Silent Trees 2024
The main character of the documentary is a 16-year-old Kurdish girl who, after the tragic death of her mother on the Polish-Belarusian border, has to become a mother to her 4 younger brothers.
The main character of the documentary is a 16-year-old Kurdish girl who, after the tragic death of her mother on the Polish-Belarusian border, has to become a mother to her 4 younger brothers.
Amany Al-Ali stands out as one of Syria's few female cartoonists, residing in her father's home in Idlib, the last city unconquered by Assad's forces. Like her remaining neighbours she's submitted to relentless Russian airstrikes and caught between advancing troops and extremist groups. Despite acclaim for her art, she faces threats, condemnation, and degradation, causing her to contemplate leaving. Ironically, her artwork has graced galleries in France and Italy but never received exposure within Syria's borders. The film captures her endeavor to organize her inaugural exhibition in Idlib. This experience compels her to confront the harsh realities of a city defined by bombings and male interference. While organizing drawing lessons for women and girls, comforting her young niece, and sharing her story with the documentary crew, Amany's outlook on the future gradually erodes.
Croatia, 7th of January 1992: In the middle of the war, a young journalist's body is discovered dressed in the uniform of an international mercenary group. Twenty years later, his cousin Anja Kofmel investigates his story.
25 years ago, Louis Sarno, an American, heard a song on the radio and followed its melody into the Central Africa Jungle and stayed. He than recorded over 1000 hours of original BaAka music. Now he is part of the BaAka community and raises his pygmy son, Samedi. Fulfilling an old promise, Louis takes Samedi to America. On this journey Louis realizes he is not part of this globalized world anymore but globalization has also arrived in the rainforest. The BaAka depend on Louis for their survival. Father and son return to the melodies of the jungle but the question remains: How much longer will the songs of the forest be heard?
A prismatic meditation on pollution in the capital of the World’s biggest free-market democracy and the most polluted and populated city, Delhi – a film about the pollution inside of the human mind.
An extraordinary journey through the material that makes up our habitat: concrete and its ancestor, stone. Victor Kossakovsky raises a fundamental question: how do we inhabit the world of tomorrow?
Kos (13) is going through the most bizarre period in his life. His mother died a few years ago and his dad is having a heart attack. While Kos’ father is in the hospital, it looks like the hotel he is running will be a big mess. But Kos and his three sisters do not intend to let that happen. After the siblings find out that father is deep in financial problems, the hotel is threatened with closure. The children however come up with a solution: someone has to win the local beauty pageant, with a hefty cash prize attached.
A luxury hotel in a conflict zone. Development aid worker Dorothea begins an affair with a young drifter, Alec, but what starts as sweet distraction brings her dangerously close to losing control.
Winter. A bus stop in a small village. People are waiting for a bus. They talk. Listening to their conversations, the viewer can imagine the world they live in. United by the movement of the camera, the place and the people blend together.
A look at the pervasive power of dust from its tiny particles settling in unseen places to its ability to cause illnesses and create the cosmos.
Art, politics and motorcycles - on the occasion of his 90th birthday John Berger or the Art of Looking is an intimate portrait of the writer and art critic whose ground-breaking work on seeing has shaped our understanding of the concept for over five decades. The film explores how paintings become narratives and stories turn into images, and rarely does anybody demonstrate this as poignantly as Berger.
Farmland - the new green gold. Hoping for export revenues, Ethiopia's government leases millions of hectares of farmland to foreign investors. But the dream of prosperity has a dark side where the World Bank plays a very questionable role... Dead Donkeys Fear No Hyenas investigates land grabbing and its impact on people's lives. Pursuing the truth, we meet investors, development bureaucrats, persecuted journalists, struggling environmentalists and evicted farmers deprived of their land.
"Pictures from the late eighties in the GDR on up to the immediate present in the year 2008 in Germany. What has been left over besieges my mind. All these pictures keep reassembling themselves to make up something which they were originally not made for. They are still in motion. They are becoming history." (Thomas Heise)
The untold story about wild rabbits which lived between the Berlin Walls. For 28 years Death Zone was their safest home. Full of grass, no predators, guards protecting them from human disturbance. They were closed but happy. When their population grew up to thousands, guards started to remove them. But rabbits survived and stayed there. Unfortunately one day the wall fell down. Rabbits had to abandon comfortable system. They moved to West Berlin and have been living there in a few colonies since then. They are still learning how to live in the free world, same as we - the citizens of Eastern Europe.
Nardos, an Azmari singer from Addis Ababa, dreams of telling stories about the lives of ordinary people through her music. In her search for the stories behind her songs, she meets Gennet, a poet who lives on the streets with her children. Nardos puts the lives, visions and power of Ethiopian women at the center of her creation as we slowly immerse ourselves in a rapidly changing country.
The Senegal River forms the national border between Mauritania and Senegal. In 1989, war broke out between these countries, along and around the river. Both sides committed atrocities. Senegalese filmmaker Alassane Diago was just a young child at the time. Now he brings together his “Senegalese and Mauritanian family,” all victims or witnesses of the bloodbath, so they can talk in detail about their traumatic experiences. He wants to find the truth, and to bring about reconciliation. Why did they slaughter each other, and why were so many people “deported”? Was there systemic racism involved, under the white and Arab elite? Was it a case of ethnic cleansing?
Vika, who is 84, is one of the eldest DJs in the world. Because of her attitude, she is far from any stereotypes about senior citizens. Bittersweet documentary musical about consistence in following your own path and fighting for your dreams.
Filled with vitality, humor and unexpected situations, Hamada paints an unusual portrait of a group of young friends living in a refugee camp in the middle of nowhere. Western Sahara is known as “the last colony in Africa” and this conflict is the longest and one of the least known ongoing disputes in the continent, but the Sahrawi people refuse to become invisible.
An exploration into the motives and histories of individuals, including herself, who have exited the world of violent extremism.
As he did with his critically-acclaimed "Blockade," a documentary re-creation of the WWII siege of Leningrad, which received its NY theatrical premiere in March 2007, filmmaker Sergei Loznitsa has once again scoured the Russian film archives for "Revue," selecting excerpts from newsreels, propaganda films, TV shows and feature films that present an evocative portrait of Soviet life during the 1950s and 1960s. With scenes taken from the length and breadth of the “Soviet Motherland,” "Revue" illustrates industry and agriculture, political life, popular culture, and technology. The film’s fascinating flow of disparate scenes representing typical Soviet life of the period is, seen from today’s perspective, alternately poignant, funny, and tragic