Franco de Peña

Berlin, A Polterabend (i.e. a party on the eve of a marriage) is taking place in a café. An American has persuaded his German friend to marry him, after just one month of knowing each other. But while Anke has decided to create a family for her and her baby, Bruce has reservations. The party's member consist of various immigrants that happened to be there, each with his own problems and Anke's mother who objects to the marriage and is expelled by her own daughter.

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Liliana, a mother of 5 kids, living in terrible condition in a Caracas's "favela", is hoping to get a new flat from President Chavez in order to change her life. August 2007, Venezuelan's President Chavez convokes a referendum in order to change the constitution and get absolute power. Carlos, a local Party Activists tries to convince Liliana to vote for the new constitution. Liliana is promised that she'll get a flat if she votes for Chavez. Hugo Rey is a journey into the totalitarian mechanism employed by Chavez to perpetuate his power.

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While living with her grandmother in Poland, a young woman falls in love. Her boyfriend is charming and suggests they travel around Europe and work here and there to pay for their trip. Unfortunately, the boyfriend isn't as he seems and the young woman is sold as a prostitute when they cross over to Germany. We follow her ordeal as she tries to free herself and stay sane as time goes by and her captors try to break and condition her to a new life of servitude.

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All the feature is given prestige to by the narration in Caetano Veloso's voice, that also signs one of the segments of the project. São Paulo is the largest city of the Southern Hemisphere, with an incessant dynamics of cultural mixtures, with immigrants of all the world and migrants of all parts of Brazil. The gathering of these peculiarities are seen through the 13 film directors's sensibilities and their segments.

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Franco de Peña's movie deals with three very different love stories, all taking place on the Avenida Libertador, the main avenue of Caracas.

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The Future of an Illusion (1997) is a poetic, semi-documentary portrait of Havana on New Year’s Day, following seven characters whose lives intertwine amid the crumbling beauty of the city. An old widow, a young prostitute, a fallen aristocrat, a jobless couple, a weary coachman, a lonely child, and a wandering poet each face their own illusions of change, love, and escape. Through their stories, Franco de Peña crafts a lyrical meditation on hope and disappointment, where the promise of renewal fades into the quiet persistence of everyday survival.

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