Visions du Réel 2024

<p>In order for the revolution to live up to its promise, might love be the missing ingredient? Artist Dora Garc&iacute;a delves into the archives and finds in the searing writings of Alexandra Kollonta&iuml;, an early-20th-century revolutionary, a precious ally of queer and feminist movements in Latin America and elsewhere. A joyfully militant political film.</p>

<p>In Chengdu, a former arms factory, the pride of the city during the Maoist era, is gradually being dismantled to make way for luxury accommodation. While recording the memories of the former workers, Jia Zhang-Ke hybridises the documentary approach by using professional actors and inserting poems as intertitles, as in the age of silent films.</p>

<p>Four tales drawn from real-life crime stories shed a relentless light on the social violence plaguing the Middle Kingdom, which is in the grip of accelerated economic development and corruption. Jia Zhang-Ke takes on the sword-film genre in this gritty drama, whose breathtaking action scenes are staged with the same brilliance as the contemplative shots that are characteristic of the director&rsquo;s style.</p>

<p>How did peacocks, originally from India, end up on an island in Berlin in the 19th century, and hippopotamuses, a century later, on the banks of a river in Colombia? Their lives there appear to be &ldquo;happy and free&rdquo;. With rapturous imagery, Elkin Calder&ograve;n Guevara and Johannes F&ouml;rster&rsquo;s decolonial fable turns them into wild icons, bearing witness to the whims of the powerful.</p>

<p>A few years later, Alexander Kuznetsov reunites with the protagonists of his Liberation, the User&rsquo;s Guide (VdR 2016), who are now free to lead their lives as they wish. While he dreams of their happiness, he accompanies them, powerless, down the path that is leading them straight to intransigent nationalism. An Ordinary Life is a film about loss, and grief.</p>

<p>Qiao loves Bin, the leader of the local Datong underworld. Having spent five years in prison for defending him during a brawl with a rival gang, she sets out to find him. Divided into three acts, this powerful and intimate fresco depicts the initiatory journey of a betrayed woman amid the societal upheaval caused by the advent of unbridled capitalism in the 2000s.</p>

<p>Au Revoir Siam charts the mental journey of a Thai political refugee in France. Intertwining traditional Thai rituals with the reality faced by political refugees, filmmaker Domenico Singha Pedroli explores the concept of borders, examining time, space and identity. A poetic and political narrative that delves into the troubled past of the Kingdom of Siam.</p>

<p>A young Chinese woman living in the United States is waiting for the results of the visa lottery. This time becomes a period of reflection for her, as she is visited by the memories of family banquets prepared by her grandmother, together with the ghosts of the past. In this enchanting journey through time, noodles take on a Proustian flavour.</p>

<p>The Brunaupark buildings in Zurich are about to be demolished as their owner, the Cr&eacute;dit Suisse pension fund, wants to build a new property complex. Hundreds of tenants&thinsp;&ndash;&thinsp;the victims of this proposal&thinsp;&ndash;&thinsp;are contesting their eviction. Hergert and Zietlow paint a portrait of a lively and resilient neighbourhood forced to confront its destiny.</p>

<p>Ulysse and Hadrien are in the same boat: university halls in the heart of Paris, a dissertation to submit, and a desperate political situation. With this shared condition at its heart, and marrying filmed journal with comic mises en sc&egrave;ne, Camarades creates the situationist portrait of a youth caught between utopia and instability.</p>

<p>In an attempt to reclaim pasture for their cattle, the inhabitants of an ecovillage in Navarre decide to cut down a pine grove planted as part of a state-funded reforesting initiative. In this fierce and sensory work, the filmmakers capture an adversarial process which uses deforestation techniques to transform a territory.</p>

<p>In Abidjan, at an &ldquo;intelligent immigration&rdquo; consultancy, young Ivorians are guided through the challenges posed by the Western institutions that grant visas. Against an ever-present backdrop of suspicion, their dream must be earned, in exchange for steep sums and an uncertain outcome. Stark and poetic.</p>

<p>Aboard a rickety bus, indigenous men and women of the Way&uacute;u community talk about their wounds. They are travelling on the fringes of Colombia and Venezuela, a territory haunted by its colonial past. The camera follows their faces, then loses itself in the immensity of the horizon. A sensory, dreamlike road trip in which every boundary is blurred&thinsp;&ndash;&thinsp;geographical, temporal, spiritual.</p>

<p>In the wake of the 2005 riots sparked by police violence, the inhabitants of Clichy-Sous-Bois mobilise in order to assert their rights. Alice Diop skilfully weaves her camera between the dilapidated tower blocks of La Foresti&egrave;re to give voice to the demands of the neighbourhood&rsquo;s youth, gradually revealing the fragile prospects of a population left to fend for itself.</p>

<p>Using a powerful visual metaphor and from a first-person perspective, Camille Vigny tells the story of the domestic violence she suffered when she was 18. The devastating impact of this abusive relationship is conveyed with remarkable precision in the interaction between the images and text. A highly courageous political statement, this film is a bloodcurdling cry from the dark.</p>

<p>On May 18th, 1995, Shawn Nelson, a 35-year-old plumber from California, emerged from the mine he had dug in his garden to search for gold, stole a tank and rampaged through his neighbourhood, destroying everything in his path. Cul de Sac peels back the layers to frame this highly personal act of rage within the historical context of a working community in decline.</p>

<p>Fearful of passing on his stammer to his young child, Dhia, a Tunisian filmmaker living in exile in France, sets out to understand the origins of this &ldquo;disorder&rdquo;. He returns to visit his relatives in Tunisia, the country he left during the Revolution. A sensitive quest about the transmission of a cultural and political heritage across generations.</p>

<p>Didy is everywhere&rdquo;, says Ga&euml;l Kamilindi at the start of his film. And yet, the emptiness is immense. In order to fill this void, he sets off for Rwanda, accompanied by Fran&ccedil;ois-Xavier Destors, in search of his mother Didy, who died when he was five. Heartrending archival footage mingles with survivors&rsquo; memories to paint the portrait of this woman, thus setting in motion the process of mourning.</p>

<p>At the latter&rsquo;s invitation, Jia Zhang-Ke follows Liu Xiaodong to the site of the Three Gorges Dam, where he creates giant canvases depicting workers, and then to Bangkok, where he paints female models. Capturing with his camera what the other paints with his brushes, the filmmaker works on the same motif as his alter ego: the sudden disappearance of a geographical and human space undergoing accelerated change.</p>

<p>As a child, Maka Gogaladze was forced to take piano lessons that drove her to tears. When she challenges her mother about it, the latter retorts that children must be taught discipline. Drawing on her personal experience, the filmmaker observes with caustic humour the mechanisms by which an entire society&thinsp;&ndash;&thinsp;in this case Georgian&thinsp;&ndash;&thinsp;is brought into line through education.</p>

<p>Leaving for Myanmar in 2020, the filmmaker could not have anticipated the upheaval the country was on the verge of experiencing. Through the darkness of the Covid-19 epidemic and the violent coup d&rsquo;&eacute;tat orchestrated by the military junta, a light continues to shine: that of 17-year-old Zu Zu and her steadfast dream of a better future for her loved ones. A four-handed diary and chronicle of a friendship.</p>

<p>A recently-separated thirty-something seeks refuge with her cousin Evelyne in Annemasse. Evelyne is a lively sexagenerian who has recently become blind&thinsp;&ndash;&thinsp;and whose apartment is overrun by cockroaches. The two set off on an adventure on the shores of Lake Geneva, with neither money nor car, but with shared belly laughs and the hope of a new beginning.</p>

<p>Angela and Jair trawl the volcanic coast, battered by the ocean, in search of the small fry that will ensure survival in their fishing village. They must learn to coexist with the visiting &ldquo;big-game&rdquo; fishermen looking for blue marlin. In adeptly composed frames, Pierre-Fran&ccedil;ois Sauter shows the effects of coastal international tourism on Cape Verde.</p>

<p>Juliette has just finished school and aspires to become a midwife. On social media, &ldquo;Junniverse&rdquo; is known as a &ldquo;fire-talker&rdquo;&thinsp;&ndash;&thinsp;a gift she inherited from her grandmother. Director Pauline Jeanbourquin follows this ordinary-yet-extraordinary young woman during a scout summer camp, creating a nuanced portrait of this self-styled &ldquo;modern witch&rdquo; as she grapples with the existential questions facing her generation.</p>

<p>A figure skater with the Ukrainian &ldquo;Ballet on ice&rdquo;, Maria Stoianova&rsquo;s father acquired his first camera in 1986, the year the filmmaker was born. In the formidable archives that make up the film, two universes intertwine: her childhood in Soviet Ukraine and the lush, capitalist outside world, to the rhythm of ice-skating performances. A fascinating and subtly political film.</p>

<p>Laboratory rats are born under neon lights, in endlessly stacked plastic trays. Here, the relationship between man and animal is ambivalent: tenderness comes gloved in latex, and the violence of experiments looms on the horizon. With remarkable framing and sound design, Gene:sis takes us right into the animal&rsquo;s point of view.</p>

<p>Hein? is a collective visual journal in which seven young individuals express themselves and explore life&#39;s imbalances. Because, after all, we can speak up about them, right</p>

<p>Pehu&eacute;n Pedre trains two actors for an examination at the civil registry, where both will have the opportunity to obtain their own disability certificate.</p>

<p>Some of John Wilson&rsquo;s sharpest comedy and his most affecting ordinary drama coalesce in this first of our selection of episodes from his one-of-a-kind HBO series. Part I makes for the perfect introduction to both his signature formula as well as a few of his peculiar obsessions, be it the absurdity of metropolitan urban engineering, deeply amusing human quirks or the desire for connection (however clumsy).</p>

<p>In this selection of episodes from his hit series, John Wilson shares lessons on how to tackle everyday problems, each becoming a pretext for a series of digressions and quirky, hilarious yet touching encounters. A deadpan anthropology of contemporary New York, How To takes a deep dive into the mundane to reveal its full, delicious absurdity. Utterly unique.</p>

<p>Jia Zhang-Ke sets out to tell the story of Shanghai by interviewing revolutionaries, industrialists, workers, artists... spanning several generations. Their stories, marked by war, exile and return, are echoed in shots of the Chinese megalopolis, where the actress Zhao Tao, a spirit from the past, searches for other voices, forever lost in the limbo of history.</p>

<p>While visiting Ypres, Sachin learns that 1.4 million Indians were conscripted by the British to fight on the Flanders Fields during the First World War. Using audio recordings, letters, songs and archives, he brings his anonymous ancestors back to life, like ghosts inlaid in an immovable winter landscape.</p>

<p>Ukraine, February 2022. The Russian invasion on the outskirts of Kyiv forces Alina to join her parents in their village. Amid the noise of the bombs, the three do their best to get on with day-to-day life: keeping warm, feeding themselves and rescuing abandoned animals. She films their daily lives, in which the tension of their enclosed world and uncertain future seems to grip them all.</p>

<p>In 2001, commissioned by the South Korean Jeonju Film Festival to make a short digital film, Jia Zhang-Ke set up his camera on the outskirts of the mining town of Datong. In thirty-one shots, In Public captures anonymous people, moments of waiting and indecision, in a railway station, a bus stop, a dance hall... transforming observed reality into a series of mini-fictions.</p>

<p>In 2018, two filmmakers meet up at the Abastumani Astrophysical Observatory in the mountains of Georgia, in an effort to capture the beauty of the place. Five years later, Keto Kipiani revisits these images and gets back in touch with her co-director. Could their shared fascination with the stars and this timeless place have concealed unexpressed romantic feelings?</p>

<p>Prior to his big break with HBO&rsquo;s How To With John Wilson, the filmmaker cut his teeth on the Internet, sharpening his inimitable brand of visual wit and unassuming wisdom. Visions du R&eacute;el presents a selection of shorts, including his first documentary made while in college, a rejected pilot episode for Viceland and other rarities!</p>

<p>Who owns the land? Legend has it that ex-prime minister Silvio Berlusconi stole a dune in Sardinia, while the locals are fighting for their land and struggling with their dependence on tourism. La Duna is an irresistibly cathartic and humorous documentary that intertwines a portrait of a community with absurd almost-fairytales.</p>

<p>In an outlying district of Nyon, a self-managed after-school centre offers children an island of freedom. Founded by an association of women volunteers, this atypical centre has survived 30 years of urban and social change in the district and continues to offer a rare, idealistic and joyfully disorganised space. The film will be screened as a Relaxed session.</p>

<p>Steve dreams of becoming an actor. Originally from Cameroon, he decides to train at the Cours Simon drama school in Paris. Repeatedly reduced to the colour of his skin, the aspiring actor struggles to bear this ostracizing environment. This portrait powerfully merges the personal with the political while offering the protagonist the role of his dreams: that of the revolutionary, Georges Danton.</p>

<p>La Permanence immerses itself in the daily life of a medical facility in Seine-Saint-Denis dedicated to migrant persons. Behind closed doors, the filmmaker documents a microcosm that cares for patients bearing the pain and scars of exile. The shabby surgery bears witness to the powerlessness of the French medical profession when faced with the violence of asylum procedures.</p>

<p>On 11 September 1973, the democratic government of President Salvador Allende was overthrown by a violent military coup. 50 years later, Santiago&rsquo;s national football stadium is momentarily brought to life to tell the story of the terrible events it silently witnessed in the aftermath of this pivotal moment in the country&rsquo;s history.</p>

<p>Alice Diop returns to the council estate where she grew up, la Rose-des-Vents, to paint a portrait of the inhabitants of her old building. Outpourings in the intimacy of apartments, the stairwell where different cultures meet, and the outside areas, veritable playgrounds, together form the rich heritage of this neighbourhood. A counterpoint to the usual media coverage.</p>

<p>Located in the north of Brussels, Caf&eacute; La Perle&thinsp;&ndash;&thinsp;with its wood panelling and karaoke&thinsp;&ndash;&thinsp;provides a cosy haven for its procession of regulars. Alternating between faces, chatter and spirited singing, Pablo Guarise&rsquo;s film pays homage to timeless bistros and the unifying and emotional power of hit songs. In the buzz of the barroom, true grace abounds.</p>

<p>Following the death of her parents, Alice Diop immerses herself for a month in the environment where her mother grew up, in Dakar. She depicts the courtyard of the family home and the different generations of women who live there, recording their confidences, their dreams and their struggles. As the daughter of exiles, the filmmaker takes a tender yet distant look at a life that could have been her own.</p>

<p>When war breaks out in Baghdad in the early 90s, Siham and Rakan decide to fight the killer robot invaders in order to escape the city and protect the future of their newborn daughter. In a universe masterfully inspired by Japanese anime, Tabarak Allah Abbas brings her parents&rsquo; history to life, whilst paying tribute to their courage.</p>

<p>Born in Biel, Switzerland, in the 1980s, filmmaker Adrien Bordone&rsquo;s &ldquo;Spanish friends&rdquo; moved back to their parents&rsquo; homeland as teenagers. A seldom-explored migration phenomenon, this return to an unfamiliar territory proves not without difficulties. Through their stories, a tender portrait of these men emerges, shaped by affection and friendship.</p>

<p>While contemplating having a child, Miranda Stern starts to open boxes containing the personal effects of her mother, whom she never knew. Through a moving introspective journey into the past and the future, the filmmaker creates a cinematic work around maternity, loss and addiction, focused on life and healing.</p>

<p>The filmmaker returns to her village, at the foot of the Avey mountain in Azerbaijan. The mountain is disappearing, swallowed up by quarries, and with it her memories of childhood. Once there, she films the relationship between a young girl and her grandmother; their daily life, and the tenderness that unites them. Mirroring this are her memories, together weaving a poetic tale.</p>

<p>&ldquo;A long time ago, we were people who grew up with animals.&rdquo; It is with these words, as well as superb images, that filmmakers Ben Donateo and Michel Zylberberg begin their journey through Tanzania. Through the eyes of a child, a young man, and an elder, their film reflects on our relationship to the land, to animals, and to the living world across different generations.</p>

<p>Like a visual elegy, My Memory Is Full of Ghosts explores a reality caught between past, present and future in Homs, Syria. Behind the self-portrait of an exsanguinated population in search of normality emerge memories of the city, haunted by destruction, disfigurement and loss. A deeply moving film, a painful echo of the absurdity of war and the strength of human beings.</p>

<p>Mariana Vi&ntilde;oles has positioned her camera in the window. As lockdown puts everything on hold, little everyday dramas continue to play out in her street, as many secret tales waiting to be told. Off-screen, everyday dialogues outline the contours of domestic life. We are invited to prolong their existence, and marvel at the magical power of life.</p>

<p>Just like Fran&ccedil;ois Maspero at the end of the 1980s, Alice Diop takes us on a journey across the Parisian region to meet its inhabitants. Humble and attentive, the director takes a fresh look at a multicultural territory marked by History, far removed from the usual media caricatures.</p>

<p>On the side of the road, in a quaint Cuban town, stands a funeral home in which Maurilio and Fidela, partners in work as in life, have been preparing corpses for the past seventeen years. With quietly affectionate humour, Mar&iacute;a Salafranca takes us on an offbeat tour of this discreet establishment where death and love intertwine on a daily basis.</p>

<p>The Pal&eacute;o Festival&thinsp;&ndash;&thinsp;with its history, enraptured crowds, protagonists from all walks of life and questions about the future&thinsp;&ndash;&thinsp;is the subject of a captivating documentary series by students of the HEAD and the ECAL. Their four capsules, including archival footage, bring the sounds of this essential Swiss institution to life.</p>

<p>Chronicling the aimless existence of a petty thief, Pickpocket presents a fresh take on an ordinary youth in a provincial town. With this first underground film, a veritable manifesto for a Chinese new wave stylistically close to neo-realism, Jia Zhang-Ke immediately established himself as a leading voice in the landscape of Asian cinema.</p>

<p>Jia Zhang-Ke&rsquo;s second film is again set in the Fenyang region, but shifts its focus to the 1980s. Centred on the fate of a provincial theatre troupe as it moves from Maoist propaganda to the discovery of Western-influenced pop music, Platform powerfully evokes the individual&rsquo;s desire for freedom thwarted by collective constraints.</p>

<p>A filmmaker and his cameraman friend undertake the journey from London to Los Angeles to meet a famous storyboard artist, who will draw the film of their trip. In this hilarious film journal, with tangents at every turn, Ruaidhri Ryan (Fog World, VdR 2018) once again adeptly explores the unexpected lurking in the corners of reality.</p>

<p>The hand of Beno&icirc;t Peyrucq, a French illustrator, traces the lines of a landscape criss-crossed by railway tracks and the rays of the setting sun. From the watercolour to its urban model, RER B offers a window of a few seconds on the horizon of a suburban train. A line running from north to south, covering a vast area containing disparate social realities.</p>

<p>In Argentina, the majority of delivery drivers working for local UberEats clone apps are Venezuelans who have fled the crisis ravaging their country. Filmed during the pandemic in Buenos Aires, Caracas and Colonia Tovar, Riders forcefully immerses us in the gruelling daily lives of those exploited by the platform economy at both ends of South America.</p>

<p>Having just graduated in filmmaking, Rose is struggling to find her direction in life. The local employment office sends her to help out on a farm. Rising at dawn, she observes, imitates, chips her nail polish, dirties her boots, and learns the names of the cows, without ever losing sight of her role as filmmaker: capturing the world around her as best she can.</p>

<p>Since 2016, nearly 40,000 people have been rescued by the Ocean Viking, the ambulance ship chartered by SOS M&eacute;diterran&eacute;e. Jean-Baptiste Bonnet spent weeks on board capturing every nook and cranny of this confined space, and thus deciphering the political and human stakes of this suspended period, at the gates of Europe, between the rescue and the landing.</p>

<p>By filming her Portuguese lessons, Ukrainian filmmaker Daryna Mamaisur ( I Stumble Every Time I Hear From Kyiv , VdR 2023) creates a moving puzzle between filmed diary and essay. Through associations of images and words, she continues to poetically formulate the disaster that affects her life as an indissoluble cinematic link between the here of exile and the elsewhere of war.</p>

<p>In Fengjie, half-submerged by the construction of the Three Gorges Dam, Han Sanming searches for his ex-wife and daughter, who disappeared 16 years ago, while Shen Hong searches for her husband. A true turning point in the filmmaker&#39;s career, filmed alongside Dong as its fictional counterpoint, Still Life forges a sweeping epic of solitude in a landscape doomed to disappear.</p>

<p>After a happy childhood in the countryside, Jacob&mdash;the director&#39;s animated alter ego&mdash;and his parents move to a Chinese megalopolis. There, he becomes aware of his ethnicity through the racism he experiences at school. He then decides to escape, at the cost of isolation and solitude. A delicate animation work that evokes the pain of exile.</p>

<p>Jia Zhang-Ke here concludes a documentary trilogy devoted to Chinese artists, begun with Dong . Returning to his native Shanxi for a literature festival attended by three great novelists born between 1950 and 1970, the filmmaker summons, through their lives and heritage, a large part of the cultural history of modern China.</p>

<p>Is there a bald man in the room? Filmmakers Marcos and Elias are there! They explore this &quot;complex&quot; with a few of their peers living in Tostado, an Argentinian town where most men seem to be suffering from premature baldness. They create a wild tragicomedy, tinged with self-mockery and populated by shaved heads and hair implants.</p>

<p>At a market, puppies trapped in a cloth bag whimper and struggle to free themselves. One of them manages to tear the canvas and pokes its head out. With this very brief documentary gesture, Jia Zhang-Ke connects the merchants and the animals in a single camera movement, allegorically evoking the artist&#39;s situation in China, hampered by censorship.</p>

<p>In Wisconsin Dells, the water park capital of the world, foreign students are employed on summer work visas. This program, presented as an immersion into American culture, is also a way to take advantage of cheap labor. An inspired portrait of contemporary America through the eyes of this young generation.</p>

<p>Deep in the Utah desert, the top-secret Dugway Testing Center prepares for the wars of tomorrow. The intertwined destinies of a soldier, a military chaplain, a father searching for his missing son, and a Hiroshima survivor are all tied to this place. The Gate explores the mysteries of a sick society that embraces the use of violence in the name of the right to freedom.</p>

<p>An incredible series of strange coincidences leads two pious sisters straight to Olaug, a woman who bears a striking resemblance to their deceased sister, Lita. With the help of director Maria Fredriksson, they set out to unravel the mystery, but nothing will prepare them for the breathtaking twists and turns that await them. A true story far stranger than fiction.</p>

<p>Between the Calais Jungle where Tarek Sami spent long months filming, Algeria, which he left at the age of 20, and South Africa, where his brother settled, the filmmaker captures faces and stories by the fireside, to ward off the inevitability of the world&#39;s polarity and reclaim History. He delivers a poetic ode to the wretched of the earth striving to live their lives; a film filled with grace.</p>

<p>Mart&iacute; moves to Bilbao for an artist residency. His clothes occupy only a small part of the immense wardrobe in his new room. When he meets a boy he likes, this wardrobe fills up day after day. But where has the emptiness, the free space, the little corner just for himself gone? Is it the wardrobe or love that has swallowed everything up?</p>

<p>Larry Towell is a photographer for the prestigious Magnum agency. For 40 years, he has traveled the burning planet, capturing the unspeakable. In this filmed diary, he reflects on his profession, his doubts, the need for images, the absurdity of borders, the danger of &quot;getting used to war,&quot; and the essence of his quest, which is also that of the film: humanity. An impressive new opus from the talented Nyon filmmaker Matthieu Rytz!</p>

<p>Sara and Pedro, young adults from a working-class suburb of Madrid, get up to mischief together. But over the course of a summer, Sara meets new people who introduce her to another world: the theater. In this whirlwind of love and partying, she will gradually be torn between the two worlds. A metamorphosis is being written, to counter destiny.</p>

<p>In the Hautes-Alpes, far from everything, F&eacute;lix has chosen a profession far removed from the world. A young shepherd, he roams the ridges watching over his flock. Alone, in the wilderness, prey to the vagaries of the weather, he lives for months in a harsh and inaccessible world. Here, the environment is harsh and the wild must be kept at a distance, and yet the wolf, invisible, prowls...</p>

<p>Amantina and Clara, two elders from a remote Colombian village, have dedicated their lives to a single cause: hating each other! Perhaps because of the section of wall they share, or the priest who shows favoritism, or perhaps it&#39;s the healer who&#39;s manipulating them? A dark neighborhood investigation, between trinkets, urban legends, stray cats, and witchcraft.</p>

<p>Through the work of Ma Ke, a young designer sought after by Fashion Week, Jia Zhang-Ke offers an empathetic reflection on the &quot;usefulness&quot; of clothing in contemporary Chinese society. Behind the untouched world of fashion, the realities of Canton&#39;s textile workers and Shanxi&#39;s impoverished tailors serve as a reminder of how unequal living conditions are reflected in the relationship with clothing.</p>

<p>Alice Diop reveals the daily lives of four young people from Seine-Saint-Denis. The urban environment, representative of a social injunction to virility, contrasts with their voices and modest confidences about romantic relationships. The film thus gradually moves from a disillusioned and cynical observation to the certainty that there is a path Towards tenderness .</p>

<p>After fifteen years of absence, Farah returns to Lebanon to be with her aging father. Hoping for one last conversation, the two try to find a common language. It will ultimately be with the only one he understands: poetry. As revolution rages outside, Farah Kassem creates a moving body of work, both intimate and open to her country in crisis.</p>

<p>In the Argentine Pampas, all life seems to be on hold. The prolonged drought is killing livestock and threatening the existence of Omar, a rancher, his nonagenarian mother, and Libertad, his four-year-old granddaughter. Far from the folkloric imagery of gauchos, Alexis Franco confronts the harshness and fragility of a condition in this Western set in the Anthropocene.</p>

<p>A dive into the exuberant world of cartists , these colorful personalities whose passion is to modify the appearance of their cars. Strange eccentrics or authentic craftsmen? This is the question this film attempts to answer, with sincere curiosity, by meeting these enthusiasts. An anthropology of an obsession.</p>

<p>The new town of Levittown, founded by a real estate entrepreneur after the war to house veterans, has all the hallmarks of an American suburb. John O&#39;Hagan paints a slightly satirical portrait of the founding members of this community, highlighting the eccentricities and peculiar aspirations of the post-war middle class.</p>

<p>I am love. These lines from a poem by Emir Abdelkader open the film, an investigation into love led by Izgar, a young activist who wanders around, seemingly searching for a place, and is stunned by the magnitude of the question. Violent love, God&#39;s love, self-love? An urgent gesture, a delicate snapshot of LGBTQIA+ love in Morocco today.</p>

<p>An Internet user enters the mental space of an artificial intelligence in search of Francine Descartes, the daughter of Ren&eacute; Descartes. This intelligence ends up functioning by itself, without human intervention, creating an alternative and emaciated world that contains all the memory of the world.</p>

<p>In the summer of 1982, the Israeli army invaded Beirut and took advantage of the opportunity to seize the archives of the Palestinian Research Center. These archives contained many historical documents on Palestine, including a rich collection of photographs and films. These images have since been renamed and re-indexed according to the vision of their new custodians, the Israeli Ministry of Defense. Against these acts of dispossession and appropriation (one sequence shows the quiet violence of their authors), A Fidai Film offers a counter-narrative based on this loss, in order to restore the traces of the plundered Palestinian history. Kamal Aljafari re-examines these images, here exclusively cinematographic or televisual, and points out the complexity of their status as well as their mode of existence as a political object. A double movement unfolds, that of making these images resurface, sometimes precious testimonies restoring the life, the struggles of the Palestinian people, but also that of rethinking the implicit gaze of those who produced them (the colonial gesture). Kamal Aljafari kneads them, sometimes mistreats them, in order to bring out the underlying ideology, the exoticizing gaze as well as the gestures of dispossession: crossing out the comments of the victors and occupiers (from the British mandate to today), adding, colorizing, removing superimposed texts, modifying sounds, recombining, editing. A gesture of anger and struggle in action as much as a restitution of a distorted or erased memory, A Fidai Film claims to be a form of cinematographic sabotage, a combative film as the title unequivocally indicates. Nicolas Feodoroff</p>

<p>Against the backdrop of the Woman, Life, Freedom movement in Iran, filmmaker Elahe Esmaili returns to her hometown in Mashhad to help her parents move house. Despite living abroad and not wearing a hijab regularly for many years, whenever she returns to Iran and is in the company of her religious extended family, she wears it. However, on this occasion she wants to force a change. With intimacy and honesty, the filmmaker embarks on a delicate journey towards lasting change.</p>

<p>In a forest in Norway, a family lives an isolated lifestyle in an attempt to be wild and free, but a tragic event changes everything, and they are forced to adjust to modern society.</p> <p>Silje Evensmo Jacobsen&rsquo;s portrait of the Payne family is an intimate encounter with a family coming to terms with a new reality. For years, the family of five enjoyed a slower-paced, independent life in harmony with nature on a picturesque farm. Now they are at a turning point, and Jacobsen captures their journey with a caring eye. The vulnerability and compassion they extend to each other, the land, and their animals are tenderly and beautifully observed by a camera that feels part of the family, while home videos woven throughout provide meaningful insights into years past. Joyous moments spring through the heartache, and the Paynes&rsquo; strong bond and love for each other guide them through each challenge they face. Jacobsen crafts a sensitive, affectionate, and completely heartfelt experience that is as much about navigating grief as it is about graciously accepting change.&mdash;SO</p>

<p>A Terrible Beauty tells a speculative tale of two time travelling companions, Lucy and Blue as they journey through the mysterious &ldquo;Miracle City&quot; - an intriguing place populated with eternal goods, forever flowers and perpetual persons.</p> <p>Will the travellers find what &dagger;hey are looking for, or are they doomed to wandering forever?</p> <p>A Terrible Beauty is an experimental endeavour to position documentary film in an immanent future, aiming to explore the notion of being human in a complex multispecies world. The film blends documentary observation with science fiction to speak of a post human present/future. It invites us to revisit questions around technology, ethics, mortality and what it means to be human in our times. A Terrible Beauty unfolds within the realm of anthropomorphic goods and objects, such as dolls, mannequins, and androids, and explores the ambivalent state of dread and excitement through which humans encounter technology. It dwells amidst the paradoxes involved in the perpetual making and unmaking of the human and invites the audience to visit a post-human future inhabited by humans and their &ldquo;companion copies&rdquo;.</p> <p>​A Terrible Beauty has predominantly been filmed in Yiwu, a city hosting one of the world&#39;s largest wholesale markets for small commodities, and a significant node on the New Silk Road. It advances propositions on how documentary film can be situated in an ordinary future and the significance of such future-oriented exploration. The film delves into the evolving narrative techniques that bridge the realms of science fiction and documentary practice, aiming to envision plausible, habitable futures through speculative storytelling.</p>

<p>It is a coming-of-age tale where youth grapple with their first profound loss. Filmmaker Yi-Shan&rsquo;s best friends Chun and Yueh were trapped in a Nepal cave for 47 days. Chun died three days before Yueh&#39;s rescue, prompting Yi-Shan to take up the camera and retrace her friends&rsquo; footsteps in Nepal. When Yi-Shan reaches the cave, what awaits her there?</p>

<p>A group of figurines from the french Mus&eacute;e de l&#39;arm&eacute;e in Paris join Napoleon on his expedition to Egypt. Inspired by a visit to the museum in 2017, the film&#39;s narrative centers on the deteriorating diorama of Napoleon and the Sphinx. As the figurines embark on their journey, they discover the Sphinx&#39;s broken nose, leading to a surreal conversation between Napoleon and the monument. By emphasizing the contrast between the seriousness of the subject and the lightness of the medium, and by mixing past and present, the film explores political issues related to militarism and colonization, challenging traditional historical narratives.</p>

<p>Stones are at once the most foundational and the most overlooked parts of our lifeworld. When a retired nature documentary narrator passes a kidney stone, she decides to tell one more story about this forgotten world of stone . A hypnotic essay film asking urgent ecological questions, Apple Cider Vinegar takes the viewer on a journey meeting Palestinian quarry workers, passionate Britisch Geologist and People living on the lava fields of Fogo.</p>

<p>The 27 residents on the tiny Danish Wadden Sea island of Mand&oslash; are used to severe weather and flooding. But climate change and increasingly extreme weather now pose a serious threat to the eight-square-kilometer island. Its last farmer, Gregers, bravely faces the inevitable catastrophe. He refuses to build a life elsewhere and instead hopes to find a wife to manage the farm with him.</p> <p>As a storm approaches, Gregers and his faithful dog inspect the decaying dykes that protect his beloved island. Meanwhile Mie celebrates her 100th birthday and Niels, an avid birdwatcher, laments the rare birds that don&rsquo;t visit the island anymore. Tourists arrive in buses at low tide and hear from tour guide Preben how Mand&oslash;&rsquo;s community was almost completely wiped out during a storm surge in 1634. Today, the current generation holds on steadfastly, despite the new threats from nature.</p> <p>The portrait of this microcosm is accompanied by masterly shots of the distinctive landscape, shifting skies, and seas that change with the wind and tide. In a sense, the grim fate of these islanders, presented in drily comic situations, affects us all.</p>

<p>One of the world&rsquo;s youngest elite rock climbers, Ashima Shiraishi spent her formative years breaking numerous age-based climbing milestones, spurred on by her number one fan and coach, her father, Poppo a retired Butoh dancer and avant-garde performer with no formal climbing experience. When these New Yorkers travel to South Africa to conquer a V14 boulder problem, father and daughter must face their interpersonal struggles in tandem with the challenging ascent. &ndash;&nbsp;<em>Brandon Harrison</em>&nbsp;</p>

<p>In&nbsp;<strong>Avant il n&#39;y avait rien</strong>, Yvann Yagchi finds a possible, poetically fitting way to address the longstanding conflict between Israel and Palestine. Made before the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war, the film concentrates on a close friendship forged in childhood. The Palestinian filmmaker and his Israeli counterpart grew up together in Switzerland and each eventually explored their respective national and cultural pasts and identities. The best friend embraced Zionism and moved to the West Bank to live in a Palestinian Occupied Territory. Yagchi, troubled but curious, decided to make a documentary with his friend there &ndash; an opportunity to discuss, compare and argue, but in a hopefully peaceable way.<br /> <br /> But the friend soon called a halt to the project, withdrawing his collaboration. He exists in the film now only as a trace, with his face erased. Yagchi refashioned his film as an impassioned, sometimes furious letter to this absent interlocutor. In cinematic terms, the letter takes the form of a peripatetic essay, including an investigation of his own family legacy &ndash; in particular, the existence of a magnificent collection of books now falsely catalogued as &quot;Abandoned Property&quot; in the National Library of Israel.</p> <p>Blending live footage, animation and voice-over, the film offers a moving testament to friendship.<br /> <br /> <em>&ndash;&nbsp; Adrian Martin</em></p>

<p>Averro&egrave;s and Rosa Parks: two units of the Esquirol Hospital, which - like the Adamant - are part of the Paris Central Psychiatric Group. From individual interviews to &quot;carer-patient&quot; meetings, the filmmaker focuses on showing a form of psychiatry that continually strives to make room for and rehabilitate the patients&#39; words. Little by little, each one eases open the door to their world. Within an increasingly worn-out health system, how can the forsaken be given a place among others?</p>

<p>In Brazil exists an underground culture of illegal hot air balloon gangs. The film follows two gang members belonging to two of the most infamous balloon gangs in Brazil, through five of the most dramatic years in recent Brazilian history.</p>

<p>In this compassionate yet disturbing documentary, director Lawrence C&ocirc;t&eacute;-Collins inspects the life of former filmmaking friend Billy Poulin, now in prison for murder, through his own stockpile of video footage and deconstructs the effects of untreated schizophrenia.</p>

<p><em>Bliss Point</em>&nbsp;indicates the optimal dose of food additives required to achieve desired palatability for the consumer.&nbsp;<em>Bliss Point</em>&nbsp;is also the culmination of a trilogy, in which Gerard Ort&iacute;n Castellv&iacute; traces the journey undertaken by food products as they make their way to our table. Buffeting us with alluring images, this aesthetically honed film follows the various stages a food item has to go through in order to stimulate our taste buds. At the same time, however, Castellv&iacute; calls into question the scramble for perfection, where functionality is placed above humanity.</p>

<p>The Amsterdam-Amstelland fire brigade needs to change. At Amsterdam&rsquo;s oldest fire station, not far from the Rijksmuseum, we follow station commander Gerrie on the eve of a move and during the long-running process to make the organization more inclusive and diverse.</p> <p>With Gerrie in the leading role, we see the firefighters carrying out their daily activities at the fire station. We join them when they go out to fight a blaze, when someone needs to be resuscitated, or when difficult conversations take place with commanders and policymakers. And we witness during group discussions where emotions sometimes run high.</p> <p>Gerrie represents the old guard, and he watches with dismay as his familiar working environment disappears. He is also struggling with understaffing, partly as a result of the new recruitment policy. Without taking sides, director Saskia Gubbels reveals why the changes imposed from above meet with so much resistance. Burning Out provides insight into the dynamics arising on the fault line of cultural change.</p>

<p>An 18-year-old musician designs a cybernetic organ and illegally implants it into his own body, acquiring a new sense that purportedly allows him to perceive sounds coming from outer space while on the surface of the Earth.</p>

<p>Which came first... the rooster or the egg? It&rsquo;s a question that has perplexed the human mind since ancient times. On 4th August 1474, an egg-laying rooster was publicly executed on the town square in Basel. Nina Forsman takes this bizarre historical fact and uses it to create an arresting if slightly absurd investigation, drawing on incredible archive footage from British Path&eacute; and Prelinger, among others.</p>

<p>Lebanon, 2018. War, politics or revolution: these are the choices faced by Georges, Joumana and Perla Joe. Three destinies and a shared desire to rebuild a troubled country. How is it possible to continue to dream when everything around is falling apart?</p>

<p>One of the most important contemporary writers invites us on a personal stroll through the past he has come to terms with in his autobiographical novels. Class, culture, sexuality, identity and education: &Eacute;douard Louis speaks from experience.</p>

<p>This personal short documentary tells the story of a soldier who never wanted to be one. His decision never to pull a trigger led to resistance and ultimately to military prison. Pretending to be mentally ill, he leaves the war zone and returns to Belgrade via the insane asylum. On the day NATO begins bombing the entire country.</p>

<p>&ldquo;Beid, Hafsa, Melissa, Manessa, Mohammad&hellip; 25 children and their dedicated teacher. We wanted to find out who they are&hellip; to discover their skills and strategies, their joys, fears, wants and needs.&quot;<br /> (Ruth Beckermann)<br /> <br /> More than 60% of all children in Viennese elementary schools do not have German as their first language. At the same time, there is an acute shortage of teachers and tutors. These adverse conditions are the starting point for Ruth Beckermann&#39;s FAVORITEN, in which the Austrian filmmaker (The Waldheim Waltz, Mutzenbacher) accompanies a Viennese elementary school class over the course of three school years. The result is an astonishingly cheerful portrait of an unusual community.</p>

<h6><span style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:18px">Summer 1900, Switzerland. Elisabeth, seventeen, is about to take her vows when her sister suddenly dies. The mistery that surrounds her death will push her to rebel against the local order.</span></span></h6>

<p>In this original and funny self-portrait, moving between hope, despair and heartbreak, we follow the main character Rogier Kappers for seven years. He wants to realize the dream he had as a nine-year-old boy: to become a famous musician playing the glass organ, an instrument made of singing glasses. Boundless optimism or naive impulsivity?</p> <p>&ldquo;He always thought he would have made it by 52, but that clearly didn&rsquo;t work out,&rdquo; says the ironic narrator. Kappers had always been a dreamer, full of ideas and projects that were supposed to bring him happiness or fortune, but something always went wrong. Insecure but stubborn, he is now finding his way as a street and stage musician. He gets an autograph from his idol Arvo P&auml;rt, practices endlessly on the heavenly sounding glasses, and in between a trip to Dubai, an appearance on national TV, and frantic work on his vacation home, he finds out how this project, too, can be as unexpected as life itself. Or is he actually looking for love?</p> <p>A glorious coming-of-old-age drama, in which Kappers&rsquo; father provides down-to-earth commentary, and creative ambition arises from the feeling that time is running out and everything needs to change.</p>

<p>Dogs walking on the breakdown lane, bachelorettes partying in the car and a bored child looking for something to do. Thousands of impatient travellers are trapped in the traffic jam of the century. Ahead lies the Gotthard mountain, one of the longest tunnels in the world, the gateway to the sunny South. Glued to the asphalt, climate activists are heating up the mood even more. Who will snap first?</p>

<p>January 2021. The UK is in its 3rd lockdown and all entertainment venues remain closed. For theatre actors Sam and Mark, the future looks bleak. As the pandemic drags on, Mark - single and childless - is increasingly socially isolated, while Sam panics about how he is going to support his young family. They spend their days in the online digital world of Grand Theft Auto and when they stumble across a theater, they suddenly have an idea to stage a full production of Hamlet within the game. This film charts their ridiculous, hilarious and moving adventure as they battle violent griefers and discover surprising truths about life, friendship and the enduring power of Shakespeare.</p>

<p>An emotive portrait of a multispecies matriarchal family composed using found footage from communist Poland.</p>

<p>The love affair between Vadim, a Soviet engineer, and the biologist Vera is threatened when the pair are separated by a mission to build utopia in Egypt. Based on never-before-seen archival footage and inspired by a true story.</p>

<p>Through the production of an obsidian prosthetic eye, body and territory are mirrored as traces of an inverse time, which uncover syndromes of our present.</p>

<p>What waves and signals run through the hybrid landscapes between agricultural use and fallow land? Who passes through them?<br /> Working, traversing, and intervening in the landscape and space meet the atmosphere, the wind, the earth. Posthuman modes of production encounter magnetism and visions of Afrofuturism. The settings of the film include a field in the Lower Rhine region, outer space, a forest in Bad Marienberg, and a research site for migratory birds. Generated voices quoting texts by feminist science fiction author Ursula K. Le Guin, theorist Mark Fisher, artist Lygia Clark, and interviews with foresters and bird researchers form the soundtrack together with music by Dominik Eulberg, Manuela Schinin&agrave;, Maya Shenfeld, and Tim Tetzner.</p>

<p>On July 17, 2014, Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur was shot down by Russian forces over eastern Ukraine, killing all 298 people on board. The reality of this attack, and its possible ramifications for the then-ongoing war in Donbas and the West&rsquo;s relationship with Russia, was immediately questioned by the Russian government and media. As voluminous evidence &mdash; including physical artifacts like the butterfly-shaped shrapnel found in the bodies of the pilots &mdash; piled up, the lies denying reality only became more outlandish and incredible.</p> <p>In a world where violence can only be defended by lies, and lies only maintained by violence, <em>Iron Butterflies </em>presents the truth of what happened to MH17, but also what was at stake by not confronting it. Director Roman Liubyi uses a wealth of visual material and individual testimonies to craft this artful yet evidence-driven examination of a turning point in recent world history. This act of mass murder not only destroyed so many people&rsquo;s lives and the possible future that they could have built &mdash; it contained the seeds of the future we now live in.</p>

<p>Working with a robot integrated with him, a boy tries to make a new body part to expand the limits of human abilities. The boy is communicating to two other kids simultaneously via the specially made glasses. Their visions reflect the real world and also the cyber world. Everything seems like connected each other, but&hellip;</p>

<p>A Hazara family from the remote mountains of Afghanistan attempt to understand the psychological state of their daughter Zahra as they pursue a case against Kabul University for her suicide. Notwithstanding the Taliban regaining control of the country, the family remains focused on the memory of Zahra and highlighting the injustices regularly faced by minority groups.</p>

<p>This story of the relationship between father and son on the shores of the Bering Sea raises questions about generational patterns of education, questioning whether it&#39;s possible to raise a courageous human being not through strength, even when circumstances demand it, but through the gentle power of love that, by breaking patterns, creates an even more powerful inner strength.</p>

<p>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&hellip; while constantly being reinvented, with humor and intelligence, over time and through cinema.</p>

<p><span data-sheets-root="1">As the youngest of five sisters, director Samira El Mouzghibati is aware she inherited a painful legacy from the past. In response to a tragic incident that was kept quiet, her sisters formed a clan&mdash;a tightly knit bond from which their mother was excluded. Thus, when they spoke of her to Samira, they always referred to her as &ldquo;your mother,&rdquo; as though she were no longer theirs. For the very first time, we hear what the mother has to say.</span></p>

<p>A film of electric sonic and visual rhythms, Karimah Ashadu&rsquo;s Machine Boys is one part 21st-century Scorpio Rising and one part incisive micro-ethnography. Intimately capturing Lagos&rsquo;s sub-economy of motorcycle taxis&mdash;known locally as &ldquo;Okada&rdquo;&mdash;Ashadu zooms in on both the thundering, tricked-out machines and the bodies of the riders, whose performances of masculine bravado mask the precarity of their dangerous and illegal livelihoods.</p>

<p>Written upon testimonies, rumours and fake news, this film questions architectures of energy shaping the Algerian territory from its colonial history to the rise of Chinese extractivism, underlining the multiplicity of reality in our post-truth era.</p>

<p>After two decades in a Belarusian Orthodox monastery, Vera reflects on her unexpected path to nunhood, rooted in a history of addiction. Facing her lingering guilt, she finds herself at a crossroads between her monastic sanctuary and an uncertain future. Directors C&eacute;cile Embleton and Alys Tomlinson&rsquo;s stark black and white observational approach reveal Vera&#39;s quiet journey of self-examination, offering an intimate glimpse into the complexities of faith, recovery, and personal transformation within cloistered walls.</p>

<p>A deep family taboo is shattered when Ado Hasanović discovers the pages of his father&#39;s diary and the images recorded by the latter in the midst of the Bosnian war. By retracing his father&#39;s steps in the lead-up to the Srebrenica massacre, this monument to memory reveals, through the prism of one family, the wounds and undimmed pride of an entire people.</p>

<p><em>My Stolen Planet</em>&nbsp;is a diary-style narrative by Farah, an Iranian filmmaker. Born during the Islamic revolution in Iran in 1979, she captures moments of joy and defiance in her daily life, navigating the contrast between domestic freedom and external oppression. Simultaneously, she collects 8mm archives from people she doesn&rsquo;t know. Relying on these recordings from other people, she gains a new perspective on losing memories. Her connection with Leyla, an Iranian professor who left Iran during the revolution, adds a name and a story to one of the faces in her archive. Farah&rsquo;s mother, who is suffering from Alzheimer&rsquo;s, motivates her to continue her fight against forgetting. In the autumn of 2022, the Women, Life, Freedom uprising becomes a turning point in Farah&rsquo;s life, as well as in the lives of many others in Iran. This is a homemade history.</p>

<p>A filmmaker and former dancer returns to her family home to make a film with her parents, but when they fail to live up to unrealistic expectations, and when her mother&#39;s cancer metastasizes, she hires professional dancers to play them.</p>

<p>This film made by a Palestinian-Israeli collective shows the destruction of the West Bank&rsquo;s Masafer Yatta by Israeli authorities and the unlikely alliance which develops between the Palestinian activist Basel and Israeli journalist Yuval.</p>

<p>A work of patient storytelling and gripping historical excavation, Steve McQueen&rsquo;s four-and-a-half-hour documentary is a mammoth confrontation with a shameful historical legacy that draws parallels to our contemporary world. With startling sobriety, McQueen (<em>12 Years a Slave</em>, NYFF51;<em>&nbsp;Small Axe</em>, NYFF58) recounts in prismatic fashion the realities of life in Amsterdam during World War II under the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. Rather than rely on archival footage or talking heads, McQueen constructs the film from exquisitely composed, newly captured images of Amsterdam, compiled over the past three years, including during the city&rsquo;s COVID lockdown. Over these shots, provocatively detached voiceover by actress Melanie Hyams&mdash;adapted from the book&nbsp;<em>Atlas of an Occupied City (Amsterdam 1940-1945)&nbsp;</em>by Dutch journalist and documentarian Bianca Stigter&mdash;narrates the evils that took place in these exact places, public and private, not even a century ago. Recalling McQueen&rsquo;s more durational installation work as much as his narrative cinema,&nbsp;<em>Occupied City</em>&nbsp;accrues power as it forges ahead. Visually representing these spaces entirely within a present-day context, McQueen evokes the rise of right-wing extremism currently felt throughout the Western world, while never letting us forget that everywhere we stand is haunted by a violent past&mdash;and that to be in history is to constantly walk upon graves.</p>

<p>Reconstructing the past culminates in a poetic observation on the process of letting go as a Japanese Canadian woman returns to empty her childhood home, reviving the memories of her mother, a survivor of the Nagasaki atomic bomb.</p>

<p>Once Upon a Time in a Forest is a film about brave young people who are defending one of the last coniferous forest areas in Europe. It is a morality play and a love story of a younger generation whose main object of love is the Finnish forest. This cinematic documentary explores environmental feelings and witnesses how the 22-year old protagonist Ida grows up to be the leader of the new Forest Movement.</p>

<p>The life of a true cinephile is one constantly haunted by the dead, as the history of the movies is a corridor of ghosts. Brazilian filmmaker and unrepentant cinema obsessive Kleber Mendon&ccedil;a Filho&rsquo;s new documentary serves as a poignant testament to the liminal state of movie love, telling, in three chapters, the story of his cinematic world&mdash;namely the city of Recife, where his youthful film education took place. At theaters like the Veneza and the S&atilde;o Luiz, Mendon&ccedil;a discovered a popular art form that would change his life; today, with the landscape of the city altering drastically, he surveys its empty rooms now pregnant with memories. This moving and playful film, as much about the architectural and social structures of a city as about the movies that inspire and haunt us, honors the personal spaces that are also the communal lifeblood of our urban centers.</p>

<p>A time-travelling Android from the future seeks the Last King to record his beautiful voice which will deliver existential answers to the machines of the future. It&rsquo;s the year 2022 and the King is about to sing. Preparations for a Miracle is a sci-fi documentary about our exploitation of nature and machines, seen through the eyes of a time-travelling Android, who interprets everything wrong. Or so it seems.</p>

<p>An experiential portrait depicting Satanists in both the everyday and in the extraordinary as they fight to preserve their lifestyle: magic, mystery, and misanthropy.</p> <p>Filmmaker Scott Cummings is no stranger to Sundance, having edited many highly acclaimed festival premieres over the past decade, including <em>Never Rarely Sometimes Always</em>, <em>Monsters and Men</em>, and <em>Wendy</em>.</p> <p><em>REALM OF SATAN</em> marks his feature-length directorial debut after first staking his claim in the peripheries of nonfiction-adjacent storytelling with his acclaimed short film <em>Buffalo Juggalos</em>.<br /> His unique approach is to work in collaboration with sinister subcultures to conjure up video portraits that express a vision of their personal existence. Working in lockstep with cinematographer Gerald Kerkletz, each shot is its own small treasure to explore, whether fantastical, explicit, mundane, or all of the above. <em>REALM OF SATAN</em>&rsquo;s acceptance in an unreality sets itself on an anarchistic path through expressions of identity and image-making that nobly fights all forms of tradition.</p>

<p>Gentle or rough, blonde or shaved, cis or trans, long term inmates or those newly admitted: women re-enact their lives in a Buenos Aires prison, in trance and balance, voguing and singing. A hybrid musical and charming piece of collective empowerment.</p>

<p>Darkness falls over Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and its 17 million inhabitants. It is just before Christmas and people are struggling to gain access to electric light. Kudi is mobilising the residents of his Kisenso neighbourhood to collect money for a new power cable. On Mount Mangengenge, a holy place overlooking the city, Pastor G&eacute;d&eacute;on delivers a sermon about the light of Christ as the path to life and truth. Davido is searching for a place to stay after his house was flooded by the Congo River. Together with other young men, he kills time by working out and dreams of a better future.<br /> <em>Tongo Saa</em>&nbsp;is a sensitive portrait of the residents of Kinshasa as they face the challenges of life in an environment plagued by violence and coloured by the uncertainty of tomorrow.</p>

<p>COMPETITION Alice Diop enters the world of fiction telling the story of Rama, a professor of literature and novelist who travels to Saint-Omer to accompany a trial, being in the first months of pregnancy. In the defendant&rsquo;s seat is Lawrence Coly, a Senegalese immigrant student accused of having left his daughter, just over a year old, abandoned on the beach. The kinship Rama feels with Lawrence&rsquo;s life experience makes her apprehensive about her future.</p>

<p>A wildly clever film that&rsquo;s part reality, part fiction, part theatre and part musical. Director Narges Shahid Kalhor directs an actor playing a version of herself. She doesn&rsquo;t want to be called &ldquo;Shahid&rdquo; (martyr) anymore, and is determined to change her name. Then, her heroic great-grandfather turns up &ndash; given the title of martyr 100 years ago in Iran &ndash; from whom his descendants inherited the name. He wants to dissuade his great-granddaughter, and shadows her in her quest along with his dancing friends. The Bavarian district administration sends her to a psychologist, who also has a difficult name&hellip; In the end, everyone is hindered: the director by bureaucracy, the actor by the director&rsquo;s demands, her great-grandfather by his descendant&rsquo;s determination and the film by itself. The winds of history blow her round and round in circles, through the scenic German town and through her own film shoot, as stereotypes and privileges are shaken up performatively and inventively, all while having a lot of fun along the way. Ambiguous autofiction with visual arcs, songs and poems: a tragicomic, defiant act of self-empowerment in exile.</p>

<p>Wolves are returning to the Swiss Alps, and Beat Oswald is determined to find them. To do this, he settles on the Tamina Valley, a remote mountain valley, and more specifically, the small town of V&auml;ttis. Yet on the traces of the wolf, it is mostly humans he comes across. And more and more the journey unfolds into a multilayered quest, full of wonder, surprises and existential questions: Are we still capable of dealing with the unexpected? And what are we talking about when we nostalgically allude to untouched nature?<br /> In this cinematic adventure - which moves freely between genres such as the thriller, observational films, essayfilm and nature documentaries - the movie unravels the debate surrounding the reintroduction of wolves, probing the Anthropocene more broadly. Rewarding the viewers with delightful formal surprises, the movie bears witness to the smallness of our civilisation in the face of Nature, asking the following question: Will there ever be what used to be?</p>

<p>A crystal hunter finds a quartz crystal on the Mont Blanc massif. The mineral passes through the hands of geophysicists, acoustic engineers and gemmologists, exploring our potential for communication with the inanimate world. This diary of a quartz crystal takes us on a journey to the edge of our systems of perception, skilfully calling into question the seemingly irrefutable.</p>

<p>What is a &ldquo;Sch&uuml;tzenfest&rdquo; (shooting festival) and what is it for? According to the websites of shooting clubs and club supply stores, these celebrations serve a dual purpose: on the one hand, they preserve traditions, and on the other hand, they offer a wide range of entertainment for the local population and guests. Both aspects can be seen in Lennart H&uuml;per&rsquo;s and Lennart Miketta&#39;s The Big Day: the local customs being maintained, and the all-purpose nature of the event.</p>

<p>The COVID pandemic brought air traffic in Lebanon to a standstill. Despite this, the noise caused by planes over Beirut increased dramatically. At the peak of the lockdown Israeli fighter jets and drones overflew the city up to 50 times a day. Their altitude would suggest that they were not there for surveillance or reconnaissance purposes, but with the aim of producing noise. However, the city&rsquo;s countless diesel generators, reconstruction work following the explosion and the numerous civil protests relegated these noises to a hum in the background whose threatening origins could almost be forgotten. The artist and Turner Prize-winner Lawrence Abu Hamdan calls himself a &ldquo;private ear&rdquo;, an independent audio investigator. In the course of the last year, he has collected over 800 recordings of Israeli aircraft which he places at the centre of his new audio-visual essay that explores the link between territoriality and atmospheric violence.</p>

<p>New Lodge: seven 12-storey towers each stuck in the heart of Belfast. One of the areas that were the most severely affected by the Northern-Irish conflict during three decades. One of those where the number of casualties per inhabitant can make your head spin. Today, this small Catholic neighbourhood is marked by some kind of social abandonment. Yet, a touch of madness and hope, even idealism, still floats around, supported by the humanity and caustic humour of the locals.</p>

<p>Armed with a 360-degree camera, Argentinean director Eduardo Williams returns to the bold, time-and-continent-skipping world of his 2016 film&nbsp;<em>The Human Surge</em>&nbsp;(NYFF54) and constructs something even more immense, fearless, and breathtaking. As in that earlier film, groups of friends from different parts of the world interact in the downtime between work, drifting and existing in constant motion along with the camera. Yet Williams here pushes things even further into a kind of hypnotic abstraction, filming in Taiwan, Sri Lanka, and Peru and achieving an unprecedented fluidity between spaces and feelings, natural splendor and human sensuality. Working as always without a locked script, Williams highlights the beauty of language and the sensations of people traversing liminal states of being, moving toward a kind of otherworldly queer utopia.</p>

<p>Along the Bosnian-Croatian border near Velika Kladu&scaron;a, the paths of mine disposal experts, migrating families and locals cross. Director Nicole V&ouml;gele 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>

<p>It&rsquo;s been 20 years since Samid last screened a film for his village. A TV repairman, Samid longs to bring the magic of cinema back to his bucolic town, taking pains to repair a Soviet-era projector. He trawls snowy mountains in search of an internet signal to order a light bulb, humorously demonstrating his tenacity. As he collaborates with 16-year-old cinephile Ayaz, Samid&rsquo;s journey becomes a personal odyssey of healing for the elderly projectionist.</p>

<p>What is Europe? In his highly topical personal essay, Vadim Jendreyko travels across the old continent to discover its essence in places that might be called acupuncture points of European identity. His various stops include the bottom of the Rhine, Greek docks, the European Parliament, a primeval forest in Poland, and a Sarajevo library. All of these places invite ambivalent reflections: on the one hand, they celebrate Europe&rsquo;s diversity and the breadth of its cultural heritage; on the other hand, they are symbols of turbulence, conflict, and bloody history. Is Europe condemned to be stuck in a vicious circle of violence, or is there hope in those who try to sing the songs of others?</p>

<p>At a deer farm in Changhua County, a middle-aged man is asked to cut off a stag&rsquo;s antlers in front of his two kids.</p>

<p>In gaming&#39;s online realm, sleep becomes an art. Streamers blend dreams, gamers doze mid-game, revealing life&#39;s quirky essence. ASMR experts craft a soundscape and a game designer imparts characters a tool: time-sensibility. Sleep, digital engagement and games turn sleep into poetic online tales.</p>

<p>1560: the beginning of the so-called &lsquo;Little Ice Age&rsquo;. Uncanny celestial events ignite the skies over Germany and Switzerland, leading people to believe the world is ending. &lsquo;Tomorrow, the Burning Heavens&rsquo; reconsiders these apocalyptic visions, once captured in hand-colored woodblock prints, and returns to the Alps to observe the industrial production of winter landscapes in a modern-day skiing resort. Here, past and present dreams and nightmares are melted together in a film about the interplay of image-making, technology and faith during times of environmental collapse.</p>

<p>The Sylvester Stallone vehicle&nbsp;<strong>Rambo III</strong>&nbsp;(1988), is both a superficial commentary on the failure of war to resolve differences and a surreal interpretation of American exceptionalism through the actions of the individual. Although set in Afghanistan, with the hero besting a Russian army, the film was shot in the Israeli desert, with the involvement of the country&rsquo;s military. Filmmaker Daniel Mann employs a variety of approaches to unpack what was to most audiences a brainless shoot &lsquo;em-up, but to Mann is a work of many meanings.<br /> <br /> Interspersed with the reading of letters Mann wrote the Hollywood star,&nbsp;<strong>Under the Blue Sun</strong>&nbsp;contrasts Rambo&rsquo;s exploits with the ways the media in our reality constructs narratives around conflict. Through Mann&#39;s investigation, he encounters Bashir, a Palestinian Bedouin and self-taught artist who worked on&nbsp;<strong>Rambo III</strong>. Bashir&#39;s experience as an indigenous individual stripped of tribal land in Israel, serves as a powerful reflection not only of colonial politics but also of how these dynamics are perpetuated and amplified in mass productions. Mann&rsquo;s film delicately unveils interconnected narratives that define the geopolitical, physical and environmental landscape of Israel/Palestine. The result is an intelligent and discursive exploration of propaganda, war and colonialism that manages to avoid falling into the trap of militancy, and ultimately leaves us wondering if we truly need another Rambo in this world.</p>

<p>Autobiographical documentary film which questions the words within a family which was struck by incest.</p>

<p>The Amazon Labor Union (ALU) &mdash; a group of current and former Amazon workers in New York City&rsquo;s Staten Island &mdash; takes on one of the world&rsquo;s largest and most powerful companies in the fight to unionize.</p> <p>Chronicling the historic efforts of the ALU, <em>Union</em> is an intimate and surprising story of dogged determination, unorthodox tactics, and speaking up despite David vs. Goliath odds. Capturing up-close, in-the-trenches moments with the upstart labor union leaders &mdash; including the charismatic Chris Smalls &mdash; as they try to build support for their movement on their own terms, filmmakers Brett Story and Stephen Maing bear witness to the realities of labor organizing in the United States &mdash; challenging at best; near-impossible when facing the unlimited resources and influence of a corporate giant. They track exhilarating victories and demoralizing setbacks along the way, but foremost spotlight the far-reaching ability of collective action to inspire hope and bring self-determination to workers who&rsquo;ve long felt disenfranchised and powerless.&mdash;BT</p>

<p>In the small town of Niscemi in Sicily, 26-year-old Valentina is living with her parents. She spends her time crocheting, swimming in her family&rsquo;s makeshift pool, and accompanying her ailing father to his doctor&rsquo;s appointments, all the while longing for the independence to live in the city like her older sister. Meanwhile, a ground station of giant antennas receives data as part of the insidious MUOS, or Mobile User Objective System&mdash;a next-generation network of U.S. Department of Defense satellites. For years, locals have protested the system for fear that strong electromagnetic waves are causing irreparable harm. Despite her parents&rsquo; objections, Valentina joins the anti-MUOS movement and begins to gain her freedom by learning to drive, finding a job, and moving out of her parents&rsquo; house. Through this tender and vulnerable coming-of-age story filled with poetic imagery, we are compelled to see the worldwide impacts of American militarism.</p>

<p>In 1952, Anita Conti, France&#39;s first female oceanographer, embarked on a trawler to share the hard life of Atlantic cod fishermen, alone with her camera and sixty men for six months. Using her 16mm film rushes and photographs, the film reveals her scientific and yet tender gaze for the workers of the sea. This pioneering woman foresaw the need to protect the oceans.This film explores the modernity of her struggle, as well as the hazy, rhythmic beauty of her writing and photography.</p>

<p>A mother embarks on a difficult conversation about consent with her children, unearthing some equally uncomfortable truths in the process.</p>

<p>Twelve-year-old Zlata has to find her way in Belgium after she inevitably had to flee the war in her home country, Ukraine. Her father, Petro, and Findus, her cat, stayed behind, Mother Ira and little brother Martin came along. Step by step the adolescent girl explores not only her new living environment, but also her own identity. Awaiting the uncertain arrival of her father, Zlata slowly opens up.</p>

<p>Can &ldquo;bedside manner&rdquo; be taught? Certainly it&rsquo;s in increasingly short supply these days, as overworked and underpaid doctors, nurses, and hospital staff are pressured to prioritize profits and efficiency over compassionate care. But while the quaint image of the country doctor may be a thing of the past, an innovative public hospital in Lausanne, Switzerland, has embarked on an ambitious training program involving the kinds of role-playing scenarios one usually finds in acting rehearsals on stage. Simply by observing these encounters, in the best tradition of documentarians like Frederick Wiseman, Allan King, and Nicolas Phillibert, Alexis Poukine has created drama of the highest order, finding the whole of human emotion in this refreshingly new kind of talking cure.</p>

<p>The Eucalyptus is the building where Nicol&aacute;s Su&aacute;rez lives in Buenos Aires. He uses it as the starting point for a playful and aerial stroll, following the thread of his cinephile&#39;s thoughts. An acrobat, the film leaps from one subject to another with joyful serendipity and juggles with image regimes to create a deliciously composite treasure hunt.</p>