Born in Beijing

Olivia Martin McGuire (China Love) parallels a grandfather’s journey to safety during the Cultural Revolution with his granddaughter’s fight for freedom in Hong Kong today. Interweaving unflinching testimony of the elder’s exodus from the Chinese mainland, exquisitely animated recreations of the perilous escape to Hong Kong through land and sea, and vivid, evocative archival footage of both mid-20th-century China and the Hong Kong protests today, Freedom Swimmer emerges as a gripping and timely account of the struggle for survival across generations.

The film documents the conversion of young Greek Military Police (ESA) recruits into torturers and touches on the subject of the power of the institution to compel otherwise moral human beings to torture. The documentary examines the processes and methods of the military junta that ruled Greece from 1967 to 1974.

Benjamin Woolley presents the gripping story of Nicholas Culpeper, the 17th century radical pharmacist who took on the establishment in order to bring medicine to the masses. Culpeper lived during one of the most tumultuous periods in British history. When the country was ravaged by famine and civil war, he took part in the revolution that culminated in the execution of King Charles I. But it is Culpeper's achievements in health care that made him famous. By practicing (often illegally) as a herbalist and publishing the first English-language texts explaining how to treat common ailments, he helped to break the monopoly of a medical establishment that had abandoned the poor and needy. His book The English Physician became the most successful non-religious English book of all time, remaining in print continuously for more than 350 years.

Juan Méndez Bernal leaves his house on the 9th of april of 1936 to fight in the imminent Spanish Civil War. 83 years later, his body is still one of the Grass Dwellers. The only thing that he leaves from those years on the front is a collection of 28 letters in his own writing.

Award-winning documentary, Sitting Bull: A Stone in My Heart, makes extensive use of Sitting Bull’s own words, giving the viewer an intimate portrait of one of America’s legendary figures in all his complexities as a leader of the great Sioux Nation: warrior, spiritual leader and skilled diplomat. Sitting Bull’s words, as portrayed by Adam Fortunate Eagle, dominate this story. Augmented by a narrator’s historical perspective, over six-hundred historical photographs and images, and a compelling original music score, the film brings to life the little-known human side of Sitting Bull as well as the story of a great man’s struggle to maintain his people’s way of life against an ever-expanding westward movement of white settlers. It is a powerful cinematic journey into the life and spirit of a legendary figure of whom people have often heard but don’t really know.

In April 2015, two shipwrecks in the central Mediterranean resulted in over a thousand deaths. The first, on 12 April, occurred when an overcrowded boat was approached by a large commercial vessel. Less than a week later, on 18 April 2015, a similar incident led to over eight hundred deaths after an overcrowded vessel collided with a cargo ship that had approached to rescue its passengers. Both incidents are in part the result of changing EU policies toward at-sea rescue, particularly the retreat of state rescue operations and a resulting onus on commercial vessels to fill the ‘rescue gap’.

Chasing Asylum tells the story of Australia's cruel, inhumane treatment of asylum seekers and refugees, examining the human, political, financial and moral impact of current and previous policy.

Beijing, China, 2020. Empty streets, mandatory masks, checkpoints, the entire state apparatus used to impose severe restrictions on population movements. An entire country quarantined to fight a fierce epidemic…

Biographical trans documentary film in which Iris Mozalar, a young artist, shares her diversity of being a bisexual transgender woman, the process of creating herself and her reflections against society.

Under the pretext of fighting terrorism or crime, the major powers have embarked on a dangerous race for surveillance technologies. Facial recognition cameras, emotion detectors, citizen rating systems, autonomous drones… A security obsession that in some countries is giving rise to a new form of political regime: numerical totalitarianism. Orwell's nightmare.

The film revolves around four female friends (Amina, Safynaz, Shahenda and Wedad) from Egypt with opposing religious, social, and political views in modern day Egypt. The four women listen to one another's views and argue openly, without ever breaking the bond that unites them.

A thought provoking short film on Indian farmers told through clay sculptures made from barren farms of the farmers who have committed suicide.

For more than a century the great colonial powers put human beings, taken by force from their native lands, on show as entertainment, just like animals in zoos; a shameful, outrageous and savage treatment of people who were considered subhuman.

The bleached palette and home-movie aesthetics of Super 8 footage provide the image track for this testimonial about an illegal abortion in Mexico City in the 1960s, delivered in voiceover by the filmmaker’s mother. In its account of this intimate and disorienting memory, Lesser Choices summons a time of profound uncertainty—a moment from an era without rights—and offers a warning to the present.

Scott Mills travels to Uganda where the death penalty could soon be introduced for being gay. The gay Radio 1 DJ finds out what it's like to live in a society which persecutes people like him and meets those who are leading the hate campaign.

This is a story about youth with music. It all happens at the Dandelion School, Beijing’s first middle school specifically established for the children of migrant workers. Every year when new pupils arrive, Ms. Yuan Xiaoyan, who has worked in the school choir for eight years, would choose a group of music-loving first-years with solid musical foundations to join the choir. A new group of children join the choir while those who have advanced to the second year have to discuss with their families their future choices. For choir members, their music career in middle school will eventually stop due to the pressure of high school entrance examinations and the inevitable parting. But along this journey accompanied by music, they have been savoring the joys and sorrows of their youth, burying them deep in their hearts, and transforming them into growth-promoting nutrients.

Desperate, broken men chase their dreams and run from their demons in the North Dakota oil fields. A local Pastor's decision to help them has extraordinary and unexpected consequences.

The story of four pioneering lesbian politicians and the battles they fought to pass a wide range of anti-discrimination laws.

The story of Muhammad Iqbal, a turn of the century poet/philosopher from South Asia. Through Iqbal's work we open a dialog between the East and West, refute the notion of a class of civilizations and discover our shared humanity.

Schaub and Schindelm’s documentary follows two Swiss star architects, Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron, on two very different projects: the national stadium for the Olympic summer games in Peking 2008 and a city area in the provincial town of Jinhua, China.