and international corruption.

John Freedman is an American writer, translator, critic, and scholar of Russian drama and theatre. He has been a theatre critic for The Moscow Times since 1992.

Amer, 45, met Raghda, 40, in a Syrian prison cell 15 years ago. Over a number of months they communicated through a tiny hole they had secretly made in the wall. They fell in love and, following their release, married and started a family together.

This film tells the poignant story of their family torn apart by the tyrannical Assad dictatorship. Filming began in Syria in 2009, prior to the wave of revolutions and ongoing changes in the Middle East. At the time, Raghda was a political prisoner and Amer was caring for their young children alone. McAllister filmed in the thriving heart of the Yarmouk Camp in Damascus – now an infamous news story as the Assad regime blocked all aid and food to its inhabitants.

This intimate family portrait probes to understand why people are literally dying for change in the Arab world. As Raghda is released from prison, filmmaker Sean McAllister himself is arrested for filming and the political pressure around all activists intensifies. The family flee to Lebanon, and then to France where they are given political asylum in the sleepy town of Albi, where they now watch the revolution from afar and wait for the fall of Assad.

However, in exile Raghda’s mental heath suffers. We see their new life in France develop, but the war is now between them. In finding the freedom they fought so hard for, their relationship is beginning to fall apart.

A Syrian Love Story won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2015 Sheffield International Documentary Festival.

Directed by: Sean McAllister
Country: UK/France/Lebanon/Syria
Running time: 80′

Filmmaker Chloe Ruthven’s grandparents were aid workers in Palestine. Growing up, she avoided getting too involved in the subject, recalling how mention of it made all the adults in her life angry. Inspired by a book written by her grandmother about the aid projects in Palestine, Ruthven explores the effects of foreign aid and the potential damage the continued reliance may have for the future.

Along the way she meets Lubna Masarwa, a forthright Palestinian woman. She not only becomes her driver, guide and fixer, but also offers a rare insight into the complex cultural and political situation on the ground. Masarwa speaks frankly of her distaste and distrust of foreign aid, something that lies uneasy with Ruthven as she seeks to find the lasting benefits of the work her grandparents supported.

What begins as a quest to better grasp her family history, turns into an emotional account of two women trying to understand one another and a unique joining of the acutely personal and complexly political. Interviews with international aid workers, Palestinian project managers, Western volunteers, local farmers and videos of her grandparents at the time, illustrate the complexity of the situation.

Directed by Chloe Ruthven
Duration: 75′
Year: 2013

“The evening breeze
blows towards the bride
as she takes her leave
on her wedding day.”

(“New Bride, New Night” by Salma)

On Thursday 26 September, the Frontline Club and DocHouse screened the evocative documentary Salma. Hosted at Rich Mix, the film was the latest in the Between the Lines Follow-Up series.

Directed by Kim Longinotto, the film follows the poet and novelist Salma on her return to her home village where she was effectively imprisoned for 25 years. Editor Ollie Huddleston joined for the post-film Q&A.

Elizabeth Wood of DocHouse began with a discussion on the craft of editing:

“Fiction films are shot to a script, but really, with a film like this, and with all Kim’s films, a script is really written during the edit.”

“I think the best documentary films are like fiction films,” responded Huddleston:

“You’re building a story. . . . I look at this film now and I see it’s of course a film about Tamil Nadu and Muslim culture and Salma, but the important thing is always that it should connect to us. It’s a very universal story in some ways. The bonds, the knots, the ties, the families. Fear of breaking away and not being able to break away.”

Editor Ollie Huddleston. Photo: George Symonds

An audience member asked if the village had changed since the film was made.

“My experience of the village,” said Huddleston, “is what I see through that material. My understanding is that it hasn’t changed, no, not at all. And I think Malik – Salma’s husband – is quite unusual. As much as he was a very strong part of keeping her away and keeping her apart from society, he also helped her to break free, and that’s very unusual.”

“He must have grown too, in a way do you think?” followed Wood.

“Yeah, the weirdest thing was that Kim and Salma, when I finally met her, said he liked the film, that he was proud of the film. That is amazing for me,” said Huddleston. “Because he doesn’t come across brilliantly sometimes. Kim said he was a lovely guy and incredibly friendly and all the rest of it, but maybe he’s happy that the story is being told. He seems very proud of his wife so eventually maybe he’s coming around and maybe the village will change, one day.”

“But,” countered Wood, “do you think perhaps he’s the one who made his sons critical of her?”

“Yes, I do. Definitely he did. But he’s part of the village, isn’t he? I mean they all are. So the village tradition has meant that they’re all bound by the past and traditions that women are locked up and hidden away.”

Ollie Huddleston in conversation with Elizabeth Wood. Photo: George Symonds.

Huddleston then spoke of the difficulties faced during filming:

“Salma had to hide a lot. They thought she was making some kind of drama film and she was going to make money out of this film in some way. So I think there was a lot of antagonism in the village. But she’s an extraordinary, pragmatic, charismatic, thoughtful, incredibly eloquent person so I imagine she found a way to explain it to them, and to get the film made.”

Hands went up in the audience to ask about the inclusion of the Hindu wedding:

“We wanted to balance the film out. That it’s not just Muslim weddings. I mean, that girl is about 10 or 11. It happens quite a lot in the village so that was the reason. It’s quite shocking, and truthful.”

Is she, Salma, interested in the world of politics and making a difference that way?

“She started a women’s refuge in Chennai and yes, she’s very interested in changing the world, most definitely,” explained Huddleston. “Politics is one way of doing that but I think at the moment she’s writing. I couldn’t say whether she’d go back into politics again. Maybe.”

Huddleston then responded to how he approached representing the many complex characters:

“You try to make stories develop. . . . Throughout the film you’re probably thinking, ‘God, how could she [Salma’s mother] do that to her daughter?’ . . . In the end, she helps her publish her books, she smuggles them out – she’s more complicated than that. So to be really crude about it, there’s a kind of set up about who the mother is. You think she’s this person then, later on, you’ve changed your opinion of her. ‘Wow, she’s stood up, she went and got the books, she sent them to a publisher, she is on Salma’s side.’ There’re many references to the mother and the complexity of that relationship is huge and crucial to the film really. You’re trying to make it understandable and very real.”

'Each shot has to count and each moment has to count' – editor Ollie Huddleston #documentary #Salma

— BerthaDocHouse (@BerthaDocHouse) September 26, 2013

To conclude, Huddleston commented on the circularity that the film depicts:

“It’s that idea that we’re constantly going in a circle. When she lies on the floor and says, ‘What can I do, I can’t leave the ones that love me, I’d be completely alone,’ isn’t that true of all families? It’s a circular thing. That seemed to be the most truthful point. She’s still yearning for her mother’s approval or love or closeness. Nothing has changed, in certain ways, even though she’s done extraordinary things.

“It’s because it’s a film about circles. Circles within families, within tradition, within religion, and trying to break free from those. That felt like the most honest end, the most truthful end. Nothing is simple.”

A collection of Salma’s poems and Longinotto’s reflections on creating the documentary is published by OR Books.

Upcoming films in the Between the Lines Follow-Up series can be found here.

A chronicle of family, assimilation and espionage that follows the El-Akels, a Palestinian family whose father, Ibrahim, has collaborated with the Israeli security services for 20 years.

Branded as traitors by Palestinians, the entire family fled to Israel to seek asylum as promised by Ibrahim’s Israeli ‘operator.’  As two- and-a-half-years passes with no progress towards the citizenship promised them, tension builds within the family.

It is Ibrahim’s wife Yusra and his three teenage sons and two daughters who bear the consequences of Ibrahim’s decision, while struggling to find their place in Israeli society.

Co-directors Adi Barash and Ruthie Shatz gain intimate access to the hardest moments the family face, observing the unravelling of family connections. An unfinching look at the experience of the people who risk their lives to collaborate with an enemy.
 

Awards

Winner of the Robert and Frances Flaherty Prize (The Grand Prize)
Yamagata Documentary Film Festival, Yamagata, Japan, 2011 Visions du Reel, Nyon, Switzerland, 2011 Offcial Selection, HotDocs, Canada 2011 Special Jury Award, DocAviv Documentary Film Festival, Tel Aviv, Israel, 2011 Research Prize, DocAviv Documentary Film Festival, Tel Aviv, Israel, 2011 Offcial Selection, Yerevan International Film Festival, Armenia, 2011 Offcial Selection, Antenna International Documentary Film Festival, Sydney, Australia, 2011 Offcial Selection, Viennale International Film Festival, Vienna, Austria, 2011 Honorable Mention, DocsLisboa Film Festival, Portugal, 2011

Directed by: Adi Barash and Ruthie Shatz
Year: 2011
Running Time: 84′