Social & External
The people behind it
Alexandre Mury
In the late 1990s, a family of six settles into their new home on Vancouver Island, as internal dynamics are slowly revealed through the experiences of the youngest child, Sasha. Their fresh start is interrupted by the increasingly dangerous behavior of Jeremy, the family's oldest child.
In 1983, Franz Paludetto acquired Rivara Castle at the foot of the Italian Alps. A century earlier, artists from all over Europe had gathered here to establish the Rivara School of Painting. We witness the story of Italy during the latter half of the 20th century.
At the intersection between animation, ceramics, film, as well as printmaking, Honeydew, Darling is employing an interdisciplinary approach to explore the transient relationship between time and identity as it relates to queerness.
Experience the joy of flight with Alice Sheppard and Laurel Lawson
A hybrid feature film that investigates contemporaneity through the body and its countless possibilities of expression and meanings. The film puts the body and the idea of the body in evidence, through metalanguage, articulation and confrontation of documentary, fictional and performative languages. The film follows the trajectory of the main character who uses her own body to formulate universes and investigate the meanings that are drawn in it. In a kind of subjective diary written on her skin, she records sensations and reflections, building relationships with thinkers, performances and archival materials, which lead her to other bodies and other stories.
The Bronx is legendary as the birthplace of hip hop, break dancing, and graffiti—or as Butch Da Barber calls it: 'A Mall of Culture.' In this intimate documentary, we follow the young barber who was born, raised, and still works in the heart of the borough. His shop is more than a place for a haircut; it’s a cultural crossroads where the soul of the Bronx is preserved and passed on. A raw and authentic look at artistry, community, and the pulse of New York City.
Living Lines is a series of performances and poetry by artist Stephanie Trujillo documented as a short film, drawing inspiration from her Peruvian ancestry, namely the Nazca Lines – giant, mysterious and ancient earthworks made by pre-colonial and pre-Christian societies in Peru – to create site-specific rituals dedicated to the flora and fauna native to Merseyside.
Sara and Alberto spend their days at home. They look out the window and watch: spring is approaching and the sun is setting later and later. Alberto entertains himself by playing with the light, the shadows and the nooks and crannies they leave on the living room. Sara goes out on the balcony in the evenings and examines the neighborhood with her camera. When they are in bed, they talk about what worries them. About job expectations. About being creative and why keep trying, if someone else has done it before you. About living in confinement, but at the same time, realizing that things haven't changed as much as they seem.
A closeted transgender woman is comforted by dancing to confront her sexual demons.
"No Ink" is an experimental short film that tells the story of a young writer under the pressure of writing a new best seller. After locking herself in a hotel room, the writer will begin to go deeper and deeper into her own demons in the form of addictions that will join her creative process.
3-minute experimental animation based on the techniques of John Whitney.
A mystical detective story set in the realm of Moscow art scene. Psychedelic trip through different places, characters and strategies in the search for the Author, covering mythology of Moscow art from the period of 1980-2010. The movie is based on the 'Inspection Medical Hermeneutics' group's text of the same name and on the historical research performed by the authors of the film. Production was an experiment in collective film making experience.
Reporter Nicolaas Veul decides to set up his first Instagram account and accumulate as many followers as possible. Over time, he becomes more interested in the social network's inner workings and uncovers a well-oiled machine based on fraud. While users enthusiastically give likes to selfies, a brisk business with user accounts is underway behind the scenes. There are huge numbers of fake profiles, and internet bots are producing new followers for those who want to feel more successful. Can anything on Instagram be believed?
Michaela tries her best to be a good person.
To save his failing business, an elderly tailor must confront his deep-seated prejudice when he accepts an unusual order: creating a female cosplay costume for a young man.
My great-grandmother, Frieda Riesenfeld, recounts moving into her first apartment in the United States after escaping from Germany in 1938.
As day turns to night, a solitary figure remains fixed before the camera while the world around him repeats itself in an endless cycle. As familiar moments return, the boundary between routine, memory, and inner unrest begins to dissolve.
“After So Long // बरसों बाद” is a visual poetry set in Mumbai (India) and voiced by Simha and their parents to symbolise their connection with each other; a walkabout through time and memories. Directed by Varsha Panikar, the film takes inspiration from vintage-home-movie culture to create a contemplative and nostalgic vignette of an artist’s spiritual journey out of the darkness and into the light.
In 1973, a young gallery assistant goes on a wild adventure behind the scenes as he helps aging genius Salvador Dali prepare for a big show in New York.
Al Pacino's deeply-felt rumination on Shakespeare's significance and relevance to the modern world through interviews and an in-depth analysis of "Richard III."
With his partner Caprice, celebrity performance artist Saul Tenser publicly showcases the metamorphosis of his organs in avant-garde performances. An investigator from the National Organ Registry obsessively tracks their movements, which is when a mysterious group is revealed... Their mission — to use Tenser's notoriety to shed light on the next phase of human evolution.
A biography of artist Frida Kahlo, who channeled the pain of a crippling injury and her tempestuous marriage into her work.
As he helps a young artist with her upcoming exhibition, the owner of a mannequin shop's deadly, suppressed desires come to the surface.
The world's greatest pin-up model and cult icon, Bettie Page, recounts the true story of how her free expression overcame government witch-hunts to help launch America's sexual revolution. When she saw the film The Notorious Bettie Page, produced by HBO in 2006, the main person concerned reacted unequivocally: “Lies! Lies!” In a long interview recorded shortly before her death, the woman who entered the collective unconscious as the ultimate pin-up gave her version of events to director Mark Mori. In a gravelly voice, Bettie Page tells her own story and lifts the veil on areas often hidden by images that have made so many men and women fantasize since the 1950s: her abused childhood, an eclipse that lasted forty years, her mental illness. Through testimonies and unpublished archives, this documentary brings back to life a body and a face endlessly declined before our eyes, just as Bettie wanted: “I would like people to remember me as I was in the photos.”
In 1974, Chilean-French director Alejandro Jodorowsky embarked on the quixotic project of adapting Frank Herbert's influential novel Dune (1969) for the big screen. After investing two years, and millions of dollars, the gigantic project ended in failure; but the artists Jodorowsky brought together to carry it out continued to work together, and ended up laying the foundations for modern science fiction cinema.
The life of internationally renowned artist and activist Nan Goldin is told through her slideshows, intimate interviews, ground-breaking photography, and rare footage of her personal fight to hold the Sackler family accountable for the overdose crisis.
From a prolific career in film and television, Anton Yelchin left an indelible legacy as an actor. Through his journals and other writings, his photography, the original music he wrote, and interviews with his family, friends, and colleagues, this film looks not just at Anton's impressive career, but at a broader portrait of the man.
In this film, Laerte conjugates the body in the feminine, and scrutinizes concepts and prejudices. Not in search of an identity, but in search of un-identities. Laerte creates and sends creatures to face reality in the fictional world of comic strips as a vanguard of the self. And, on the streets, the one who becomes the fiction of a real character. Laerte, of all the bodies, and of none, complicates all binaries. In following Laerte, this documentary chooses to clothe the nudity beyond the skin we inhabit.
The story of artist Lil Peep from his birth in Long Island and meteoric rise as a genre blending pop star & style icon, to his death due to an accidental opioid overdose in Arizona at just 21 years of age.
The brief life of Jean Michel Basquiat, a world renowned New York street artist struggling with fame, drugs and his identity.
As a visually radical memoir, CAMERAPERSON draws on the remarkable footage that filmmaker Kirsten Johnson has shot and reframes it in ways that illuminate moments and situations that have personally affected her. What emerges is an elegant meditation on the relationship between truth and the camera frame, as Johnson transforms scenes that have been presented on Festival screens as one kind of truth into another kind of story—one about personal journey, craft, and direct human connection.
A concert film documenting Talking Heads at the height of their popularity, on tour for their 1983 album "Speaking in Tongues." The band takes the stage one by one and is joined by a cadre of guest musicians for a career-spanning and cinematic performance that features creative choreography and visuals.
Unprecedented access to Muhammad Ali's personal archive of "audio journals" as well as interviews and testimonials from his inner circle of family and friends are used to tell the legend's life story.
In this documentary, wealthy entrepreneur Bryan Johnson puts his body and fortune on the line to defy aging and extend his life beyond all known limits.
Long-lost footage from Elvis Presley's legendary Las Vegas residency in the 1970s woven together with rare 16mm footage from Elvis on Tour, and 8mm from the Graceland archive, plus recordings of Elvis telling "his side of the story" rediscovered during Baz Luhrmann's research for his 2022 film, Elvis.
Captured during Billie Eilish's sold-out world tour, a concert experience from one of the most celebrated and successful artists of her generation, presented in immersive 3D.
Fresh off the heels of her brand-new album, "Happier Than Ever," this cinematic concert experience features an intimate performance of every song in the album's sequential order – for the first and only time – from the stage of the legendary Hollywood Bowl.
A symbolic reflection on issues of female sexuality, art and identity constructs.