Playlist
Ron, the filmmaker's father, has a brain injury that affects his ability to situate himself and retain memories. Upon realising that her father no longer recognises her, the director decides to turn her father's notebooks into a film that plunges us into the complexities of memory and the brain, full of creativity, humour and tenderness.
Winter 1993. A widower who remains inconsolable after the death of his wife; a Vietnamese man who left his country with the boat people... Some have grown up here, others have arrived from elsewhere. Despite their differences, they share a home at "12, chemin des Bruyères". Budding filmmaker Jean-Stéphane Bron reveals their shared human condition through his empathetic lens.
Jyzone has just got out of prison. He has found a new job, but the people he meets on the way to work risk making him late for his first day. Through a choreographic and poetic portrait outlined by skilful camera work, Basil Da Cunha explores the violent neighbourhood of Reboleira in Lisbon, with the participation of its inhabitants.
A one-of-a-kind European rescue centre. Here, dreary pens surrounded by wire fencing house stray dogs impounded for training. As he follows the training of these dogs, Dejan Petrović meditates on the mechanisms of authority and obedience, drawing a striking parallel with human society.
In this "telephone" road movie, Floriane Devigne (Ni d'Ève, ni d'Adam, VdR 2018; La Clé de la chambre à lessive, VdR 2013) takes us on a journey through so-called "peripheral" France. From remote villages to deserted areas, guided by telephone conversations collected from the last public telephone boxes, she casts an amused, critical and cutting gaze over our ever-changing society.
Barely 200 years separate the very first photographs from the 45 billion cameras of our modern era. This is nothing short of a revolution, resulting in a world where images — which have now become "content" — hold sway over our lives. Danielson and Van Aertryck deliver a headlong journey into the centre of the captivating story of humanity's latest infatuation.
With formal precision, Riccardo Giacconi proposes a curious and surprising dialogue which articulates the old tradition of puppetry with robotics and artificial intelligence: two totally different forms of research and creation that nevertheless share a passion for the movement of anthropomorphic bodies and their endless possibilities.
With her extravagant looks, Singaporean drag queen Opera Tang is the talk of the town. Chronicling her elaborate performances as much as her private life—including her relationship with her grandmother—Baby Queen paints a tender portrait of a character in the making, while denouncing the City-State's homophobia against LGBTQIA+ communities.
The desert region of Errachidia (Morocco) suffers from recurrent periods of severe drought. A man is sent there to clear a system of underground water galleries earmarked for irrigating crops. With a keen sense of framing and a skilful simplicity, Driss Aroussi spins a cinematographic fable on the subject of the climate crisis.
Maid-in-training Patri's work is interrupted by her ringing telephone. Messages and voices swirl around her head, causing her to lose her grip on reality. Lucrecia Martel delivers a choreographed account of class and marital violence, leading us through an anxiety-provoking whirlwind of the senses.
Hidden away in the Catskills Mountains, Casa Susanna was home to the first clandestine network of cross-dressers during the 50s and 60s. Illegal practitioners in a conservative American society, this is where Diane, Kate and dozens of others found a space of freedom and expression. Today, they tell their unusual and essential story.
The Chagrin Valley assisted living facility for dementia sufferers is home to a fragile and ageing population. Punctuated by fleeting conflicts, confusion and long-awaited family visits, the day-to-day life of the residents drags on. Chagrin Valley is a caring enquiry into our relationship with old age and a glimpse into the substance of our collective dreams.
In 2008, a group of lawyers from Cleveland began legal proceedings against the Wall Street banks they deemed responsible for the property seizures that left 100,000 people homeless. In the end, the trial never took place. Jean-Stéphane Bron therefore decides to recreate this trial in a cinema, transposing it into a codified fictional genre in order to better "avenge" a null and void reality.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Bern Federal Police revealed they had been keeping activists from far-left groups in Western Switzerland under surveillance for years - among them, Claude Muret. In his first film, Jean-Stéphane Bron deploys a humorous and affectionate gaze to chronicle the story of these ex-"cops and outlaws" who come from a generation marked by clashes… of ideology.
After growing up in Switzerland, Marta returns to her native Calabria with her mother and sister. At Sunday school, where she is preparing for her confirmation, she discovers a pious community with its own shady dealings. The age of naivety and innocence then seems to leave Marta's heavenly spirit. Corpo celeste (Cannes 2011) announces Alice Rohrwacher's undeniable talent.
In Mardin, a Turkish town close to the Syrian and Iraqi borders, an analogue photography workshop brings a group of children together. The director delicately documents the seemingly carefree nature of their daily lives, while exploring the way in which they learn about photography and its mysteries. A shared adventure enhanced by a film filled with joy and music.
On the seashore, a nun scans the horizon. In a luxury hotel, dresses washed up by the sea are prepared for a fashion show while the paparazzi lie in wait. One of the dresses suddenly comes alive. A fantastic fable in a fictional language, De Djess is a feast for the eyes, commissioned by the brand Miu Miu, Miuccia Prada's fashion house.
Nearly 8,000 Bosnian Muslims were massacred in Srebrenica in the summer of 1995. Kumjana Novakova and Guillermo Carreras-Candi have managed to get hold of archival footage that was shot at the time by the Serbian forces. Twenty years later, they confront these devastating images of the past with the current landscape of the former enclave, which still bears the scars of overwhelming collective grief.
As a child, Moha travelled from Morocco to Europe. Today, eight years later, he lives in a small Spanish city thanks to the help of his friends and the support of social services. Trapped between his childhood dreams and his disillusionment as a young adult, he clings to what he can. As an illegal immigrant, he lives every day with uncertainty.
In a small village in Southern Spain, in the heat of the summer, a storm is brewing. According to an old belief, women will disappear the next time the river overflows, because they have "water in them". In this electric atmosphere, a group of youths smoke, dance, desire each other… This is a striking debut feature film by Elena López Riera.
Through a combination of hypnotic, at times enigmatic images and sound fragments, Floating Islands is constructed through a free and associative montage, resulting in a delicate filmic poem. Simone Fürbringer and Nicolas Humbert invite us to take part in a journey through their artistic world, paying tribute to the cinematographic voices they hold dear.
Set in the hyperarid Atacama Desert in Chile, Follow the Water hints at an apocalyptic future. Scientists conduct research into the planet Mars from the edge of a lithium mine, while an indigenous woman fights for the right to water… Through an immersive device, the directors invite us on a multilayered exploration of a territory.
Director Spencer Bogaert immerses us in a nostalgic reverie about table tennis, inviting us to an impromptu game of ping-pong in various public spaces. Drawing on his memories, For Mouna openly explores different cinematographic forms and styles to rediscover the joys of play and of childhood.
Esteban, a swiss entrepreneur, dreams of taking part in the 24 Hours of Le Mans. A dream he turns into reality, and which results in him competing alongside professional drivers. Laps follow each other endlessly among the exhilaration of these exceptional vehicles. Full Tank humorously immerses itself in this testosterone-driven microcosm, subtly highlighting the excesses of motorsport.
Three filmmakers travel across Italy from North to South in search of the local youth. In this collaborative film, which updates a certain tradition of Italian documentary, the filmmakers paint the picture of a country seen through the eyes of teenagers, who reveal their realities, fears, expectations and desires. A precious and charming contemporary archive.
Space flight is a unique experience for a human being, upending the body's mechanics as much as its metaphysical considerations. On board the International Space Station, we observe the astronauts' hearts and the doctor who monitors their every beat. Jennifer Rainsford (Our Heartbeats Are Connected Through Exploding Stars, VdR 2022) delivers a lyrically-accented scientific film, rendered with a weightless touch.
"Baba" spent 30 years of his life working in Saudi Arabia while his daughters grew up in Cairo. Much of their relationship was created and preserved through videos exchanged over the years. When they are reunited, none of the family members completely manage to abandon this form of communication, as if trapped in the logic of exile.
While studying in Bruxelles, Daryna Mamaisur is caught up in the conflict invasion of her country. She questions the way in which to speak about it, at a distance, while cinema seems the "least appropriate" means.
"What is a self-portrait? Only painting has given us an answer. Rembrandt and Madame Vigée-Lebrun practised self-portraiture to show themselves to others, but it can also be a way to observe one's own painting. (…) I think that here I tried to film, to record thought, which is what cinema is made for." Jean-Luc Godard
C. is about to be arrested. Something to do with a motorbike. Estranged from his family, he finds refuge with his friend Ramzi, with whom he discovers a new aspect of family relationships. During the day, he wanders the streets of Geneva, selling musk on the sly, while suffering from a worrying injury to his face.
"To tell your story is to tell ours, to explore our shadow." In this voice-over, Jean-Stéphane Bron is addressing Christoph Blocher, whom he is filming during the latter's election campaign in autumn 2011. L'Expérience Blocher is the portrait of a poor pastor's son turned billionaire, who has radically transformed the Swiss political landscape in his wake.
"I wanted to stage the collective, the concept of the chorus and the loneliness of artists." Following his portrayal of Christoph Blocher, the filmmaker immerses himself in the Opéra National de Paris. He depicts one of the world's most prestigious lyrical institutions, from top to bottom, from dressing room to stage, with a sensitive, spellbound, removed yet humorous gaze.
Dinh-Chuong Nguyen and Rolande Mollard do not have much in common, apart from a few miles of road shared while the one was teaching the other to drive. Jean-Stéphane Bron builds his second film around five driver-learner duos confined to their driving school cars, the latter thus becoming mobile film studios in which human comedies unfold.
In Salta, Northern Argentina, Mecha and her family's holiday is coming to an end under the relentless February heat. Time becomes distended, punctuated by naps around the stagnant water of the pool, visits from cousins and the children playing war in the jungle. A muted tension and a series of incidents slowly begin to disrupt the family order.
Sophie and Tarik have inherited a family home in the Vallée de Joux. They could have chosen to move in, but they decided to start by knocking it down and are now attempting to renovate it. In this charming and humorous film, it is now Sophie's turn to deconstruct everything: from the patriarchy and capitalism to growth and degrowth, paving the way for an achievable utopia.
Lucrecia Martel's third feature film, shot in her native Salta, stars Vero, a woman beset by confusion. Distracted while driving, she thinks she has run over someone. All she sees on the side of the road is a dead dog. Anchored in a powerful political context, La mujer sin cabeza reflects on the mechanisms of denial and highlights the forms that dissolution of responsibility can take.
Amalia is feeling the first flutters of adolescence. Raised in a devoutly religious environment, her emerging desires wrestle with her faith. After a sexual assault, she assigns herself the dangerous mission of saving the guilty man from his impulses. The brilliantly directed La niña santa confronts family pressure and class violence, while echoing a sensory awakening.
Luigi Lineri has accumulated thousands of rocks. Over the years, he has obsessively gathered, collected, admired, observed, sorted and loved these sharpened flints and evocatively shaped stones. His 'quest' – which gives Giuseppe Petruzzellis' film its title – seeks to link the origins of technology and art, as part of a deeply personal cosmogony.
Samir hardly knows his father. Hoping to become closer with him, he decides to accompany him on a hunting expedition in the mountains. Director Juliette Riccaboni films the complexity of a relationship rife with disagreement. The picturesque Valais scenery provides the backdrop for this difficult reunion, shot through with humour and tenderness.
In room 87 of the Federal Palace, a parliamentary committee is discussing a future law authorising the use of GMOs in our food. Jean-Stéphane Bron sets up camp with his camera at the door of the political kitchen, following it as it dishes up various tactics, power plays and twists. This irresistible political thriller was the film that introduced the director to a wide audience.
In a village in Umbria, Gelsomina and her three sisters live according to the rules of their nature-loving, beekeeper father. As they strive to keep up their honey production, the family is disrupted by the arrival of a reality TV show, "The Village of Wonders". Le meraviglie is a poetic tale, filled with light and dreams (Grand Prix, Cannes 2014).
In the middle of the desert, with the police on his tail, Amine buries his booty in a tomb. When he returns ten years later, the arid hill has become a holy site for the worshippers of the Unknown Saint. Amine will have to deal with the inhabitants of the village in order to retrieve his money. This fable with true undertones is Alaa Eddine Aljem's first film.
It's Christmas Eve at a wartime boarding school and food is scarce. A merry band of orphaned girls, up for anything to entertain themselves, must evade the inflexible morality of the mother superior. "Clumsily and freely" inspired by a letter from Elsa Morante to her friend Goffredo Fofi, Le pupille is a tale of pranks and mischievous young minds.
Both at school and in the fields, rich land barons spread terror among the indigenous communities. In this hostile climate, young generations of native Argentines struggle to find their place. Leguas insightfully explores the challenges related to the transmission of colonial history and the violence perpetrated by the educational system.
"The sea has its own time, as does the Mediterranean Sea; there is definitely something sacred about this time." Returning to Genoa, which he first discovered in 1947, Alain Tanner films his post-war dockworker comrades, still attached to the self-management style they invented. A profound and personal reflection on the world of work.
While studying Rossini's 1816 opera The Barber of Seville, a group of teenagers in Paris reflect on what love means to them.
Based on Jean‑Philippe Rameau's 1735 opéra‑ballet, Cogitore reimagines the work at Paris Opera Bastille (2019) through the lens of urban dance—KRUMP, voguing, hip‑hop—led by choreographer Bintou Dembélé. The project juxtaposes Baroque music with contemporary street dance, subverting colonial-era "exotic" narratives and critiquing stereotypes through a dynamic, decolonial reinterpretation
Conquered by Israel in 1967, the Syrian Golan has a military border running through it, which families "cross" by shouting to their loved ones. From his European exile, anxiety-ridden Alhasan Yousef attempts to break free from his inner isolation with this exploration of the power of sound, in an effort to reconnect with his lost country from afar.
The extraordinary story of the queen of disco Donna Summer, told by her daughter Brooklyn Sudano and Oscar-winning director Roger Ross Williams, through never-before-seen archival footage, home videos, and audio recordings... Love to Love You, Donna Summer traces the impressive journey of an artist and woman who constantly reinvented herself.
Jean-Stéphane Bron's latest self-imposed challenge is "to make a 3-hour film about a 165-metre street" – the one he lives on. In this documentary mini-series, filmed over the course of two years during the pandemic, the director shines a light on the entertaining troupe of characters who people the street below, mischievously casting them in his universal human theatre.
Jean-Stéphane Bron's latest self-imposed challenge is "to make a 3-hour film about a 165-metre street" – the one he lives on. In this documentary mini-series, filmed over the course of two years during the pandemic, the director shines a light on the entertaining troupe of characters who people the street below, mischievously casting them in his universal human theatre.
Iván Simonovis, security chief of the Caracas police, was sentenced to thirty years in prison in 2009. He became the most famous political prisoner in President Hugo Chavez's Venezuela, an event that had dramatic consequences for him and his family. His son, Iván, tells his story through extraordinarily beautiful, at times spectacular archive material, combined with a highly personal, direct style.
Shot in Recife, the filmmaker's hometown in northern Brazil, Kleber Mendonça Filho's fiction debut is not only a fundamental reflection on the landscape of contemporary Brazilian cinema, but also an extraordinary film of great subtlety which casts a profoundly critical gaze on class relations and the different ways in which violence can emerge.
Driven by a desire for emancipation, indigenous communities float down Argentina's rivers on rafts made out of mud and plastic bottles, alarming the coastal authorities in their wake. On the bicentenary of the May Revolution of 1810, Lucrecia Martel offers a politically engaged reinterpretation of Sarmiento's utopian novel Argirópolis.
Small-scale farming is under threat on the Alfina plateau Alice Rohrwacher calls home. She organises a 'farmer's homily' alongside world-renowned photographer JR and the local community. This powerful collective performance stages the funeral of farming and biodiversity, killed off by the profits of multinational agro-food corporations.
Beach cabins are dismantled at the end of summer, revealing large stretches of sand to make way for winter. But when summer returns, crowds of holidaymakers invade this Sicilian beach, providing the material for colourful comic sketches. Giulia di Maggio observes them in this playful and perfectly executed Tati-esque portrait.
Para no olvidar explores the videographic relationship between two exiles. Following the death of her father, the director Laura Gabay attempts to solve the mystery of this paternal figure who fled the Uruguayan dictatorship, through a work of collage based on family archives. A hypnotically beautiful film that bears witness to the pain of exile and to the great changes of the past century.
Pianoforte takes us backstage at one of the world's most prestigious musical contests, the International Chopin Piano Competition. Following half a dozen young pianists as they experience a gamut of emotions generated by the pressure of the recitals, the film intelligently navigates between the quest for excellence and the sense of frustration that inevitably ensues.
At the edge of Rome, at the mouth of the Tiber, the small district of Idroscalo di Ostia juts out into the sea. The women who live there, such as Franca and her daughters, are the bearers of its stories, and of the natural power of the place. This sacred point becomes the stage of a community's resistance, expressing its right to live in this place. Visions du Réel Grand Prize 2020.
It's April, the countryside is in bloom and a virus is preventing people from approaching one another. Equipped with her 'magic eye' and a few metres of expired film, Alice Rohrwacher decides to visit her neighbours, filming them simply, in all their poetic splendour. A real breath of fresh air and an ode to rural life and times.
Rui lives alone on the outskirts of Lisbon, making a living from illegal fishing. He sells his crabs door to door by the kilo. Using dazzling chiaroscuro effects with an impressionist touch, Ruslan Fedotow gradually reveals the daily life of a man struggling with drug addiction, and his fight to stay in touch with his son who is being kept away from him.
Until the "Light For All" project came along, the inhabitants of Ponta Negra, Brazil, had always lived without electricity. Vinícius Girnys spent six years among them. A gentle yet searing portrait of a changing village, oscillating between shots filmed by candlelight and fireworks imported by the influx of tourists.
Upstream, the Kukadi River has dried up. Downstream, it has been dammed and its waters exploited. Filmmaker Aisha Jain explores the activities that take place along this river that runs through rural India, as well as the more intimate relationships people have with its waters. An inventive portrait of a territory and the people who inhabit it.
Filmmaker Davina Maria and illustrator Dominique Goblet share a fascination for the beach in Ostend. Made up of photographs and illustrations, the film subtly interweaves their respective artistic practices. With a delicate and melancholic tone, Souvenirs d'une journée parfaite celebrates friendship, memory and the fleeting nature of shared moments.
Squid fishing on the high seas is one of the practices most called out by protectionist groups around the world, and the exploitation of its workers is repeatedly denounced by human rights organisations. This visually powerful film brings us dazzling images of a unique and terrible world: that of the fishing vessel, thousands of kilometres from home.
During the 2020 lockdown, Lucrecia Martel returns to her home region of Salta in Northern Argentina. There, she follows tango singer Julieta Laso as she joins a community of feminist and dissident artists who gather together in the heart of the forest. From this timeless tale emerges a powerful sisterhood, an antidote to the anxieties of a world in turmoil.
Loosely inspired by Stefan Zweig's novella, in which playing chess is depicted as a means of surviving fascism, The Avalanche recounts the events of the Armenian genocide, still contested by the Turkish state. Pinar Öğrenci uses archives and present-day footage of the region to uncover the traumas left by the Armenian people on their landscape and their memories.
From her window, Siri Pårup can see the building opposite where the everyday heroes and heroines of this persistently intriguing film reside. The Swedish filmmaker has reconstructed some of these flats in a studio, using effects to make them blend in with the building's real façade, in a brilliant and playful variation on everyday voyeurism.
Before her compatriot Serhii Tykhoniuk's watchful camera, Lisa evokes her hometown, the loss of the keen sense of freedom that she connects with it, its smells… as many fragments of imagination that people forced into exile take with them in their suitcase.
In 2021, the statue of Columbus in central Mexico City was replaced by the figure of a women; a gesture at the centre of intense controversies. The film documents this episode in a skillful manner, triggering fundamental questions about the people of stone and bronze that contemplate us every day from the streets of any city in the world.
In the Ukrainian Carpathians, on the borders of Poland and Slovakia, lies an isolated village on the edge of the EU. In Stuzhytsya—literally, "cold place"—live Hannah, a farmer, Maria, a postal worker and Neyla, a biologist. Maksym Melnyk and his cameraman spent a year observing the ways in which they live (and survive) in this rural community, eventually becoming a part of it themselves.
Petra and Stefan run a small travelling circus, consisting of a few horse-drawn trailers. Together, the family travels through Italy, enthralling their children with the beauty of their world. Soon, they will be heading for Hungary. This debut documentary film co-directed by Alice Rohrwacher hints at the spirit and inspirations of her future work.
It's the end of the academic year at the Hénin-Beaumont high school. Between two TikTok videos and their science lessons, best friends Linda and Irina confide in each other about their families and their future. But Linda is going to have to move in the coming year. What will remain of their friendship? The marvellous story of a bygone summer.
For the Istituto Luce's 90th birthday, Alice Rohrwacher was invited to dive into the archives of the famous Roman institute. Comprising audio interviews and a kaleidoscope of surprising images, this short film is a reflection on our relationship with song, and goes some way towards shedding light on the filmmaker's wonderful use of traditional songs in her feature films.
Bin and Yuan are brother and sister. When they're not working, they share a small apartment in Marseille. This is their haven, a space where they can rest. Here they can be connected to the outside world at all hours of the day and night, and especially to their home country, China, to which Yuan is planning to return.
Daughter of the iconic actor Giuliano Gemma, Vera Gemma feels crushed by the weight of her parentage. After an accident, she fills the void in her life by befriending a young boy. A film that thrives on the border between fiction and reality, and tackles head-on the question of privilege, the transactional nature of relationships, and how our identities are constructed.
Devised on the occasion of Alice Rohrwacher's 2016 staging of the opera La Traviata, this exquisite 16 mm miniature depicts a little girl playing 'he loves me, he loves me not' with a daisy. This child-like, spontaneous act – through which we see the little girl as she once was – is the very same gesture that made Violetta famous
When Russian troops withdrew from the Kiev region, the world discovered the appalling war crimes committed in the small town of Bucha. Mila Teshaieva and Marcus Lenz meticulously document the lives of its inhabitants as they gather what is left of their existence, waiting for spring to arrive. A film about trauma, and hope.
The frank collective portrait of a youth caught in the endless routine of war, animated by a lust for life interwoven with feelings of guilt, anger and hope.
Don Diego de Zama, an apathetic colonist stationed somewhere in the far reaches of Latin America, impatiently awaits his departure. Depicting a dystopian colony sinking into disillusionment, Lucrecia Martel rewrites colonial history in this flamboyant period film. An intense, hallucinatory experience that slowly immerses us in the madness of its protagonist.
The majority of jobs that exists today will disappear within a few decades. As technology surpasses human capacity, we have the opportunity to rethink the role of work in our lives. Are we ready for an excess of time? For a work-free existence? Sweeping across four continents, the film describes widely different
lives where some barely spend any time outside of work while others bathe in leisure. Through these stories and characters we are thrown into the existential tension between that which is and that which could be.
Rakesh and Ganesh are so close, they consider themselves brothers. Both are fishermen of Bombay's Indigenous Koli community, but they've taken contrasting paths. Rakesh uses his inheritance — his father's boat and the knowledge passed down by generations of Koli fisherman — to fish in the traditional ways, while Ganesh — who was educated abroad — has instead embraced modern, technology-driven, and environmentally destructive methods of deep-sea fishing, causing increasing friction between the friends. But with declining fish populations caused by pollution and invasive species, neither man is finding much success, adding to the burdens facing their young families, and testing the bonds of their brotherhood.
Director Sarvnik Kaur takes a deeply humanistic and intimate approach in her profile of these two men at a crossroads in both their friendship and profession. Immersing the viewer in their experiences, where neither man is hero or villain in the choices they make to survive in an imperiled world, she presents a microcosmic, sea level view of the fragility of our relationship with the changing environment.
Filmmaker Chloé Aïcha Boro returns to her homeland, Burkina Faso, after the death of her uncle, killed while on a pilgrimage to Mecca. Boro documents the aftermath in her family's compound as a rift about the estate develops between family members who embrace traditional Islamic law and those who would follow Burkina Faso's official colonialist laws. What starts as a small family matter becomes, in Boro's distinctively observant eye, a story about the role culture, heritage, and religious beliefs play in the daily life of a community. – Murtada Elfadl
Activist Nan Goldin and artist Nan Goldin are inextricably bound up with one another in this candid documentary on the groundbreaking American photographer. Oscar-winning director Laura Poitras (Citizenfour) interviews Goldin about her life and what drives her. Poitras illustrates Goldin's personal narrative with photographs and footage of the protests she has organized.
Goldin left home at a young age, and had her breakthrough as a photographer with The Ballad of Sexual Dependency, a series of intimate snapshots featuring her friends and herself. Nowadays, she devotes her energies to her activist group PAIN (Prescription Addiction Intervention Now), which stands up for people addicted to painkillers and fights the producers of these medications, the Sacklers. This family has made billions of dollars from sales of OxyContin, contributing to the opioid crisis in the US.
Goldin speaks from experience: she was prescribed the painkiller following an operation, and was immediately hooked. Back then, she only knew the Sacklers as the philanthropists who sponsored leading museums—museums in which her own work was on display.
On September 19, 2021, after 50 years, a new volcano emerged on the island of La Palma. During the months of the eruption, a group of childhood friends shared audio messages via WhatsApp; creating a daily chronicle of wander and tragedy, far from the media narrative.
AN INHABITED VOLCANO is a collective portrait of the friendship and the spirit of the people of a land, which from time to time, have to live through the hypnotic and devastating power of nature.
Mahmoud Dowlatabadi is one of the most prolific Iranian novelists. In this beautiful, poetic portrait, gracefully crafted by his filmmaker daughter Sara Dolatabadi, he reflects on his life throughout the turbulent 20th century. Meanwhile, his daughter manages to create her own images of a father who is full of luminous ideas, yet also somewhat peculiar and lonely.
The video is authentic, and perhaps the audio too, but the combination of the two is fictional—for now, at least. We see the Iranian Ayatollah Ali Khamenei taking refuge in a mosque, surrounded by his followers. Meanwhile, we hear the protests outside becoming increasingly furious and violent. This is a documentary about the near future of Iran, maker Saleh Kashefi hopes.
The Iranian filmmaker, who has now fled to Switzerland, delved into the archives of Khamenei's website, which contain endless videos of sermons and speeches that Iran's supreme leader has given over the years. Kashefi places the images in a new context; through his careful selection and editing, he shows Khamenei not as the strong leader he likes to present himself as, but as a desperate dictator in his vulnerable final moments.
In this small village in Extremadura, population has been declining since the 1960s, driven away by unemployment. Alberto Martín Menacho returns to this region he knows intimately, and together with local youths, spins stories in a reality suspended between tradition and modernity, human and animal, between a thousand-year-old oak tree and Tinder. A strikingly graceful debut film.
Yoknapatawpha is the name of American writer William Faulkner's apocryphal county. "Apocryphal", meaning "of doubtful authenticity". Authentic or not, this is where Faulkner set all of his stories. He even drew its map. That is what guides Geoffrey Lachassagne in this brilliant and dizzying cinematographic adaptation.
For a class assignment in 2009, film student Lea Glob begins documenting a young bohemian painter from France. The assignment blossoms into something deeper, that spans 13 years in the life of a talented artist and her circle, from Paris to New York and Los Angeles and back again. Lea finds in Apolonia Sokol a story of a new generation of female artists still painfully navigating patriarchy. – Jaie Laplante
It is 1979. Flicking through pictures from a Soviet magazine, 15-year-old Martim dreams of building a new society. His radical communist parents send him to study at Astrakan for one year. In her new film, Catarina Mourão captures with tremendous precision the moment a middle-aged man passes his story on to his son, thus shedding the taboo of his ineffable experience.
Amani Al-Ali, the first female cartoonist in Idlib, Syria, draws the life of her town, a bastion of jihadist groups that are attempting to overthrow President Assad since 2011. Armed with her pen, she is struggling against Islamist authority and traditional patriarchy. But for how much longer will she have the strength to keep fighting, among the ruins of her town?
Caiti Blues portrays the daily life of a 30 year old singer, Caiti Lord, and the locals of Madrid, US, an ancien ghost town transformed in a landmark for hippies and marginal people. Through Caiti's life and artistic practice, this film explores more universal struggles such as self-acceptance, the burden of social norms and the ideological challenges of her generation in the US current political landscape.
A woman wakes up with this desire, to film blood. In Paris, her city, she meets people. A courier, a grafter, a chimera... And she remembers a trial she followed long ago. The contaminated blood trial. Meanwhile, deep in a forest, a dog leads her search for blood.
In an unexplored vault in Belgrade, the capital of the former Yugoslavia, lies a collection of films known as "the Labudović Reels." On them are images of African and Asian liberation movements and revolutionary leaders that defined the era of the 1960s. How is it that the archive of these revolutions lies on another continent, forgotten in a film archive? The answer to this question takes us into the story behind the images, on an intimate voyage with the man who filmed them.
Today, the race is on between human and artificial intelligence. While researchers are slowly uncovering the mysteries of the human brain, dramatic progress is being made in the field of AI. We follow the silent war raging inside cutting-edge laboratories embodied by two scientists: a father and his son. While the father, dedicates his life to the understanding of the human brain, his son, a young AI researcher in Oxford, aims to build intelligent machines. Their captivating confrontations around the world challenge our beliefs in a disturbing yet fascinating existential journey.
A young Burmese woman who was trafficked to China and sold into marriage tells her story. An animated film that portrays a woman torn between her love for the child she was forced to bear and her longing for the country to which she may never be able to return.
Matthieu Rytz returns to Sundance (Anote's Ark, 2018 Sundance Film Festival) with this up-to-the-minute tale of geopolitical, scientific, and corporate intrigue that exposes the machinations of a secretive organization empowered to greenlight massive extraction of metals from the deep seafloor that are deemed essential to the electric battery revolution.
Narrated by Jason Momoa, Deep Rising illuminates the vital relationship between the deep ocean and sustaining life on Earth. The documentary also follows mining startup The Metals Company, as it pursues funding, public favor, and permission from the International Seabed Authority to mine wide swathes of the Pacific Ocean floor.
Rytz's fly-on-the-wall access observes extraction companies as they co-opt scientific studies and deliver pitches to investors, proposing how the costs of industrializing our Earth's last pristine environment can be justified to access metals they claim will benefit all of mankind. As oil conglomerates pivot investments to deep-ocean mining, Deep Rising examines humanity's destructive pattern of extracting materials for profit and asks why we don't choose, instead, to develop abundant resources to solve our energy problems.
Combining a humorous and affectionate family portrait, a historical film and a search for identity, Defectors confronts the impact of the Korean War on different generations. Through encounters with a North Korean defector, Hyun kyung Kim reflects on her separation from her loved ones — such as her whimsical mother, whom she left behind in Korea upon moving to the United States.
Today is a day of celebration for Ajju: his father is turning 90. However, the old man no longer recognises his loved ones and embarks on a single-minded quest to find his lost dentures. In this playful and humorous film, the protagonist's constant memory losses result in disorienting time slips, and explosive chaos ensues!
In a modest workshop, a ceramicist constructs dildos intended to stimulate non-normative bodies and desires, drawing inspiration from forms other than the phallus. In a convent in northern Portugal, two 18th-century recolhidas (secular recluses) are accused of sodomy by the Inquisition. Beginning with practical concerns and veering decisively toward the speculative and the fabulist, Tomás Paula Marques depicts the fact and fantasy of queer pleasure.
A village in the Sardinian hinterland.
While the drought is in full swing, old legends emerge from the territory, summoning characters and places suspended between two worlds.
A painter goes to work, young people practice traditional songs, a shepherd fights against the fire... Only the storm will calm the flames.
Carlos' American dream is trapped in the labyrinth of the U.S. administration which refuses to legally recognise him. He arrived from Mexico as a child, yet he has been living in Chicago for 29 years... Swiss duo Luc Peter and Stéphanie Barbey give substance to this indeterminate existence by filming Carlos' simple day-to-day life, made up of work, family celebrations and love.
Otto spends night and day blurring faces on Google Streetview for a cent each.
It's the kind of work he and his friends around the world can find on the Amazon Mechanical Turk, the crowdworking platform.
Alongside his turker friends, Otto sinks into a robotic world that raise the question of humanity.
In a forest on the outskirts of Barcelona an old shepherd and his flock live alongside a high-tech laboratory for animal experimentation. Two opposite worlds facing each other. Two worlds that are two sides of the same coin. While the shepherd, afflicted with a bone disease, witnesses his profession disappearing, scientists are busier than ever researching the covid vaccine. 'Fauna' is a science fiction fable about the relationship between humans, animals and science in post-pandemic times.
"Cut!"… and yet the camera keeps rolling. FILMING is an immersive experience in the Colombian coffee fields, in which Robert Bresson's Notes on the Cinematographer reveal themselves as in a palimpsest.
Many years ago, a group of friends buried a time capsule in their dorm. New students live now in the same building. Flirting tricks, uncertain future, tarot card reading, and other ramblings take place in the rooms. Soon, the place will no longer belong to them.
Filmed over the course of three seasons, GRASSHOPPER REPUBLIC follows a local grasshopper trapping team in verité style, as these modern-day prospectors push into remote forests seeking their fortune by capturing this elusive prey.
We witness massive generators being hauled up collapsing mudbanks. Light posts are erected with chemically treated bulbs, casting a lurid neon green pall over the tree canopy, irresistibly attracting the swarm to their corrugated iron traps.
With otherworldly visuals, these distinct universes collide with a burst of emotion. The trappers, who have suffered through injury, sickness, and exhaustion, finally have their moment and relief washes over them. As for the grasshoppers who have been lured into a trap through unnatural trickery, their path ends in a frying pan.
Shifting between these two perspectives sparks consideration for man's relationship to nature and our collective effect on it.
Born into the Chinese community in Costa Rica, filmmaker Nicole Chi Amén was never able to communicate with her grandmother Guián, who couldn't speak Spanish. After her death, Nicole heads to China to rediscover her roots. The result is a sublime cinematic travelogue in which sensuous shots capture the essence of a place, in spite of linguistic differences.
In Tamatave, Madagascar, a group of young undocumented men work at a car wash. Jelco, Justin, Rabetsy and Mamy have come from across the country seeking employment in the city, hoping for a brighter future. Instead, they are faced with discrimination and a boss who exploits them with low wages and long hours. While waiting for their ID cards, they pass the time by playfully teasing each other, sharing meals, and reflecting on the violence that is never far from their neighborhood. Michaël Andrianaly (Nofinofy, T/F 2020) observes the rhythms of their daily lives with an intimate and lingering lens. Circumventing traditional narrative, Andrianaly immerses us in the world of these men, painting a cinematically rich portrait. A beautifully rendered hangout doc, Gwetto gives voice to the often ignored "economically displaced" population of Madagascar. (CT)
In 2014, Daesh took control of Northern Iraq, home to the Yazidi community. They separated families, killing the men and kidnapping the women and girls, who were then "offered" to the jihad fighters. The reporter and filmmaker Pascale Bourgaux tells the story of the children born during this period of captivity, "the bastards of Daesh", shedding light on this human tragedy.
Returning from a decade abroad, Komtouch Napattaloong meets the Ibrahim family in Bangkok, in exile due to the war in the Sudan. During their interminable six-year wait for a potential departure elsewhere, the director befriends the family, and together they create an uncommonly tender and lucid film.
A full-scale invasion found the Kyiv director in a small Bedouin village in the Middle East. It was warm, safe, and unbearably far from home. Once the director had a prophetic dream. She decided to return to Kyiv, still the hostilities were unfolding. Despite the condemnation of relatives and the long journey, she finally managed to cross the threshold of her home. But the house itself has now become forever different.
As Western World struggled to understand the convention-breaking atrocities of the Russian army in Ukraine, European citizens joined forces to welcome nearly 8 million refugees fleeing the country. What happened to those who stayed or who returned home? Can home even be called "home" under the circumstances? Filmmakers Piotr Pawlus and Tomasz Wolski depart on a challenging mission to show, rather than tell, what is going on in shelled-out cities and burnt-down villages.
In 2018, Chicago barber Harith "Snoop" Augustus is shot dead by police on his way to work. Incident first shows this shocking event from a distance, a view from above. This is followed by a chilling reconstruction based on footage from different angles and viewpoints, including surveillance cameras, and the dashboard cameras and bodycams of the officers present.
At a certain point, different perspectives are combined in split-screen, intensely conveying the chaos, and the anger and desperation of the bystanders. Some know the victim. They see that he's still breathing. Gradually a disconcerting picture unfolds not only of the shooting incident itself, but also of the immediate aftermath. Where do the priority's of the police officers involved lie?
Shot entirely in a virtual environment, Knit's Island is an exceptionally cinematic and contemplative documentary. The film is set in a rural game world that is both impressively realistic and uncannily not quite right. What is still "real" in this virtual existence, which will probably play an important role in the lives of more and more people in the future? With this question, the filmmakers set out to explore the sparsely populated 250 square kilometers of the game.
They encounter zombies, dodge shootings, and speak to a disconcerting group who set out simply to kill as many other participants as possible. Above all, they meet players who spend hundreds or thousands of hours here, roaming, growing food, forming communities.
"Sometimes I confuse my digital memories with those in real life," a player says. "This virtual nature reminds me of my homeland, Australia," says another in Berlin. The boundaries between role-play and reality gradually fade – all the more so during Covid lockdowns, when for many players, the video game became their most important "outside world."
Landshaft sketches the psychogeography of a geopolitically charged landscape and its inhabitants in eastern Armenia. A journey through extractivism, war and displacement.
A naive peasant named Lazzaro becomes friends with a nobleman, Tancredi. But chaos strikes when Tancredi seeks help from Lazzaro for a fake kidnapping ploy.
The story of Lazzaro, a peasant still shy of 20 and so good he appears stupid, and Tancredi, a young man of the same age but spoilt by his own imagination, is the story of a friendship. It's a friendship that begins genuinely amid a flurry of secret schemes and lies. Full of light and youthful enthusiasm, it's the first friendship Lazzaro has ever had. And it subsequently survives the passing of time and the disruptive consequences of a Big Swindle to bring the one, Lazzaro, to a huge, empty city in search of the other, Tancredi.
A stunned crowd looks on in horror, disgust, concern, disinterest and awe—at what, we don't know. The mob's interest is slowly revealed using a morphing technique and by blurring live-action reality and 3D virtual space. Stoked by contradictory information, conspiracies and divisive opinions, a burning rage threatens to incinerate more than just an edifice but an entire institution, system and symbol of civilization.
In the village of Kolofata on the Nigerian border, the Cameroonian military has been dispatched to guard villagers from attacks by the religious terrorist group Boko Haram. In this milieu, filmmaker Cyrielle Raingou follows three young children as they navigate lost innocence while growing up in constant fear. Having sparked international outrage in 2014 with the kidnapping of 276 schoolgirls, Boko Haram may have fallen out of mainstream headlines, but the threat they represent—especially to children—is as omnipresent as ever. – Jaie Laplante
A grandfather teaches his grandson the ins and outs of farming, and makes mistakes along the way. – Samah Ali
In a summer house in the Savoie region of France, three men in their sixties meet to share experiences. As children, they were pupils at the Catholic boys' boarding school La Belle Étoile in nearby Mercury. Their time there, we discover, has destroyed their lives. André became a hardened criminal who spent 35 years in prison. Michel has always been afraid. Daniel has never dared to express emotion.
With great caution, director Clémence Davigo allows the three to tell their stories. About the structural abuse, the lack of food, the cruel punishments. About the priests who went even further and sexually abused the boys. And about a society that looked the other way. Even when the three men are silent, the camera records their grief, anger and despair.
Davigo is also present when André, Michel and Daniel talk to therapists from the Catholic Church. Because many questions remain unanswered. Why were children treated like criminals? And what will the church do to recompense all the victims?
His generation is "totally lost," says a young, anonymous artist and filmmaker in Yangon, describing life since the 2021 military coup in Myanmar. "Our dreams are slowly disappearing, piece by piece." From the window of his apartment, he films life on the street below: a vendor with a pushcart, a group of monks, a passing cat. The views are deceptively ordinary, although we see shots of a demonstration against the regime as well.
The protagonist also protested against the coup and was imprisoned for eight months. The fact that he found prison life easier than his life now, after his release, may sound strange, but it says a lot about the perverse effect of the dictatorship. In prison, he had discussions and recited poetry with fellow prisoners, but now he lives alone and in fear. The window of his apartment offers his only view of the outside world. This is the way the regime likes it. But the artist/filmmaker refuses to accept the dictatorship: "Mental resistance is our weapon." Losing Ground is his resistance.
In the early 90's, women left Moldova in large numbers to provide for their families. Unable to return home, they found a peculiar way to stay in touch: sending large cardboard boxes filled with gifts and food you could only dream about in those days. In return, their children would send videotapes. This exchange became a ritual among thousands of families. Video cameras and presents allowed these mothers and children to share glimpses of their realities while being apart.
In Saigon, family culture carries on as it has for centuries, even when blood ties are broken. Through a mosaic of intimate portraits, MÁ SÀI GÒN (MOTHER SAIGON) explores humanity's universal desire for love, acceptance, connection and belonging through an LGBTQ+ lens. The film is a love letter a bittersweet ode to a comforting yet disturbing mother, to a city that is as liberating as it is oppressive.
Fatma and daughters Najeh and Waffeh are machtat, traditional wedding musicians performing their joyful songs and rousing rhythms at ceremonies in Mahdia, Tunisia. But as the film progresses, the sense grows that their exuberance is partly an attempt to banish the darker aspects of married life.
Machtat shows Najeh and Waffeh's own struggles in this area. Divorcee Najeh is on her cell phone making frantic attempts to find a reliable marriage candidate—her brother must not find out. Waffeh has the opposite problem: she wants to be freed from the torment of her physically abusive husband.
Director Sonia Ben Slama met the sisters when filming Maktoub (Tout est écrit, 2015), another film in which the position of women plays a major role. Shooting in a lively and observational style, she keeps close to the three women—and leaves the men outside the frame. There's little romance here; relationships, it seems, are mostly transactional. Although Najeh, Waffeh and their mother have a good sense of humor and are very fond of each other, the problems cause increasing tension between them. These women have to work hard to follow their chosen paths.
In an orthodox parish in Lisbon, a nun who lives far from her family must face her existential dilemmas. Dividing her time between prayer and her daily chores, for example olive-picking, a woman ponders on how love and faith have shaped her life in this atmospheric film where image is more important than words.
Paris-based filmmaker Mehran Tamadon has not returned to his motherland of Iran after the authorities informed him he was no longer welcome, following the filming of his documentary film Iranian. A painful outcome—especially for someone whose work so explicitly aspires to inspire conversation.
Searching for a way out of this deadlock, he characteristically chooses the path of dialogue. My Worst Enemy was filmed before the severe repression that followed the wave of 2022 protests. In the film, he asks exiled Iranian citizens to draw from their personal experiences with the Iranian authorities and interrogate him in an empty apartment in Paris.
They know all the tricks used to force detainees to make false confessions, which in turn leads to pressing reflections on the validity of the system and whether anyone can be made into an offender. The stakes rise for Tamadon when one of the participants (actress Zar Emir Ebrahimi) questions the project herself.
29-year-old Natalia is about to make her Life Profession in the orders of the Byzantine Catholic Church, having left behind her exciting life as a young student to devote herself to God. Elizabeth Mirzaei films these last few months, filled with doubts and questions, but also joy and contemplation. An intimate, poignant and masterfully directed portrait.
Intertwining associated experiments in image and sound generation using AI, Nearest Neighbor focuses on language acquisition and mimicry between humans, birds and machines, asking fundamental questions about consciousness, learning and understanding.
When night falls in the picturesque French ski resort of Montgenèvre, the mountains become the setting for a desperate game of cat-and-mouse. Nighttime is when small groups of migrants trek from Italy to France across the snowy Alps, all the while being hunted by the border police. A team of volunteers and members of Doctors Without Borders try to provide help where they can. In the darkness they scour the slopes searching for stragglers and strays—for pregnant women, young children with no parents, the sick—whose willingness to face the perilous nocturnal journey across the ice betrays their desperation.
The prevailing emotion among the volunteers is one of outrage at the system. How did it come this far, that asylum seekers have to make such inhumane decisions? The camera follows the aid workers closely for a single night—the horror stories told by refugees in whispered voices contrast starkly with the idyllic moonlit landscape. Several of them recount in voice-over the hardships they have endured on their sometimes years-long trek to join Europe.
In a Parisian hospital, Claire Simon films a ward where destinies intersect: abortion, endometriosis, assisted reproduction, maternity, gender transition, cancer... There, she collects the stories of these individuals, their hopes, their desires, but also their fears. This film follows doctors and patients at a gynecology ward in France.
In a village in Galicia, Pablo's family lives attached to their traditions and beliefs. Having lived abroad for 20 years, he returns to his grandmother's house for the traditional brandy-making season, and paints a warm and tender portrait of his family. Ghosts of the past mingle with the mists of the Galician coast in this stunning cinematic work.
What to take, what to leave? How important are material possessions when you're trying to save your life? Packages from Ukraine – filled with everything and nothing – wait patiently under a bridge to be found, while a voice stirs memories of frivolous and treasured personal effects, in an apparent heart-breaking farewell letter to Kiev.
Virginia Woolf's 1928 novel Orlando is both historical anchor and hopeful North Star of writer and philosopher Paul B. Preciado's first film, a sweeping yet intimate documentary that takes a panoramic look at past and present trans lives. Preciado's literate, charming conceptual approach casts 26 trans and non-binary people as different versions and evocations of Woolf's famous gender nonconformist, using the book as a starting point to talk about both the social and metaphorical meanings of transness and how Woolf's reflections on the body untethered from both time and gender normativity remain radical. Fleet and visually inventive, Preciado's film is finally a robust polemical inquiry into contemporary trans personhood and political disenfranchisement that points the way toward a possible utopia. Winner of four prizes at the Berlin International Film Festival, including the Teddy Award.
In the summer 2021, an exceptional heatwave and drought led to giant fires that ravaged 19 million hectares of land in northeastern Siberia. In this region at the heart of the taiga lies the village of Shologon soon to be blanketed by a thick cloud of smoke. Spread by the wind, the black ashes carry alarming news: the forest is on fire and the flames are fast approaching. The government having left them to fend for themselves, the inhabitants must rally to fight The Dragon.
How does one grow up on a planet that is destroying itself? Pieter Van Eecke provides a response to this urgent question in this film, in which he returns home to Belgium. For the past four years, he has patiently and carefully followed the beautiful and playful friendship between Bo and Luca, two young teenagers, and their enthusiastic activism in defense of the health of the planet. Concerned about climate change, and instead of passively watching the planet's destruction, the protagonists decide to take radical action, and end up having run-ins with the law. While the two friends grow up, they also change along the uncertain, turbulent yet beautiful path of adolescence. In this context, in which personal questions mingle with broader ones about the incomprehensible functioning of a rapidly changing world, something nevertheless seems unalterable: the protagonists' spontaneous and open friendship.
The act of burial is a primal human ritual that delimits life from death. But what happens to the corpses of migrant persons drowned at sea, those "pure unknown" who have been denied the possibility of a better life? No one now seems to care about their right to a dignified death. No one except Dr. Cristina Cattaneo, who is bravely and determinedly fighting for their cause.
How do you film a minority that prefers to stay invisible, when you belong to the majority? Andreas Müller and Simon Guy Fässler travelled with the Yenish for six years—all over Europe and as far as the Grisons—faithfully and empathetically filming this freedom-loving nomadic community who bear the wounds of the past.
Anna Dziapshipa was born of the union between an Abkhazian man and a Georgian woman. In Self-Portrait Along the Borderline, she skilfully weaves together unique archives and fragments to offer a personal and political biography of Georgia-Abkhazia relations. This vibrant exploration foregrounds a divided identity caught between the margins.
Amid the ongoing struggle for "Women, Life, Freedom," the Iranian people use their cell-phone cameras to capture scenes of urgent protest and brutal retaliation by the regime. In the act of bearing witness, they risk the loss of their vision, as authorities are known to target the eyes of their victims. Narges Kalhor aggregates these images, which have been flagged as "sensitive content" on various social media channels, a form of censorship that sanitizes and erases violent events from the record.
SHE CHEF is the portrait of young chef and recent culinary world cup winner Agnes on her journey to mastery through three of the most outstanding restaurants in the world.
In the form of a fictitious legal deposition, James N. Kienitz Wilkins explores the last forty years of cinema using images taken from Hollywood film press kits. This obsessive and joyful film flits between memories, conspiracy theories and technological obsolescence, like a meditative contemplation on contemporary cinema and truth itself.
In rural Estonia, closely observed seasons of farming, homesteading and childrearing reveal life's daily rhythms as a harmonic chorus of nature and community where the world is in balance and every living thing has a unique purpose.
The Adamant is a unique day-care centre. A floating structure located on the Seine in the heart of Paris, it welcomes adults suffering from mental disorders, offering the kind of care that grounds them in time and space and helps them to recover or keep up their spirits. The team running it tries to resist the deterioration and dehumanisation of psychiatry as best as they can.
One of the great documentary filmmakers working today, Nicolas Philibert's approach has everything to do with getting close to his subject. Whether it is an individual such as the orangutan of Nénette (Forum, 2010), or a group of people as in La maison de la radio (Panorama, 2013), his observation over an extended period of time is motivated by a genuine and contagious interest in all that moves within a community. The question of trust is always central to a documentary filmmaker's work and Philibert's stance is perfect in that regard, especially for those who might have reason to mistrust their fellow humans. This gentle, enlightening film invites us to join the welcoming microcosm of the Adamant. In their company we may, as one patient suggests, decide in the morning to make sure that we will have a good day.
Driving around the streets of Cuba, Lav Diaz – the famous Filipino director – and Gustavo Flecha - a talkative Cuban taxi driver – find themselves discussing about politics, migration, social conditions and love; touching many personal stories and experiences, they create an historical affresco of the conditions of their own countries.
Iván Bilbao has just spent 5 years in prison. Upon his release, he is reunited with his wife Yamila, his daughter Luz, and Chascomùs, his hometown, where his reputation is notorious. Eager to settle down, he resumes boxing and pawnbroking. Pedro Speroni films this chaotic return up close, underscored by tight, uppercut-like editing work.
A young mother runs across a mountain meadow with her children and they save a sheep from drowning. A girl cares for her elderly grandmother so tenderly that you want to cry while another practices being a teacher with just the right tone of voice, her dolls lined up before her as willing pupils. The fathers are mostly absent: as construction workers or tradesmen, they rarely share their daily lives with their families. In El Eco, a remote village in northern Mexico, life consists of the most elementary things. Being a child here is an intense experience from day one, involving nature, animals and people. But also love, intimacy, illness and death. And education – at least for the younger generation.
Tatiana Huezo has made a name for herself as a sensitive and poetic documentarian (e.g. Tempestad, Forum, 2016). Accompanying three families in her new work, the notion of meandering becomes an informing principle as she brilliantly weaves a host of faces and gestures into a kaleidoscope of unpretentiousness. Almost incidentally, she portrays the care-working matriarchy in a country notorious for its innumerable kidnappings of women and girls. A tender film that celebrates the grace of animals and the children of this earth alike.
Funky Town is one of the last safe and free places in Chengdu for free-spirited young adults. But that's about to change, because the expansion of the subway means the club, which is already surrounded by a construction site, will have to go. The Last Year of Darkness captures the lives of a handful of regulars in scenes that switch from the lyrical to the intensely real.
These twenty-something clubbers are queer, performance artists, DJs—outsiders of every kind. They plod through the days to show off their true splendor at night. Most of their conversations are about trying to find—or create—a place for themselves in the oppressive society around them.
We follow these young adults from the bleak daytime realities of money worries, family arguments and uncertainties, to euphoria in the darkness. In stroboscopic quick-cut scenes set to uplifting techno beats, we see the clubbers coming to life and dancing, flirting, kissing, drinking, smoking—till the inevitable moment when their dream world meets the shock of reality.
To decades after the tragic death of his brother, the direct or Christians Einshøj's family is falling apart. Armed with 30 years of home video, 75.000 family photos and three tightly fit superhero costumes, he ventures into landscapes of long lost time, in an attempt to confront the 25 year old tragedy, and the hid
den wounds left in its wake. It's a story of fathers and sons, of vast collections of stamps and amateur videography, of long distance
business class flights and all the other ways in which we flee, instead of talking about that which hurts and of the redemption that can follow when the silence is breached and they maybe finally make it to the other side of the mountains.
From her grandmother's garden to California via the Mojave Desert and the cosmos, Emmanuelle Antille takes us on a journey to out-of-the-ordinary places, as we meet the people who created, imagined or discovered them. THE WONDER WAY is a free and personal quest, an inner exploration and a journey in search of unusual - but very real - spaces.
Greyhound racing makes an impression. Not only for the speed of the dogs, but for the recklessness of humans towards animals. With a profound narrative voice and precise images, Olivia Calcaterra manages to capture the tension between the people who train dogs to race and then abandon them, and the people who rescue them.
Werner Herzog sets his sights on yet another mysterious landscape — the human brain — for clues as to why a hunk of tissue can produce profound thoughts and feelings while considering the philosophical, ethical, and social implications of fast-advancing neural technology.
Werner Herzog turned 80 this year. He's travelled on every continent including Antarctica. In recent films, he's reached back in time to study ancient paintings, stared down into volcanoes, and cast our eyes heavenwards to contemplate meteorites. Now he ventures into the inner landscape of our brains.
He teams with scientist Rafael Yuste who, in Herzog's words, "is at the forefront of research that will change the world as much as the understanding of DNA has changed it." They go on a road trip to meet an array of people whose cutting-edge research sounds like the stuff of science fiction. There's the tech billionaire funding brain scanners. The scientist inspired by psychedelic trips to build a brain-to-computer interface. And the human rights lawyer who warns that the international community is totally unprepared for the rapid advances in neural technology.
Herzog delights in dialogues that probe into philosophy, ethics, and the offbeat. He ponders questions such as: How do all our senses of motion, love, hate, pleasure, pain, and more emerge from the tissue inside our skull? How does music affect human existence? Do fish have souls? How does a tightrope walker conquer fear? How stupid is Siri? Are we living in some sort of theatre of thought, an imaginary world that only exists in our brain?
The film is multifaceted, illuminating the technological advances that are helping people overcome brain-related illness, confronting conspiracy theories over implanted chips, and questioning the politics of mind control.
Most of us will never set foot on the forbidding terrain Herzog has traversed. But we all have a brain. This film deepens our understanding of what's happening inside it.
Thom Powers, TIFF
Dominic Ongwen was just nine years old when the Lord Resistance Army terrorist group abducted him and killed his parents. Joseph Kony's guerrilla group then tortured, brainwashed and forced the boy to kill others. Thirty years later, Ongwen surrendered to the authorities and now stands accused of crimes against humanity at the International Criminal Court in The Hague, the first former child soldier ever to do so. The charges range from murder and rape to torture and slavery. But can the adult man be separated from his traumatic past when it comes to sentencing? Director Lukasz Konopa and Emil Langballe soberly and convincingly portray both sides of the immensely complex case, following lawyer Krispus Ayena as he prepares Ongwen's defence. 'Theatre of Violence' confronts us with fundamental questions of guilt and punishment, and of how modern society should deal with the traumas of the past. A monumental film of wide-reaching consequences.
Beibei speaks with astonishment about how she used to pliably conform to the role prescribed to women in China. She married. She had a child. It's surprising, given the aversion this 30-something woman feels for the concept of being "a good wife."
Against the backdrop of the encroaching COVID-19 epidemic, this film explores the web of conventional roles in which women so often lose themselves. What happens to the "I" in the face of all those imposed personas: mother, daughter, wife? The film immerses us in the life of a woman who refuses to let her identity be defined by others, who demands the right to find out for herself who she is and what she wants. Moving from city to city and from lover to lover, she defies Chinese society's expectations of what a woman should do and be.
The sophisticated editing and composition of shots suggests the film may be toying with fact and fiction—it is a game whose rules are never fully revealed. And perhaps that is precisely the point. As Beibei herself remarks, something can be both real and fake at the same time. Ultimately, the film is an intelligent deconstruction of the role-playing game that is identity. And while roles can be constraining and oppressive, they can also be liberating at times.
At the turn of the millennium, as the Israeli army retaliates against the Second Intifada in the West Bank, Suha, a Palestinian mother, films her family's daily life. Time spent sheltering in the basement at night and her two young children's fear of the shelling are recurring elements. The scenes also have something commonplace about them, apparent in the family members who are not used to the ever-present camera, as well as the fact that the children still head off to school each morning.
In 2017, Suha's son Yousef, the director of this documentary, discovered the videos. Together with his mother, he explores why she chose to film her family's life in wartime. And why she waited to flee the country—several times Suha broke a promise she made to God that she would leave.
This clever debut film underlines the value of documenting the present: the filmmaker constructs new stories with old footage. It's a story of a mother with her camera, a boy and his childhood, and at the same time, the history of the Palestinian people.
In the 1960s, an anthropologist thinks he has discovered the existence of a vampire woman in a Kashub community in Wilno, Ontario. Kinga Michalska returns to the village still recovering from the trauma of this coverage.
In a peaceful and functional reception center for Ukrainian refugees—a former Wehrmacht military barracks—the children are left to their own devices. Three friends teach each other German words, a boy mends a bicycle tire, a teenage girl and her toddler brother talk on a smartphone with their dad back in Kyiv, a girl chalks on the curb, "Putin, stop killing people."
The camera explores the grounds and examines the buildings—the somber gray façade, the walls inside. Sometimes its gaze, as innocent as that of a child, dwells on a detail—the statue of an eagle on the wall, a painted war scene in a classroom, a sticker of an American army unit on a window. Witnesses from another era.
Meanwhile, the children play, or sit on the grass eating out of a bag of strawberries, which taste sweeter back home. In the evening it is quiet.
Only through his camera is Swiss-Canadian filmmaker Peter Mettler (The End of Time, Becoming Animal) able to relate to the world, study himself and the people around him, and share his insights. This also applies to his relationship with the phenomenon of time and the finite nature of our existence on earth. He is confronted by this when his mother dies and he knows that his 90-year-old father, despite his cheerful zest for life, inevitably will follow. During Mettler's cinematographic exploration of the meaning of life and what comes before and after, the COVID pandemic breaks out, which puts everything even more sharply into perspective.
While the Green Grass Grows consists of parts 1 and 6 of a seven-part filmic diary that unfolds unhurriedly and meditatively. Mettler asks his parents and friends his existential questions. At the same time, he focuses on nature: the Swiss Alps, where his parents come from, and the forests of his own native country, Canada. Everything flows, reproduces and continues—with great beauty, and without revealing any meaning.
When Lenin and Trotsky met in Zimmerwald, it was not to watch birds, contrary to what they claimed. The conference was a call to the workers of the world to unite against the war that was raging in Europe. This page of Switzerland's history has long been forgotten, but new generations, such as the ones portrayed in this film, are willing to recover it.
The idyllic Swiss family estate – Sonnenhof – no longer feels like home to Dijana, now that her daughter has moved away. She slowly begins to look beyond its borders and seeks comfort in the fragments of a past life she left behind in former Yugoslavia.
Two men work alongside each other in the Central African Republic, the first a local laborer struggling to meet everyday needs and the other his boss, a Chinese expatriate construction manager far from home trying to improve his economic standing. While never wavering away from its two subjects, this striking documentary effectively portrays how globalization impacts individual lives, and the destabilizing effects of the new international hierarchy in Africa. – Murtada Elfadl