Playlist
On February 24th, 2022, Russia invades Ukraine. The news reaches the director, Rostislav Kirpicenko, in Paris, where he has been living for many years. The war raises questions about exile... In search of answers, Rostislav travels to Lithuania, where his grandfather settled, before returning to Dnipro, the Ukrainian town where he grew up.
Sixteen years after the fateful day, the host of a local television station invites two witnesses to debate the role of their town in the overthrowing of Ceaușescu. From foggy memories to contradictory accounts, things take a farcical turn, revealing the difficulty of distinguishing history from myth. A brilliant first film that swings between hilarity and indignation.
The tornado is both a destructive event and a uniquely American icon, one often fraught with collective tragedy. With wit and humour, this film unfolds like an episodic road movie, raising questions of memory, inequality, colonisation, climate change, and disaster capitalism as it examines legacies of weather within this area of the United States dubbed "tornado alley".
In a small sewing atelier in Baku, Azerbaijan, the country's most important symbol, the flag, is being crafted against the backdrop of the second Karabakh war in 2020. As customers enter, political agendas and propagandistic narratives infiltrate the workshop, blending with the stories of the seamstresses who are bringing the national emblem to life.
In the Garden of the Hesperides, there once grew a fruit capable of granting immortality. This garden, located off the coast of West Africa, was guarded by a hundred-headed dragon. Through the bio-sonification of banana trees, a monoculture crop in the Canary Islands, we discover the tale of this mythical garden in which eternal life was possible.
Information is scarce around Heron 1, a longrange military drone patrolling the Mediterranean Sea and surveilling the borders of Europe. Starting as a desktop research into the drone, this investigation about the present and future of surveillance technology drops us at the crossroads of Frontex, the military industrial complex and a plane spotter community.
In the middle of the Siberian Taiga, cut off from the outside world, a community of men and women has lived for three decades, led by the man they consider their guide: Vissarion, the self-proclaimed messiah. Abode of Dawn takes us into the day-to-day life of this miniature human society, oscillating between indoctrination and the desire to invent another way of being in the world.
The life of the bullfighter Andrés Roca Rey during a day of bullfighting, from the moment he dresses up to the moment he undresses.
The`sea women' of Japan's Shima Peninsula maintain an ancient tradition of diving for pearls, urchins and abalone, without the benefit of modern gear or protection. For over 2000 years, the Ama-San have been diving in this way.
Two twin sisters, a master and his dog, lovers who look like each other… All these combinations are possible in the simultaneously poetic and hyper-realistic world of Cláudia Varejão. Here, love comes in all shapes and sizes, orchestrating a choreography of visual resemblances, while also calling into question the concept of the couple in today's society.
Ten years after its Cannes premiere, Amy has lost none of its relevance. Assembled from a remarkable personal archive, the film chronicles the meteoric rise and dizzying fall of an incomparable artist. Using Senna's successful formula, Kapadia delves into the psychology of his subject without succumbing to the iniquity of the tabloids.
After a 20-year long fruitless search in the Cameroonian forest, Frenchman Michel Ballot is on the verge of giving up his lifelong quest to find the mysterious creature known as the Mokélé-Mbembé. Turning to local initiates for help, and torn between ancestral wisdom and scientific evidence, he embarks on a final journey into powers, knowledge and the unseen.
By the sea, on a public beach in Beirut frequented only by men, Reda, Adel and Quassem are not waiting for a miracle: they are watching their entire country fall to ruin. Dima El-Horr's camera captures these men, united in their disillusionment and haunted by the ghosts of the civil war, bearing the burden of their melancholy with remarkable dignity.
Another Other revolves around the interrogations of two black figures – Lt. Smith, a character portrayed by Wesley Snipes, and Claudine Gay, Harvard University's 30th president – by white state officials. Cutting through legal language, the film impactfully reveals what the speech of the interrogators and the interrogated actually conceals.
Drawing on the fantasy genre, Arcturus evokes the disappearance of the filmmaker's mother in the unexpected guise of a bear. Through a mixture of image modes, the film conveys a poetic reflection on the mourning process, which it entwines with a history of the presence of bears in Finland...
2010: a terrible earthquake hits Haiti, leaving 230,000 people dead and 1.5 million homeless. For 24 months, Raoul Peck filmed the process of rebuilding his country, led by a gigantic humanitarian noria. He reveals the carelessness, opulence and deeply political nature of the international solidarity it claims to implement in the name of the right to intervene.
In the wake of a dream, João Vieira Torres sets off to find the children that his grandmother Aurora, a midwife, helped deliver. Through encounters with the living and the dead, he uncovers tragic destinies which reflect a structural history of violence against women. A curse dispelled by the means of cinema, resulting in a film of exceptionally rare beauty.
For years, Floriane has been recording her conversations with the drivers who picked her up as a hitchhiker. She now re-enacts these scenarios with two actors, who perform the exchanges word for word with the help of an earpiece. Together, they explore the possibilities of interpretation, and the relationship between fiction and documentary.
Faced with a society mired in conservatism, a charismatic and controversial young singer from Michigan is transformed into a pop icon before our very eyes. Through the prism of her personal life and the challenges she overcame during her rise to fame between 1978 and 1992, Becoming Madonna chronicles the extraordinary success of this living legend.
The film is divided into three volumes of about 40 minutes, each dealing with a single subject: animals, plants, stones. In this tripartite vision, each of its segment is a tribute to a specific genre of documentary filmmaking.
Through the three volumes, a single dramaturgical body emerges, that stages a process of admission of responsibility, a process of maintenance and protection, and finally a process of rediscovery of a common and fundamental value: care.
When the world is engulfed by the COVID-19 pandemic, three scientists who long predicted its arrival must battle not only the virus but also a wave of misinformation, conspiracy theories, and political blame that threatens to eclipse the truth. This is their story. Part investigation, part thriller, Blame investigates the relationship between science, politics and the media.
Twenty-something Peng Tian returns to China after studying in London. He feels adrift. His friends are enjoying themselves, his father wanders around chanting advertising slogans, while his mother expounds her inevitable plan for his brilliant future: boss, father, business owner. Sprawled on the couch, he tries to resist the demands of a rapidly evolving Chinese society.
During his time as Haiti's Minister of Culture, the filmmaker investigates the limits of power. The result is this striking video-letter, a bitter assessment of a country battered by "300 years of resistance", and a reminiscence of his youth in Berlin. With Raoul Peck, the biographical always leads to the collective, and the universal never ceases to haunt private experience.
Consumed by boredom on a luxury yacht in the middle of the Aegean Sea, six men decide to play a game. A game of comparisons, in which each man is measured, weighed and evaluated in the hope of walking away with the title of Chevalier. Tsangari's dark, absurdist comedy explores the obsessive competitiveness that defines the male experience.
A country awakens from a deep winter sleep. An incomprehensible and absurd world slowly unfolds before the camera, imbued with strangeness, even though we are familiar with its sounds, rhythms and colours. Then the stakes become higher, and the suspense grows. The shadow of ongoing collapse looms over Chronicle, but it is not spectacular.
Comedian Noam Shuster Eliassi creates a personal and political one-woman show about the struggle for equality in Israel/Palestine. When the elusive coexistence she's spent her life working toward starts sounding like a bad joke, she challenges her audiences with hard truths that are no laughing matter.
High up in the breathtaking landscapes of the Swiss Alps, Pascal runs the family farm. The days go by to the rhythm of the milking of his 30-odd cows, which he cherishes with love. When Solène, a city-dweller, volunteers on his farm, she discovers the harshness of Pascal's farming life, in contact with the land and the animals. A beautiful tale of intertwined lives.
Against a green-screen backdrop, a group of children and adults ask themselves questions about their gender. In a natural space freed from normativity, the possibilities of rewriting the scripts of their lives become infinite. Acclaimed director Manuel Abramovich and his performers invite us into a dazzling new reality of desires and possible futures.
As the first elected councilwoman of her Iranian village, Sara Shahverdi aims to break long-held patriarchal traditions by training teenage girls to ride motorcycles and stopping child marriages. When accusations arise questioning Sara's intentions to empower the girls, her identity is put in turmoil.
The youth movement in Zurich in 1980-81 and the deaths of four boys, victims of "accidents" involving the police, provide the focus of Richard Dindo's gripping investigation. With its emphasis on eyewitness accounts and the spoken word in general, the film makes a fervent case for the revolt of a generation in search of freedom.
Dear Tomorrow is a multi-character story about loneliness. Set in Japan, the film centers around the mental health hotline called "A Place for You", where a group of young volunteers are chatting with thousands in need, every single day. The film follows three lonely users as they struggle to find meaning in their lives. With support from the chat service and the Japanese government's focus on loneliness, they finally have a place to turn. Aware of their need for human connection, they embark on a journey toward healing and renewal.
The director engages in a dialogue with his older brother, once convicted of drug trafficking in French Guiana. Oscillating between the present and past recorded in his diary, the film opens the door to a rapprochement between the two men. But the older brother remains mysterious and elusive, and his skin seems to bear witness to what prison does to a man.
An elite group of athletes gathers under one of the world's tallest permanent diving platforms. Guided by the gentle rhythms of training, the hum of the pool deck and a breathtaking sense for cinematography, Divers observes their training process, from careful preparation to the restless anticipation that builds before ascending the 27-meter tower.
Once upon a time in a Polish village in Romania, Hanka and Bronka, left behind by their deceased husbands and their children who have emigrated for work, face everyday life with humour and persistence. Fighting to stay independent, they will soon need to make a life-changing decision. Is the world of these two lifelong friends coming to an end?
"From my grandfather to me, how much light has flowed through this lens? Does memory become dream?" While attempting to fix an old inherited camera, the filmmaker reflects on his bond with his parents, along with his attraction to images. Like a waking dream, the film sets up a narrative in which the past, the present and other worlds interact.
Strong winds shake the leaves of drought-stricken trees in an ancient olive grove near Delphi, reminding us of the wildfires that are engulfing the country. Here, a family of farmers attempts to restore its land. Poetic and sensitive, Elysian Fields explores landscapes of devastation and hope alike, where solidarity and community constitute the last resort.
Follows Ernest Cole's journey as the first Black freelance photographer in apartheid South Africa.
A pie in the face is as old as cinema itself. In this essay, an ode to activism, Sasha Pirker pays tribute to the original pie-thrower Mabel Normand, the pioneering Alice Guy Blaché, the illustrious ballerina Anna Pavlova and her eponymous confections… A thrilling surrealist collage which celebrates the subversive nature of cinema and calls us to action.
Through his personal voyage, Raoul Peck deconstructs the making and masking of history, digging deep into the exploitative and genocidal aspects of European colonialism—from America to Africa—and its impact on society today.
Two lovers lay on a bed. One of the men is asleep, the other is awake. One is Palestinian, the other Israeli. Far away in their homeland, the war rages on, as the night goes on without end. A prose poem dedicated to the beloved, as if to ward off the inequality of conditions and resist the deluge of images, in an attempt to once again find a common language.
Hassan Al Balawi, a Palestinian diplomat, returns to his homeland on the occasion of the 15th anniversary of the death of Yasser Arafat. Filmed in 2019, Al Balawi's journey from the occupied West Bank to the border of Gaza draws a subjective image of what has become of the Palestinian liberation struggle, foreshadowing the events that would unfold on October 7, 2023.
Inspired by B. Traven's novel about a 1920s Mexican cart driver, this film follows four contemporary truck drivers in Europe, all named Andrés. As they haul goods through the night, their labor "exhausts the men who make it function, and in so doing exhausts itself" in a poignant echo of capitalist systems
At Stellenbosch University in South Africa, within the walls of a prestigious student residence called Eendrag, young men from all walks of life are confronted with colonial structures and traditions. 30 years after the end of apartheid, the free-born generation attempts to navigate between personal growth, cultural differences and a past still fresh in their collective memory.
In "Flophouse America," 12-year-old Mikal navigates a life of hardship as he grows up in a cheap American hotel, or "flophouse", where his parents struggle with alcohol abuse and poverty. Despite their love for him, their chaotic existence threatens to pull him down. Set against the backdrop of radical economic inequality in the U.S., the film captures Mikal's resilience as he finds glimmers of hope amid an unexpected tragedy. The documentary follows three years of Mikal's life, chronicling his fight for a better future. Director Monica Strømdahl, a photographer by profession, spent 15 years documenting marginalized communities in the U.S. before meeting Mikal and his family. She put down her camera and picked up a film camera, capturing their journey in intimate and unflinching detail.
At Milan's Niguarda public hospital, the unconventional Dr. Bini leads a bold mission overseeing aspiring parents undergoing in vitro fertilization and the journeys of individuals reconciling their bodies with their gender identities. He navigates the constraints set by a conservative government and an aggressive market eager to commodify bodies.
Sleeping disorders are omnipresent in this day and age. In this desktop diary, a resident of Amsterdam cannot sleep, absorbed by the genocides and atrocities being broadcast in real time. They are looking for solutions to cut down their screen time. But then, a particular anxiety takes hold: What in the world will happen while they are offline?
Defying Iran's travel ban, a filmmaker chronicles his confinement in smog-choked Tehran after authorities raid his home and seize his work. Through dreams and memories, he imagines soaring above a city where everyone is equal in this boundary pushing, hybrid film.
In a virtual world inspired by the codes of gay dating apps, Homunculus follows the wanderings of a man in search of other men. Over the course of his travels, he will come to realise that people see him as an "Arab": an ambiguous, virile and powerful entity both celebrated by white gay males and hated by the French police forces.
"What white people have to do, is try to find out in their hearts why it was necessary for them to have a n***** in the first place." Through James Baldwin's feverish prose, Raoul Peck revisits the African-American struggles of recent decades. A stunning reflection on American identity and its false pretenses, strikingly sharp and disturbingly topical. Nominated for an Oscar in 2017.
Migrant workers are building a shopping mall for the 1972 Munich Olympics. In 2016, this same place becomes the site of a racist shooting. "And now all this hatred," remarks a woman in Addressee Unknown (1983). An attempt at looking back and finding connections.
The National Ballet of Portugal is celebrating its 40th anniversary. Day-to-day life here is demanding for the dancers, musicians, technicians and other staff. Over the course of a year, director Cláudia Varejão takes off her shoes to gain access to the stage. She films the discipline and virtuosity of the dancers, trying to understand with them what moves us, and why.
When he learns that one of his brother's childhood friends has invented a new sport by adapting the rules of football, creating a faster, more spectacular game, Porumboiu decides to film it. Between utopia and resilience, one local government employee has found in this reinvented game a lifeline, while the filmmaker uncovers a parable for post-Soviet Romania.
In Mongolia's remote Tsakhir Valley, Batbold faces the greatest challenge of his young life: safeguarding 1,000 horses during the deadliest winter on record. After this adventure and with the future of his community at stake, Batbold must choose between upholding the values that define his culture, or abandon them for the lure of a more appealing life in the city.
The essayistic 3-channel video installation ج-ن-ن blends family conversations from a trip to Iraq with research on the Jinn – elusive entities central to Iraqi culture – exploring themes of war, repression, and cosmic beliefs.
While going through a period of limbo, filmmaker Sophie Bédard Marcotte (L.A. Tea Time, VdR 2019) turns her camera on her playwright neighbour. Together, they dissect the various stages of artistic creation in irresistibly funny chapters. From Canada to Iceland, an intimate and universal exploration of the uncontrollable nature of human existence.
The high rises on the outskirts of Geneva are his kingdom. Chouaib makes ends meet as a street trader, and nurtures his passion for rap. Both of which draw on his gift for language to win over customers and create poetry. A portrait emerges between moments of work and play, between the daily grind and the need to make it big, as a means of escape.
Yamel, a Mexican cinema student in Cuba, is randomly filming a stormy afternoon in Havana when Jans, an 18-year-old fisherman, walks across her frame and captures her attention. From that first recorded encounter, she, her camera and him become intertwined. As real emotions emerge, ethical questions appear. Why can't she stop filming him?
A filmmaker wanders with his camera through a large empty house where he spent a happy childhood. Aged 14, he was stopped in his tracks by the terrifying image of his father's corpse, covered in a white shroud. Thirty years on, he makes his way back to the original scene. This powerful, restrained tale also weaves around the iconic figures of Ayrton Senna and Marilyn Monroe.
With a stunning array of archival images and sounds, renowned filmmakers Courtney Stephens and Michael Almereyda explore the life and ideas of intrepid mid-century utopian neuroscientist, John C. Lilly, whose unorthodox experimentations into human and animal consciousness were controversial in methodology but far-reaching in intent.
Kevine and Fortune, two inseparable friends, play for the same football team in Yaoundé. To achieve their dream of playing for a foreign club, they must gain recognition as female footballers. Kevine signs with a renowned team and leaves her country behind, while Fortune holds onto the hope of joining her one day. A dazzling modern tale of sisterhood and determination.
Joker, Kookie and Djumbo are "Khmericans": Cambodian refugees who grew up in the United States and were deported back to Cambodia after serving a prison sentence. We follow this trio in their daily lives, as they reunite with their new Khmer families, oscillating between the vestiges of a vanished life and a future yet to be built.
Kora outlines the stories of refugee women living in Portugal, who carry their past in their bodies and words, and their loved ones in the form of photographs. Through Cláudia Varejão's gentle gathering of their memories, we are offered a glimpse into these women's private lives as they reconstruct the(ir) present, cherished photographs anchoring their uncertain existence.
Photographer and visual artist Sammy Baloji's fascinating film essay explores the Democratic Republic of Congo's colonial history and its ecological significance. Drawing on research from the 1930s, the film highlights the Congo Basin's vital role in consuming carbon dioxide and shaping global environmental balance over a century.
In January 2017, a video of a young Gambian man drowning in Venice's Grand Canal went viral. From the shore, onlookers shouted insults instead of offering help. He was 22 years old. His name was Pateh Sabally. Now, 2,500 miles away, the people who knew and loved him share the story behind the footage—the life, dreams, and heartbreak that led to that tragic moment.
It is early morning in a Montreal diner: filter coffee, bacon, French toast. Stories are exchanged, solitudes are shared for a while. Silences fall, glances are exchanged. Encounters signal the promise of a brand-new day. This restaurant and refuge, into which the chaos of the world still finds a way in, is tenderly portrayed with love for its characters.
What if fairy tales had a secret connection to reality? Thanks to a performance by La Lanterne Magique centered on Snow White and the screening of the animated film Revolting Rhymes, discover how these stories are tied to our reality… while constantly being reinvented, with humor and intelligence, over time and through cinema.
Gold fever has gripped northern Niger. In search of the precious metal, and despite the risks, an army of researchers has invaded the sites of interest. While camps are set up and dismantled as rumours of new leads spread, Moussa and his companions are banking on the Ikazan vein. A film packed with palpable tension, brimming with dreams of fortune and friendship.
In south-eastern Spain, there is a wall separating two worlds: a healthy world, and a sick world, once deemed contagious. The sanatorium of Les Fontilles used to be a sanctuary for people suffering from leprosy. Callisto Mc Nulty criss-crosses this border seeking out witnesses from the past and present, who through their stories become the keepers of a disappearing world.
Ekiem Barbier et Guilhem Causse (Knit's Island, 2023) offer a unique experience to Victor Assié, a young actor questioning the meaning of his profession: to explore an online simulation of daily life as an avatar and meet its users, while playing his own role. Through his complicated but hilarious peregrinations, he discovers a new yet familiar world.
"Capital has won," Raoul Peck wryly asserts at the start of this Marxian essay, which pits the financial capitalism of the early 2000s against Haitian reality. In front of the camera appear market economy specialists, a New York garbage collector and merchants from Port-à-Piment. The voice-over dissects, analyzes and connects. A film that remains as modern as ever!
Christophe, Luca, Julien and Gaëtan are four young men discovering their fatherhood. Les Papas journeys into their private lives, interspersed with scenes from everyday life, using a discreet and sensitive approach to shed light on the place that these young fathers must claim in society, and in so doing questioning the role of men in the contemporary family unit.
Al Moon lives a solitary life on the territory of the Yurok nation in California. Surrounded by violence and ecological threats affecting his people, buried anxieties from his time in Vietnam now begin to resurface. Driven by an urge to confront his past, Al Moon embarks on a cross-country journey, moving closer to uncovering a truth that has haunted him for decades.
On the border between Morocco and Spain, a group of travelers is eagerly waiting to cross over to Europe. One failed attempt after another, they survive, while the "director" must keep the flame of hope alive for the whole group. Les Voyageurs, woven together with a camera and a couple of songs, echoes as a powerful gesture of resilience.
Amid landscapes of confused memories, Doctor L, a missionary in southern Africa, recounts his journeys and adventures in the bush, intensive evangelisation efforts and surgical operations at the end of the 19th century. 150 years later, four inhabitants of the region send him a letter in the form of sound capsules, evoking a past whose traces can still be keenly felt.
Ronald Reagan's visit to Berlin in 1982 provoked violent demonstrations by pacifists, feminists and other protesters. In his first short film, in the form of a political pamphlet, Raoul Peck uses skilful editing to paint a portrait of the lies embodied by the American president, and denounces the degradation of the meaning of words in the public sphere.
Little, Big, and Far is a hybrid feature film with a focus on astronomy, physics, and natural history museums. The main character, Karl, is an Austrian astronomer and dark sky advocate, at a crossroads in life and work. At 70, with jobs at risk and his physicist wife distancing, he and his colleague, Sarah, also struggle with the environmental crises reshaping their fields. After a museums conference in Greece, Karl decides not to return home and heads for a small island in hopes of finding a dark enough sky to reconnect with the stars. Left on his own at a remote mountain trail, he ascends and waits for darkness to fall.
In Mumbai, once an island city linked by the sea, modern bridges and land reclamation have reshaped the landscape, disrupting the lives of its original communities. An old man, an enigmatic woman and a child take turns narrating how their world, once bound by tradition and the sea, is now dissolving amidst rapid transformation and urbanisation.
1962. Two years after Patrice Lumumba's death, a Haitian child joins his parents, who are working in the Congo. 30 years later, based on a photo of Lumumba found by his mother, Raoul Peck crafts a highly personal film, combining eyewitness accounts and archival footage to explore the legacy of this mythical leader of Congolese independence and his political assassination.
A wetland archaeologist tracks groundwater levels in a drained swamp. In a quiet village, the emergency call center receives reports of a drifting island. This kaleidoscopic tale takes us on a journey across time and place, exploring the tense relationship between humans and wetlands from surprising perspectives that blend science and oral folklore.
A poetic exploration of three subterranean telescopes in remote regions of Canada, Japan, and Antarctica that reveal a new way of perceiving the universe from within. Underground, we are dreaming into the earth.
'Messengers' was shot in cooperation with the groundbreaking particle physics collaborations SNO+ (Canada), Super Kamiokande (Japan), and IceCube (Antarctica). As each surreal subterranean facility is explored in order of physical size, the film gradually reveals how these environments not only intersect with the natural world, but can also be seen as extensions of the unconscious mind – monuments to our questions about the universe. Following the journey of neutrinos from a black hole, 'Messengers' serves as a tactile meditation on human scientific endeavour, the vastness of geologic time, and the shadowy depths of the unconscious.
In September 2020, after a spurious trial, six refugees are convicted of starting the fire which destroyed the Moria camp on Lesbos. The filmmaker begins a correspondence with one of the "Moria Six", Hassan, as the new camp is being built. Highly secure, it symbolises the dehumanising stance that our so-called civilised Europe adopts towards migration.
Morning Light circles the distance between three generations – a mother, a daughter and a granddaughter. In a dense river that unites them, for no apparent reason other than exhaustion, a fissure emerges. In the setting of an idyllic countryside's scorching summer, Cláudia Varejão masterfully captures the silences and leaky eyes at play in this family disruption.
American filmmaker Julia Loktev, born in the Soviet Union, returned to Moscow in 2021 to make a documentary on the persistence of independent media journalism in Putin's Russia—just months, as it turned out, before the country's invasion of Ukraine. Structured in five chapters, Loktev's film is an extraordinary vérité document of a moment of immense change and anxiety.
A pair of teenage girls in rural Pennsylvania travel to New York City to seek out medical help after an unintended pregnancy.
In a forgotten Swiss valley, an evil wind haunts the daily lives of former Italian asbestos factory workers, who still breathe its invisible fibers. Archival images of progress and greed, and contemporary accounts of forgotten hopes and denied rights, weave this tale of ongoing injustice, celebrating the men who lived, worked, and died in a foreign land.
At the foot of Tepozteco, a sacred hill that governs the winds and fertility, lies the small town of Tepoztlán. Against this backdrop, fifteen-year-old Karla's body and mind are undergoing a revolution. While Karla navigates her transition, Kani shapes eight years of footage into a joyful film, as they handle the vagaries of a rural trans adolescence together.
On a clear night in Belfast, two workmen and their apprentice work methodically to change the city's streetlights from orange sodium to white LED. Northern Ireland lags behind the rest of the UK on this transformation, reflecting the city's complicated relationship to change. As the night progresses, a city searching for clarity starts to come into focus.
After having walked the streets of Mellila, Malik, Mehdi, and Hassan now beat the cobblestones of Paris, discovering its lights and its chimeras, its joys and its violence... In this closing chapter of a trilogy on policies of migration, Sylvain George accompanies the street children of Morocco through this complex age and ordeal, while Europe turns a blind eye.
Halfway between a cinema documentary and an electroacoustic composition, this nearly imageless film —designed for cinema screening—plunges the audience into the harrowing experience of a young woman isolated for several months in a sterile hospital room. Clara Alloing and Noémie Ruben offer an intense yet tender exploration of the long road to recovery.
We recommend watching the online screener in a dark room with headphones for a cinema-like experience.
Inspired by Virginie Despentes, who describes an island inhabited by genderless creatures offering the possibility of a polymorphous and hyper-powerful form of sexuality, the filmmakers portray an island composed of several interior landscapes. Between silence and intimacy, new islands are this shaped, in a possible encounter between life and death.
Standing on a beach in the Philippines, teenage Sita confesses to her mother that she almost drowned in these waters when she was a child. In turn, her mother admits that though she grew up by the sea, she never learned how to swim. Turning into half-fish, half-human creatures, Sita and her mother swim through their turbulent past.
In exile in Switzerland, Olga, a 15-year-old Ukrainian gymnast, is torn between her irrepressible desire to take part in the European Championships and her growing fears for her family back in Kiev, who witnessed the Euromaidan uprising. Elie Grappe has produced a brilliant first film, driven by a powerful narrative and breathtaking formal virtuosity.
Enrico Naso is an undertaker in Lampedusa. Constantly confronted with the death that lurks everywhere on this remote rock in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, Enrico has chosen life, immersing us in what it means to be human. Against the grain of images and media coverage, he turns to everyday gestures, faith, songs, and the waves to preserve his humanity.
June 2023, one year since Russia invaded Ukraine. In Kyiv, a class is visiting the Natural History Museum, guided by a paleontology teacher who transports the schoolchildren into a faraway and peaceful world, under the gaze of the great filmmaker S. Loznitsa. In spite of grief, the dreams and aspirations of Ukrainian children and adults keep the country going.
The hypnotic purr of a bus engine resonates, accompanied by the rumble of the vehicle's interior. A voice leads us into an inner monologue. We are on our way to Prijedor in Bosnia, the director's hometown, and the place of his perpetual departures. But before arriving, we must learn to inhabit departure as a space in which we can grow and be reborn.
Struggling with depression and social anxiety, Paul has found refuge in serving women who invite him to clean their homes. By sharing his gently eccentric routines on social media, he combats loneliness and takes it one day at a time.
Mariem, 53, a former estate agent, has been living at a shelter for several months. Surrounded by women in far more precarious circumstances than herself, she tries to regard her unprecedented social downfall as an immersion in real life. By the time she leaves, Mariem's view of the world will have changed forever, enriched by all the women she has met along the way.
In 2021, an orchestrated coup d'état in Myanmar shuts down the country. Gao Gao, who can no longer go to school, spends his days with his friends in the village, passing the time by playing with toy guns, going through life as if nothing has changed despite the unrest around him. With Play, Myo Aung chooses to disrupt reality – letting its painful echoes resonate.
Young detective Cristi is surveilling a teenager suspected of drug trafficking. Convinced that the law is unjust, he hesitates to make the arrest, afraid of ruining the boy's life. Porumboiu targets the bureaucratic inertia of post-communist society in this striking film noir, poised between philosophical reflection and caustic black humour, in which every word carries weight.
At just thirteen years old, Zahira is refusing to submit to the diktats imposed by the men of her Moroccan village. She is going to fight to become the first girl from her douar to continue her studies after primary school, thus building a better life for herself than that of her parents. Zahira dreams of becoming a teacher – but dreams are no guarantee of success…
Lea is fixated on finding the subject of her documentary. She goes on the hunt, armed with her camera, and comes across an older man who seems different. Lea thinks she has found her target, but suddenly the roles are reversed. Animation here becomes a means of retracing the unsayable and contending with reality, as a cry of resistance.
In the high Himalayas, the village of Lohari is submerged below the waters of a hydroelectric dam. The last member of the Jaunsari tribe, living in the remnants of his flooded village, recalls a time when the land was pulsating with magic. Through letters to a girl long since gone, the boy's tale unfolds, blurring the lines between reality and myth.
After surviving ISIS prisons as a child, Rashid has been reunited with his family in Sinjar, northwestern Iraq. Now a teenager, the young Yazidi dreams of a brighter future. But peace is fragile, and hatred against his community is resurfacing. On the threshold of adulthood, Rashid must reinvent himself amid daily disruptions, while wondering whether to leave or stay.
From his prison cell in Texas, Mabry, sentenced to death, imagines the final journey that will one day take him to Walls Unit, the place of his execution, 60 kilometres away. A stretch of road, along which live people whose existence is linked to the prison institution; those same who might one day witness Mabry go by, seated in the back of a van.
Roikin is a child from Marseille. When he is sent to a rehabilitation center, his three educators accompany him during this disconcerting change of scenery. Searching for his place, Roikin runs away and meets a young rider. As they search for him, the three young women question themselves about his future and their role in the path he will choose to take.
Despite a war close by, mud treatments and electro-therapies continue at Kuyalnik Sanatorium near Odesa in southern Ukraine, where a small group searches for love, healing & happiness.
Under the imposing snow-capped mountains of Utah, a Mexican family lives with the uncertainty of a loved one's disappearance. Through carefully crafted shots, Say Goodbye reveals the loneliness and silence tainting the daily routine of Rosa, Sol, and Javier, as the void becomes a constant presence. An achingly powerful and relevant film.
Sediments follows the traces of a family, uncovering the entanglements of two dictatorships layer by layer. Through the filmmaker's conversations with her grandfather, we journey through different epochs of German history – National Socialism, the GDR and the post-reunification era. A film about memory and personal responsibility in times of dictatorship.
Boca Chica, Texas. Hemmed in by the Gulf of Mexico and the Rio Grande, the village is defined by the rhythmic sound of the waves. But this wild country is in the midst of irreversible change. For the swamps have been drained, the beaches closed and the homes bought out: the shadow looming over the beach is that of a 50-story rocket, being readied for launch into space.
A pile of blankets filmed at bed height appears in a room with faded colors. Fragmented views follow one another, suggesting the fragile living conditions of people living in the rubble of a suburb. A prayer in Romanian signals their origin. A plane passes in the sky and we are transported to a parade of shimmering colors in the streets of Okinawa, before landing at a beekeeper's in Ariège. The Franco-Japanese artist Amie Barouh brings together in a form of filmed diary fragments of biography and snippets of conversations collected over the years and during her travels, mainly from Roma friends with whom she has lived. Through frenetic editing, Shuruuk , which literally means "rising in the east", weaves a dreamlike journey that follows the movement of the sun, from Japan to Tunisia, from Palestine to the four corners of France. The camera rummages through the folds of reality to capture the faces of those with whom the artist navigates, to bear witness to the struggle for their daily survival as well as more specific manifestations in the face of state oppression. Amie Barouh intertwines the impressionist bursts with bursts of another gravity: violent and sudden police interventions, which take shape in the movement of the film, carried by a manifest vital impulse. The fragmentation of Shuruuk reflects the perpetual reconfiguration to which the lives of all these beings are subjected, humans, animals, like these bees that swarm while the tender words of Pierre Barouh resonate: "Today I am what I am, we are who we are, and all that is the sum of the pollen we have fed on."
Oscar-nominated filmmaker Raoul Peck (I Am Not Your Negro) chronicles the way real estate developers work in blatant and subtle ways to divest Black families from inherited property. He focuses on the case of the Reels family in North Carolina who resisted intimidation tactics and dubious legal maneuvers over several decades. The film draws upon the in-depth reporting of Lizzie Presser, published by ProPublica and The New Yorker.
Starting from the trail of a bullet captured on CCTV, Soixante-sept millisecondes follows the trajectory of the shot and those of its key protagonists. Through a reconstruction combining computer-generated images with surveillance footage and the story of a victim, the film forcefully questions the legitimacy and excesses of law enforcement in France.
David, aka "Mister Raw", is part of a growing scene of self-proclaimed "healers" with links to the far right. As for Timo, who works for this raw vegan influencer, he is attempting to cure his psychotic delusions with food supplements and fasting. A stark dive into the reasons that drive some individuals to turn towards a world full of threats and dark forces.
A journey through three distant cultures, retracing the steps that give rise to the breath of life: its primeval discovery, the circularity of breathing, the harmony of a song, the colour of each single voice and connection with the innermost part of the self. Song of Breath powerfully examines the transformation of this essential heritage of humankind.
Daniel – the filmmaker – and Samuel are brothers: one is European, the other is Cuban. They share the same father: a man who fled Germany and the collective memory of Nazism, first to Italy, then to Cuba. Together, with the help of cinema and their poetic sensibilities, the three of them will weather stormy family ties and confront a fundamental chapter of life: death.
Archival images of a bride are interwoven with dialogue from Manoel de Oliveira's film Vale Abraão (1993), in which Pedro warns Ema about the role that will be assigned to her in this patriarchal society, in which she must learn the "art of illusion". Unless she manages to find her inner Emma Bovary, embracing disobedience and defying the path that has been laid out for her.
Guinaw Rail, a forgotten neighbourhood on the outskirts of Dakar, is emptying out. Bulldozers are demolishing houses along the route of the 'Train Express Regional', the symbol of President Macky Sall's "Emerging Senegal". Before it disappears and is transformed entirely, the filmmaker captures his childhood kingdom and his mother, as she recalls a life lived behind the Rails.
Leopold Trepper, a former Red Army officer and hero of the anti-Nazi resistance, faces a Kafkaesque struggle in 1970s Poland as the demons of anti-Semitism resurface. Stripped of his job and under constant surveillance, Trepper leaves with no hope of return. A gripping portrait of an enigmatic character that rivals the great classics of espionage.
Scientists mapping the universe have recently observed baryon acoustic oscillations fossilised within the cosmos. These are the scars of what happened 380,000 years after the Big Bang, before the galaxies were born; remains of a far-distant past that make up the very matter that forms both you and me, and the humble coffee pot.
In Córdoba, Spain, budding filmmakers and actors from the Federico García Lorca primary school are working on a film project. An idea takes shape… to bring to the screen the story of the Roma people from the Punjab, who have lived in Spain for several centuries and yet are still perceived as foreigners by the local community.
Five children sit around a dining table. Instead of "mum" and "dad", they say "Mrs. Wagner" and "Mr. Gerecke". In this ephemeral semblance of a family, between parental love and the bureaucracy of youth welfare services, social workers do everything they can to create a home for children. A film about the superpower that is raising a child, and family in all its forms.
Emilia and Caterina write letters to each other, revisiting their memories and experiences at a boarding school in the 1950s. Did they choose the lives they truly wanted, or only those that they dared to imagine? A few minutes of amateur footage condense the essence of a love story worthy of a period drama, up against the constraints of Italian postwar society.
Unable to sleep, a young man is lured into the woods by a mysterious sound. He follows it across a river, through forest and shadows, until he finally comes upon the red curtains of a travelling funeral performance stage. The mesmerising mourning recital that unfolds is a dreamlike invitation into a sensorial exploration of memories, rituals, and ghosts.
Maciek lives in a Polish village close to Belarus. It is winter 2021; the whole area has turned into a military zone, patrolled by border guards searching for "illegals" and pushing them back to Belarus. One day, Maciek's mother lets an exhausted Syrian refugee into their house. Constructed like a thriller, this flawlessly executed film calls into question our definition of humanity.
In Georgia, Ushguli mountain customs dictate that in the absence of a son, a family's land must be handed down to the next male relative who will perpetuate the family name. The Men's Land follows the journey of an aspiring singer as she fights for her property in the face of dated local rules and traditions, her song becoming a bulwark against humiliation.
On the heights of a mountain in North Macedonia, in the midst of a flock of 600 sheep being watched over by huge dogs, stands a refuge. Children's laughter escapes from the precarious shelter. They are a brotherhood, ranging from ages eight to twenty. When they are not hard at work, they are playing and discussing the meaning of life. Is their future really here?
On a bustling footbridge separating Argentina and Paraguay, where people traffic all kinds of things in a mix of Guarani and Spanish, the director meets nine-year-old Angel. Struck by his expressiveness and panache, she follows him home. Over the course of ten years, they create a film together, during which Angel will have to make decisive choices for his future.
A deceptively simple set-up: the director and his father watch a 1988 football match which the father refereed, their commentary accompanying the original television images in real time. A Bucharest derby between the country's leading teams, Dinamo and Steaua, taking place in heavy snow, one year before the revolution that toppled Ceaușescu.
High in the majestic French Pyrenees, a conflict is provoked by the reintroduction of brown bears amid a traditional shepherding community. The film follows an aging shepherd struggling to find a successor as bears prey on his flock, and a teenage boy obsessed with tracking them down. A modern folktale examining humanity's relationship with a vanishing natural world.
A family of wild owls experiences the springtime: hunting, feeding, raising their young. A camera in their nest captures their every move. While a community of online viewers monitor the owls 24/7 via livestream, a strange story begins to unfold, calling into question the paradigm of control that underpins our human interventions into the non-human realm.
The historic village of Hasankeyf, a Kurdish majority settlement, is ordered to relocate after plans are made to build a dam. The stark beauty of the Anatolian landscape frames the devastated buildings, the site of a political game requiring obedience and submission. When all has disappeared, only a bitter and unsettling sense of dignity will remain.
Young father Costi agrees to help his neighbour, Adrian, who persuades him that there is treasure buried in his grandparents' garden. Joined by the prospector Cornel and a metal detector, they set out to unearth the loot. With formal precision and a cutting sense of irony, Porumboiu composes a delicious fable which echoes the past and present reality of his country.
Abandoned houses, surviving objects that carry memory. Exiled from Iran after her film on the 2009 Green Movement was banned, a filmmaker breaks her family's decades-long silence about a disappeared cousin, executed during the 1988 purges in Iran's political prisons. Grappling with estrangement and loss, she uses fragments, archives, and the images made during her years of diaristic filming in Iran to reflect on the collective taboo, the fear that silenced the population for so many years, and the explosion of resistance that continues to grow within Iranian society today.
Cristi, a disillusioned and corrupt police inspector, embarks with the ravishing Gilda on a highstakes heist, navigating treachery and deception. Silbo Gomero, a secret whistling language spoken on The Canary Islands, could be just the ticket they need to pull off their caper. For his first film shot outside of Romania, Porumboiu signs an absurd and impeccable film noir.
In a village in the Argentinian countryside, the inhabitants lead a life characterised by nature and routine. When a light appears to the elderly farmer Omar one night, he sets off with his grandson Noah on a journey in search of meaning. In a holiday villa whose owners are never there, the two housekeepers Rosana and Lily make a strange discovery, as magic and reality intertwine.
Landi and Mercedes live in Cuba's Zapata swamp, a biosphere reserve. To feed their sick child, Landi must secretly hunt crocodiles, leaving his wife and son behind for days on end. Amid social unrest and a global pandemic, To the West, in Zapata follows this loving family as they go to extreme lengths to survive, in a constant cycle of reunion and separation.
In 1982, six rural communities across the United States were notified that all of the nation's nuclear waste might be buried beneath them forever. Each candidate site was studied in detail by the Department of Energy's scientists and bureaucrats, in a process met with distress and resistance. A compelling indictment that interweaves physics, geology and democracy.
Since the age of six, Noah has navigated between his mother's home, foster homes and problems with the law. But whenever he loses his footing, he hops on his bike, hurtles down the slopes of Lausanne and becomes the king of tarmac. Shot over three years, Toute ma vie delicately explores the faultlines of adolescence, painting an intimate portrait of a quest for identity.
In a place of their choosing, Ambre, Méline and Chiara each recount a moment in their lives. It is personal and singular, yet part of a wider phenomenon: the persistence of rape culture, which robs women of their bodies. Through this simple yet powerful device, Laura Dauvin speaks to all the women – the titular "elles" – whose voices are yet to be heard.
What faces lie behind the fireworks and banners that fill stadiums the world over? Brought up in the terraces, Ragnhild Ekner unpacks the culture of the football ultras, going beyond the violent reputation that riles up politicians and the media, revealing instead its beauty and complexity. A riot of colour abounds in this dazzling odyssey through the world's most iconic arenas.
Between 2018 and 2023, Polish filmmaker Ewelina Rosinska travelled through Portugal with Nuno Barroso, her Bolex, and, occasionally, a group of artists and environmental activists. Intuitively edited, following the rhythm of the seasons, Unstable Rocks is a sensitive reflection on the ambivalent nature of human presence in natural environments.
For some thirty years, from the 1980s until their decline in the 2010s, video shops were crucial arenas for film culture– and both highbrow and lowbrow American cinema has documented their rise, fall and changing meanings. Alex Ross Perry's Videoheaven, a labour of love ten years in the making, retraces this history using solely appropriated footage from a vast array of films, ranging from huge Hollywood productions to non-professional no-budget affairs, sold solely at their neighbourhood video shop.
Fusing rigorous reportage with innovative cinematic subjectivity, this bold documentary from veteran war photographer Olivier Sarbil is a uniquely intimate portrait of a Deaf person's experience of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
After fleeing Vietnam for the Philippines, Hoa Thi Lê and Hue Nguyên Chế recount their experiences as background extras during the filming of Apocalypse Now (1979).
After four years away, Huiju returns home to South Korea. Exchanges with her loved ones are awkward and clumsy. Huiju turns once again to her familiar rituals: pruning the trees, preparing a sauce, tying a braid. With the help of her camera, she finds the courage to confront her family, determined to put an end to the domestic war that plagued her childhood.
At first glance, what could be more inanimate – and therefore anti-cinematic – than the mineral kingdom? Nora Štrbová challenges this declaration, turning it on its head and making stones into a highly kinetic subject. In this humorous essay film shot in 35 mm, stones are finally given a voice as they observe us, judge us and, above all… put up with us.
With just a few days left to shoot his film, director Paul changes his plans to spend more time with Alina, his actress. In order to do so, he pretends to rewrite part of the script, giving more space to Alina's character, who had until then been secondary. In this skilful film, Porumboiu regales us at every turn with his obsession with cinema.
At the southernmost tip of Africa lies the Cape of Good Hope, where the Indian and Atlantic Oceans meet but never mix. A few miles away, in a township built to isolate the mixed-race population during apartheid, Kulsum lives alone with her two children while her husband Phadiel serves a 25-year sentence. With great sensitivity, Lulu Scott films the epic wait of a loving family.
To fill in the gaps and inconsistencies in her father's biography, filmmaker Evi Stamou begins a correspondence with an artificial intelligence. From this conspiratorial and often impertinent exchange, possible and probable stories emerge, painting the portrait of a young dreamer, at a time when the Greek military junta was gaining power.
What if we could transfer the heart of the human brain to artificial intelligence? Empathy, imagination, feelings… and the ability to cooperate? Wider Than the Sky brings us closer to the world-renowned artists, dancers and scientists exploring the different paths that artificial intelligence is taking. Is a collective use of AI to shape a positive future for humanity even possible?
In the suffocating heat of a remote salt mine, six elderly women work seasonally, their hands and faces weathered by years of labour, their resolve unshaken. Within the Sun is a collective portrait of resilience and quiet strength, offering a glimpse into the rhythm of these women's daily lives, and how the harsh environment shapes their existence and soul.
Ana was born in São Miguel, an island ruled by religion and traditions. In between Luis, her queer best friend who loves dresses as much as pants, and her friend Cloé from Canada, bringing with her the glowing days of youth, Ana embarks on a journey filled with new desires. Wolf and Dog is the enchanting ode to the island's queer community where the twilight glow crosses the immense Atlantic Ocean.
When filmmaker Areeb Zuaiter lost her Palestinian mother, she lost her connection to Gaza. With all the memories from her childhood destroyed, she sets out on a quest to connect with a young man she sees in a video doing parkour among ruins in Gaza. With Ahmad as her guide, she explores life in Gaza, and rebuilds her memories of her mother and her childhood. In this time when Gaza and its people are being devastated every day, here's a portrait of a tormented city and the perseverance of its people.
The search for La Flor de Irupé, a lost film by Guillermo Zúñiga, a Spanish pioneer of scientific filmmaking who was exiled in Argentina after the Spanish Civil War, triggers a journey into family histories and national archives. As we witness the slow growth of the yrupé plant, images and silences emerge, revealing layers of historical concealment and censorship.
Against the backdrop of sunbaked parking lots, deserted courthouses, and empty suburban homes — the familiar spaces of true crime, stripped of all action and spectacle — a filmmaker describes his abandoned Zodiac Killer documentary and probes the inner workings of a genre at saturation point.