The Reporter

Documentary film about four families in Pori, Finland, all struggling with unemployment and poverty.

In the narrow streets of Marikina City, where the sound of hammers once echoed endlessly, Soles of Marikina unfolds as a cinematic portrait of craft, struggle, and survival. The film follows aging shoemakers and young apprentices as they work by hand—cutting leather, shaping soles, stitching stories into every pair—while fighting to keep an industry alive in a rapidly changing world.

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.

Approximately, because so-called "ethnic" statistics are prohibited, there are an estimated 3.3 million black French citizens. Distant descendants of slaves from the Caribbean or "indigenous" peoples from the French colonial empire in Africa, they constitute a minority that is often discriminated against. Isabelle Boni-Claverie, a mixed-race woman raised in the affluent neighborhoods of Paris, daughter of an Ivorian politician and granddaughter of Alphonse Boni, a Black man who became a magistrate of the French Republic in the 1930s, examines what is blocking the social advancement of Black French people and the full recognition of their citizenship.

The film explores the potential for automation in every sector of employment and questions the integrity of our methods of resource distribution going into the future.

Disobedience tells the David vs. Goliath tale of front line leaders battling for a livable world. Filmed in the Philippines, Turkey, Germany, Canada, Cambodia and the United States, it weaves together these riveting stories with insights from the most renowned voices on social justice and climate. Disobedience is personal, passionate and powerful - the stakes could not be higher, nor the mission more critical.

Social democracy propaganda film about future dreams for Denmark in 1960. Although Denmark is free again, the former opponent and worker, Svend, is disillusioned: "It is all something soft". The dream of the future is incarnated by a young woman, Karen, who shows Svend the visions of a better life in the 'youth's land'. There are homes and a nuclear-powered car for everyone.

Documentary about the nurses' strike in Finland on autumn 2007.

A Roma beggar on his knees raises many extreme emotions: guilt, rage, sympathy and frustration. Most people just walk on by, but there is always someone willing to help. In this film, the director follows the confrontations between the Roma beggars from Romania and Finnish people, and is forced to question, over and over again, her own ideas about helping.

Conductivity is a film about creative leadership told through the story of three young conductors at the prestigious Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, Finland; I-Han Fu (Taiwan), Emilia Hoving (Finland) and James Kahane (France). When stepping on the podium, they are put under a magnifying glass. Conductor training, in essence, is leadership training. The film gives a unique viewpoint to follow the students, as this is the first film about conductor training at the Sibelius Academy.

Communities depend on each other for such things as food, clothing, appliances, magazines, automobiles, as well as for many services.

Macadam Cowboy

Since the enactment of the Anti-Boryokudan Act and Yakuza exclusion ordinances, the number of Yakuza members reduced to less than 60,000. In the past 3 years, about 20,000 members have left from Yakuza organizations. However, just numbers can’t tell you the reality. What are they thinking, how are they living now? The camera zooms in on the Yakuza world. Are there basic human rights for them?

Regina is a young feminist wrestler who fights men to become an international star. However, the true battle in wrestling takes place outside the ring – in the story team meetings.

Nine fictitious documentaries and films reflect the mood of late 1970s Germany, particularly the two-month period in 1977 when a businessman was kidnapped by the RAF (Red Army Faction). The kidnap had been made to orchestrate the release of the original leaders of the RAF, aka the Baader-Meinhof.

Milana, Sephora, and Mario are between seventeen and twenty-six years old. They grew up in modest, stigmatized rural Manouche families. Unlike their parents, they have degrees and work as employees. They have dreams to fulfill.

Masao Adachi, the author and director of experimental works and pinku-eiga in the 1960s, was a member of the Japanese New Left that shifted from being a filmmaker to a guerrilla fighter. In 1974, he joined the Japanese Red Army in Lebanon, which worked closely with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Filmmaker Lutz Dammbeck met Adachi in Tokyo in 2018 and talked with him about a wide range of topics, including art, revolution, the influence of western avant-garde art and American underground; the Japanese Red Army; collaboration with secret services; the role of the Left after 1968; and the reasons for failures of leftist ideas and strategies.

Auringonkiertoja

Why do people vent such toxic opinions online? Filmmaker Kyrre Lien spent three years travelling the world to find out who these anonymous ‘internet warriors’ are and why they do it.

Primary is a documentary film about the primary elections between John F. Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey in 1960. Primary is the first documentary to use light equipment in order to follow their subjects in a more intimate filmmaking style. This unconventional way of filming created a new look for documentary films where the camera’s lens was right in the middle of what ever drama was occurring. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with The Film Foundation in 1998.