Library

143 Sahara Street

France/Algeria 2019, Locarno Filmmakers of the Present- Best Director, Toronto Wavelenghts, Seoul DMZDocs Grand Prize, El Gouna Silver Star Award, Montreal RIDM Special Mention, Nantes 3 Continents Silver Mongolfière, Young Jury Prize & Audience Award, Turin Doc competition- Best Film.

Documentary by Hassen Ferhani

Synopsis

In the middle of the Algerian sahara, in her relay, a woman writes her History. She welcomes, for a cigarette, a coffee or eggs, truckers, wandering beings and dreams… Her name is Malika. Continuer la lecture →

A River Runs, Turns, Erases, Replaces

USA – Berlin Forum 2021- Caligari Prize, Paris Cinema du Reel competition, IDFA Paradocs, Milan Filmmaker Award

Documentary by Shengze Zhu

Synopsis

A portrait of urban spaces along the Yangtze River in the city of Wuhan. An engaging communal stage on which people perform in various ways: some dancing, singing, swimming; some shoveling, welding, and hammering. An evolving landscape that is continuously sculpted by nature and dramatically altered by roaring machines and rising infrastructure. Where desires are planted. Where memories are buried. The lost place. Continuer la lecture →

Acid Forest

Lithuania 2018, Locarno First Feature Swatch Art Peace Hotel Award

First Documentary by Rugile Barzdziukaite

Synopsis

Can you imagine a tourist attraction where people come to see a dead forest? Where they are not only observers, but also the ones being observed and listened to by black birds? The forest reminds of a nuclear fallout for some visitors, while others recall Hitchcock’s The Birds. People’s observations and responses to this environment are as multi-layered and bizarre as the story of the forest itself. » Continuer la lecture →

American Journal

France, Berlinale Encounters 2022

Documentary by Arnaud des Pallières

Synopsis

Think of America, I told myself. The cities, the homes, the people, the arrivals, the departures, the children coming and leaving, death, life, movement, speech. Think of the deep sigh inside of all things alive in America. Bend down. Pick up what others let go to waste from life. So the wind won’t blow it all away. Continuer la lecture →

Aurora

Costa Rica – Rotterdam Big Screen competition 2021, San Sebastian Horizontes Latinos, Antalya Best Director Award 

Feature Film by Paz Fabrega

Synopsis

Thoughtfully, lovingly, Aurora tells the story of an unwanted pregnancy. Alongside her work as an architect, 40-year-old Luisa gives inspirational creative workshops to children. One day, she comes across 17-year-old Yuli by the school toilets; it turns out she has unintentionally become pregnant. Luisa decides to help her – in the process operating herself into a difficult position somewhere between friend, teacher and mother figure. Or does she secretly enjoy playing this role?

Continuer la lecture →

Ava

Iran 2017, Toronto Discovery FIPRESCI award

First feature film by Sadaf Foroughi

Synopsis

Seventeen-year-old Iranian Ava challenges the strict rules of her traditional upbringing and learns that her mother broke the rules as a young woman as well.

Continuer la lecture →

Bulbul Can Sing

India 2018, Toronto & Busan 2018, Berlinale Generation 2019- special mention

Feature Film by Rima Das

Synopsis

Bulbul, Bonny and Suman live an idyllic life, playing in the rain, climbing trees and swimming in the river. On the cusp of puberty, the inseparable trio go through their schooling days as a unit, discovering love, sexual awakenings and rebellion together. When a group of villagers discover the teens engaged in acts that outrage their moral modesty, the trio’s friendship is put to the test through violent punishment and tragedy. Continuer la lecture →

Donkeyote

Spain/Germany/UK, Rotterdam Big Screen Competition 2017

Chico Pereira

Synopsis

Manolo leads a simple life in Southern Spain. He has two loves: his animals, in particular his donkey Gorrión (“Sparrow”), and wandering through nature. Against the advice of his doctor, he decides to plan one last walk in the US, the brutal 2200 mile Trail of Tears. But not without his donkey.

Continuer la lecture →

Epicentro

Austria, France – Sundance Winner World Cinema Grand Jury Prize Documentary 2020

Hubert Sauper

Synopsis

An immersive and metaphorical portrait of post-colonial, “utopian” Cuba, where the 1898 explosion of the USS Maine still resonates. This Big Bang ended Spanish colonial dominance in the Americas and ushered in the era of the American Empire. At the same time and place, a powerful tool of conquest was born: cinema as propaganda. In Epicentro, Sauper explores a century of interventionism and myth-making together with the extraordinary people of Havana — particularly its children, who he calls “young prophets » — to interrogate time, imperialism and cinema itself. Continuer la lecture →

Eyimofe (This is my Desire)

Nigeria – Berlin Forum 2020, Seattle New Directors Competition Grand Jury Award 2021, MOOOV winner of the University of Antwerp Award 2021

First feature film by Arie & Chuko

Synopsis

Tragedy and fate intervene as two Nigerians try to better the lives of their families. Eyimofe (This is My Desire) is a film about two people’s quest for what they believe will be a better life on foreign shores. Continuer la lecture →

Fire in the Mountains

India – Sundance World Cinema competition 2021

First feature Film by Ajitpal Singh

Synopsis

A mother toils to save money to build a road in a Himalayan village to take her wheelchair-bound son for physiotherapy but her husband who believes that a shamanic ritual (Jagar) is the remedy, steals her savings. Continuer la lecture →

Footnote

USA, Rotterdam Harbour 2022

Documentary by Zhengfan Yang

Synopsis

An audio-visual portrait of a neighborhood in the city of Chicago. Life presents itself in two contradictory ways: as seen through the windows of an apartment filmed over the course of three years – peaceful, mundane, ambiguous; and as told through the local police scanner recorded during the last year of the Trump administration, also the first year of the ongoing pandemic – violent, tragic, absurd. From here, a neighborhood is observed, a city is echoed, and a country is footnoted. Continuer la lecture →

Garage, Engines & Men

France – Paris Cinema du Reel competition 2021

Documentary by Claire Simon

Synopsis

A pretty little village in Provence. Yes, I grew up there but it seems to me today that life has somewhat deserted it. Apart from here, at the garage, that everyone, meaning the men, comes to in order to get their cars looked after. What do they do? What do they talk about? A breakdown turns into a puzzle full of suspense. The garage becomes the place for male transmission. There are only men here, and they repair metal bodies. Continuer la lecture →

Giacinto Scelsi. The First Motion of the Immovable

France 2018, IDFA Best First Appearance Award, Turin Special Prize of the Jury

First Documentary by Sebastiano d’Ayala Valva

Synopsis

When Sebastiano d’Ayala Valva was 10 years old, his father played him music by his cousin, the composer Giacinto Scelsi. He found it frightening. Now he attempts to penetrate the world of a composer who remained obscure for many years and whose ideas about music and sound were unorthodox.

Continuer la lecture →

Gold Is All There Is

Italy 2019, Rotterdam Signatures

Non Fiction Film by Andrea Caccia

Synopsis

A river. A young boy who plays and gets lost in the woods. A naked man who wanders among the trees. A weapon. An illegal hunter. A police officer. A crime from the past. An old gold prospector. Real people, who go about their daily lives in a natural theatre where reality takes on the qualities of a fairy tale, a crime novel, a coming-of-age story. Five men at different stages of life who never meet yet are all part of one, unique, suspended narration.

Continuer la lecture →

Just Don’t Think I’ll Scream

France 2019, Berlin Forum, Curitiba Olhar do Cinema New Views Award – Feature for Best Film, DocLisboa Special Prize of the Jury

First Documentary by Frank Beauvais

Synopsis

January 2016. The love story that brought me to this village in Alsace where I live ended six months ago. At 45, I am now alone, without a car, a job or any real prospects, surrounded by luxuriant nature, the proximity of which is not enough to calm the deep distress into which I am plunged. France, still in shock from the November terror attacks, is in a state of emergency. I feel helpless, I suffocate with contained rage. I am lost and I watch four to five films a day. I decide to record this stagnation, not by picking up a camera but by editing shots from the stream of films I watch. Continuer la lecture →

Just Like That

India 2019, Busan New Currents competition- special mention, Mumbai -Film Critics Guild Award & Best Actress Award

First Feature Film by Kislay Kislay

Synopsis

In the outskirts of a small village in India, Mrs. Sharma is forced to remain a respected middle-class wife and a faithful, wise old woman upon her husband’s death. Her son and his family, who live with her, have no doubt that she will make sacrifices to help them out financially. But Mrs. Sharma has absolutely no intention to do so.

Continuer la lecture →

Le Fort des Fous

France, 2017- Locarno Cineasti del Presente, Toronto, Rotterdam 2018

Narimane Mari

Synopsis

Departing from material records of the early colonial “scientific expeditions” and “taming campaigns” led by the French colonizers in North Africa, the story follows a community of young nomads and wanderers as they form an imagined utopian society in response to imperialist rule.

Continuer la lecture →

Love Blooms

France 2018, Cannes ACID selection

First Feature Film by Michaël Dacheux

Synopsis

Martin, in a last ditch hope, comes to meet Léa in Paris. They are both twenty-five and shared their first love story together. They are both now striving to mature.

Continuer la lecture →

Market

India 2019, Busan A Window On Asian Cinema- Kim Jiseok Award

Feature Film by Pradip Kurbah

Synopsis

Iewduh is the name of the largest and the most vibrant market in Northeast India. Market, whose original title is ‘Iewduh’, tells the story of the people of the Iewduh Bara Bazaar market. Mike is a bathroom cleaner working in the darkest of the dark places in the market. He lives with Hep, a boy who was abandoned by his parents and was later taken in by Mike.

Continuer la lecture →

May God be with You

France, DOK Leipzig competition 2021- prize of the Interreligious jury, IDFA Best of Fests

First documentary by Cleo Cohen

Synopsis

I wonder if I have to choose between being French, Jewish or Arab. I visit my four grandparents, Jews from Algeria and Tunisia, who took up exile France in the 1960s. I want to discuss with them the meaning of these seemingly contradictory legacies they have left me. Unfortunately, my distress isn’t really contagious. Continuer la lecture →

Mother and Son

Azerbaijan 2019, IDFA main competition

Documentary by Hilal Baydarov

Synopsis

In rural Azerbaijan, a mother welcomes her adult son, who left home eight years earlier. In the calm rhythm of rural life, reflective silences punctuate their personal, philosophical conversations. Continuer la lecture →

Nails in my Brain

Azerbaijan, Paris Cinema du Reel competition 2020

Documentary by Hilal Baydarov

Synopsis

A young man wanders through the ruins of what may or may not be his childhood home, where each crumbling doorway opens up onto the past. Memories accost him-memories of his school days, of loved ones long gone, of wonder, callousness, and defeat. Continuer la lecture →

Newton

India, 2017 Berlin Forum, Hong Kong Jury Prize, Tribeca competition, Indian entry for Oscar Awards

Amit V Masurkar

Synopsis

As India, the world’s largest democracy, braces itself for another general election- with 9 million polling booths, more than 800 million voters, and costing nearly $5 billion- Newton Kumar, a rookie government clerk finds himself entrusted with a task that appears deceptively simple: conducting elections in a remote village in the jungles of central India.

Continuer la lecture →

No Farewells (Sans Adieu)

France, 2017 Cannes ACID selection, Viennale, Turin Doc competition

First feature documentary by Christophe Agou

Synopsis

The endangered world of small farmers, determined to resist till the end…with Claudette as leader!

Continuer la lecture →

Nona If they soak me, I’ll burn them

Chile 2019, Rotterdam Tiger competition

Fiction/ experimental documentary by Camila Jose Donoso

Synopsis

After a torrid act of vengeance on the home of her ex-lover, 66-year old Nona flees to her summer house in Pichilemu, a Chilean coastal town. There she potters about in apparent satisfaction, until a series of forest fires drives many of her neighbors from their homes.

Continuer la lecture →

Ofrenda

Argentina 2020, Rotterdam Bright Future competition

First Feature Film by Juan Monaco Cagni

Synopsis

Ofrenda depicts two women who, at various stages in their lives, happen to be in the same place. Being and time. That might sound vague, but this is nonetheless what it is. The young teens spend time in summery fields, in desolate, abandoned warehouses and other buildings on the outskirts of a small provincial town in the Argentinian pampas. The same spaces reoccur a few years later when the young women meet again when one of them returns with a backpack symbolising the knowledge acquired. Continuer la lecture →

Our Madness

Mozambique 2018, Berlin Forum

Joao Viana

Synopsis

Ernania is hospitalized in a psychiatric hospital in Mozambique. She dreams about her little son, Hanic, and her husband, Pak, who is a soldier of the war. In the meantime, a quirky musical intrument plays: her own bed. Ernania’s musical virtuosity, attracts the attention of the hospital nurses. One day, her song is played in a radio program and Rosa, an envangelical priest of “Rádio Moçambique”, goes to the hospital to listen to Ernania’s song. Ernania takes the priest’s visit as an opportunity to run away from the hospital.

Continuer la lecture →

Piedra Sola

Argentina 2020, Rotterdam Tiger Award competition

First Feature Film by Alejandro Telemaco Tarraf

Synopsis

Deep inside the Argentinian highlands in a small community at an altitude of 4000 ma.s.l, a native llama herder is following the traces of an invisible puma who is killing his livestock. Through his search, a mystical exchange is revealed between him, his ancestors and the changing form of the puma. Continuer la lecture →

Present. Perfect.

USA/ Hong Kong 2019, Rotterdam Tiger Award, Mexico Ficunam Special Mention for Best Film, Paris Cinema du Reel Young Jury Award Special Mention, Montreal RIDM Grand Prize.

Documentary by Shengze Zhu

Synopsis

Weaving together footage filmed and broadcasted by little-known Chinese live-streaming anchors, who struggle with real-life face-to-face social interaction because of their identity, disability and social-economic status, this cinematic collage explores how individuals satisfy their cravings for human connection through virtual togetherness, and how these virtual relationships challenge standard definitions of companionship. Continuer la lecture →

Private Fiction

Argentina 2019, San Sebastian Zabaltegi, IDFA Masters

Documentary by Andrés di Tella

Synopsis

Over several days and nights, an actor and an actress read the correspondence between Torcuato and Kamala, the film director’s parents, he from Argentina, and she from India. The letters, encompassing the decades from the 50s to the 70s, refer to love and idealism, record world travels, talk about socialism and psychoanalysis, about pain and broken dreams. Their reading reveals a relationship between the actors, with similarities and differences. Meanwhile, with his own daughter, the director sets about solving the puzzle of the family memory, an intimate twentieth-century tale.

Continuer la lecture →

Roundabout in my Head

Algeria/France/Lebanon. FID Marseille 2015- Grand Price for the French competition, IDFA Special Jury Award for First Appearance, Turin Best Film for Documentary

Documentary by Hassen Ferhani

Synopsis

To a slaughterhouse in the centre of Algiers, men live and work behind closed doors to the throbbing rhythms of their tasks and their dreams.Hope, bitterness, love, paradise and hell, the football stories as of the Chaabi and Rai melodies that set their lives and their world.

Continuer la lecture →

Sons of Caïn

Albania, Venice Days 2021 – Special Screening

First docu-fiction by Keti Stamo

Synopsis

Sons of Cain is a film set in a small village in northern Albania. In this place time is suspended and the severe rules of an old code (KANUN) still dictate life and deathof the inhabitants. Continuer la lecture →

Still Recording

Syria 2018, Venice Critic’s Week FIPRESCI & Audience awards. Valdivia Best Film

First Documentary by Saeed Al Batal & Ghiath Ayoub

Synopsis

Saeed is a young cinema passionate trying to teach other young people in Eastern Ghouta in Syria the rules of filming, but the reality they face is much more harsh to respect any rule.
His friend Milad is on the other side of the fence, in Damascus, under the control of the regime finishing his studies in Fine Arts.

Continuer la lecture →

The Elder One

India 2019, Toronto Special Presentations, Mumbai opening film

Feature Film by Geetu Mohandas

Synopsis

The search for Akbar brings his younger sibiling, Mulla from Lakshadweep island to the decadent underbelly of Mumbai. Continuer la lecture →

The Perpetuel Leek

France- FID Marseille 2021- Special Mention French competition, High School Award & Special Mention GNCR 

Documentary by Zoe Chantre

Synopsis

The film starts on March 5th. Every year, on this very same day, an ant comes through my door and I observe her. To her springtime is coming, to me it’s my mother’s birthday. Continuer la lecture →

The Shepherdess and the Seven Songs

India – Berlinale Encounters competition 2020

Feature film by Pushpendra Singh

Synopsis

The timeless story of the proud and beautiful nomadic shepherdess Laila is set against the backdrop of the current Kashmir conflict. A tribute to a very modern female figure, inspired by mystical poetry and traditional songs. Continuer la lecture →

The Time of the Pirates

France 2018, FID Marseille, Grand Prize French competition

First Feature Film by Gael Lepingle

Synopsis

Following an urban redevelopment project, Géro is about to be evicted from his home and his small theatre, where he no longer plays since he lost his voice. A nephew he barely knows suddenly settles in his home. He wants to write.

Continuer la lecture →

The Trouble with Nature

Denmark 2020, Rotterdam Bright Future competition

First feature film by Illum Jacobi

Synopsis

The year 1769. The philosopher Edmund Burke has fled London, debt collectors and a ramping midlife crisis to go on a grandtour of the Alps to rewrite his book on the Sublime in this 18. century roadmovie. Continuer la lecture →

Theatre of War

Argentina 2018, Berlin Forum- Ecumenical Prize & CICAE Art Cinema award

First Documentary Film by Lola Arias

Synopsis

This is an essay on how to represent war, performed by former enemies. British and Argentinian veterans of the Falklands/Malvinas war come together to discuss, rehearse and re-enact their memories 35 years after the conflict.

Continuer la lecture →

Vedette

France- Cannes ACID selection 2021, IDFA international competition 2021

Documentary by Claudine Bories & Patrice Chagnard

Synopsis

Vedette is a cow. Vedette is a queen. In fact, she once was the queen of the queens of the Alpine pastures. But Vedette is old now, and in order to avoid her the humiliation of being dethroned by younger rivals, our neighbours asked us to take her with us for a whole summer. It was at this time that we discovered that every cow is unique.  Continuer la lecture →

Veins of the Amazon

Peru, DOK Leipzig competition 2021

Documentary by Álvaro Sarmiento, Diego Sarmiento, Terje Toomistu

Synopsis

In the Peruvian Amazon, the main means of transport for goods and people since the times of the rubber boom and the infamous adventures of Fitzcarraldo are the ferries navigating the majestic Amazon River. Continuer la lecture →

Walden

Switzerland 2018, Karlovy Vary Documentary competition- Special Jury prize, Rotterdam & Sundance 2019

First Documentary by Daniel Zimmermann

Synopsis

In the forest of the Catholic Monastery of Admont in Austria a fir tree is felled and processed into planks of wood. By train, truck, boat and finally by hand, the stack is transported to a mysterious destination right in the heart of the Brazilian rainforest.

Continuer la lecture →

We Haven’t Lost our Way

Poland, Berlinale Forum 2022

Feature Film by Anka Sasnal, Wilhelm Sasnal

Synopsis

This loose adaptation of the P.C. Jersild novel follows a professor who quits his job and a translator in difficulties. He sends her recordings of the mysterious journey he has embarked on, but is the journey even real? Or just proof of his madness? Continuer la lecture →

When The Persimmons Grew

Azerbaijan 2019- Nyon Visions du Reel Special Mention, Sarajevo Best Documentary Film, IDFA Best of Fest

Hilal Baydarov

Synopsis

Immobile in a home where the sands of time fall to the rhythm of rural Azerbaijani sounds, a mother waits for her son. When he arrives, their conversations circle around existential questi- ons and news from afar, troubling and cryptic. Unrest cloaks the world outside. Continuer la lecture →

Widow of Silence

India 2018, Busan a Window on Asian Cinema, Rotterdam Voices 2019

Feature Film by Praveen Morchhale

Synopsis

In conflict-ridden Kashmir, a Muslim widow, responsible for her 11-year-old daughter and ill mother-in-law, finds herself in dire straits. Unable to obtain her missing husband’s death certificate from the government, she must find the strength to overcome this absurd plight.

Continuer la lecture →

You Have the Night

Montenegro, Serbia, 2018- Venice Critic’s Week, Hong Kong Firebird Award 2019

First Feature Film by Ivan Salatic

Synopsis

After leaving the ship on which she works, Sanja finds herself stranded, with nowhere to go but home. The shipyard has filed for bankruptcy, leaving many workers out of work. Boats covered with tarpaulin are scattered around the landscape, set aside for better days. A storm comes. One life is lost. Luka is waiting for the night in the woods. The night when everything could change.

Continuer la lecture →

Yours Truly

India 2018, Busan a Window on Asian Cinema

Feature Film by Sanjoy Nag

Synopsis

Amidst the daily din of the local trains in Calcutta, a lonely working woman in her late fifties finds herself falling in love with the voice of the railway announcer. Yours Truly is a story about seeking connection and discovering how love can strike at any age- and in the most unexpected places.

Continuer la lecture →

Zahorí

Switzerland, Argentina, Chile, France- Locarno Filmmakers of the Present 2021

First feature film by Marí Alessandrini

Synopsis

The Patagonian steppe is battered by a grey wind… Mora is 13 years old and intends to become a « gaucho ». She questions the school and asserts her individuality towards her parents, two environmentalists from Italian-speaking Switzerland whose dream of autonomy turns into a nightmare. Mora goes deep into the steppe to help the only friend she has, Nazareno, an old Mapuche who has lost his horse, Zahorí. Continuer la lecture →