La Bête

A synaesthetic portrait made between French Polynesia and Brittany, Color-blind follows the restless ghost of Gauguin in excavating the colonial legacy of a post-postcolonial present.

Director Yuri Ancarani crosses the Persian Gulf to accompany a falconer to an important competition, entering the surreal world of wealthy Qatari sheikhs with a passion for amateur falconry. The opulence of this Middle Eastern gas state is on full display as the men race SUVs up and down sand dunes, fly their prized falcons around on private jets, and take their pet cheetahs out for desert spins in their souped-up Ferraris.

Negev Desert, Israel, 1987. Bashir Abu Rabi'a works as a pyrotechnics and special effects assistant on the film Rambo III, starring Sylvester Stallone, a shoot that will have far-reaching consequences for the local Bedouin population.

In the late 1970s, Marcel fled Catalonia to avoid conscription into the Spanish military. For 30 years he has been living in the tropical forests of Costa Rica, where he hosts ayahuasca ceremonies for young seekers from the West.

A feelgood documentary about Nothing, in which Nothing, tired of being misunderstood, tries to defend its cause. Filmed worldwide by 100+ complementary DoPs, scored by cabaret grandmasters Pascal Comelade & The Tiger Lillies, narrated - in simple childish verse - by Iggy Pop.

In Calcutta, Trupti Jayin is a renowned hypnotherapist specialized in guiding her patients through their past incarnations. Meanwhile a group of ghost hunters tracks the restless spirits that haunt the city.

Two children in the countryside. Time lazily goes by on a hot month of August as they long for adventure.

Winter 2021, Atacama Desert, Chile. Around one of the largest lithium mines in the world, several protagonists tell of their attachment to this territory. The commitment of an indigenous woman for water rights, the doubts of scientists exploring the desert as an analogue to Mars, the belief of industrialists, the ghosts of colonisation and the stories of new explorers collide.

“I’m an exile, and an exile always needs a light at the end of the tunnel.” I don’t know whether I can make my dreams come true, but I want to reach the Dutch literary and linguistic top. I say that quite consciously: to keep that light burning in the future. An exile always runs the risk of falling, and I don’t want to fall. I want to stay on my feet.” Kader Abdolah, an Iranian political refugee, arrived in the Netherlands in 1988 at the age of 33, without knowing a word of Dutch. Twenty-five years later, one of his novels, The House of the Mosque (2005), was voted by the readers the second best book ever written in Dutch. The son of a deaf and dumb carpet repairman, Kader had been, since childhood, his father’s ears and tongue. For all his life he has been searching for those words that aloud us to exist.