Social & External
The people behind it
Alix Lamothe
cast
Chantal Parodi
Florence André
Léone Delva
In 2024, during an artistic residency at Periférne Centrá (Dúbravica, Slovakia), Cristian Estrella filmed the folkumentary „Medzi dolinami, medzi vŕški, po stopách budúceho zvuku Slovenska“ while producing the album "The Future Sound of Slovakia Vol.1" by Mira Tus Manos. But every film leaves scenes out. What doesn't fit due to time, rhythm, or because the main story needs to go elsewhere. "Medzi scénami, medzi hlasmi" is exactly those outtakes: already edited material that no one had seen, divided into two parts —SIDE A and SIDE B— where artists from Argentina, England, France, Catalonia, Amsterdam, New Zealand, and Slovakia speak not only about the project but also about their own artistic practices, personal stories, and internal maps.
The documentary by Mari Soppela focuses on glass ceilings, a metaphor for the invisible borders between men and women in work life. Talk about glass ceilings is usually associated with women’s opportunities to advance to well paid managerial positions, but the documentary connects itself more broadly to the structural problems of work life from women’s perspective. Glass ceilings are long trials about equal pay, having to continually prove one’s skills, and 85-cent euros. The topic cannot be handled without intersectional crossings: what are invisible glass ceilings for some, are solid concrete for others.
Actor Yoo Ji-Tae’s directorial debut feature film is one part melodrama, one part comingof-age story about Soo-young, a miserable thirtysomething man and Mai-Ratima, a 22-year-old Thai girl who accepts a mail order marriage in order to realize her Korean Dream. Into their relationship comes Young-jin, a hostess, slowly turning it into a love triangle.
The cross-frontier migrant's life 'within the system' - an endless, featureless, futureless round of queues - becomes even bleaker in December. Bipul doesn't want to admit it, but the arrival of Lidia, a Russian girl makes a difference. Hope? Surely not! A future? Get real! December is also the ninth month of Martina's pregnancy. But, just when the situation seems hopeless, help is at hand. A Christmas story.
Ninja is famous around the world for her fierce ballroom performances, but she is not as well-known in her native country of French Guyana. But a trip home to teach a workshop might change that.
In Paraíba in the 70s, love took place on the banks of the Paraíba River. Two teenagers, Josué and Alex fall in love and run away from their aristocratic families in the countryside of Paraíba state. Threatened by their families, the only place they know to escape their parents' evil is river, the place where they grew up and played together. Through the geographical beauty of the river, they will face hate, love and the strength of nature like never before.
Nearly 200,000 Saharawi refugees live in the barren desert of southwestern Algeria. A former nomadic society, the Saharawis, who have been under Spanish colonial rule for 90 years, were forced to flee their homeland when Morocco was invaded in 1975. Against all odds, they have sought to keep their culture alive while carrying on their fight to gain the independence of Western Sahara, the last colony in Africa. Through the lives and works of poets, singers and painters, Beat of Distant Hearts explores their collective experience of exile, loss and war and offers insight into how these art forms have played a role in the ongoing struggle.
Three stories of immigrants trying to start new lives in Poland: an Afghan traumatised by the war, a Ukrainian lost in her own body, and a Belarusian running away from painful love.
Rap de Saia is a documentary that reports, through the voices and rhymes of the protagonists themselves, part of the historical trajectory of Female Rap in the State of Rio de Janeiro. In addition to its historical trajectory, Rap de Saia brings a collection of themes that leads us to reflect on women in today's society.
A young mouse named Fievel and his family decide to migrate to America, a "land without cats," at the turn of the 20th century. But somehow, Fievel ends up in the New World alone and must fend off not only the felines he never thought he'd have to deal with again but also the loneliness of being away from home.
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.
Since August 2024, in Martinique, a popular protest movement against the high cost of living has been reemerging under the leadership of the RPPRAC (Rassemblement Pour La Protection Des Peuples Et Des Ressources Afro-Caribéens – Gathering for the Protection of Afro-Caribbean Peoples and Resources). On the island, food prices are on average 54% higher than in mainland France.* Through various cultural figures, the people of Martinique are expressing their anger and seeking concrete solutions. *Source: Kiprix, Price comparison between supermarkets in the French overseas territories and mainland France.
Borrowing from an anthropological study initiated through the University of California in 1969, The Taste of The Name is a fantasia on universality. As a parallel to the elusive “umami” and its gradual scientific acceptance as a primary taste, we consider what is perceivable, knowable, and namable. Through the blue spectrum of various hermetic artifices, we are fed fables of Jules Verne's Nautilus and resurface in a virtual tanning bed, turning over in a slippery navigation of language.
A documentary about Basque inmigrants who went to USA looking for work and a better future. Basically, Amerikanuak talks about feeling homesick, about struggling in a different country to make a decent living and about being part of a comunity.
Charming amateur film featuring the Eisner family, who emigrated to Britain from Romania the year this film was made.
The director goes back to her roots in Pangnirtung, amongst her family and community. It leads her to another journey: to Qipisa, the outpost camp from where they were uprooted.
Aisyah just graduated. She lives in Ciwidey, West Java, a religious village near a tea plantation, with her mother and younger brother. Her father had died a few years ago. She wants to be a teacher. One day, she gets a call from the foundation where she enrolled: she gets her wish fulfilled at the location that she never knows: Derok, North Middle Timor District. From the beginning she feels like a "foreigner". The local people mistake her as Sister Maria, just because she wears a veil like a sister. The people is expecting the arrival of Sister Maria as a teacher in the village. This isolated village is without electricity and cellular signals. The new environment, the different tradition and religion make Aisyah giddy. Fortunately there is Pedro (Arie Kriting) who makes the problems easy. She must face the hatred of one of his student, Lordis Defam. Through the chief, she understand that she is a Muslim who is considered an enemy by Lordis Defam who is a catholic
The sordid lives of an addict, an ex-con, and a luchador collide when an organ harvesting caper goes very, very wrong.
Claude and Marie Verneuil face a new crisis. The four spouses of their daughters, David, Rachid, Chao and Charles decided to leave France for various reasons. Here they are imagining their lives elsewhere.
Samba migrated to France 10 years ago from Senegal, and has since been plugging away at various lowly jobs. Alice is a senior executive who has recently undergone a burnout. Both struggle to get out of their dead-end lives. Samba's willing to do whatever it takes to get working papers, while Alice tries to get her life back on track until fate draws them together.
The story of Usnavi, a bodega owner who has mixed feelings about closing his store and retiring to the Dominican Republic or staying in Washington Heights.
When she learns she's in danger of losing her visa status and being deported, overbearing book editor Margaret Tate forces her put-upon assistant, Andrew Paxton, to marry her.
A catholic French couple sees their life upside down when their four daughters get married to men of different religion and origins.
Mexican immigrant and single mother Flor Moreno finds housekeeping work with Deborah and John Clasky, a well-off couple with two children of their own. When Flor admits she can't handle the schedule because of her daughter, Cristina, Deborah decides they should move into the Clasky home. Cultures clash and tensions run high as Flor and the Claskys struggle to share space while raising their children on their own, and very different, terms.
Aimless young Alexandre juggles his relationships with his girlfriend, Marie, and a casual lover named Veronika. Marie becomes increasingly jealous of Alexandre's fling with Veronika and as the trio continues their unsustainable affair, the emotional stakes get higher, leading to conflict and unhappiness.
A young Pakistani Briton manages a rundown laundrette with his lover while dealing with tension in his family, the local Pakistani community, and a persistent mob of skinheads.
When a mysterious fog surrounds the boundaries of California, there is a communication breakdown and all the Mexicans disappear, affecting the economy and the state stops working missing the Mexican workers and dwellers.
When a young African-American woman brings her fiancé home to meet her parents, she's neglected to mention one tiny detail – he's white.
The duty manager of a seaside cinema, who is struggling with her mental health, forms a relationship with a new employee on the south coast of England in the 1980s.
A successful and married black man contemplates having an affair with a white girl from work. He's quite rightly worried that the racial difference would make an already taboo relationship even worse.
Eager to find a better life abroad, a Senegalese woman becomes a mere governess to a family in southern France, suffering from discrimination and marginalization.
When an Italian man comes out of the closet, it affects both his life and his crazy family.
Charlie, a wandering tramp, becomes a circus handyman - soon the star of the show - and falls in love with the circus owner's stepdaughter.
Set in a magnificent villa near a sun-drenched St. Tropez, lovers Jean-Paul and Marianne are spending a happy, lazy summer holiday. Their only concern is to gratify their mutual passion - until the day when Marianne invites her former lover and his beautiful teenage daughter to spend a few days with them. From the first moment, a certain uneasiness and tension begin to develop between the four, which soon escalates in a dangerous love-game.
Germany, 1944. Leyna, the 15-year old daughter of a white German mother and a black African father, meets Lutz, a compassionate member of the Hitler Youth whose father is a prominent Nazi soldier, and they form an unlikely connection in this quickly changing world.
Olivier Assayas, Gus Van Sant, Wes Craven and Alfonso Cuaron are among the 20 distinguished directors who contribute to this collection of 18 stories, each exploring a different aspect of Parisian life. The colourful characters in this drama include a pair of mimes, a husband trying to choose between his wife and his lover, and a married man who turns to a prostitute for advice.
A couple's attitudes are challenged when their daughter brings home a fiancé who is black.
Years after her Indian family was forced to flee their Uganda home, twentysomething Mina finds herself co-operating a motel in the faraway land of Mississippi. Her passionate romance with charming Black carpet cleaner Demetrius challenges the prejudices of their conservative families and exposes the rifts between the region's Indian and African-American communities.
