An audiovisual allegory on communication – this film follows cable technicians in different countries, as they visit their customers. Each client they call on provides a glimpse into their own individual universe. With so many tools for communication, we still inhabit a modern-day Tower of Babel; an ordered discordance of personalities and perspectives.
2020, Austria, 86 min
Director and producer: Pavel Cuzuioc
In the fishing village of Makoko, the largest slum on water in Nigeria, Mrs F. wants to unite women and perform the play called “Hear Word” – a women empowerment project about gender inequality based on true stories to get women out of their oppressed position and to encourage and convince them to speak up. But even before she can start, she must overcome the unruly gatekeepers of patriarchy and religion.
2020, Netherlands, Nigeria, 76 min
Director: Chris van der Vorm
Producers: Denis Vaslin, Fleur Knopperts
It’s a family reunion ... what could go wrong? Plenty, as we soon learn when Rita Davern exposes an ugly reality at the heart of a family legend. Her family members have always been proud to say that their great grandparents once owned Pike Island, a beautiful piece of land at the confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi rivers. But when Rita relates what happened to the people who lived there before, some family members react with understanding, others with arguments and anger. Rita’s attempts to understand what happened and why leads her on a journey that requires facing the complicated legacy of westward expansion in the U.S. Along the way she meets Ramona, a Dakota educator and activist. What Ramona’s ancestors experienced because of U.S. government policies puts faces and names on this story. Rita listens and learns. She wants to find a way to put something right. We learn the value of finding and facing the past by watching her journey.
2020, USA, 74 min
Directors and producers: Rita Davern, Melody Gilbert
GLITTER AND DUST is a documentary film about girls who do manly things in the male dominated world of rodeo and who try to find their own path in the process. Maysun does everything she can to gain her father's recognition, to meet his expectations - as a girl.
Tatyanna (17) is competing as a bullrider for the Navajo team. Not only is she one of a few girls riding bulls, she is doing so without a helmet or protection.
Although they move about in the powerful imagery of the American prairie and the myths of the Wild West, they give it new resonance and break free of it. In today's world, where many people yearn for the authoritarian systems of yesteryear, GLITTER and DUST tells the story of cowgirls who seek a new tomorrow in their conservative homeland.
2020, Germany, 91 min
Directors: Anna Koch, Julia Lemke
Producers: Katharina Bergfeld, Martin Heisler
ROBOLOVE reflects on the strategies of men and women involved with the creation of humanoid, android robots. Robots that will perhaps one day expand the human body and human life. From an exciting variety of perspectives we understand the immense complexity of this topic. Featuring Japanese robotics guru, Hiroshi Ishiguro, to the transhumanist, Natasha Vita More - and many more.
While the difference between humans and androids is gradually washing away, the tension between technology and social responsibility is growing as much as utopian visions are further expanding. From this mosaic, a tense ambivalence emerges, that questions these futuristic technologies – and is full of love for those who dare to create these new machines that try to mirror our humanness.
2019, Austria, 79 min
Director: Maria Arlamovsky
Producers: Michael Kitzberger, Wolfgang Widerhofer, Nikolaus Geyrhalter, Markus Glaser
In the wake of a vicious anti-LGBTQI government crackdown in Azerbaijan in September 2017, this documentary film follows the plight of three young LGBTQI Azeris fearing for their lives. On a journey from Istanbul to Baku, the filmmakers combine animation and video footage to reveal stories of extortion, torture and murder, and discover that for those who have managed to escape, persecution has followed them. It’s a universal story of identity, survival and enduring love in a place that seeks to destroy it.
2019, Azerbaijan, 21 min
Directors and producers: Helen Spooner, Hugh Davies
A found footage film compiled from countless YouTube videos in which the people of Russia make a direct appeal to president Putin. A kaleidoscope of the mood in the country – from submissive pleas to pure rage about injustice and rampant corruption.
2020, Russia, 70 min
Director and producer: Andrey Gryazev
In 2015, after Hassan Fazili’s documentary Peace aired on Afghan national television, the Taliban assassinated the film’s main subject and put a price on Hassan’s head. Hassan looked at his wife and his daughters, and he knew they had to flee their home. Over the course of their multi-year saga in search of safety, the family grasped onto the only means they had to assert control over their situation: their camera-phones. Hassan and his wife Fatima are both filmmakers, and they are educating their daughters and encouraging them to be artists. The whole family shot this autobiographical film, which began when they sought and were rejected for refugee protection and follows them along the notorious Balkan smuggling route. As they experienced increasingly degrading circumstances, the family latched on to filmmaking as a way to not just survive, but retain their humanity.
Midnight Traveler is a gripping vérité story made by a family on the run. Their unique access and artistic vision provide an intimate portrait of a loving family and the myriad fellow travelers they meet on their odyssey.
2019, USA, Qatar, Canada, UK, 87 min
Director: Hassan Fazili
Producers: Emelie Mahdavian, Su Kim
The film is a portrait of an artist and a portrait of a deadly disease. During the last years, Lene Marie Fossen became recognized as a world class photographer. She has been suffering from severe anorexia since the age of ten. She had a unique photo-project; expose the shame and confront the disease. Her photo art is naked and honest.
In October 2019, Lene Marie died of anorexia. She watched the finished film before she passed away. Together with her parents, she decided that the film should be launched on schedule, as it was important for Lene Marie that her story could mean something to others.
SELF PORTRAIT is a film about the power of art. It raises important questions about what treatment one who suffers from severe anorexia needs. The audience gets to meet an unusual girl in a raw and poetic film.
2020, Norway, 88 min
Directors: Margreth Olin, Katja Høgset, Espen Wallin
Producer: Margreth Olin
For decades, Jola did what was expected of her. As a mother of six and the wife of an abusive husband, she would put on her make-up and colourful clothes to pretend everything was fine. One day something breaks inside her and she finds the strength to leave her husband and start living life to the fullest. She hangs out with her girlfriends, dances in Café Smile, writes poems and songs. She sings about love – something she’s always dreamt of, yet never experienced. Unexpectedly, she meets Wojtek, who treats her like a queen. Will she be able to open up and embrace love for the first time? Especially, when she finds out that she has less time than she thought?
2019, Poland, 75 min
Directors: Małgorzata Goliszewska, Kasia Mateja
Producer: Anna Stylińska
The film tells the story of Lieutenant Colonel Anastasia Biefang, assigned "male" at birth. At the height of her career in the German Armed Forces, she decided to live as female. The film follows Anastasia on her transition to becoming a woman and her entry into service as a commander.
2019, Germany, 95 min
Director and producer: Thomas Ladenburger
