Social & External
The ideal of youth is at the centre of this eloquent film, mixing documentary and fiction, art and experimentation. Demonstrating both formal and narrative freedom, Bélanger weaves a deliberately loose weave in which the initiatory journey of two young people, wandering through Montreal in search of a job, unfolds. But not just any job. The two idealists want a job that will satisfy their desire for freedom, peace and respect. Of course, even though the breath of renewal from Expo 67 still floats here and there, the world they encounter does not correspond - by far - to their aspirations. Strangers in this country that tells them nothing, they come across brutally, materialism, violence, and egocentrism.
Barack Obama launched into our national consciousness at the 2004 Democratic National Convention and ever since, he's delivered messages of patriotism, unity, and hope through the power of words. But of all the speeches he's given, six in particular may define his legacy as, in historian Doris Kearns Goodwin's words, "one of the best writers and orators in the presidency." Interviews with eminent historians and key figures in his writing process give rare insights into these iconic speeches, as well as the Obama presidency and the man himself.
Tímamót, or Changes in English. An upbeat, heartwarming story about Gudjon, Sigurbjorn and Steinthor who lived together for decades along with several other inhabitants in the Tjaldanes Institution, in a peaceful valley close to Reykjavik. When a decision is made to close down the institution, their life takes an unexpected turn and they discover a new side to life and to themselves.
This documentary explores two horrific stories. With haunting interviews with the killers, plus emotional exchanges with the daughters.
Short film for Vice Media about the illusion of stability, freedom, and prosperity in the West, comparing it to life in the Soviet Union during the 1970s. Ends with a trailer for HyperNormalisation.
Openland is an art film guided by issues surrounding micro states and its derivative definitions. Through intertwining interviews, meta-narratives, and digital landscapes, Openland unfurls a dialogue between consciousness, individuality and collectivity.
This is not a film about gun control. It is a film about the fearful heart and soul of the United States, and the 280 million Americans lucky enough to have the right to a constitutionally protected Uzi. From a look at the Columbine High School security camera tapes to the home of Oscar-winning NRA President Charlton Heston, from a young man who makes homemade napalm with The Anarchist's Cookbook to the murder of a six-year-old girl by another six-year-old. Bowling for Columbine is a journey through the US, through our past, hoping to discover why our pursuit of happiness is so riddled with violence.
Approximately, because so-called "ethnic" statistics are prohibited, there are an estimated 3.3 million black French citizens. Distant descendants of slaves from the Caribbean or "indigenous" peoples from the French colonial empire in Africa, they constitute a minority that is often discriminated against. Isabelle Boni-Claverie, a mixed-race woman raised in the affluent neighborhoods of Paris, daughter of an Ivorian politician and granddaughter of Alphonse Boni, a Black man who became a magistrate of the French Republic in the 1930s, examines what is blocking the social advancement of Black French people and the full recognition of their citizenship.
A short film following Anthony, a young child from the small, rural town of San Antonio de los Baños, Cuba. We see him in different moments of his daily life as he interacts with different forms of environmental, familial, and social influences. While Anthony displays contradictory traits of creativity, destruction, rigidity, and tenderness as he interacts with his external and internal worlds, we see a story built from the the multidimensionality of Anthony's layered personality as a young man.
As clichés go, in 1999 the World as we knew it was about to change - and we'd been expecting it. Since childhood we'd been promised that the 21st century would bring us dramatic new technologies like flying cars and Utopian cities. Instead it bought us the smart-phone, social media, and virtual societies. And as it turns out these technologies began to transform society almost as dramatically as the moon colonies we'd been expecting. Now over a decade into the revolution, 'DSKNECTD' explores how digital communication technology is profoundly changing the way we interact and experience each other - for the good and for the bad.
The film explores the potential for automation in every sector of employment and questions the integrity of our methods of resource distribution going into the future.
Disobedience tells the David vs. Goliath tale of front line leaders battling for a livable world. Filmed in the Philippines, Turkey, Germany, Canada, Cambodia and the United States, it weaves together these riveting stories with insights from the most renowned voices on social justice and climate. Disobedience is personal, passionate and powerful - the stakes could not be higher, nor the mission more critical.
After delivery of a parcel, on leaving a restaurant, hotel or train, or following an exchange with the customer service department of your telephone operator, the same request: to rate. On a scale from 0 to 10, embellished with colors, or by awarding pretty, playful little stars. A simple, mechanical and painless action for the rater. But behind this harmless gesture lies a brutal management system, operated directly by the customer, without their knowledge. Even more worrying: without knowing it, we are all being rated, to feed the algorithms of opaque companies that claim to be able to predict the future. The film questions this invasion of rating systems, and the consequences of this practice for our individual realities and collective freedoms.
Masao Adachi, the author and director of experimental works and pinku-eiga in the 1960s, was a member of the Japanese New Left that shifted from being a filmmaker to a guerrilla fighter. In 1974, he joined the Japanese Red Army in Lebanon, which worked closely with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Filmmaker Lutz Dammbeck met Adachi in Tokyo in 2018 and talked with him about a wide range of topics, including art, revolution, the influence of western avant-garde art and American underground; the Japanese Red Army; collaboration with secret services; the role of the Left after 1968; and the reasons for failures of leftist ideas and strategies.
A young man, convicted murderer, has a chance of redemption when he enters the best Italian university of economics, going back and forth from prison to university every day.
The film does not have a plot per se; it mixes documentary footage, along with standard movie scenes, to give the audience the mood of Germany during the late 1970s. The movie covers the two-month time period during 1977 when a businessman was kidnapped and later murdered by the left-wing terrorists known as the RAF-Rote Armee Fraktion (Red Army Fraction). The businessman had been kidnapped in an effort to secure the release of the original leaders of the RAF, also known as the Baader-Meinhof gang. When the kidnapping effort and a plane hijacking effort failed, the three most prominent leaders of the RAF, Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin, and Jan-Carl Raspe, all committed suicide in prison. It has become an article of faith within the left-wing community that these three were actually murdered by the state.
A green lawn like an unused carpet, encircled by a neat forest edge, in the background the steaming cooling towers of a coal power station – impressionistic camera images from Lusatia. They summarise in one pan how a used-up utilitarian landscape is trying to recultivate itself. Can ancient identity and language be re-discovered amid this strange artificiality? The director travelled through this region in search of her origins. She was born here, in Lusatia. This is her home and that of the smallest of all Slavic peoples: the Sorbs.
In his new film, Erwin Wagenhofer is looking for the good and beautiful in this world.
A day in the life of John Lennon, alive and well in modern-day New York City. The former Beatle squabbles with a security guard, commiserates with his best friend over lunch, and upsets a bully.
This is the tragicomic story of two lovers who cannot ever get together.
Six vignettes pit an assortment of characters against each other in everyday situations.
Tony Lip, a bouncer in 1962, is hired to drive pianist Don Shirley on a tour through the Deep South in the days when African Americans, forced to find alternate accommodations and services due to segregation laws below the Mason-Dixon Line, relied on a guide called The Negro Motorist Green Book.
A leukemia patient attempts to end a 20-year feud with her sister to get her bone marrow.
Arriving in Moscow, Chechen War veteran Danila meets Konstantin, an old friend who tells him that his twin brother has been forced into signing a crooked contract with a US ice hockey team. Soon after this meeting, Danila discovers Konstantin dead and he sets out to avenge his death; a journey that leads him to Chicago and a whole new experience.
Four high school teachers launch a drinking experiment: upholding a constant low level of intoxication.
After a queen's tragic death, the king abandons his newborn daughter in a cave, but a witch saves her. Years later, the tomboy princess must confront and ultimately falls in love with the enemy king.
Five years after an unexplained malfunction causes the death of 15 tour-goers and staff on the opening night of a Halloween haunted house tour, a documentary crew travels back to the scene of the tragedy to find out what really happened.
It's 1649: Mazarin hires the impoverished D'Artagnan to find the other musketeers: Cromwell has overthrown the English king, so Mazarin fears revolt, particularly from the popular Beaufort. Porthos, bored with riches and wanting a title, signs on, but Aramis, an abbé, and Athos, a brawler raising an intellectual son, assist Beaufort in secret. When they fail to halt Beaufort's escape from prison, the musketeers are expendable, and Mazarin sends them to London to rescue Charles I. They are also pursued by Justine, the avenging daughter of Milady de Winter, their enemy 20 years ago. They must escape England, avoid Justine, serve the Queen, and secure Beauford's political reforms.
Two young children and an adult in a small town have an encounter with an alien spaceship. 25 years later the children are reunited as adults in the same town which is now beset by strange cattle mutilations. Matters become worse when the cattle mutilations are joined by human murders and mutilations.
A very old woman wants to have dinner with her friends. As they are all dead, the butler has to play the role of every guest.
A struggling widow and her daughter take in a black housekeeper and her fair-skinned daughter. The two women start a successful business but face familial, identity, and racial issues along the way.
A struggling restaurant owner, caring for his sick mom, finds a bag of cash in a sauna locker, while a customs officer gets into trouble when his girlfriend runs off with money he borrowed from a loan shark.
JSDF pilot Akane has a fateful encounter when a new Godzilla emerges in Tateyama. As a countermeasure, a cyborg named Kiryu is constructed from the remains of the original. The machine is discovered to harbor the restless soul of the original monster as Akane must learn to find value in her own life as well.
The Red Mountain Tribe hangs out in my backyard. "Lipton's lovely home movie PEOPLE, in its affection for valuable inconsequential gestures, indicates in the course of its three minutes why there has to be a continuing alternative to the commercial cinema." – Roger Greenspun, The New York Times
After the Combiner Wars ended, Cybertron started to be rebuilt. However, an undead Starscream has been reincarnated as Trypticon, wreaking havoc around him. To combat this menace, Windblade gathers up a ragtag team of Transformers, including Optimus Prime and Megatron, to resurrect an ancient ally. And while some may be forever changed by the events, others may not emerge with their sparks intact.
Guner Sernikli is a government official who, with his wife and their wheelchair bound daughter, has been assigned as the head librarian to this isolated province, virtually an exile since there is no library in the village. The family is warmly welcome, but these are the years of political anarchy and leftist/rightist clashes in big cities and the youth of the village inevitably follow the tides. They arrive in Vizontele, just as the situation is becoming really absurd. Guner brings wisdom; his daughter Tuba brings beauty, innocence and love. Some like the Mayor, Nazmi Dogan and crazy Emin appreciate these things but they are in the minority and confusion continues to reign. The story is based on the memories of writer-director Yılmaz Erdoğan of the last summer of his childhood in Hakkâri, Turkey in 1980.
Occupied France, 1942. Gilles is arrested by SS soldiers alongside other Jews and sent to a camp in Germany. He narrowly avoids sudden execution by swearing to the guards that he is not Jewish, but Persian. This lie temporarily saves him, but Gilles gets assigned a life-or-death mission: to teach Farsi to Head of Camp Koch, who dreams of opening a restaurant in Iran once the war is over. Through an ingenious trick, Gilles manages to survive by inventing words of "Farsi" every day and teaching them to Koch.
A man's life, thoughts, feelings and his very own darkness... Adapted from Dostoevsky's novel "Notes from Underground", Demirkubuz follows Muharrem as he gets himself invited to a party where he is not welcome, just to find himself disgusted.
