Personal Documentary

Colosseum: A Gladiator's Story

A cameraman wanders around with a camera slung over his shoulder, documenting urban life with dazzling inventiveness.

"All Five Millions of Us" is a hybrid of documentary and fiction feature film about father absence, based on data released by the National Council of Justice: there are 5.5 million children without paternal recognition in Brazil.

Spain, early 20th century. As a child, Leocadia Cantalapiedra was dazzled by a new art: cinema; but she lives in a society where directing films is something only men can do.

Aya grows up with her mother on the island of Lahou. Joyful and carefree, she likes to pick coconuts and sleep on the sand. However, her paradise is doomed to disappear under the waters. As the waves threaten her house, Aya makes a choice: the sea can rise, but she will not leave her island.

In this short docu-fiction film, strong and hardy Inuit hunters demonstrate and test their strength in boxing, tug-of-war, and other strenuous activities. We see and hear the drum dance, a demonstration of Inuit poetry and rhythm.

Capital is dead labor that, like a vampire, lives only by sucking up living labor; and the longer it lives, the more work it sucks.

By the end of the weekend, nothing has truly changed. Ekin remains the same, the Anatolian side of Istanbul remains the same. Set in 2020s Istanbul, the film follows Ekin, a young adult living with his mother whose days revolve around searching for a place to live, at least as he tries to believe. As childhood memories, friendships, and new encounters linger in the streets, anxiety quietly grows, and after sleep, life resumes exactly where it left off.

A day in the life of Annie, Boo and Carmen, three Chinese/Taiwanese girls living in Paris during the Covid -19 pandemic, presented in a triptych split screen.

La vie au temps de Cro-Magnon

The Hugo's Brain is a French documentary-drama about autism. The documentary crosses authentic autistic stories with a fiction story about the life of an autistic (Hugo), from childhood to adulthood, portraying his difficulties and his handicap.

Tinskani mourns the death of his friend and mentor, Salvador. His partner, Citlali, urges him to attend the funeral with her, but Tinskani is haunted by the photograph of his friend's corpse. He'd rather wander through the town’s carnival, camera in hand, seeking to replace that ghostly portrait with new ones.

Issa, a footballer from Guinea-Bissau who plays in Portugal, is contacted by two filmmakers who want to know more about his life and make a documentary. Exposing the voices behind the camera, Nha Sunhu is a reflection on the gaze, bias, and representation of the other.

The film approaches the work of the Greek artist Nikos Koniaris. The particular way in which the painter depicts human suffering is presented through a film - a hybrid of real recording and directed material. The grief, the sick body, is reflected in self portraits, portraits of dying strangers and paintings of dead models. The paintings, apart from his work, also express a different version of himself. All together contribute to the depiction of man as a "garment of pain".

It is summer, a day in the life under the blistering heat. This is an archival journey through different pairs of eyes and different layers of skin - all in the hopes of finding someplace to sit and do nothing, while the world around you always wants you to do something.

In a follow-up to his 2021 short, SUMMER, Liam once again spends the duration of a summer filming, editing, and releasing a single shot every day. Things have changed or have they?

L, a student in India witness to the government's violent response to university protests, writes letters to her estranged lover while he is away.

How do German couples communicate in private? What are they arguing about? Is the way to a man’s heart really through his stomach? This docu-fictional hybrid production discusses such questions with the help of authentic interview snippets that were edited under the staged plot. We get an insight into the life of an animal couple, who experience typical everyday situations on behalf of us humans. At first, our fox is emotionally contained, while the penguin lady may get wild as hell. With a wink, the filmmakers hold up a mirror to the audience in the cinema.

With noise-canceling headphones, they communicate with an inaudible counterpart. Decoupled, they move around the room and meet their surroundings. Intimate stories and needs are discussed. The personal blends into a shared portrait.

A metacinematic reflection on the nature of representation and the ongoing drug war in Mexico, Nicolás Pereda’s Flora revisits locations and scenes from the mainstream 2010 narco-comedy El Infierno, exploring the paradoxes of depicting narco-trafficking on film—its tendency both to romanticize and to obscure. To screen is both to project and to conceal.