Social & External
A drama-documentary film about the fatal effect of poor living conditions on health – the so-called "social inheritance." The principal characters in the film are two fourteen or fifteen-year-old children, Carl and Hanne. Covering a hundred-year period and drawing on case stories recorded by actual hospital staff, the film illustrates a number of variations of "the same old story."
Lotte (18) and Roos (16) are sisters and both have Usher syndrome. That means they will soon become deaf and blind. It is not known how fast that will go, but they already see and hear a lot worse than their peers. How do these two high-spirited girls deal with their development into adulthood, while the time bomb of deafness and blindness ticks inexorably? They are not deterred from getting the most out of life: Lotte is studying to become a photographer and Roos is passing her final exams. At the same time, they also want to do a few things before it is too late, such as seeing the Northern Lights with their own eyes. Director Kim Smeekes followed Lotte and Roos for the film for two years.
Newfoundland painter Gerald Squires has referred to his portraits as "confrontations," though not intending the hostility that word can convey. This film shows a meeting between the artist and Edythe Goodridge, art curator and critic. Through a combination of Squires's reflections on his life and work and the good-natured banter of these two friends, an intimate portrait evolves of the artist and his subject.
The film follows five people who lost their sight in armed conflicts, gathering fragments of their present-day lives. Through an enveloping sound composition, veiled archival material, footage shot by the protagonists themselves, and a sensitive visual approach, the film explores memory, perception, and our relationship to the visible. Steering away from spectacle, it invites us to hear what often goes unheard, and to feel differently. In an age saturated with images, this documentary offers a sensory experience where listening becomes a gesture of resistance and human reconnection.
A documentary about the corrupt health care system in The United States who's main goal is to make profit even if it means losing people’s lives. "The more people you deny health insurance the more money we make" is the business model for health care providers in America.
Achour is thirty. Night and day, he walks. Rebellious soul, he crisscrosses Alger and its neighborhoods, stays at friends' houses and often leaves the city to meet the nearby montain in Kabylia, his alter-ego. In this environment, marked by war and terrorism, his resistance continues, mobile and ascending. Algerian hardcore-punk musician, Achour once screamed his anger against the country's regime and sang "Anarchytecture". But the movement died down, friends went their separate ways. His Facebook wall became his notebook, his window open to the world. It represents a scream aimed towards the echo of the mountains, between virtual wall, infinite facades of large complexes and the strata of mineral cliffs. A scream comes back at us.
The film approaches the work of the Greek artist Nikos Koniaris. The particular way in which the painter depicts human suffering is presented through a film - a hybrid of real recording and directed material. The grief, the sick body, is reflected in self portraits, portraits of dying strangers and paintings of dead models. The paintings, apart from his work, also express a different version of himself. All together contribute to the depiction of man as a "garment of pain".
In this film, Paul Tomkowicz, Polish-born Canadian, talks about his job and his life in Canada. He compares his new life in the city of Winnipeg to the life he knew in Poland, marvelling at the freedom Canadians enjoy. In winter the rail-switches on streetcar tracks in Winnipeg froze and jammed with freezing mud and snow. Keeping them clean, whatever the weather, was the job of the switchman.
Fragments from a portrait of Jean-Louis Costes - sincere artist, versatile designer, poet of excess -, a man forever atoning his anguish through singing, performance, drawing and writing...
Stop for Bud is Jørgen Leth's first film and the first in his long collaboration with Ole John. […] they wanted to "blow up cinematic conventions and invent cinematic language from scratch". The jazz pianist Bud Powell moves around Copenhagen -- through King's Garden, along the quay at Kalkbrænderihavnen, across a waste dump. […] Bud is alone, accompanied only by his music. […] Image and sound are two different things -- that's Leth's and John's principle. Dexter Gordon, the narrator, tells stories about Powell's famous left hand. In an obituary for Powell, dated 3 August 1966, Leth wrote: "He quite willingly, or better still, unresistingly, mechanically, let himself be directed. The film attempts to depict his strange duality about his surroundings. His touch on the keys was like he was burning his fingers -- that's what it looked like, and that's how it sounded. But outside his playing, and often right in the middle of it, too, he was simply gone, not there."
A group of educators led by Fernand Deligny are working to create contact with autistic children in a hamlet of the Cevennes.
7-year-old Sasha has always known that she is a girl. Sasha’s family has recently accepted her gender identity, embracing their daughter for who she truly is while working to confront outdated norms and find affirmation in a small community of rural France.
Visually impaired climber Koichiro Kobayashi, also known as Koba, relies on the voice of his site guide, Naoya Suzuki, as if it were his own eyes. In 2021, the pair travels to the United States with the aim of standing on the spire of the bright red sandstone Fisher Towers in Utah
A man tells the story of his three cats.
Sean Penn is almost a living legend. His filmography paints a picture of an 'other America': the lower class, the oppressed and the outsiders. Whether as an actor or director, he turns all the great myths upside down.
'if you only had one year left of your life, what would you do?' This question asks Swiss author Franz Hohler. His answer: 'Make death your adviser to live life to the fullest.' He is one of several carefully chosen Swiss citizens who give us an insight into their personal views on life and death. Besides these colorful, oftentimes funny quotes we meet Tom, a 50-year old male that has been diagnosed with incurable brain tumor. Contrary to what one would expect, Tom takes his sickness not as a burden but as a chance and lives his life happier than ever before. This to the surprise of his family and friends and above all - himself. The film encourages people to live life more consciously.
