Library
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
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?
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.
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.
Epicentro
Austria, France – Sundance Winner World Cinema Grand Jury Prize Documentary 2020
Hubert Sauper
Synopsis
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
Fire in the Mountains
India – Sundance World Cinema competition 2021
First feature Film by Ajitpal Singh
Synopsis
Footnote
USA, Rotterdam Harbour 2022
Documentary by Zhengfan Yang
Synopsis
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
Mother and Son
Azerbaijan 2019, IDFA main competition
Documentary by Hilal Baydarov
Synopsis
Nails in my Brain
Azerbaijan, Paris Cinema du Reel competition 2020
Documentary by Hilal Baydarov
Synopsis
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.
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!
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.
Ofrenda
Argentina 2020, Rotterdam Bright Future competition
First Feature Film by Juan Monaco Cagni
Synopsis
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.
Piedra Sola
Argentina 2020, Rotterdam Tiger Award competition
First Feature Film by Alejandro Telemaco Tarraf
Synopsis
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
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.
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.
Sons of Caïn
Albania, Venice Days 2021 – Special Screening
First docu-fiction by Keti Stamo
Synopsis
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.
The Elder One
India 2019, Toronto Special Presentations, Mumbai opening film
Feature Film by Geetu Mohandas
Synopsis
The Perpetuel Leek
France- FID Marseille 2021- Special Mention French competition, High School Award & Special Mention GNCR
Documentary by Zoe Chantre
Synopsis
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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