Clarkii

A fairly shabby, dark, three-part wardrobe in a hallway: About ten years have passed since Joana Claude suffered sexual violence when it was assembled. Now the time has come to not only disassemble it. Instead, Joana sets out to destroy the artefact of pain completely. The gesture is made with fervour, tearing out the shelves and doors looks like retroactive resistance, what was pent up finds an outlet. At the same time, the ritual is characterised by gradual escalation: At first the director speaks of her relationship with her parents – a big sweat stain on her back already beginning to show –, in the end everything is in flames. The act is short, it lasts only a few minutes. And yet it allows an intimate insight that acquires a universal, strength-giving character as it unfolds.

Stan Lee and Len Wein talk about X-Men & Wolverine.

A young Toronto drag performer launches a fundraising campaign for her friend Sondos, a young mother trying to support her family in Palestine

GLAUBER MARCADO PARA MORRER

A film producer, an assassin, and a patriot. These aren’t three characters in this film but three ways of describing Wu Dun, a member of the United Bamboo Gang who murdered the Taiwanese-American writer Henry Liu and became a producer of wuxia films. Hsu Che-yu, who previously brought Single Copy (IFFR 2020) and Re-rupture (IFFR 2018) to Rotterdam, visits Wu’s abandoned studio to restage the events with forensic scanning techniques.

Extra, behind scenes from Hideaki Anno's film Ritual (also known as Shiki-Jitsu).

PINA is an explosion. The documentary follows PINA—a Brazilian rapper, pedagogue, and poet—who confronts the daily struggles of being a woman in several male-dominated fields. The audience is invited into an intimate, casual, and profound conversation between the rapper and the filmmaker, Alexia Pereira, a director navigating her own challenges in a male-dominated film industry. Always striking the right bpm, PINA reflects the power of women who use rap as a social response.

At Ella Hill Hutch Community Center in the Fillmore, magic is happening. Throughout the 2024 school year, Magic Zone students in Citizen Film's filmmaking and media production class collaborated in painting murals that represent their community, cultivating a beautiful garden, learning how to cook nutritious meals and documenting community stories through still photography, video and graphic design.

INERCIA

This behind the scenes documentary split across five chapters focuses on the many aspects of the filmmaking journey and includes interviews with lead actor and actress Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand. As well as various crew members.

Shot in under an hour, this is a micro-portrait of Jost Haas, the last glass eye maker working in the UK.

Two Serbian cinematography students set out to follow the longest relay in history, through protests, blockades, and a line of memories, tracing back to the moment it all began. An intimate and powerful film about fear, freedom, and a generation that is still running.

Featuring the sites and sounds of the Isle of Man in 1958.

A snapshot into the life of clan elder, Taloch, and his teenage son, Connach, in the South West of England, as they navigate embracing their heritage with the incoming summer solstice and the turmoil of teenhood.

Snippets from found postcards and photographs from the 1920s to the 1980s.

This 1944 newsreel documents arrivals at a Wellington wharf from the Middle East: New Zealand soldiers and Polish children. For the refugees it was the conclusion of an epic wartime survival tale: an exodus from Poland via Siberian labour camps, to being greeted by Prime Minister Peter Fraser in NZ. The Poles then take the train past waving crowds to their new home: a camp in Pahīatua. Twenty years later the children were revisited in Kathleen O’Brien’s classic 1966 documentary The Story of Seven-Hundred Polish Children.

A short documentary about local and sustainable fashion in Denmark.

Set in a semi-urban coastal village of Kerala, “Beneath the Wings of Rosary Beads” follows a fishing community where faith and labor intertwine. Susan Maria, guided by recurring dreams of abundance, returns to the sea; Rosie anchors life in devotion; and Robert recalls a fading past. Through daily rhythms, memories, and conversations, the film explores belief, risk, and generational change, as faith continues to shape life by the shore.

A short documentary on life in Iceland.

Provides, through onsite study and observations of a young biologist, an introduction to the life cycle and habitat of the blue heron. Shows its cycles of migration, reproduction and growth and obstacle to survival.