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 →

About the Clouds

Argentina, FID Marseille competition 2022, best film FIC Valdivia, best director Mexico Black Canvas, Jeonju best picture prize 2023

Feature film by Maria Aparicio

Synopsis

Ramiro is a cook in a bar. Hernán is an unemployed technician. Nora is a nurse in a public hospital. Lucía is an employee in a bookstore. Four stories and a black and white city with a cloudy sky. None of them know each other, they are only inhabitants of the same city. 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 →

Agra

India, Cannes Director’s Fortnight 2023

Kanu Behl

Synopsis

Guru, a young man in his twenties, works in a call center in Agra. In love with Mala, a work colleague, he stills lives with his parents, whose house is divided in two parts. Guru lives on the ground floor with his mother while his father is upstairs with his mistress. when Guru announces that he wants to marry Mala, and make the terrace of the house his future bedroom, nothing goes as planned. Frustrations, faults and family hatreds come to light, symptoms of an Indian patriarchal society with many taboos. 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 →

Bentu

Italy, Venice Giornate di Autori 2022

Feature film by Salvatore Mereu

Synopsis

Raffaele has just gathered up his little pile of grain, which will be his provision for an entire year. Not wishing to be caught unprepared, he has been sleeping in the country for days, far from everybody, waiting for the wind to arrive and help him at last to separate the wheat-grains from the chaff. But the wind will not show up. Only Angelino arrives to visit him every day, making him feel less lonely. Maybe one day, when he has grown up, Raffaele may lend him his indomitable mare and he will finally manage to ride her. But Angelino does not want to wait… Continuer la lecture →

Concrete Valley

Canada, Toronto Wavelenghts 2022, Berlinale Forum 2023

Feature film by Antoine Bourges

Synopsis

Rashid (Hussam Douhna), a doctor from Syria, struggles to adjust to his life in Canada
after five years in Toronto’s Thorncliffe Park with his wife Farah (Amani Ibrahim) and son
Ammar (Abdullah Nadaf). He tries to hold on to his old identity by working as an
unlicensed doctor for his neighbours. While Farah becomes more involved in their local
community, tensions between her and Rashid begin to take their toll on their fragile
marriage. 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 →

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 →

Geographies of Solitude

Canada, Berlinale Forum 2022 -Ecumenical Award, Arthouse Cinema Award, Caligari Film Prize-, Jeonju Grand Prize, Hot Docs Best Film & Best Emerging Director, Las Palmas Best Film

Documentary by Jacquelyn Mills

Synopsis

Geographies of Solitude is an immersion into the rich landscapes of Sable Island and the life of Zoe Lucas, a naturalist and environmentalist who has lived over 40 years on this remote strip of land. Continuer la lecture →

Grace

Russia, Cannes Director’s Fortnight 2023

Ilya Povolotsky

Synopsis

An old camper van passes through obscure Russian province, carrying a teen girl, her father and a rusty film projector. They’ve been on the road for long, drifting among the eerie picturesque “nowhere’s”. She’s used to his melancholy and random women. He bears with her whims. But everything changes on the way up North, when their world packed in the tight space of the car along with hopes, hurts, fears, and unburied past — eventually explodes. 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 →

La Bonga

Colombia, Paris Cinema du Reel, NY MoMA Doc Fortnight, True False 2023

Sebastian Pinzon Silva & Canela Reyes

Synopsis

Two decades after a death threat from right-wing paramilitaries caused the maroon community of La Bonga to flee, the townspeople embark on a symbolic journey through the jungles of the Colombian Caribbean to resurrect a home that exists only in their memories.  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 →

Le Spectre de Boko Haram

Cameroon, Rotterdam Tiger award 2023, FESPACO Paul Robeson award

Cyrielle Raingou

Synopsis

A group of children forge their own world amid the dangers of armed conflict. We meet Falta, studious and hardworking, who is struggling to come to terms with the death of her father in a terrorist attack. Her classmate, Ibrahim, and older brother, Mohamad, struggle to balance their childlike energy with a traumatic past that takes them away from the innocence of their eight and eleven years. Continuer la lecture →

Mixtape La Pampa

Argentina, San Sebastian Zabaltegi 2023

Andres di Tella

Synopsis

This is the cinematographic diary of an extended trip through the Pampas, on the trail of Guillermo Enrique Hudson, aka William Henry Hudson. Hudson is an enigmatic figure, full of contradictions: he was an Argentine gaucho who became an English writer. He fought in the army against the “savages” but also defended them. He wrote obsessively about his native land, but never returned. In the twists and turns of the road, a combination emerges of documentary speculation, personal memory… and dreams. Continuer la lecture →

Monisme

Indonesia, FID Marseille competition 2023, best film at Bucarest Experimental 

Riar Rizaldi

Synopsis

Several professional actors and non-actor professionals portray a dynamic of human-nature relationship in one of the most active stratovolcano in the world, Mount Merapi. In the shadows of recent eruptions, these actors play a story that is written together with volcanologist, sand miner, and a mystic—people who have a close bond with the mountain, potentially illustrating fiction and nonfiction situations that could and would have happened in Merapi. 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 →

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 →

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 →

Shivamma

India, Busan 2022 new currents award winner, Nantes 3 Continents young jury award

First feature film by Jayshankar Aryar

Synopsis

Shivamma (46), a mother of two and the wife of an ailing bedridden husband, works as a government school mid-day meal cook in a small village. She is the only active working member of her family. Her entire family is in the process of finding a suitable groom for her daughter, though she has her own affair running alongside. 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 Plains

Australia, Rotterdam Tiger competition 2022, Bildrausch Film Basel Best Film

First docu-fiction by David Easteal

Synopsis

Every evening a man in his late 50s commutes home at the end of the working day in the outer suburbs of Melbourne. As the seasons pass in gentle rhythm we observe dramatic events of his life as well as mundane quotidian details, and learn more about the man, his inner conflicts and the relationships in his life—with his wife, his mother, deceased sister, and a younger co-worker whom he occasionally drives home. Within the microcosm of the car the film ultimately becomes a meditation on the passage of time, memory, work, and how love and the relationships in our life sustain us. Continuer la lecture →

The River is not a Border

France, Locarno Critic’s Week 2022, IDFA

Documentary by Alassane Diago

Synopsis

Forty protagonists, witnesses and victims, look back at the 1989 massacres on both sides of the Senegal River, the border between Mauritania and Senegal, in order to understand what really happened, and try to take a step towards reconciliation together. 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 Song of the Auricanturi

Colombia, Karlovy Vary Proxima competition 2023

Camila Rodriguez Triana

Synopsis

Rocío returns to her home town to reunite with her mother Alba, from whom she was separated as a child. The only thing from her mother that Rocío had kept is a cassette recording of her voice singing her a song in a language that they invented to communicate with each other. Alba has stopped talking as a reaction to trauma from the war that their territory endured. This forces Rocío to find other ways to communicate with her mother and tell her that she is pregnant. 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 →

There is a Stone

Japan, Tokyo Filmex 2022, Berlinale Forum 2023, Jeonju Grand Prize

Feature Film by Tatsunari Ota

Synopsis

Yoshikawa, who works for a travel agency, is visiting a town in the suburbs to do research for a new tour project. However, Yamakita, which used to be a prosperous « railway town », is no sign of life in front of the station and the shopping street is almost closed. Halfway through her research, she walks along a nearby riverbed and discovers a man, Doi, who is diligently skimming stones.

Continuer la lecture →

Tora’s Husband

India , Toronto Platform, Busan A Window on Asian Cinema 2022

Feature film by Rima Das

Synopsis

Loss and lockdowns, life and death – like everywhere around the world, a small-town businessman in Assam is grappling with uncertainty and restlessness. 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 →

Voyages en Italie

France, Rotterdam big screen competition 2023

Feature film by Sophie Letourneur

Synopsis

A French couple burnt out by the routine of their daily family life decides after much hesitation to travel to Sicily for a short holiday. Voyages en Italie depicts the neuroses and eccentricities of Jean-Philippe and Sophie, the gracious dynamics of their relationship and the depth of their affection and intimacy. Continuer la lecture →

We Had the Day Bonsoir

France, FID Marseille 2022 French competition Grand Prize & Prize of the National Center for Plastic Arts (CNAP), Rotterdam Harbour 2023

A film by Narimane Mari

Synopsis

Dying is an adventure, the last one, and we lived it. But what’s great is that we have added this film project like a future. Michel was involved right up until the end… and I can hear him telling me « there is no end ». 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 →

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 →