Ikuska 1: Ikastolak

A documentary about an Iranian boy's first day of school. The beginning of hardships and understanding the realities of life, and perhaps unwanted pain and suffering.

A father films the daily efforts and struggle of his son to do his homework. Completing the school tasks is an agony that oppresses the creative passion of a restless, imaginative boy. His father gets deeply involved so he can understand what the problem is, and spends an hour every day to help him with his homework. Days, weeks, years go by, and we observe how the eagerness to learn clashes with the ghost of school dropout. The endearing relationship between father and son, a real rollercoaster of emotions, reveals with a sense of humour the contradictions in the French education system.

A documentary about a vision care school that enables visually impaired children to learn the skills necessary for a full life.

La langue est donc une histoire d'amour

This episode from the Czech Journal series examines how a military spirit is slowly returning to our society. Attempts to renew military training or compulsory military service and in general to prepare the nation for the next big war go hand in hand with society’s fear of the Russians, the Muslims, or whatever other “enemies”. This observational flight over the machine gun nest of Czech militarism becomes a grotesque, unsettling military parade. It can be considered not only to be a message about how easily people allow themselves to be manipulated into a state of paranoia by the media, but also a warning against the possibility that extremism will become a part of the regular school curriculum.

Pojď s námi na palubu!

Nová škola

The documentary's title translates as "to be and to have", the two auxiliary verbs in the French language. It is about a primary school in the commune of Saint-Étienne-sur-Usson, Puy-de-Dôme, France, the population of which is just over 200. The school has one small class of mixed ages (from four to twelve years), with a dedicated teacher, Georges Lopez, who shows patience and respect for the children as we follow their story through a single school year.

Draining two million cubic meters of water to protect a small animal in danger of extinction. This has been the task of those who have worked to remove the Enobieta reservoir and ensure a safe haven for the Pyrenean desman. This amazing story took place in Artikutza, the estate that San Sebastián bought in Navarre a century ago and which is now one of the best-preserved natural sites on the Cantabrian coast. In Normandy, meanwhile, the large Vezins dam has been removed. Its demolition will allow salmon to return to the Sélune River. Abandoned dams on rivers are barriers to biodiversity, and their demolition allows us to imagine a more habitable planet. That future will depend on small gestures, or large ones, such as those in Vezins and Enobia.

The purpose of Rise Above the Mark, narrated by Peter Coyote, is to educate the general public about the “corporate takeover” of Indiana public schools and what parents, community members and educators can do to protect their local public schools. Legislators are calling the shots and putting public schools in an ever-shrinking box. WLCSC Board of School Trustees and Superintendent of Schools, Rocky Killion, want to secure resources and legislative relief necessary to achieve the school district’s mission of creating a world-class educational system for all children. The school district’s strategic plan will introduce a model of education that puts decision making back into the hands of local communities and public school teachers, rather than leaving it in the hands of legislators and ultimately lining the pockets of corporations.

An attempt to create a bridge between the different political positions that coexist, sometimes violently, in the Basque Country, in northern Spain.

Departing from peripheral details of some paintings of the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum, a female narrator unravels several stories related to the economic, social and psychological conditions of past and current artists.

Gripping, heartbreaking, and ultimately hopeful, Waiting for Superman is an impassioned indictment of the American school system from An Inconvenient Truth director Davis Guggenheim.

L'école de demain

At just 17 years old, Eduardo Madina and Borja Semper decided to enter politics to defend freedom of thought in the Basque Country. This made them a target of the ETA terrorist group for almost two decades.

Over the course of the summer until her graduation, with changes she can't control but also being protected by the mochi which looks over important times, Yuna, a 15-year old student begins to change so that she will not forget.

In the Makarenko public elementary school in the Paris outskirts, children want to learn and to be cheered while teachers know they do not only teach, they also educate. With care, tenacity and efforts, children are trained to become not only responsible citizens but also human beings.

A semi-dramatized documentary about the first Slovak grammar school in Revúca.

A Cincinnati public school fights to break the cycle of poverty in its Urban Appalachian neighborhood, where senior Raven Gribbins aims to become the first in her troubled family to graduate and go to college. When Principal Craig Hockenberry's job is threatened, it becomes clear it's a make-or-break year for both of them.

The Columbine shootings were a tragic event in American history and have proved a lasting influence in continued acts of violence ever since. In this harrowing account, student and faculty survivors of Columbine, Amy, Gus, Jaimi, Zach, Mr. Leyba and Principal DeAngelis, reflect on the event that has both shaped them and created an unbreakable spirit shared between them. This is not the story of death, but of the process of healing in the face of the unspeakable.