The Common Ground 10th Annual Middletown International Film Festival Announces the Films

"The Insult" is the first film to be screened at the Russell Library October 2nd.

The 10th Middletown International Film Festival

Tuesdays in October and November, 7:00pm.
The Common Ground Tenth Annual Middletown International Film Festival
is a collaboration between Middlesex Community College, Wesleyan University and
Russell Library.
The line -up of films, locations and speakers is as follows:

October 2: The Hubbard Room, Russell Library, 123 Broad Street, Middletown.

The Insult, (Lebanon, 2017, directed by Ziad Doueiri)

In today’s Beirut, a civilian dispute blown out of proportion finds Tony, a Lebanese Christian, and Yasser, a Palestinian refugee, facing off in court.  As the media circus surrounding the case threatens a social explosion in divided Lebanon, Tony and Yasser reconsider their values and beliefs as revelations of trauma complicate their understanding of one another.

Speaker: Peter Gottschalk, Professor of Religion, Wesleyan University

October 9: Wesleyan University Center for Film Studies, 301 Washington Terrace

Kills on Wheels, (Hungary, 2016, directed by Attila Till)

A wildly original action-comedy in which two teen-aged boys living with disabilities find escape from their humdrum lives.  They are enlisted by a gruff ex-con to be his accomplices…as wheelchair hit men. Thrust into a surreal world of gangster and guns, the partnership blossoms into friendship as their mentor reveals a soft heart beneath his tough exterior and the boys help him come to terms with his own disability.

Speaker: Máté Vincze, Director of the Hungarian Cultural Center in NYC

October 16: Wesleyan University Center for Film Studies, 301 Washington Terrace

Drunktown’s Finest, (USA , Native, 2014, directed by Sydney Freeland)

On a beautifully desolate Navajo reservation in New Mexico, three young people - a college-bound, devout Christian; a rebellious and angry father-to-be; and a promiscuous but gorgeous transsexual, search for love and acceptance.  As the three find their lives becoming more complicated and their troubles growing, their paths begin to intersect.

Speaker: Sarah Del Seronde – Navajo Documentary Filmmaker

October 23: Chapman Hall, 100 Training Hill Road, Middlesex Community College

White Sun, (Nepal, 2016, directed by Deepak Rauniyar)

On the occasion of his father's funeral, Chandra returns to the village he left years earlier to join the Maoists, and finds himself revisiting frayed family relations and unspoken divisions among neighbors. Past traumas return and cause tensions to boil over.

Speaker: Indira Karamcheti, Associate Professor of American Studies, Wesleyan University

October 30: Chapman Hall, 100 Training Hill Road, Middlesex Community College

Santa & Andres, (Cuba, 2016, directed by Carlos LeChuga)

In 1983 Cuba, a dissident gay novelist, Andres, is placed under house arrest for his sexual and ideological orientation. Santa, a local peasant woman is assigned to keep a close watch on him for three consecutive days, keeping him from disrupting a political event. An unlikely friendship forms between the two. Banned in Cuba.

Speaker: Victor Triay, Professor of History, Middlesex Community College

November 6: The Hubbard Room, Russell Library, 123 Broad Street, Middletown.

Amerika Square, (Greece, 2017, directed Yannis Sakaridis)

Tattoo artist Billy and unemployed Nakos are best friends from Athens. Old bachelor Nakos is a racist, obsessed with the victim mentality, and he rages at Greece's increasing immigrant numbers. Billy, however, is in favor of foreigners coming. They meet in Amerika Square in Athens because of Syrian refugee Tarek.

Speaker: Speaker: George Syrimis, Program Director and Lecturer in Comparative Literature, Hellenic Studies Program, Yale University       

The Festival is sponsored by Connecticut Humanities.