2020 UMFF Feature Films

A Folksong of Happiness China | 90min | Feature Drama Director: Shengji Wu Synopsis: Yao Dongmei, the queen of folksongs, met the soldier Rao Ge because of the same love they have for folksongs. They fought side by side to defeat the evil landlord. Rao Ge died for glory and Dongmei kept singing the folksong to keep their love in her heart.   Auspicious China | 100min | Feature Drama Director: Shu Zhang Synopsis: The story happened in the 1970s, Li Fei, a young well-educated man met an ethnic girl, Na Zhu, in Lugu Lake. They fell in love since they met but missed the chance to be together for three times. It's a film to display the beauty of Lugu Lake and the Mosuo Culture.                 For All The Brilliant Conversations   USA | 56min | Feature Drama Director: Seok Wun Au Yong Synopsis: Two international graduate students in the USA - Malaysian queer filmmaker Seok and Kenyan disabled activist-scholar Faith - embark on a journey to make a film that captures their friendship, putting them in vulnerable positions as they navigate trauma and healing     Happy Reunion China | 95min | Feature Opera Director: Keping Yu Synopsis: Ming Dynasty Qiongzhou hero Sun Shu-lin in a natural disaster, unfortunately with her husband Zhang Zheng and two sons separated, to find relatives, Sun Shu-lin across the sea to the North, began her long and difficult to find a husband to find children, and finally a happy reunion.                 Hidden Love China | 93min | Feature Drama Director: Feng Yang Synopsis: Italian fashion designers love Emily went to Guangxi, China, to find inspiration for her design. She met a young Chinese music teacher Li Sihai and started a cross-border love story.   Illegal   USA | 80min | Feature Drama Director: Nick Alexander  Synopsis: Illegal is a feature-length documentary about the miraculous journey of Salvadoran immigrant Laz Ayala’s life or death path to U.S. citizenship, the challenges of present-day immigration, and his mission to humanize immigrants and reform immigration for the benefit of all.                 Kiana’s Apache Ceremony   Morocco | 52min | Feature Drama Director: Dounia Benjelloun Mezian Synopsis: In the middle of the White Mountain Apache reservation near Pinetop, Arizona, Kiana, a twelve-year-old Native American girl, prepares to celebrate her passage into adulthood. Surrounded by her tribe, she bravely embarks upon her initiation ritual, a demanding experience filled with symbolism and color, where song and dance intermingle from another time. Her journey through this ancestral rite of passage will instill her with patience and perseverance for the rest of her life.     Morabeza, the Strength of Movement France | 76min | Feature Drama Director: Jérémy Billon, Benjamin Vallet Synopsis: Cape Verde is one of the smallest countries in Africa but also the one that migrates the most. What if in its joy of living and openness to others, its Morabeza, lied the key to overpower its European equivalent, the growing morosity?               Mustang Saviors  USA | 100min | Feature Drama Director: David Glossberg  Synopsis: American veterans are killing themselves by the thousands each year. It is a national tragedy on an epic scale. But a remarkable treatment is proving more powerful than ever imagined: Wild mustangs taken straight off the range! Pairing them with veterans is miraculously turning despair into enduring hope!   "My Culture" USA | 78min | Feature Drama Director: Mario Bobino Synopsis: Growing up in Oakland, California, with a strong and admired father, working as a Bay Area Fireman, and a successful college-educated mother, has made Athedral and his sister very proud. But since his father's heroic death in 2002, Athedral has spent his life pursuing his baseball career and helping run his mother's upscale apartment complex in Oakland, California, not leaving him much time to find love.                  My Farmland Canada | 86min | Feature Drama Director: Diana Dai  Synopsis: My Farmland explores how Chinese national and Chinese immigrants’ investments are affecting traditional Canada’s agricultural sector by following three families: two in tiny Saskatchewanfarming communities, the other in the wine-making region of Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont. The film tells a very human story of how communities react to an influx of people from a different culture who hope for a better life by working the land.     Osun the Goddess Nigeria  | 120min | Feature Myth Director: Ade Eketunde  Synopsis: The movie “Osun the Goddess” is an epic historical movie project telling a story of the Yoruba goddess “Osun”. It starts with the 16 deities descending from heaven to earth for the creation. The 15 male deities tried to do it without Osun and when they failed Oludumare (the supreme deity) told them to go back and beg Osun to help them in anything they wanted to do on Earth.                Pendulum Canada  | 80min | Feature Drama Director: Amir Ganjavie, Mostafa Azizi Synopsis: Do men have any rights in abortion? This is the central issue of Pendulum, the story of a couple whose life shifts dramatically after realizing that they will have a child soon. They start a fight in which no one shows any hesitation to express his opinion without fear of being judged.   Soumaya France | 103min | Feature Drama Director: Ubaydah Abu-Usayd, Waheed Khan Synopsis: Soumaya is an executive in a transport company. After fourteen years of employment, she learned overnight that she had been dismissed and discovered the reasons for her dismissal on television that same evening. She then decides to exercise a very particular right of a reply.               Shadows USA | 100min | Feature Drama Director: Michael Matteo Rossi Synopsis: A young low-level drug dealer is reunited with his estranged mom and uncle to protect him when a ruthless drug kingpin puts a hit on him   Catching the Breeze China | 88min | Feature Drama Director: Wen Shi, Xiaoying Shi Synopsis: The film mainly tells the story of Luobin Wang, a famous musician in China, who discovered the western folks, collected folk songs, and music materials. He created such famous songs as "Half a Moon Climbs Up" and "In that Far Away Place                 The Borderline Zambia  | 93min | Feature Drama Director: Peter Langmead  Synopsis: What does it profit a man if he gains the world but loses his mind? In a desperate bid to make a success of his life and become rich in the future, Faustino, a poacher and failed gemstone dealer, sells his soul to the devil.      The Donbass Children Bulgaria  | 60min | Feature Drama Director: Lubomir Dankov  Synopsis: This is a movie about the Donbas war, first-person stories. You will hear the stories of so-called "ordinary people". These people suffered from irrational from a military point of view strikes on civilian targets. They are victims of someone's desire to wage war on their territory at all costs.