Svitlana, a Russian-speaking Ukrainian, examines the colonised part of her consciousness and tries to find answers to the question of how Soviet totalitarianism and Russification influenced the relationships within her family.
Social & External
Self
Larry Towell is a photographer with the prestigious Magnum agency. For 40 years, he has travelled our troubled planet, capturing the unspeakable. In this cinematic diary, he looks back on his profession, his doubts, the need for images, the absurdity of borders, the danger of “getting used to war” and the essence of his quest, which is also that of the film: humanity. Yet another impressive work by Matthieu Rytz, talented filmmaker born in Nyon!
The Alps – wild mountains, extreme lives, but also a magical world. This majestic mountain range connects eight countries and reaches heights of up to 4,000 metres above sea level. At a length of 1,200 kilometres, the Alps form both a connecting bridge between western and eastern Europe and a high barrier between southern and central Europe. The mountains act as a mighty water reservoir and continental watershed, feeding innumerable rivers that flow into three different oceans. Their highest peak, Mont Blanc, is surrounded by long, soaring mountains with ice-covered slopes. These great summits are just one reason the so-called “Roof of Europe” continues to fascinate – across the continent and around the world. The incredible diversity of landscapes, flora and fauna makes the Alps a unique natural treasure at the heart of Europe.
Weighing more than 15 tons, a sperm whale has a brain larger than any other animal on earth and is considered one of the more social whale species. Over the years, Patrick Dykstra has worked with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to learn how whales communicate, how they perceive other creatures in the water, and how they behave in his immediate presence. With sensitivity and experience, he gets closer to whales than nearly anyone else, leading to once-in-a-lifetime experiences and personal bonds with specific whales.
This documentary profiles a Maine craftsman and his son, who are among the last practitioners of the art of wooden boat building.
Yu Tian (played by Hu Tian) is a senior this year. He hasn't returned home for a few years while studying in a big city. The estrangement between him and his mother (Lin Jiehua) is somehow getting bigger and bigger. He is immersed in his artistic dreams and is not practical, but his mother, who has always been conservative, does not understand. His friends remained the same, still the same young people in the small town. Friends booed that he would be the most promising one among them, but he himself was convinced. He told his sister (played by Sun Nan) that he would go to the big city to make a fortune.
With a team of the world's foremost historic and marine experts as well as friend Bill Paxton, James Cameron embarks on an unscripted adventure back to the wreck of the Titanic where nearly 1,500 souls lost their lives almost a century ago.
RiverBlue chronicles an unprecedented around-the-world river adventure, led by renowned paddler and conservationist, Mark Angelo, who ends up uncovering and documenting the dark side of the global fashion industry.
Since the year 2000, there have been several waves of suicides among the indigenous population of the Colombian Amazon. I discovered that the men commit suicide because of love sorrow. Their wives leave them for white men. The latter think that the Indian feels nothing because they do not express themselves in the same way and, in their language, there are no words to describe feelings. Is it possible that a whole people, the Cácuas Indians, do not feel anything?
Stunning stories from the unusual life of the Ural owl, a mysterious nocturnal predator that can fearlessly attack even humans. Set over a period of just over a year, 'Fearless Queen of the Night' provides an extraordinary insight into the life of one of the largest European owl species.
The Dream Is Alive takes you into space alongside the astronauts on the space shuttle. Share with them the delights of zero gravity while working, eating and sleeping in orbit around the Earth. Float as never before over the towering Andes, the boot of Italy, Egypt and the Nile. Witness firsthand a tension-filled satellite capture and repair and the historic first spacewalk by an American woman.
An observational documentary follows a pack of canines inhabiting the dynamic crossroads between the urban landscape and the natural world along the banks of the Sabarmati River, Ahmedabad.
1972 in Haute-Savoie (France) : the Bertrand's farm, with a hundred dairy cows owned by three bachelor brothers, is filmed for the first time. In 1997, they were the subject of Gilles Perret's first movie, as they let their farm to their nephew Patrick and his wife Hélène. Nowadays, 25 years later, Gilles Perret take another look at this farm, managed by Hélène who will step down. Through their words, an intimate, social and economic history of the rural world.
During the Syrian civil war, the district of Yarmouk, home to thousands of Palestinians, became the scene of dramatic and ferocious fighting. The film follows the destiny of civilians during the brutal sieges, imposed by the Syrian regime, that took place in the wake of the battles. With his camera, Abdallah Al-Khatib composes a love song to a place that proudly resists the atrocities of war.
In GLOBAL METAL, directors Scot McFadyen and Sam Dunn set out to discover how the West's most maligned musical genre - heavy metal - has impacted the world's cultures beyond Europe and North America. The film follows metal fan and anthropologist Sam Dunn on a whirlwind journey through Asia, South America and the Middle East as he explores the underbelly of the world's emerging extreme music scenes; from Indonesian death metal to Chinese black metal to Iranian thrash metal. GLOBAL METAL reveals a worldwide community of metalheads who aren't just absorbing metal from the West - they're transforming it - creating a new form of cultural expression in societies dominated by conflict, corruption and mass-consumerism.
In this captivating tale, lion researcher Dr. Philip Stander follows three orphaned desert lion cubs as they navigate the harsh realities of survival in one of the world’s most unforgiving places, Namibia’s brutal Skeleton Coast. Stander’s passion for these majestic creatures began 40 years ago, when he encountered a lone desert lioness on the Coast shores. But the desert lions soon disappeared from the region, and more than a decade later, he discovers a female cub called Queen”whose life unlocks the survival secrets of desert lions. One day tragedy strikes the Queen’s three granddaughters, who become unexpectedly orphaned, and they embark on a harrowing journey through the empty desert facing starvation. Stander documents their every move, revealing the unique and complex relationship between land and marine predators.
Paratrooper commander Colonel Mathieu, a former French Resistance fighter during World War II, is sent to Algeria to reinforce efforts to squelch the uprisings of the Algerian War. There he faces Ali la Pointe, a former petty criminal who, as the leader of the Algerian Front de Liberation Nationale, directs terror strategies against the colonial French government occupation. As each side resorts to ever-increasing brutality, no violent act is too unthinkable.
Amid the failing counteroffensive, a journalist follows a Ukrainian platoon on their mission to traverse one mile of heavily fortified forest and liberate a strategic village from Russian occupation. But the farther they advance through their destroyed homeland, the more they realize that this war may never end.
A love letter from a young mother to her daughter, the film tells the story of Waad al-Kateab’s life through five years of the uprising in Aleppo, Syria as she falls in love, gets married and gives birth to Sama, all while cataclysmic conflict rises around her. Her camera captures incredible stories of loss, laughter and survival as Waad wrestles with an impossible choice– whether or not to flee the city to protect her daughter’s life, when leaving means abandoning the struggle for freedom for which she has already sacrificed so much.
When Sgt. First Class Brian Eisch is critically wounded in Afghanistan, it sets him and his sons on a journey of love, loss, redemption and legacy.
With unprecedented access, this documentary follows the extraordinary journey of “Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently”—a group of anonymous citizen journalists who banded together after their homeland was overtaken by ISIS—as they risk their lives to stand up against one of the greatest evils in the world today.
Lyrical and powerfully personal essay film that reflects on the deaths of her husband Lou Reed, her mother, her beloved dog, and such diverse subjects as family memories, surveillance, and Buddhist teachings.
This real-life look at FBI counterterrorism operations features access to both sides of a sting: the government informant and the radicalized target.
Biographical documentary of the war photographer Don McCullin, with sections on his upbringing, early work for the Observer and extensive war reporting for the Sunday Times until the purchase of the newspaper by Rupert Murdoch in the 1980s.
Set both in Latin America and the United States, the film explores the historic and current relationship of Washington with countries such as Venezuela, Bolivia and Chile. Pilger says that the film "...tells a universal story... analysing and revealing, through vivid testimony, the story of great power behind its venerable myths. It allows us to understand the true nature of the so-called "war on terror". According to Pilger, the film’s message is that the greed and power of empire is not invincible and that people power is always the "seed beneath the snow".
A documentary on the expletive's origin, why it offends some people so deeply, and what can be gained from its use.
Director Michael Apted revisits the same group of British-born adults after a 7 year wait. The subjects are interviewed as to the changes that have occurred in their lives during the last seven years.
A compilation of over 30 years of private home movie footage shot by Lithuanian-American avant-garde director Jonas Mekas, assembled by Mekas "purely by chance", without concern for chronological order.
“The Soviet Story” is a story of an Allied power, which helped the Nazis to fight Jews and which slaughtered its own people on an industrial scale. Assisted by the West, this power triumphed on May 9th, 1945. Its crimes were made taboo, and the complete story of Europe’s most murderous regime has never been told. Until now...
Through deeply personal interviews with her siblings and an examination of the photographs, letters, and belongings left behind, Mariska assembles a new portrait of her mother Jayne Mansfield, an extraordinary and complex woman.
Pete Postlethwaite stars as a man living alone in the devastated future world of 2055, looking at old footage from 2008 and asking: why didn’t we stop climate change when we had the chance?
Produced and presented as evidence at the Nuremberg war crimes trial of Hermann Göring and twenty other Nazi leaders, this film consists primarily of dead and surviving prisoners and of facilities used to kill and torture during the World War II.
A visual montage portrait of our contemporary world dominated by globalized technology and violence.
Diaries, audiotapes, videotapes and testimonials from friends and colleagues offer insight into the life and career of Gilda Radner -- the beloved comic and actress who became an icon on Saturday Night Live.
As the Russian invasion begins, a team of Ukrainian journalists trapped in the besieged city of Mariupol struggle to continue their work documenting the war's atrocities.
In 1977, a book of photographs captured an awakening - women shedding the cultural restrictions of their childhoods and embracing their full humanity. This documentary revisits those photos, those women and those times and takes aim at our culture today that alarmingly shows the need for continued change.
A documentary about how a dominant cultural and demographic institution both sustains their traditional activities and adapts to the digital revolution.