Image courtesy of Rise and Shine
New to the Berlin-based sales company slate is Roger Federer: the Reunion and Dragon Women, about top female operatives in the field of finance. Rise and Shine continue sales on the female wrestler doc Luchadoras, which picked up three awards at last week’s Thessaloniki Film Festival, as well as the avian-themed love affair The Storkman.
Roger Federer: the Reunion follows the Swiss tennis champ as he makes “a long aspired dream come true: to play in his mother’s home country, South Africa, battling his biggest rival Rafael Nadal while raising funds for his foundation.” He does so together with philantropist Bill Gates and comedian Trevor Noah in front 50,000 fans in a Cape Town stadium. The film is described as “a film about family, philanthropy, rivalry, friendship, and a unique and spectacular breaking of a world record.” All territories are available other than Israel and Croatia, points out Rise and Shine Festival Manager Anja Dziersk.
Frédérique de Montblanc’s 80/52-minute Belgian doc Dragon Women, produced by Savage Film, comprises a series of intimate portraits of various senior women in finance management. Filmed in New York, London and Paris at work and at home, and during their leisure time, the women tell us what made them succeed in business and share with the mechanisms they’ve had to implement to survive in one of the most competitive business sectors in the world. All territories are available.
Also on the Rise and Shine slate is the female wrestler doc Luchadoras by Paola Calvo and Patrick Jasim, which picked up the Fipresci and Audience awards in July at Thessaloniki Doc Fest 2021, as well as a Special Mention in main competition. The film portrays the courageous female wrestlers of Ciudad Juárez, a city known for its high femicide rates. ‘With Mexican passion they present a new image of what it means to be a woman in Mexico,’ say the film notes. The film premiered at SXSW and has subsequently been programmed at numerous US festivals, says Rise and Shine’s Dziersk. “They [the women] are trying to fight for their lives and also fight in the ring, so that’s some kind of metaphor,” she adds.
Croatian Tomislav Jelinčić’s The Storkman tells the story of an avian love affair, that of Malena, a female stork that can’t fly and her mate Klepetan who returns faithfully every year, and of human carer Stjepan who looks after Malena in Klepetan’s absence. Together all three have hatched over 60 fledgling storks. “It’s some kind of a fairy tale about love – the female stork waiting for the male stork every year, because she cannot fly anymore,” says Dziersk of the feature doc.
Elsehere on the slate are Aliaksei Paluyan’s masterly Courage, about the protests that followed the 2020 Belarusian elections; Sergej Kreso’s Here We Move, Here We Groove about Balkan Beats founder Robert Soko’s attempts to discover/invent a music appropriate to our age of mass migration, economic uncertainty and existential questions over identity, and The Taste of Desire, Willemiek Kluijfhout’s engagingly meditative film that follows six people all motivated by their affection for, and connection to, the oyster.
Dzersk won’t be attending Cannes, and doesn’t feel that she will be turning up physically at events until late in the year. That said, he stresses how the world of sales access has opened up online over the past year. “Now you can do everything online,” she stresses. She is nevertheless looking forward to opportunity once again to “reach out to the people personally.”
