Grants & Awards

About the Film:

The Angola Project is a film about the African and Chinese people whose lives are intimately intertwined with the reconstruction of the Benguela Railway. The tracks form the spine of the film, stretching from coast to border. Early one morning we board the train with a young man, who had been conscripted into the army as a boy. Now, years later, he makes his way through the country he once helped to destroy, en route to a new job as security guard for a Chinese construction compound on the border. He passes through the ruins and graveyard of Angola at the moment of its rebirth, tracking the transformation of the country as well as of his own soul. His path crosses the lives of a series of characters, both Chinese and African, who have all pinned their hopes and dreams for the future on this venture. Through the personal stories of everyday people caught in the middle of global events, the film offers a visceral glimpse of how the new world order is being shaped. This is a narrative journey through one of the most important social and political shifts of our time taking place in the most unlikely place – Angola.

About the Filmmakers:

Jeremy Xido (Director) is originally from Detroit, graduated cum laude in Painting and Comparative Literature from Columbia University and trained at the Actor’s Studio. Working as a dancer, actor and filmmaker, Xido has performed and presented work around the world on stage, TV and in Cinema, blending emotionally gripping personal stories with the larger social contexts within which they emerge.  He is the co-director of the company CABULA6, and was recognized with the 2010 Outstanding Artist of the Year Award by the Austrian Ministry of Culture and the 2005 Audience Award at the Salzburg Sommerszene, among others. Xido is the director of the six part documentary series Crime: Europe, commissioned by the European Union, and the film Macondo, as well as a series of critically acclaimed short fiction films.

Heino Deckert (Producer) is the director of ma.ja.de, Filmproduktion and Deckert Distribution.  He has produced more than 50 award-winning documentaries, including Hartmut Bitomsky’s Staub (Dust), Thomas Heise’s Children, As Time Flies and Sergei Loznitsa’s Revue. His latest co-production Rabbit á la Berlin, by Bartek Konopka, was nominated for a 2010 Academy Award 2010, and his film Khadak premiered in Venice in 2006 where it won the Lion of the Future.  Deckert lectures on production and distribution of documentaries for organizations such as EDN and Ex Oriente and is group leader of Eurodoc.  He was the chairman of the European Documentary Network (EDN) from 2006-2008.