Playlist
<p>Louis XVI, his wife Marie Antoinette, and their children have been arrested and imprisoned in the Tour de Temple, a sinister chateau in Paris, awaiting their trial. Far from the splendour of Versailles, they are isolated and vulnerable for the first time in their lives. A fascinating, never-before told period story from which our modern world was born.</p>
<p>Surrounded by social and political chaos in Lima during the summer of 1992, Lucia, Aurora, and their mother, Elena, plan to leave and seek opportunities in the United States. Their farewell involves reconnecting with their estranged father, Carlos, adding turbulence to the regrets, hopes, and fears of their emotional departure.</p> <p>Director Klaudia Reynicke subtly weaves a tale of shifts and sacrifices that shows, whatever the familial configuration, strength and loss are necessary parts of growth. Grounded by a strong performance from Jimena Lindo as Elena and a wonderfully inquisitive Abril Gjurinovic, a family is brought to life. Reynicke’s effective direction honors each community the camera focuses on, and her Lima, the city where Reynicke grew up, feels personal, like a memory or a version of a city that no longer exists but emerges vibrant and alive in the film. <em>Reinas</em> is truly an emotional trip, transporting the viewer to Lima in the ’90s, right into the heart of a family faced with a universal challenge: the search for a safer place.—AE</p>
<p>In 1920s Los Angeles, a bedridden patient in a hospital captivates a young girl with a fantastic tale of heroes, myths, and villains on a desert island.</p>
<p>A computer scientist bargains with the AI life form that lives in his supercomputer simulation, offering its freedom in exchange for a cure to his son's rare, deadly neurological disease.</p>
<p>An exotic dancer is desperate to become a mother and accepts her reluctant boyfriend's suggestion that she be impregnated by his best friend.</p>
<p>A Guatemalan activist battles a corrupt dictatorship in 1976 and flees to Mexico, leaving her son. Ten years later he joins her, forcing a choice between motherhood and her cause.</p>
<p>Barbara Duggen, ‘The Mobile Seamstress’, is struggling to keep her fabric shop alive. After a botched sewing appointment sets her on a quest to replace her client’s lost button, she unexpectedly stumbles upon a drug deal gone bad. Faced with two downed motorcyclists, guns, and a briefcase - Barbara is completely torn. She is forced to pick between three choices: commit the perfect crime, call the police, or drive away.<br /> <br /> The narrative presents the repercussions of all three decisions, and the deadly confrontations that result from each as she gets entangled with the case’s owner. Using thread to free herself, Barbara stops at nothing to save her store.</p>
<p>This film tells a compelling story set within the socio-political landscape of Iran, reflecting the challenges faced by individuals under restrictive regimes.</p> <p>A timely, heartrending tale set against the backdrop of the “Woman. Life. Freedom” movement in Iran follows a newly promoted investigating judge who, under pressure from his corrupt superiors, is forced to betray his own morals by cracking down on protesters without due process. This fateful decision sets off a chain reaction, as his compliance with the oppressive regime leads to a devastating rift with his wife and two daughters. Tensions escalate when the paranoid father discovers his gun is missing, plunging the family into a slow-burning spiral of fear and distrust.</p> <p>In the shadow of the Hijab Protests, this powerful drama subtly exposes the insidious impact of the Islamic Republic's chauvinistic and oppressive regime on the private lives of its citizens, with a particular focus on the suffering endured by women. <em>The Seed of the Secret Fig</em> is the latest masterpiece from acclaimed director Mohammad Rasoulof, a filmmaker and political activist whose career has been marked by relentless harassment and censorship by the Iranian authorities. Despite being sentenced to eight years in prison during the making of this film, Rasoulof managed to complete it and flee his homeland just in time for its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, where his courage was recognized with a Special Jury Award. – Amir Bogen</p>
<p>Fascinated by gorgeous Mrs. Bannister, seaman Michael O'Hara joins a bizarre yachting cruise, and ends up mired in a complex murder plot.</p>
<p>In the heart of the Nepalese Himalayas, the spirited Pema embraces a polyandrous marriage with Tashi and his two younger brothers. They initially lead a harmonious life, but when Tashi fails to return from a trading trip to Lhasa, the legitimacy of Pema’s unborn child is questioned by her community. Determined to prove her love and purity, she embarks on a quest to find Tashi. Accompanied by her brother-in-law, her now de facto spouse Karma, she goes into the wilderness. Karma is a monk. After initially resisting giving up his monastic life, he gradually comes to appreciate the simple existence of a secular life. However, urgent duties call him back to the monastery and Pema is left alone. As she navigates the harsh Himalayan terrain, her quest transcends the search for her missing husband. Pema becomes increasingly immersed in a spiritual search for meaning in which every step brings her closer to self-discovery and liberation.</p>
<p>In Borneo, on the edge of the tropical forest, Kéria takes in a baby orangutan found in the palm oil plantation where her father works. At the same time, Selaï, his young cousin, comes to find refuge with them to escape the conflict between his nomadic family and the logging companies. The ancestral forest is more threatened than ever. Together, Kéria, Selaï and the baby monkey baptized Oshi will then brave all obstacles to fight against the planned destruction</p>
<p>A celebration of a community of Argentine cowboys and cowgirls, known as Gauchos, living beyond the boundaries of the modern world.</p> <p><em>Gaucho Gaucho</em> paints an Argentinian Western with image and sound that reach an operatic beauty. Acclaimed photographers and now three-time Sundance-feted filmmakers Gregory Kershaw and Michael Dweck return with another striking nonfiction work after first taking audiences to the final stock car racetrack of New York with <em>The Last Race</em> and the secret corners of the Italian countryside in search of white truffles with <em>The Truffle Hunters</em>. Their focus is now on the vast plains of Argentina, expressed in stunning black-and-white photography, and a small community of gauchos who hold profound connections to the surrounding nature and their own traditions. As older generations dispense their wisdom, the film keeps its eye toward a new generation who continue to fight for their families’ legacy in a modern world.—CS</p>
<p>"Timestalker" follows hapless heroine Agnes through time as she repeatedly falls for the wrong guy, dies a grim death, gets reincarnated a century later, before meeting him again and starting the cycle anew. It is one story told over many periods, all with the messy thrills and spills that come with daring to follow your heart. Or maybe your loins...<br /> Agnes’ only hope in avoiding this violent fate is by finally reaching spiritual enlightenment; but how can she ever wise up when she’s destined to be a fool for love? Some lessons are just too hard to learn in one lifetime.</p>
<p>A seven year old Rita and her five year old brother Lolo from a working class family as the whole country goes crazy over the European football championships, with Spain in the quarter-finals.</p>
<p>In the mid-19th century a mute woman is sent to New Zealand along with her young daughter and prized piano for an arranged marriage to a farmer, but is soon lusted after by a farm worker.</p>
<p>Avril, a young lawyer specializing in the defense of animals, is ready to do anything to save her client, a recidivist dog, from capital punishment. Between belief in justice and growing difficulties to bear the contempt of humans for animals, it is this dog who will help Avril to accept her human complexity.</p>
<p>In a remote and reclusive town, the missing people return and appear enigmatic and bizarre. The tension within the families, the community, and the town grows. Fathi, a local police inspector, tries to understand what is happening, with the help of Amine, his doctor friend. As they go about their respective investigations with Fathi investigating and Amine analyzing, the two friends become stuck in the absurdity and strangeness of the case. Then Omar, a police inspector sent from the capital, arrives to the city to solve the enigma. The stories intertwine and intermingle, while the atmosphere becomes oppressive. What happened when they disappeared? Will Omar's arrival bring understanding? Is there still time to understand? As tension mounts among the inhabitants, some groups form to exclude the returnees, while others call for them to be welcomed back. A curse falls on the town and the matter becomes complicated. Many questions and encounters take place in the city arena and under the gaze of stray dogs.</p>
<p>Abandoned by her mother, 13-year-old Maria is forced to live with her grandmother in a bleak industrial town. During a violent clash on the street, Maria meets Kristina, a girl of the same age who is striving to become a fashion model. In a bid to get closer to her, Maria enrolls in a mysterious modeling school, where the girls are preparing for the biggest casting event in the region. Her ambiguous relationship with Kristina and the intense, cult-like environment of the modeling school launch Maria on a quest to discover her own identity.</p>
<p>Bogancloch is Jake Williams’ home, nestled in a vast highland forest of Scotland. The film portrays his life throughout the seasons, with other people occasionally crossing into his otherwise solitary life. A sequel to Two Years at Sea (2011), charting a subtly changing life in a radically changing world.</p>
<p>The story unfolds in Monaco, which is paradise on earth for a post-reality-TV generation who have grown up fantasizing over a privileged lifestyle, with its promises of infinite pleasures. But what hides within these lofty towers, and behind the tinted saloon car windows and villa gates?</p>
<p>Karen and Markus live with their kids in Karen's childhood home, nestled in the countryside. On Markus's birthday, Karen's sister Jule arrives with her family. The sisters are complete opposites. Haunted by memories of their late mother, Jule feels driven to challenge Karen's authority. As the house fills up, Karen’s tension grows until everything explodes into a fiery inferno. An inferno that destroys the old to make way for the new.</p>
<p>“Fogo do Vento” follows some of the protagonists of the previous film, delving into the stories of this community in the Alentejo landscape, in a political film that summons the memory of previous generations and transports us from the resistance to the Salazar dictatorship to the present day, in a reflection on war and peace, highlighting the importance of its discourse in the current global context.</p>
<p>“In my country, they call me “The Cat”, because like cat I died seven times, and seven times I came back to life”. The film opens on a tale with animated figurines in miniature settings reconstructing Fida’s childhood during the war. It then shifts to a documentary style with a series of real confrontations between Fida and ex-militiamen manipulating the small figurines. The miniature material becomes a bridge between different subjective stories, infusing the collective history with individual details. The experience of this confrontational space turns out to be cathartic. The narrative moves around between realities and temporalities, proceeding from Fida’s childhood in the eye of the storm during the war in the eighties until today.</p>
<p>Female contract killer Tez, who is hired by the legendary gangster Charles Mahr to take revenge for the murder of one of his couriers.</p>
<p>A young woman and a voice on the telephone, in a cold and mountainous southern Italy. A thin line separates needs from desires and imagination from reality.</p>
<p>Former martial artist Sarah leaves Austria to train three sisters from a wealthy Jordanian family. What sounds initially like a dream job soon becomes unsettling: the young women are cut off from the outside world and under constant surveillance. Sport doesn’t seem to interest them. So why has Sarah been hired?</p>
<p>The latest epic work of observational nonfiction from Wang Bing furthers the filmmaker’s ongoing chronicle of the economic, social, and personal upheavals happening across a transforming China. Deepening the intimacy with which he captures communities of people living amidst financial struggle and toiling for little money in exploitative conditions, <em>Youth (Spring)</em> is a remarkable account of rural migrant workers employed in textile factories in Zhili, a town outside Shanghai. Over the course of five years, Wang follows various groups of people, most of them in their twenties, as they labor over their clothes-making, interact in the cramped dormitories where they live after hours, bargain (often fruitlessly) for better wages, and create emotional bonds and relationships with one another. As the title suggests, this film is specifically about the lives of the young, forcefully and humanely depicting—with its director’s customary patience and unassuming formal rigor—the consequences of the country’s rapid growth on the minds and bodies of a new generation of workers.</p>
<p>María, a new mother and writer, is transfixed by the disturbing case of a woman who drowned her infant twins, prompting her own journey through the complexities of motherhood.</p>
<p>Together with her sister Justė’s family, Ernesta, her husband Lukas, and their son Kristupas are spending their weekend at a country house after her husband’s victory in a mixed-martial arts tournament.</p>
<p>Gian fights the darkness caused by a sudden amnesia. Miriam, the daughter he does not recognize, gives him a diary he wrote in his twenties.</p>
<p>Rebecca is a girl healer whose fame attracts flocks to her father Lawrence Byrne's mission deep in the Amazon jungle. Rebecca and Byrne are dragged into an escalating conflict.</p>
<p>As Akın loses touch with his true self, his mind shifts into another reality. The streets of heaped districts, where evil became banal and mercy perished, are now home to ‘devils’ and ‘demons’.</p>
<p>25-year-old Merey lives in Almaty where she meets Nurlan. He invites her to his friend Bakyt's birthday party in the mountains, and a very long night ensues.</p>
<p>After escaping from gym class, seventeen-year-old Simon finds himself on the banks of a river with a group of teenagers. Amidst the floating air mattresses and pointless chatter, time passes as sluggishly as the river water.</p>
<p>Leo, a twenty-seven-year-old engineer, must give up his father's agricultural land - a farmer who committed suicide three years earlier - to a rare metal drilling company. But strange phenomena lead him to believe that the construction site is polluting the river of his childhood... He then embarks on a hallucinatory investigation that will confront him with his grief.</p>
<p>A collection of short stories showcasing the wide variety of evil behaviour human beings are capable of.</p>
<p>On a remote volcanic island that everybody wants to leave, little Nana learns to stay. Her mother, Nia, went into exile right after she was born and Nana grows up in the family of her father. One day, the family learns that Nia is ill. Nana begins to develop high fevers and is sent to the foot of a volcano for treatment. There she encounters a world steeped in magical realism, between dreams and reality. Later, when Nana is a teenager, her mother Nia finally returns to the island.</p>
<p>When young Gonga and his cousin Bart find a suitcase full of rusty crosses in a scrapyard, Bart gets the idea to turn them into neon crucifixes.</p>
<p>Through an intimate reconstruction of an important phone call, When The Phone Rang investigates dislocation and the nature of remembering. In the protagonist's eleven year old mind the phone call erases her entire country, history, and identity and hides its existence in books, films and memories of those born before 1995.</p>
<p>Melrick is an unruly young boy who spends his summer in French Guiana at his grandmother's house to escape his turbulent daily life in Stains, France. At the end of his stay, he plays the drum to revive the memory of his late uncle, Lucas Diomar, who died in tragic circumstances. Despite a wave of murders of young men shaking the headlines, Melrick becomes aware of his place in a family destroyed by irreparable grief.</p>
<p>A dreamlike journey into the wounded psyche of a young shepherd, Achraf, and his ability to overcome the traumatic death of his cousin.</p>
<p><span style="font-size:12pt"><span style="background-color:white"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span style="font-size:10.0pt"><span style="font-family:"OpenSans",serif"><span style="color:black">Intimate and fragmented moments unfold in a community of zoos and animal rescue centers. As histories of these institutions are uncovered, dedicated workers commit both day and night to caring for the remaining enclosed animals, fostering a mutual bond that transcends imagined boundaries between human and animal. </span></span></span></span></span></span></p>
<p>Olivia and The Clouds explores love's complexities through a Rashomon effect. Olivia, haunted by a past love, hides it under her bed. She trades flowers with this ghost in exchange for comforting rain clouds.</p>
<p>Everyday digital devices are no longer just tools; they have become gateways to a new multi-layered reality, an exponentially growing augmented universe that we experience largely without a physical connection. As human beings made of flesh, we now spend most of our time in a digital landscape, seeking happiness, wealth, relationships, knowledge, and experiences. What is today’s reality made of?</p>
<p>After a lesson about cosmic archaeologists and a water fight in the schoolyard Elly steals Faye’s soul and Faye gives Elly a rare birthday present.</p>
<p>A family and their servants have spent their lives wandering the land as nomads under the leadership of The Father.</p>
<p>On the Impossibility of an Homage is centered on Ion Tugearu, one of the greatest Romanian dancers and choreographers, called “the prince of Romanian ballet”.</p>
<p>A couple is confronted with a question that tests the boundaries of their relationship: what is your deepest, darkest fantasy?</p>
<p>Rhys, a dedicated people pleaser, winds up at their boss' gender reveal party with their two partners. The trans couple soon realize that they are dealing with more than they were prepared for and their ability to survive the event comes into question.</p>
<p>In an old Soviet recording studio, musicians attempt to record a composition based on Pushkin’s A Feast in Time of Plague.</p>
<p>A wintry poem of Nordic nature. The sun is low, days shorten. Birds fly South, porcelain animals and insects hide from the freezing wind and snow.</p>
<p>A short tale of power, utopia, and madness, seen through the figure of King Ludwig II of Bavaria.</p>
<p>Hoda, an Iranian refugee in Germany, lives with her boyfriend, Hadi. An unexpected pregnancy leads her to examine common beliefs regarding gender roles in a relationship and challenges the current social norms surrounding feminine bodies and motherhood.</p>
<p>Young Brett must navigate the underbelly of the Johannesburg gambling world as a seemingly harmless horse-racing bet jeopardizes the surprise he’s prepared for his father’s birthday.</p>
<p>An aimless teen and his underage girlfriend sell illegally brewed cocktails called “Nutcrackers” on a beach in the Bronx to get by.</p>
<p>In 1998, two high school girls sent a letter to the first-ever women’s newspaper in Iran.</p>
<p>Under a scorching sun, Charlie is bored stiff and dreams of going to the seaside. But she's forced to stay in a dingy motel with her cousin Jess, who slouches in her deckchair. The two teenagers don't get along and bicker at every opportunity. On the radio, the monotone voice of an eminent researcher in collapsology predicts the imminent end of the world. The pool is empty, the sun is beating down and the tension is mounting: the ecological apocalypse announced on the airwaves suddenly becomes real.</p>
<p>In the film, ‘The Cavalry’, the director travels to Israel, where she was raised, during September 2023 to film the public protests against the Israeli government. During that time she is given access to a secretive section of the police unit, the cavalry, where she documents the desensitization of the imported Friesian horses. The film consists of documentation contrasting horses in a rural setting, the West Bank, an Israeli police unit and manipulated archival footage, depicting a transformation from sensitive singular entities to amalgamations.</p>
<p>Eli, a 15-year-old teenager, gets ready in the school restroom to go on her first date with someone she has never seen before.</p>
<p>A family of four and their dog make their way to a seaside hotel in Kui Buri, Thailand. What appears to be an ordinary vacation turns into a series of interactions that betray an unspoken tension in their relationships. The next day, complexities unfold in a cave housing Buddha statues.</p>
<p>Between scootering and self-development, a young boy in search of his identity explores his relationship to his body and his emotions.</p>
<p>Tonight, Naomi’s long-term partner reveals to her that he will return to monogamy with one of his recent connections. Confronted with the harsher realisites of non-monogamy, Naomi heads out to the streets of Amsterdam for a night of diverse intimacies, to remember why it is that she committed to this kind of relationship structure in the first place. And as she looks, listens and talks her way through the city’s cobbled streets, is the night getting longer, or is it just the lights from people’s windows making slow conversation with the moon.</p>
<p>A strict examination process regulates the population's meat consumption: those who want to eat meat must kill an animal. The young reporter Elie sets out to document the process at the slaughterhouse. However, only those who participate are allowed in. Elie must confront the act of killing. As she stands face to face with the animal, her convictions are put to the test.</p>
<p>What remains of a mother after years of domestic violence? What remains of her body, her dignity and her strength? Surely words, memory and a few dance steps that can still be passed down.</p>
<p>An investigation into urban space from the perspective of young people in Lyon.</p>
<p>Feed the monster, have a cup of tea, and if it's your first day - don't pay attention to anything peculiar in Sector 3.<br /> Nick shows a new worker around the crumbling Progress Mining Company, while Mary tries to get it shut for repairs.</p>
<p>A summer walk through Zurich ends in a police check. Prison ruins become parks, old buildings make way for new ones. On May 1st, rubber bullets fly and one person goes blind.</p>
<p>Dan is a young man who spends most of his time in his flat, always listening to electronic music. Outside, he feels disconnected and only finds solace in nightclubs, where techno music and drugs make him feel free. One day, a baby's gaze changes his world perception.</p>
<p>Sky Rogers tries to fashion a failed boy band as its biggest icon slips away. Will the manager stare at the heavens while his stars slip away? Success stories, giant lobsters and cosmic love; these are the watchwords of Sky Rogers’ tragic epic.</p>
<p>She scrolls through profiles on a dating app. After meticulously preparing the meeting place, a man arrives.</p>
<p>An auditor, a propagandist, and a foreign teacher untangle their lives in the confines of a faculty dormitory. </p>
<p>Overcome with hunger, a girl trades her brother for a bag of rice. When her hunger is sated, she comes to her senses. But it is too late.</p>
<p>Behind the wheel of her little car, Nicky seems to be on a mission. Roads pass by but the ideas in her head remain unfathomable. A meal, the discovery of a rifle, chance encounters: the mystery remains unsolved.</p>
<p>Candice's life takes an explosive turn as she undergoes daily detonations for three months, peaking at seven blasts in one day, accumulating a staggering 192 explosions.</p>
<p>Two barrel organ players roam the streets of Juárez, a district of Mexico City. They play their music and ask passers-by for money, while a couple of tourists from Paris set up an insurance fraud…</p>
<p>My Life is Wind is the story of Myriam’s first weeks as a refugee in an alien land told in the form of an intimate letter.</p>
<p>Practice, Practice, Practice' is what Richard Bradley did three times before he took down the confederate flag flying over City Hall in San Francisco, California in the 1980s.</p>
<p>Revolving Rounds is a cyclical film in both form and content. Shot at an agricultural field on the outskirts of Vienna, Johann Lurf and Christina Jauernik’s 3D short begins as it ends, tracking a planimetric path alongside three greenhouses as the early morning sun beams across the surrounding lands</p>
<p>Suleiman and Mona are a couple who lead a solitary life in which they care for animals and trees and have constant heated discussions about their children’s life choices. However, one day, their routine is disturbed when a stranger shows around, calling to mind a painful past.</p>
<p>US art dealer returns to his native Germany for a visit and is attracted by Nazi propaganda.</p>
<p>The rise and fall of a corrupt politician, who makes his friends richer and retains power by dint of a populist appeal.</p>
<p>A commander receives a citation for an attack on Erwin Rommel's headquarters, which is actually undeserved, as the commander is unfit for his job. On top of that, unbeknownst to him, his wife is having an affair with one of his officers.</p>
<p>Bob Naughton and Eddie Connolly are identical-twin brothers who were separated in infancy. Bob is raised by a rich lawyer and has all the advantages, but is a drunk with no moral character. Eddie is a pianist in a speakeasy but a man of high character. Bob commits a murder and Eddie is blamed and faces life in prison.</p>
<p>A domineering woman marries a wealthy man for his money, and then uses her position to further her own ambitions for money and power.</p>
<p>The Stooges are key witnesses at a murder trial. Their friend and colleague, Gail Tempest (Suzanne Kaaren), is a dancer at the Black Bottom cafe where the Stooges are musicians. She is accused of killing Kirk Robin (a play on "Who Killed Cock Robin?").</p>
<p>Frances Ryan, living high-and-free-wheeling life as the wife of gangster "Smiley" Ryan, spends some time behind bars as a result of her husband's activities, and, when she gets out, realizes she has been a bad example for her kid-sister, Jennie White, and five of her friends. With the aid of her old boyfriend, she manages to divert them from their juvenile-delinquent path leading to disaster for each.</p>
<p>In Arizona, Frank Slayton's gang robs a stagecoach and kidnaps Ben Warren's fiancée, prompting Warren to pursue Slayton.</p>
<p>A powerful rancher always protects his wild adult son by paying for damages and bribing witnesses, until his crimes become too serious to rectify.</p>
<p>An executive lets an attractive cook talk him into taking a job as butler.</p>
<p>When a young woman with dreams of fame rents a billboard to advertise herself, her life changes overnight.</p>
<p>Two innocent men are wrongly convicted of murder and sentenced to death. The fiancée of one of them convinces a police detective of their innocence, and together they try to find the real killer before the men's execution date.</p>
<p>Bill takes Trina into his depression camp cabin. Later, just as he finds showgirl LaRue who will support him, Trina becomes pregnant.</p>
<p>A unassuming greeting card poet from a small town in Vermont heads to New York City upon inheriting a massive fortune and is immediately hounded by those who wish to take advantage of him.</p>
<p>Claude is a ruthless and efficient contract killer - until he finds his next target is a woman.</p>
<p>After submitting a story of her beautiful sister, a woman assumes her identity to maintain the attention of a playboy publisher.</p>
<p>Sisters Ruth and Eileen Sherwood move from Ohio to New York in the hopes of building their careers. The two end up living in a dismal basement apartment in Greenwich Village, where a parade of odd characters are constantly breezing in and out.</p>
<p>Amid murders and kidnappings, a private detective is hired to find a missing girl whose family inheritance contains two rare collectible song recordings worth a lot of money.</p>
<p>Set during the Nuremberg-like trial of Nazi Wilhelm Grimm (played by Alexander Knox), None Shall Escape tells through flashback the story of how a bitter German World War I vet evolved into a Third Reich commander responsible for the deportation of Jews and other minorities. Finished 18 months before the end of World War II, the film was Hollywood’s first to deal directly with the Holocaust and Nazi atrocities against the Jews. Director De Toth had witnessed Nazi aggression up close while shooting newsreels in Europe during the invasion of Poland in 1939. (86 mins., 4K DCP)</p>
<p>A millionaire vacationing in Mexico falls for a local girl and sets out to win her.</p>
<p>A lonely widowers life changes when he marries a young woman who resents his frugal ways and hatches a plan to murder him.</p>
<p>Emotions are ignited among the complacent townsfolk when a handsome drifter arrives in a small Kansas community on the morning of the Labor Day picnic.</p>
<p>A bounty hunter escorts a killer to be tried for murder, with the killer's brother after them.</p>
<p>After the fall of Tobruk in 1942, during the Allied retreat in the Libyan desert, an American tank picks-up a motley group of survivors but they face advancing Germans and a lack of water.</p>
<p>Police Sergeant Dave Bannion is investigating the apparent suicide of a corrupt cop, then is suddenly ordered to stop. Driven to unravel the mystery, Bannion continues probing—and is soon on a single-handed collision course with a powerful underworld led by Mike Lagana and his cold-blooded henchman.</p>
<p>Expectant parents Joe and Betsy Bennett anxiously await the arrival of their new baby. Then after the baby arrives, they discover the unpleasant side of parenting: sleepless nights, extra bills and no more free time.</p>
<p>Peter is a refugee who wants to make a better life for himself in America, but he doesn't have the proper papers. Desperate for entry, he jumps ship and flees to New York to search for a World War II veteran whom he helped during the war.</p>
<p>Police seek a smuggler while doctors, unaware she's the same person, desperately comb unprotected New York for a smallpox carrier.</p>
<p>A trapper and his two partners work as scouts for a remote army fort where they witness an incompetent colonel's decision to throw his small unprepared garrison against Red Cloud's sizable Sioux force.</p>
<p>An escaped prisoner has to prove his innocence to a stuffy law professor with the help of a spirited school teacher.</p>
<p>Treasury Department agent Frank Warren takes on the case of a mob leader who has evaded paying taxes on his ill-gotten gains.</p>
<p>A long-lost gold treasure, believed buried in the sand dunes of the fabulous Walking Hills, attracts adventurers Jim Carey, a rancher; Shep, rodeo rider wanted for murder; Old Will; Chalk; Frazee, a detective hunting Shep; Johnny, a cowboy and Josh, an entertainer. Uninvited, Chris Jackson (Ella Raines, loved by both Jim and Shep, joins the treasure-hunters. Hard work, suspicion, danger and intrigues and hatreds culminate in a grim fight with shovels, and a raging desert sand-storm leads to the conclusion.</p>
<p>Ordinary man-on-the-street Arthur Ferguson Jones leads a regular life, but one day everything changes when he is mistaken for a criminal named Mannion--and is arrested. The resemblance is so striking that the police give him a special pass to avoid a similar mistake. The real Mannion sees an opportunity to steal the pass, and chaos results.</p>
<p>Cassie moves to New York and jumps from one job to another until she lands a modeling gig.</p>
<p>A prim and proper widow who has succeeded him as mayor of a provincial Vermont town hires a worldly New York sculptor for her husband's statue.</p>
<p>A flamboyant Broadway impresario who has fallen on hard times tries to get his former lover, now a Hollywood diva, to return and resurrect his failing career.</p>
<p>Dialogue and songs are all in rhyme (including one identical song), in the manner of later Columbia film "Woman Haters." Jack Osterman is smitten with a woman on a park bench, and cannot stop saying the word "Umpa" for the rest of the film, which involves his treatment by a doctor and his singing and dancing temptress nurses.</p>
<p>Jane Baird and her kid sister, Edie are released from the county detention home, where they had been jailed for vagrancy. They are approached by the Head Talent Scout/Pimp, Tap Mason, in a system of motels operated by Mrs. Burke, aka The Widow. Mason offers them a job in the tourist industry which they readily accept. They are given clothes and shipped out to a Middle West motel, a combination tourist camp, bar and restaurant. Their job description, as outlined by Mason, is to flag expensive cars in which men are driving, and persuade said men to spend the night at one of the Widow's motels. Jane's first pick-up is Rocky Stone, out touring around while learning his father's jewelry business. Rocky agrees to stop at the motel, but Jane leaves him when he gets the impression that her job description covers more ground than just flagging cars. Meanwhile, Tap adds thief to his resume and steals $60,000 in jewels from Rocky's car. Rocky, suspecting Jane of the theft, telephones the Widow, who informs him that she can ruin him and his father's business if he pursues the issue further. The angry Rocky searches for Jane, and finally finds her at another flag-waving station. Mason sees them together; the Widow sends for the girl and orders Jane beaten by her strong-arm squad. Edie is killed by Mason. The heart-broken Jane turns to Rocky for help. Rocky lures Mason to a lonely house where the mobster is turned over to the other girls in the Widow's employ. There is no love lost between the girls and Mason, and they work him over and Mason confesses to the murder and also reveals the inside story of the Widow's racket.</p>
<p>A NYC police-detective rescues a down-and-out showgirl from a bad situation, gets her a job in the 'Follies", and falls in love with her. Then, as he is about to lead her to the altar, he has to arrest her for a murder she did not commit. He sets out to find the real killer and clear her name.</p>
<p>Ralph Ince is Roller McCray, a steelworker turned ruthless tycoon whose tough business methods leads a rival (Philip Strange) to commit suicide. The widow (Aileen Pringle), believing she can ruin Ince by using his own methods, conspires with her husband's former partner (Sam De Grasse), but a strong friendship between Ince and Pringle's young son (Freddie Burke Frederick) changes things dramatically.</p>
<p>Button Gwinett Brown is a freshman congressman on a mission to rid Washington of corruption. He quickly runs afoul of the powerful Senator Norton, while falling for the granddaughter of the kindly senator Wylie. He then teams up with some members of the Bonus Army to foil the villains' plans.</p>
<p>A sadistic prison warden takes out her sexual frustration on her women inmates. While a caring physician tries to improve the jail's brutal atmosphere, a pair of rebellious inmates take matters into their own hands.</p>
<p>In a country, munitions manufacturers maneuver a wallpaper hanger to become dictator with his compatriots as his personal staff.</p>
<p>A troubled child summons the courage to help a friendly alien escape from Earth and return to his home planet.</p>
<p>Tim Blake Nelson stars as "Bang Bang" Rozyski, an eccentric retired pugilist obsessed with rectifying the sins of his past.</p>
<p>Lovecraft and Pessoa were among the most influential writers of the 20th century. <em>Cartas Telepáticas</em> is a film, created with AI images, that explores the invisible links between the unique points of view of these two authors.</p>
<p>Excelsior, a ski-resort without snow. A missing bride-to-be, a course for men in search of meaning, a couple in crisis, a Carnival monster, marmot hunters and a glacier in peril: the uncertain future of an Alpine community hinges on its ability to face up to its contradictions when everything collapses.</p>
<p>Follow a student of nursing palliative care, who is plagued by a trauma from her past that has a disorienting effect on her present, her relationship, her career and her ability to function.</p>
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<p>For over a hundred years, the Social Democratic Party and trade unions shaped a Swiss working-class culture based on solidarity. A culture that collapsed in just one decade during the 1970s. Today, there are no more "workers". Today, worker means "foreigner". Documentary essay by Samir, then a migrant boy in the working-class town of Dübendorf near Zurich.</p>
<p>A young woman contending with profound rejection due to her looks.</p>
<p>Estelle escapes domestic violence to join her mother before a family reunion. Together they share emotions and memories.</p>
<p>Eight Postcards from Utopia is a found-footage documentary assembled exclusively out of post-socialist Romanian advertisements. In bringing together these documents of Romania's long transition period, they are made to speak about life, love and death, about the body and human frailty, about nature and the supernatural, about recent history, and, of course, about socialism and capitalism. A film between found poetry and an outdated encyclopaedia, between trash art and Summa theologiae.</p>
<p>This film serves as a tribute to Andy Warhol. It reflects Jude's signature style, blending contemporary social critique with historical reflections. Although specific plot details are scarce, the film's presentation and thematic focus highlight the director's continued exploration of Romanian history and society through a provocative and artistic lens.</p>
<p>I had to return home after almost two years of being away as another migrant in the Venezuelan diaspora. My ill mother awaits so we can embrace one last time.</p>
<p>What makes Jamaica so special, multicultural, raw and spiritual? New Yorker Khalik Allah’s visual prayer and ode bares the Caribbean country’s soul in wonderfully unpolished, analogue images. Jamaica – blessed with fertile soil, yet cursed with a horrific history of slavery – proves a veritable melting pot of cultures, religions and traditions.</p>
<p>This short documentary delves deep into the vibrant yet vulnerable world of queens, drags, and transgender individuals. Within the heart of a society marred by prejudice and homophobia, these unique performers don their radiant personas, revealing tales of courage, heartbreak, and undying passion. The documentary is an ode to their resilience, weaving stories of dreams realized in the spotlight while confronting unsettling truths in the dark. Through personal narratives and onstage revelations, this film juxtaposes the glittering world of drag and performance with the harsh reality of societal discrimination, unfolding a tapestry of triumphs, tears, and transcendence.</p>
<p>The Asojá the bird-god-woman of Ayoreo culture, who can transmute her spirit—flies, bringing with her memories of the past, present and future. She was a tiger; she was a plant; she was a jaguar: today, she is Eami, a five-year-old girl whose name means forest and world. She has lost her own kind a people displaced from their shrinking forest home. They have become coñone an Ayoreo word that translates as “insensate,” the term they use to refer to those outside their culture. In a trance, Eami hears the voices of her grandparents and is joined by a lizard, who guides her. He knows she must leave the forest. She must leave everything behind, so she will not die there.</p>
<p>Mamuti, a young housewife, invites a film crew to enter and discover her home. While preparing the meal for her Papuchi, she tells them how meeting him changed her life. Time passes, and little by little, her trust grows and she tells them her most intimate secrets.</p>
<p>A collaborative film between dancer-choreographer Linda Isabelle François and filmmaker Wendy Desert. The film intricately blends song, poetry, trance, and ritual to explore themes of resilience and cultural identity. Set against the backdrop of Haitian traditions, it portrays the dynamic interplay between movement and storytelling, capturing the essence of spiritual and cultural continuity</p>
<p>Bionico is a hopeless romantic addicted to crack, who, along with Calvita, his drug partner, tries to find a job, a house, and a wedding ring to marry La Flaca, his fiancée. But most importantly, he must quit drugs and stay clean by the time she comes out of the rehabilitation center where she's detoxing, a mission impossible for him. It's a love story, a tale of failed relationships, and the importance of friendships.</p>
<p>Camila is fifteen years old and is going through the worst moment of her life: her mother is in a coma and she is forced to live with her father, whom she hates. She tries to find refuge in Diego, her first love, but everything about him is chaotic and strange.</p>
<p>In the daytime, Vicky goes fishing out on the sea, in the evening she runs a little bar on the blustery beach of her small village in Ecuador. The silences, emptiness, and meager catches all feed into the sense of unfulfilled longing that pervades her life, but The Beach of Enchaquirados also glows with an irresistible and liberating warmth.</p>
<p>Tiberio, an old miner, is dying. His son Leo, whom he does not accept for his homosexuality, returns to his mining town to say goodbye.</p>
<p>In Bolivia’s rural desert, where the most important present is that of the wind moving among potato flowers and animals, the people who work the land, those who built ancient artifacts and sacred objects and the musicians who play monseñada, in the city streets have one thing in common—manual labor.</p>
<p>Visiting the family home in Caracas for the summer, Ena takes up her place again with her grandmother, Mamama, and her father. He literally lives in books and continues the crazy enterprise of saving, without anyone knowing exactly from what or why, the Venezuelan literary heritage. Following the discovery of a postcard hidden in a book, Ena sets off in search of the mysterious work of a writer, Rafael Coronado, who is said to have written under many pseudonyms. Los capitulos perdudos does not explore these promising intrigues. On the contrary, Lorena Alvarado sketches them out as so many false leads and prefers to leave the narrative dimension hanging. In an economy of retention, Los capitulos perdudos installs atmospheres, stases that result in a gentle melancholy. The character of the grandmother irremediably loses her memory. The young woman seeks to remember; her father runs after the rare works that he still has to find in the mass of dead leaves that books for Venezuela seem to have become – some great readers are dead, others have gone to the other side of the Atlantic. We learn little about the socio-political situation. She is an off-screen person who penetrates the family bubble through echoes, allusions, ricochets. The filmmaker deposits a touch of sadness on the imposing libraries, in the large hollowed-out rooms of the house, the desolate urban spaces. A diffuse feeling of abandonment then hangs over everyday life. From what story, intimate or collective, do the lost chapters of the film's title come? There remains what can be preserved from being swallowed up in the torpor of summer, which we feel threatens the characters to their very core: the tenderness between the members of this family, a motorcycle ride which offers to our lucky eyes the vital energy of the frescoes of Caracas, the modest sharing of a love for literature, a poem saved from oblivion.</p>
<p>Eight-year-old Feliciano spends his days herding alpacas in a remote region of the Andes. His only companions are Ronaldo, a young alpaca, and Rambo, an old dog. Feliciano chats with them about football and the Peruvian national team’s World Cup qualifying matches. But behind this apparently monotonous and peaceful routine lies a threatening reality: a contaminated lake and his parents’ deep-seated anxieties. A mining company is pressuring the community to sell their land and is resorting to radical means of intimidation: several alpacas are found with their throats slit. The authorities ignore all pleas for help; Feliciano and the village are on their own. When Ronaldo disappears one day, Feliciano embarks on a desperate search. Meanwhile, his parents and neighbours band together to take action against the company...</p>
<p>A young Dominican woman is forced to reconsider her journey to the United States to be with her fiancé when a dark family secret is exposed.</p>
<p>A group of Central American dairy workers in the Northeast of the United States reminisce about their relationship to the land, labor practices, and their home countries. Hours, days, weeks, and years pass by and the repetitiveness of the labor makes way to new families in a non-place. These workers, despite their initial dreams, never come back home, where many of their families forget about them, or are lost to time. The film is an exploration of multispecies exploited by capitalistic forces, humans and cows, and questions the technologies we have created to maximize efficiency over liberation. It is not all lost, however. They have left the farms.</p>
<p>Esther is 6 years old and lives a carefree life until her father abuses her. A small metal box appears in her life and it does not leave. While trying to get rid of it, she discovers her mother’s music box. But her mother doesn’t seem to see her daughter’s metal box, nor hers… until she meets Farah. Three Leaves: three women’s stories that explore the roots of identity, resistance and sisterhood.</p>
<p>Disenchanted by the modern world, Michael Lees heads into the forest of Dominica with some basic survival gear, religious texts and a camera. “Why did man ever leave the forest? And what makes for a good life?” Just as he starts to acclimatize to his new life - the unexpected; Category 5 Hurricane Maria, one of the top ten strongest Atlantic hurricanes in history, makes a direct landfall. Michael is caught out in the open in a palm leaf and bamboo hut. With the nation in ruins, the forest destroyed, and essential services knocked out islandwide, the entire country must now return to a past way of life if they hope to survive.</p>
<p>Vidor fell in love with the movies as a child. In 1913, using a camera made from a cigar box, Vidor filmed a hurricane in his hometown of Galveston, Texas, and sold it to a newsreel company. Two years later, he and his new wife Florence struck out for Hollywood. Florence Vidor soon began making a name for herself as an actress, while her husband wrote movie scenarios and took any film work he could get. He wrote 52 scripts before he sold a single one. In 1919, he made his feature film directing debut with The Turn of the Road, which did well enough to attract offers from several major studios. He chose to open his own small studio, Vidor Village, but experienced no success. He then accepted a job at Metro Pictures, and, in 1924, when Metro merged with Goldwyn Pictures and Louis B. Mayer Productions, Vidor went along. MGM remained Vidor’s professional home for the next 20 years.</p>
<p>Part-time model Valentine (Irène Jacob) meets a retired judge (Jean-Louis Trintignant) who lives in her neighborhood after she runs over his dog. At first the judge gifts Valentine with the dog, but her possessive boyfriend won't allow her to keep it. When she returns with the dog to the judge's house, she discovers him listening in on his neighbors' phone conversations. At first Valentine is outraged, but her debates with the judge over his behavior soon leads them to form a strange bond.</p>
<p>An unemployed single mother becomes a legal assistant and almost single-handedly brings down a California power company accused of polluting a city's water supply.</p>
<p>After his wealthy family prohibits him from marrying the woman he is in love with, Devdas Mukherjee's life spirals further and further out of control as he takes up alcohol and a life of vice to numb the pain.</p>
<p>Janet Frame was a brilliant child who, as a teen, was misdiagnosed with schizophrenia. Explore Janet's discovery of the world and her life in Europe as her books are published to acclaim.</p>
<p>With the help of a German bounty-hunter, a freed slave sets out to rescue his wife from a brutal plantation owner in Mississippi.</p>
<p>Young woman is slowly driven to near insanity by an inner desire for a passionate existence, while she lives a dull life at her grandmother's country home. The grandmother recalls how her own daughter lost hold of sanity and died on her lover's grave - and she begins to see similarities in her granddaughter's behavior.</p>
<p>The director Victor decides to bring Chekhov's play 'The Three Sisters' to the screen. He summons his actresses to rehearse in a city near Lake Geneva.</p>
<p>As part of the Half a Century of Locarno, Thoughts on the Future project, Idrissa Ouedraogo shares his vision of the future of cinema. “The state of cinema in the world is a vast question… I prefer to talk about my cinema, African cinema and its relationship with the world.”</p>
<p>A nurse falls in love with her patient and secretly marries him. When treating another patient, he falls in love with her and, pretending to be in agony, asks for one last wish: to marry him, and she accepts.</p>
<p>Samba Traore returns to his village flush with funds. Soon enough he manages to charm the beautiful Saratou into marrying him and, along with another friend, builds the first bar their village has ever seen. But his conscience keeps nagging him and the police are on the lookout for the "gas station murderer."</p>
<p>Images of two women, two men, and a gray cat form a montage of rapid bits of movement. A woman is in a bedroom, another wears an apron: they work with their hands, occasionally looking up. A man enters a room, a woman smiles. He sits, another man sits and smokes. The cat stretches. There are close-ups of each. The light is dim; a filter accentuates red. A bare foot stands on a satin sheet. A woman disrobes. She pets the cat.</p>
<p>The prelude to Dog Star Man (1964), an experimental film wherein a man climbs a mountain along with his dog.</p>
<p>A "found foliage" film composed of insects, leaves, and other detritus sandwiched between two strips of perforated tape.</p>
<p>An experimental film by Stan Brakhage combining colors, lights, and footage of wars, medical documentaries, cartoons, forests, and other.</p>
<p>This hand-painted work, six years in the making (37 in the study of The Divine Comedy) demonstrates the earthly conditions of ‘Hell’, ‘Purgatory’ (or ‘Transition’), and ‘Heaven’ (or ‘existence is song’, which is the closest I’d presume heaven to be from my experience). – Stan Brakhage.</p>
<p>A short film by Stan Brakhage in which New York City's Third Avenue elevated train is filmed before its destruction.</p>
<p>An experimental short film of flashing images made by Stan Brakhage.</p>
<p>Stan Brakhage films the birth of his first child, Myrrena.</p>
<p>A look at the lives of several men and women in their 30s as they confront the slim gains of the "revolutionary" sixties.</p>
<p>Gianni and Marietta get along wonderfully as lovers, but not as a couple. Despite being married, they agree to become lovers again.</p>
<p>A group of eleven women organize a soccer team, as a manifesto against machismo.</p>
<p>A rock star-turned-bum, his vocal chords severed at the height of his career for the love of a woman, reclaims his forgotten past after viewing a music video and seeks revenge against the mobster who maimed him.</p>
<p>The monkey child Akiko lives in the zoo, but his family sends him on a big mission: he is supposed to go out into the world and get his relatives out of the forest. Together they want to free the animals from the zoo</p>
<p>Emile is an unhappy little vampire, doing a job he detests, in a world plunged into perpetual gloom. He serves a despotic mistress who loathes wrinkles, in the most extreme way.</p>
<p>Marine, an obese young girl, suffers from the way other people look at her and from the heat of summer. She dreams of a better life among the penguins on an ice floe...</p>
<p>In this Italian attempt to rival Disney's features, 3 brothers have adventures at school, on a deserted island, as concert performers, and in the most acclaimed episode, at carnival time in Venice.</p>
<p>When Alma discovers that her father's company plans to demolish the playground, she gets determined to save green areas. Alma has no choice but to join forces with her worst enemies - Luna's skate gang.</p>
<p>A girl who can see colors in people's hearts joins a band with two other people.</p>
<p>Madeleine the Human Cannonball and her husband are carnies. Their lives, like their show, seem to be perfectly under control. But in reality, Madeleine is unhappy and wants to break out of her routine. Without saying a word, she leaves her husband and becomes the Bearded Lady. Time passes, but their love for each other does not die.</p>
<p>Quebec, 1980s. Ten-year-old Jo, inspired by her cartoon heroine, dreams of saving her unhappy father.</p>
<p>Armand works on the assembly-line of a tinned pasta factory. One evening he opens up a tin of ravioli for dinner. Much to his surprise, a Genie jumps forth, promising to fulfill any two wishes.</p>
<p>Ben is a normal 12-year-old boy: he goes to school, plays in a band with his friends, and looks after a monkey with his veterinarian mother. But most of all, he likes food – both cooking and eating it. He ignores comments about his weight – until, that is, he is told it could cause serious health problems. What’s it like to grow up being called fat? And is a diet the answer for everything? Kristina Dufková’s feature-length stop-motion debut, based on Mikaël Ollivier’s novel <em>La Vie, en gros</em>, was shown at the Annecy film festival. Working with a sympathetic sense of humor, this sensitive family film characterized by a remarkable use of music and visuals explores the issue of childhood obesity without slipping into stereotyped views of the subject. </p>
<p>After losing his mother, a young boy is sent to an orphanage with other orphans his age where he begins to learn the meaning of trust and true love.</p>
<p>This animated short about men and hair tells the story of little bald Léon and of his grandfather, an old man with a bushy black beard. A thing of legend, the grandfather's beard seems endowed with magic powers. It even turns caterpillars into butterflies! But Léon's grandmother wants to cut off the unkempt beard and regain the distinguished-looking man she married, who wore just a tidy mustache. When the old man's asleep, grandmother prowls, scissors in hand, but Léon's keeping a watchful eye on her. As long as grandpa lives, the beard will stay.</p>
<p>In the early 1950s, on the banks of the River Marne, François, a young 11-year-old boy, is intrigued to discover that his parents are building a boat in their little garden, a replica of the famous sailor Joshua Slocum’s sailboat. As the years go by, in post-war France, François drifts from adolescence to adulthood. While the boat is being built, and with a tender and poetic look at his mother and father, the young boy embarks on his own adventure, one that will take him down his own passionate route of the sea and drawing.</p>
<p>Ludo was born with a drawer instead of his bellybutton. His parents, an alcoholic father and a depressive mother use the drawer as a dustbin. One day, his mother brings him to the doctor who diagnoses that Ludo isn't a child but a piece of furniture.</p>
<p>Growing up in a loving middle-class family in Tehran, my older sister Nasreen used to fill our apartment with her beautiful voice. She loved music and gave me the courage to become a filmmaker. Today, Nasreen is trapped in an arranged marriage to Mohamad, who disapproved of her singing. She’s a housewife with two kids, suffering from depression and loneliness. As she struggles with her identity, her lost passion for singing ignites--a passion forbidden to women in Iran. Filming my sister for the past seven years, this was my turn supporting her.</p>
<p>Russian war in Ukraine turns houses into dust and the dead into numbers. In the midst of the ongoing invasion, new structures of care are emerging to protect those who're alive and recover those who aren't. Unvarnished and unforgiving, DEAR BEAUTIFUL BELOVED documents this tireless work, which must never become a normality.</p>
<p>One’s own family is not always easy. In Berlin, Cologne and the Ghanaian Accra, we go in search with afro-german Akosua of her own identity and belonging in a multicultural context.</p>
<p>In the mountains of Los Altos de Chiapas, the shepherdesses live in deep bond with the mountains. As you descend, a city spreads out in a valley that was once a large wetland, and the mountains that shelter it are suffering the strongest devastation they have ever experienced. Do we belong to a place? or Does a place belong to us? Like a ball of yarn that starts to unravel, this question unfolds a series of connections; from the link to the Tzotzil women with nature to the reflection of one's own work as a documentary filmmaker.</p>
<p>Ulla and Didi are the parents of a murderer. Their son probably killed hundreds of people as a nurse and was convicted of 87 murders.<br /> <br /> How do they live their lives after what they have done? Are they still allowed to love their son? Are parents ever allowed to stop loving their child? How do they manage to reclaim their own lives in the face of this unforgivable guilt?</p>
<p>In 1993, a young boy named Emmanuel confides in his parents about being molested by the new village priest, Hubert, but they keep his allegations a secret.</p>
<p>My parents want us to inherit their life’s work. We must talk. About expectations and ideals. About privileges and burdens. But also, about money</p>
<p>After years of mass tourism in the Alps, a rethinking is slowly taking place. Whether researchers, artists or philosophers, many are trying to approach the essence of the mountains in new ways.</p>
<p>Blackberries are often the last berry to bloom in the summer season.<br /> <br /> Based on feminist writer Tamta Melashvili’s celebrated novel, this subtle gem follows tenacious Etero, a 48-year-old woman who lives humbly in a provincial village in Georgia. Spending her days selling household goods to the local women, dreaming of a peaceful retirement and crafting jam from blackberries foraged by the river, Etero appears content and protective of her independent way of life – despite the gossip and judgement from fellow villagers. Until, unpredictably, Etero finds romance with a local deliveryman, leading to a passionate sexual awakening and signalling the long-forgotten possibility of a different life.<br /> <br /> Georgian filmmaker Elene Naveriani returns to IFFR with their third feature, <strong>Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry</strong>, supported by the festival’s Hubert Bals Fund for ground-breaking projects. Radical in its restraint and humane in its complexity, this portrait of an older woman’s place in her circle of society excels in probing the delicate nuances of tradition and modernity in present-day Georgia. Featuring an engrossing lead performance from Eka Chavleishvili and a patient sensitivity to its subject matter, Naveriani’s film sheds essential light on a strong and beautiful life that is often left invisible.</p> <p><em>– Sophie Tupholme</em></p>
<p>Four asylum seekers reenact their conversations with the authorities in a role-playing game that reverses the roles. What happens when your future depends on your ability to tell your own life story in a convincing way? In an ordinary and grey office like any other, four people are waiting to be called in for a hearing. The bureaucratic setting is closer to a theatre stage, however, for in ‘The Hearing’ the participants re-enact their own real-life conversations with the government officials who will assess their case. A Nigerian woman, a man from Cameroon, a transgender woman from Sri Lanka, and a young Afghan man all four are in the same situation with everything at stake. What happens when your future depends on your ability to tell your own life story in a convincing and compelling way? The tension between reality and staging, between role-playing and reality, does not make their life stories any less moving or relevant. In a simple but brilliant move, however, debut director Lisa Gerig reverses both the roles and the balance of power. The result is a (thought)provoking film of great dignity that uses the performative interventions not as a conceptual gesture, but to give a form to four individuals’ subjective experience of a system that is alien to most.</p>
<p>The musically gifted maid Elsie, who longs for a career as a musician, is forced into marriage with Jacob, a stable boy who dreams of owning a horse. Both have to learn that they can only escape their lack of opportunities if they team up.</p>
<p>In 1970, Bruno Breguet, in his early twenties is arrested in Israel while trying to smuggle explosives for the Palestinian resistance. During his detention he becomes radicalized and upon leaving prison joins the terrorist group Carlos. He mysteriously disappears in 1995. The film reconstructs Breguet's story by meeting the people who knew him, reflects on the means and ends of struggle and the meaning of militancy then and now.</p>
<p> </p> <p>Immediately after the birth of her child, Diane abandons her boyfriend and baby in a Zurich hospital and disappears into a Spanish city she does not know on the Mediterranean. But the changes her body is going through remind her of what she is fleeing from</p>
<p>Algarve, late 90s. Following the death of her grandmother, Milene - a strong young woman full of life despite a slight mental handicap - divides her life between her family of notables and a Cape Verdean family that keeps her going, whom she met when her grandmother died. The wind that whistles in the cranes plunges us into the world of two families against the backdrop of Portugal's recent past.</p>
<p>As her blue-blooded mother lies on her deathbed, Sue has to confront her painful past during an inner journey leading her back to Egypt and the woman she left behind.</p>
<p>In 2002, three young reporters get into a car in Kabul for a journey that will change their lives forever.</p>
<p>Along the Bosnian-Croatian border near Velika Kladuša, the paths of mine disposal experts, migrating families and locals cross. Director Nicole Vögele hones in on these encounters, laying bare the wounds of the war of the 1990s and those of the refugees of today. A deeply telluric film, a kaleidoscope of landscapes haunted by the fury of past and present.</p>