CCA 4 Sunday 19th October
3.00-4.30 pm

Half Me
Justyna Tafel
Poland 2007 / 11 Mins 30 Secs

Aza's life has come to a standstill. For years she has been staying with her family in a refugee camp awaiting the decision of the Polish authorities on their future. Living from day to day, will she ever recover the person she was in Chechnya?

Stella
Vanina Vignal
France 2006 / 77 Mins

Stella, her husband and sister live in a shantytown installed under the motorway in Plaine Saint-Denis just north of Paris. Stella begs in the metro, and the hospital where she goes for treatment is her only contact with society.

One of the invisible, illegal immigrants of our cities, she was once a factory worker in the Romania of the Ceausescu regime. Leaving everything behind, she chose to live illegally in France for love of her seriously ill husband Marcel, convinced she would find a doctor able to treat him. Though she succeeds, Stella in turn, falls ill. Jobless, penniless and with no legal status, she has to finish her course of medical treatment before returning to Romania.

While the film renders her anguish and suffering palpable, it also shows a woman who never gives up, who is determined to solve her problems one after the other with the means she has available. Within her exhausted frame, there lies an iron will.