The mother of animation director Rebecca Blöcher didn’t want to live an ordinary life. She wanted “something more,” she explains in this stop-motion film. The people around her didn’t understand—in a letter written in 1968, a girlfriend criticizes her for going out on her own and making men jealous, while advising her to dress in a more “feminine” way and to join a cooking course. Blöcher’s mother brushed aside the advice. Years later still, she divorced her husband and stepped into the big wide world.
When a Mongolian nomadic family's newest camel colt is rejected by its mother, a musician is needed for a ritual to change her mind.
Traces the lives of the Hartings, a blind Montreal family of three who make their living singing in the city's subway stations. The Hartings lost their only sighted child Hassan in a tragic drowning accident, and have since turned to the teachings of Russian mystic Grigori Grabovoi, hoping to resurrect their son. Resurrecting Hassan is an exploration of this family's legacy of grief, tragedy and abuse; the film will follow them on their path to redemption.
This documentary on the "youth movement" of the late 1960s focuses on the hippie pot smoking/free love culture in the San Francisco Bay area.
An Austrian director followed five successful African music and dance artists with his camera and followed their lives for a year. The artists, from villages in Ghana, Gambia and Congo, were the subjects of Africa! Africa! touring across Europe, but they have unbreakable roots to their homeland and their families. Schmiderer lovingly portrays his heroes, who tell their stories about themselves, their art and what it means to them to be African with captivating honesty. The interviews are interwoven with dance scenes and colourful vignettes set to authentic music.
A meeting between the daughter and the grandmother of the director, Iván Mora Manzano, at a time when the memories of one, the girl’s, were taking shape, and the other’s the grandmother’s, were vanishing. This starting point is used as a pretext to talk about other topics such as the importance of family memories and the search for memory.
Rafaela, an 80-year-old woman, has a long conversation with her grandson, going over his path from childhood to old age. Now that she has been diagnosed with chronic breast cancer, faith is more present in her life than ever, which coexists with Rafaela's fear of death, and her grandson's fear of dying.
yaya/ayat explores identities, being lost in translation and distance. But at its core it's about the filmmaker longing for a relationship with her geographically distant grandma and her journey to Greece to find her. This is an experimental documentary about how being a part of any diaspora shapes a person's identity.
I was scrounging around the neighborhood for inspiration. Within a block from my apartment, I found a wild mushroom in the grass, and an advertisement for a psychic named Sara.
This experimental film takes a closer look through the entomologist's lens at the cyclical behavioural patterns linking humans to the insect world. Just as the fig wasp inevitably finds death in the pollination of the fig tree flower, we too are thrown into the dance of passion and death. Drawn by the seductive scent of allurement and the inevitability of the final end.
Gavin built a giant volcano sculpture that's now in his dad's shed. Gavin seeks his dad's understanding but he's uninterested in modern art and refuses to participate in the documentary.
What's it like starting a family when you're both transgender? This intimate film follows Hannah and Jake Graf on a journey through prejudice and surrogacy to birth during lockdown.
A documentary about the parents of director Ivette Löcker, who have been living apart in their shared home for 20 years.
What would your family reminiscences about dad sound like if he had been an early supporter of Hitler’s, a leader of the notorious SA and the Third Reich’s minister in charge of Slovakia, including its Final Solution? Executed as a war criminal in 1947, Hanns Ludin left behind a grieving widow and six young children, the youngest of whom became a filmmaker. It's a fascinating, maddening, sometimes even humorous look at what the director calls "a typical German story." (Film Forum)
The life of a couple is observed through the home they have left behind.
An Oscar nominated documentary about a middle-class American family who is torn apart when the father Arnold and son Jesse are accused of sexually abusing numerous children. Director Jarecki interviews people from different sides of this tragic story and raises the question of whether they were rightfully tried when they claim they were innocent and there was never any evidence against them.
I'll just have cats documentary follows 21-year-old Kay Proctor as she delves into Britain’s evolving views on queer parenthood and questions whether she even wants children herself. Through conversations with queer parents and professionals, Kay confronts complex questions about her future. This award-winning documentary, recognised with multiple Royal Television Society Student Awards, offers a candid exploration of family, identity, and choice in modern Britain.
Filmed largely in close-up, this documentary records a woman giving birth while her husband remains at her side. The camera concentrates on her face throughout labor, briefly revealing the moment of the child’s arrival before the newborn is placed in her arms.
Translated literally as "Animals in Love," the French-language documentary Animaux Amoreux depicts various species of the animal kingdom in courting, mating and reproduction activities. Laurent Charbonnier directs.
Meet Duewand Collier Jr.-Male, 68 years old, American Citizen, a child conceived in the backdrop of the Philippines-American Mutual Defense Treaty, born and raised with Catholic guilt. He has made peace with his past and now tells his story-a story of love.