Personal Cuts

Twenty-five films from twenty-five European countries by twenty-five European directors.

Two old sisters, living in the same Warsaw apartment, sit on a bench and talk. The 87-year-old elder one seems to care for the other reluctantly and treat her badly. The younger, who is said to be clumsier, has walking problems.

The action is placed in a cramped flat in Warsaw’s district of Ochota. A father and a son, both bedridden, live in a fascinating symbiosis. The son, a well‑known photographer Bernard ben Dobrowolski, is lying in bed because a chronic condition has deformed his body and immobilized him. The father, Dominik, has recently suffered from a stroke. Now they are taking care of each other and crowds of visitors move through their room.

What we show in Milk is literally the best of the best when it comes to dairy farming, yet, as soon we view what happens from the perspective of the mother cow, it becomes clear that this is an industry that runs on the exploitation and suffering of animals. By using animation, we are able to show a unique perspective and tell the story of the mother cow in a way that cannot be done from investigative footage alone. Milk centres the cow as the protagonist of her own story and allows us to view what is happening to her from an up close and personal perspective. Organic, free-range, high-welfare, humanely raised. It doesn’t matter what label we put on dairy products, all dairy cows are victims of an industry that forcibly impregnates them, takes their babies from them, exploits their bodies and then sends them to a slaughterhouse to cut their throats. It's time to end the dairy industry.

In 2011, photographer Tanja Hollander decided to visit each one of her Facebook "friends" (all 626 of them) in their homes and make formal portraits of each of them. Armed with her cameras and iPhone, Tanja traveled throughout the U.S. and around the world for 5 years, meticulously documenting her experiences in real time and creating a historical narrative, both visual and written, along the way. Her project is an exploration of friendships, the effects of social networks, the intimate places we call home and the communities in which we live.

A study of the behavior of monkeys in the African jungle.

The courtship behavior of Great Bustards is studied. The male Great Bustard is considerably larger than the female. This impression is reinforced during courtship when the male dances in front of the female, showing the light undersides of its wings and inflating its throat pouch.

Zebra finches and Japanese gulls are shown, as well as the rearing of young zebra finches by Japanese gulls. Despite considerable differences in the appearance of the nestlings, the gulls provide their own and the foreign young with food equally. The male zebra finches raised by the foreign species later direct their courtship behavior exclusively towards the stepparent species, i.e. they are sexually imprinted on the foreign species.

In Unión Hidalgo, Oaxaca, México, there is a group of people who pay homage to living characters in the community through urban murals, generating an identity that is reflected on the walls of traditional houses.

People destroyed the Ali Akbar Sanati Museum, an Iranian painter and sculptor, and all his works were destroyed. Mordad 28, In 1332, many people were burned alive in the fire of Rex Cinema, 28 years later on the 25th, they repaired The House of History movie. This film is an experimental fiction film, with links to images of the last survivor of the Sanati Museum, namely the sculptures of prisoners in prison, and the voices of the history of Iranian cinema, from the Sasanian era to the Constitution and the Islamic Revolution.

A continuously running two-channel installation, presented on 9" and 25" CRT monitors atop pedestals and overlooked by a green Kit-Cat clock. The smaller CRT bears a painted green square and is framed by a pair of crossed silver opera gloves, at whose intersection rests a vintage push-puppet of two boxers sharing a single red stand. Together, the two monitors display distinct video collages interweaving footage from Emerald Square Mall and the strike during its 1989 construction with remixed interferences from Channel J's Emerald City TV (1976–1979), Huge Video's Heat in the Night (1989), Genet's Un Chant d'Amour (1950), various cigarette commercials, The Wizard of Oz (1939), and a performance of a mylar-clad entity wrapping one of the televisions in videotape. The work has most frequently circulated publicly through its primary video channel.

The camera slowly pans through a room as Smolders offers various observations and memories.

Under the sign of the swastika, it was, amongst other things, turned into a naval base, it got heavily destroyed in two waves of attack in April of 1945 by British bombers. After the war, Heligoland was made available as bombing training ground for the English army by the West-German government. Seven young people occupied the isle and began to repair the emergency shelter for sailors who got in danger. This and further major actions eventually ended the bombing exercises. Back then, the watchword was: “Heligoland to the Germans! “ – “Heligoland for peace!”

The animal inhabitants of the Manhattan Zoo are presented.

The peaks, the valleys, and all the moments in between. Being a father is an extraordinary privilege that transforms your perspective on the world. "A Letter from the Fathers" is a touching, captivating, and emotive movie that presents the audience with the fatherhood journeys of four men. Gear up to experience laughter, tears, and reflection as these dads share insights from their parenting adventures. It's a profound, insightful exploration of how fatherhood doesn't just mould the children but also profoundly influences the men themselves.

A 94-year-old Glacier National Park ranger confronts the decline of the park he calls home as he reflects on his life and the legacy he will leave behind.

Journalist Dermi Azevedo has never stopped fighting for human rights and now, three decades after the end of the military dictatorship in Brazil, he's witnessing the return of those same practices.

A young woman of the Tarahumara, well-known for their extraordinary long distance running abilities, wins ultramarathons seemingly out of nowhere despite running in sandals.

The second part of the series Cypriot Collage Stories sketches out the history of this Mediterranean island as a conflict of its two mothers – Aphrodite and Virgin Mary. Animations and collages are intertwined with found footage of the 1974 Turkish invasion of the island, revealing the obvious fact that modern conflicts are rooted in history.

Director Harry Kümel and writer Pierre Drouot revisit the locations from their classic movie Daughters of Darkness.