Silent Stories

How do humans and animals see each other? Dominique Loreau captures astonishing exchanges of “views” between people and animals who coexist in the city, in farms, slaughterhouses, zoos, museums, or in a dance rehearsal room. In The Eyes Of A Beast questions the permeable boundary between man and animal.

From the beginning, Hergé's work, Tintin's creator, was conditioned by the ideology of his publisher, the weekly child supplement of a Belgian Catholic newspaper. An exciting analysis of the political meaning of the adventures of Tintin.

The rules are simple in Senegalese wrestling: First man down, loses. The sport derives from ritual manhood trials and has developed into a national sport with packed stadiums and huge prizes. Today, the fight is supplemented with bare knuckle boxing but without any protection. The 22­-year-­old cattle herder Ndoff has been chosen to compete in an annual talent event in Dakar, and faces a possible breakthrough as a pro wrestler. LAAMB is the story of a sport filled with myths and extreme voodoo rituals, and a modern tale about fighting one’s way out of poverty.

In his early twenties, Sam Cagnina, oldest son of a Mafia hit man, meets Steven, a handsome 19-year old college student and they fall in love. Then, after a few years Sam offers Steven a "visionary" idea. What if they could find a woman who would fall in love with both of them and agree to live in a "trio" relationship? They spend the next 7 years dating and looking for that special woman. Finally, they meet Samantha, a young, struggling actress. THREE OF HEARTS explores this very unique trio union as they negotiate their living arangements, fall in love and open one of the hottest wellness centres in New York City. Everyone who comes in contact with them is never quite sure how the relationship works. But the one thing which seems certain is their love for each other.

One afternoon, four young people meet and share experiences about being bisexual in a world marked by heteronormativity.

For decades, performance artist and writer Kate Bornstein has been exploding binaries and deconstructing gender. And, her own identity. Trans-dyke. Reluctant polyamorist. Sadomasochist. Recovering Scientologist. Pioneering Gender Outlaw. Kate Bornstein Is a Queer and Pleasant Danger, joins her on her latest tour capturing rollicking public performances and painful personal revelations as it bears witness to Kate as a trailblazing artist theorist activist who inhabits a space between male and female with wit, style, and astonishing candor. By turns meditative and playful, the film invites us on a thought provoking journey through Kate's world to seek answers to some of life's biggest questions.

In an age when women were incapable of joining the artistic dialogue, Lilias Trotter managed to win the favour of celebrated critics.

Too high, misused, unfair... a large part of the French and Europeans criticize taxes. From tax-rascal to tax revolt, the movement of yellow vests in France has returned to the center of attention the question of consent to tax. How to explain a different resistance to taxes from one country to another without tax pressure being an explanation? Is there a "good" tax? Jean Quatremer takes us on a journey to the tax center across Europe, to meet those who pay it, those who decide it, those who study it... or those who allow to avoid it.

Violeta leads a normal life in a well-off family, with loving parents, surrounded by everything the heart of an eleven-year-old girl might wish for. But she hasn’t always been the pretty girl she is today; she was born a boy. At age 6, she baffled her parents (the famous adult movie stars Nacho Vidal and Franceska Jaimes) when she told them she wanted to be called and dress as a girl. After the initial shock, they decided to give her all their support on the long and tough road that will lead to her becoming a woman someday. Violeta faces many challenges, medical (such as deciding whether or not to take hormone-blockers to stop the development of masculine features as soon as puberty kicks in) and legal (obtaining an ID card with her new name and gender). Later, she may consider getting a sex reassignment procedure, or the possibility of becoming a mother through adoption.

Daniel Timsit, l’Algérien

René Vautier, le maquisard à la caméra

Algiers. From the port to the souks, passing through the Jardin d'Essai, Dominique Cabrera transports us to the land where she was born, on the other side of the Mediterranean "where the sea is saltier". If most of the pieds-noirs left Algeria in the summer of 1962, some -a minority- remained. By going to meet them, the director makes her own inner journey.

Festival panafricain d'Alger is a documentary by William Klein of the music and dance festival held 40 years ago in the streets and in venues all across Algiers. Klein follows the preparations, the rehearsals, the concerts… He blends images of interviews made to writers and advocates of the freedom movements with stock images, thus allowing him to touch on such matters as colonialism, neocolonialism, colonial exploitation, the struggles and battles of the revolutionary movements for Independence.

It is the evocation of a life as brief as it is dense. An encounter with a dazzling thought, that of Frantz Fanon, a psychiatrist of West Indian origin, who will reflect on the alienation of black people. It is the evocation of a man of reflection who refuses to close his eyes, of the man of action who devoted himself body and soul to the liberation struggle of the Algerian people and who will become, through his political commitment, his fight, and his writings, one of the figures of the anti-colonialist struggle. Before being killed at the age of 36 by leukemia, on December 6, 1961. His body was buried by Chadli Bendjedid, who later became Algerian president, in Algeria, at the Chouhadas cemetery (cemetery of war martyrs ). With him, three of his works are buried: “Black Skin, White Masks”, “L’An V De La Révolution Algérien” and “The Wretched of the Earth”.

Every day our changing climate pushes us closer to an environmental catastrophe, but for most the problem is easy to ignore. David Hallquist, a Vermont utility executive, has made it his mission to take on one of the largest contributors of this global crisis-our electric grid. But when his son Derek tries to tell his father's story, the film is soon derailed by a staggering family secret, one that forces Derek and David to turn their attention toward a much more personal struggle, one that can no longer be ignored. - Written by Aaron Woolf

Sascha’s name wasn’t always Sascha. But now it is. Sascha doesn’t identify as a man or as a woman, but as trans non-binary. A story about what it means to live in a society that wasn’t expecting you. A glimpse into a life that allows us to question our own categories. And a film about what it means to be oneself.

A sublime documentary on childhood and bereavement that’s one of several shorts the filmmaker completed while working in Algeria for Georges Derocles’s company Les Studios Africa, for whom he would shortly make his breakthrough feature The Olive Trees of Justice.

Sixteen year olds Palani and Karthik want to become "ladyboys." They're bullied in school and beaten by their families. Their parents would like to see them grow up as normal boys, but they're falling deeper and deeper into the world of the "Aravanis." Loved as dance performers but hated as homosexuals, their stories emblazon the inner conflicts of India's gender culture today.

“La Zerda and the songs of oblivion” (1982) is one of only two films made by the Algerian novelist Assia Djebar, with “La Nouba des femmes du mont Chenoua” (1977). Powerful poetic essay based on archives, in which Assia Djebar – in collaboration with the poet Malek Alloula and the composer Ahmed Essyad – deconstructs the French colonial propaganda of the Pathé-Gaumont newsreels from 1912 to 1942, to reveal the signs of revolt among the subjugated North African population. Through the reassembly of these propaganda images, Djebar recovers the history of the Zerda ceremonies, suggesting that the power and mysticism of this tradition were obliterated and erased by the predatory voyeurism of the colonial gaze. This very gaze is thus subverted and a hidden tradition of resistance and struggle is revealed, against any exoticizing and orientalist temptation.

At the heart of the Moroccan High Atlas mountains, water is a resource in short supply. The village of Tizi N'Oucheg has undergone a transformation thanks to Rachid Mandili, who is well-aware that the development of his village depends on access to clean water and on his strong leadership of this project. Mandili rallies all the villagers together and calls upon the knowledge of French and Moroccan scientists to tap water sources, to purify, and reuse waste water for irrigation. The documentary highlights the Berbers' community ties and ingenuity in their dream of independently managing their village water resources. It equally paints a portrait of a man whose initiative and resourcefulness has opened Tizi N'Oucheg up to modernity while still conserving its cultural heritage. Tizi's example presents some of the problems of water access in semi-arid regions and puts forward concrete solutions to these problems.