Self-Portrait: 47 KM 2020

Present day: a small village somewhere in rural Serbia. Reports on the upcoming parliamentary elections drone from the radio while a local traffic policeman tries to teach his old grandmother how to use a mobile phone. Glimpses of this old lady, who lives a lonely life on a remote farm, become the red thread running through the film with its snapshot-like portraits of everyday life in the tiny community. There’s the grocer’s shop the men visit to talk about money and politics. Or the postman who delivers on his moped the ballot papers for the forthcoming elections. The policeman who stops cars as he fancies. The school with a handful of children in the overlarge classroom. The pub in which something approaching merriment occasionally arises. And the recurrent visits to the old peasant woman: Her matter-of-fact inventory of aches and pains delivered to the local doctor, her worries about increasing thievery confided in the village priest.

A song is heard in the distance. It comes from the Hekeng village, famous for its ancient earthen buildings, also called tulou. It is where the last original Hakka families live amidst the exodus of those looking for a more modern environment. Among them there is Zhang Zhouyin, an elderly man concerned about the state of the village's temple; or her daughter-in-law, Wei Yi, who spends her entire day guiding tourists through these awe-inspiring houses. And then there’s young Zhang Weibo, her son, who manages to find joy even in the simplest of things... Hekeng: a place frozen in time whose songs have endured for centuries.

In the summer of 2007, Gan Xiaoer led an independent film projection team, using projectors and self-made screens, to tour villages in Henan province to show his feature film "Raised from dust" for 8 times, and recorded the process. The 81-minute version of Church Cinema records only one stop, the Qiliying Church, where "Raised from dust" was shot.

Goralská obec Čierne

Flor Brilhante e as Cicatrizes da Pedra

The film describes the microcosmos of the small village Wacken and shows the clash of the cultures, before and during the biggest heavy metal festival in Europe.

A documentary about a proposed military training area in Rothenthurm, Central Switzerland, and the village's resistance to those plans.

Sail away to a bygone Cornwall in this wistful coastal travelogue.

Brazil is one of the most dangerous countries for environmentalists. The rural community of Belisário holds the country's second largest bauxite reserve, right below one of the most bio-diverse areas in the world: the Atlantic Forest. The small community was shaken when the beloved Gilberto, a Franciscan Friar, received a death threat followed by the lines: "you've been talking against mining way too much". PT: O Brasil é um dos países mais perigosos do mundo para defensores do meio ambiente. Em Minas Gerais, a comunidade rural de Belisário abriga a segunda maior reserva de bauxita do país, em uma das áreas de maior biodiversidade do mundo: a Mata Atlântica. A tranquilidade do pequeno vilarejo foi abalada quando Frei Gilberto, um franciscano que dedica sua vida à preservação da natureza, recebeu uma ameaça de morte com o seguinte aviso: "você tem falado demais contra a mineração".

La détresse au bout du rang

This is the story of Vasiliy Ilyin, a retired farmer from the village of Ryshkovo, on a first time journey to see the world, New York, the ocean, and a cover photoshoot for Esquire Russia

A short film following Anthony, a young child from the small, rural town of San Antonio de los Baños, Cuba. We see him in different moments of his daily life as he interacts with different forms of environmental, familial, and social influences. While Anthony displays contradictory traits of creativity, destruction, rigidity, and tenderness as he interacts with his external and internal worlds, we see a story built from the the multidimensionality of Anthony's layered personality as a young man.

Belarus, Vileika district of Minsk region. Lonely elderly people are leaving for winter to the home of seasonal residence. Each of them carries their own experience and beliefs, but they will have to stay the winter together. The days pass in sicknesses, conversations, watching TV... In mid-winter, there appears a new resident of the house, and the life inside changes.

Vasil Granouski is 58. He's living in a village, where he leads a local choir. It consists of only elderly performers. The harmonic Vasil plays is also old, and it lacks a couple of keys. His car, in which he drivers the singers around, is faulty and doesn't always start.

Beneath its reassuring façade, Davos is each year at the heart of the Western and capitalistic world. Every chief of State and everyone who is someone in the money world meets with their peers in the Swiss village. What is really at stake in Davos ? Julia Niemann and Daniel Hoesl create a fascinating observational documentary in which judgement is never handed out and where the dialectics of conflicts matter more than easy and reassuring answers. The film asks the viewer some uncomfortable questions by focusing on challenges that the new global economy poses to the world.

Baix la garrofera

Meet Brian Boland—the beloved, eccentric hot air balloonist and artist from the rural Upper Valley of Vermont.

The efforts of a community to build a bridge which would allow their children to go school during the rainy season.

The banned and unseen Harvest and Seed is a sardonic look at the conditions of a poverty-stricken Iranian village after the so-called agrarian reforms of the early 1960s, which amounted to a corrupt land grab rather than an equitable redistribution of wealth. This film recorded in village in south of fars, Shiraz, Esmaeel abad

A Traveltalks visit to some small towns in Mexico. In Mazatlán, away from the tourist spots, we see a small village where fishing, growing coconuts, and gathering large sea turtles are the main pursuits. We then visit Toluca on market day, where people sell produce and pottery. The last stop is Taxco, where the Castilian influence of the Spanish conquerors is still prevalent.