Easter Customs

The enigma of the personality cult is revealed in the grand spectacle of Stalin’s funeral. The film is based on unique archive footage, shot in the USSR on March 5 - 9, 1953, when the country mourned and buried Joseph Stalin.

The plot of the film unfolds in the ancient monastery of Dokhiar on the west coast of Mount Athos, on the Aegean peninsula. This peninsula is given to the exclusive use of the monks of Eastern Christianity. Images of nature are woven into a virtually uninterrupted series of work and prayer, lining up in the rhythmic interrelation of man and nature. The central figure of the film was the monastery’s elder, Hegumen Gregory, whose long-term experience of spiritual nourishment rewarded him with a deep understanding of the human soul and her desire to return to the state characteristic of Adam’s human nature before the fall.

RROMANI SOUL traces the true origin of the Rroma people. Through rituals, song and dance we follow emblematic figure and "Queen of the Gypsies" Esma Redzepova to Macedonia, south of France and finally to India. The film reveals for the first time ever that the true and unique origin of the Rroma is Kannauj in Uttar Pradesh, India.

In Papua New Guinea, pig tusks and shell money are currencies which can buy most things. Henry Tokubak’s dream is to create the first bank where traditional money counts as legal tender.

An unhappy family in a remote village in Calabria: Luisa is at war with the world since day one. She is juggling odd jobs, her love for her children and granddaughter, and her feuding with her mother, brother, and sister-in-law. While the two women exchange insults and call in the cops, three elderly aunts, a tragicomic chorus, try in vain to keep the peace.

Six o'clock in the morning, the sun rises behind the Djurdjura mountain. With precise gestures, learned since childhood, Ouardia raises the water, crouches down to splash his face with cool water. Soon her baby will be born. Hadjila, the traditional midwife, prepares herself internally to help the mother complete the transition from separation. This film talks about the knowledge surrounding birth that Kabyle women have passed down for centuries; knowledge that European women seek to rediscover in order to reclaim this founding passage of our lives.

A stunning and intimate portrait of the Arhuaco indigenous community in Colombia. In 1990, in a celebrated BBC documentary, the Arhuaco made contact with the outside world to warn industrialized societies of the potentially catastrophic future facing the planet if we don’t change our ways. Now, three decades later, with the advances of audio/visual technology, we go back to the Snowy Peaks of Sierra Nevada de Santa Maria to illuminate their ethos against the backdrop of an increasingly fragile world.

In this film the last living witnesses of the events from Second World War are telling their stories and thus transferring silenced victim’s voices to present times.

Song is a story of the last Finnish rune singer and his pupil, and the comforting power of singing.

IJswee is a documentary film about an ice club, a village and the warm winters. In the film we follow Oringers, the inhabitants of Odoorn, through the winter. The Oringers all experience IJswee in their own way. You will also see the Icecounter (Rafael van der Ziel), who builds ice sculptures and drinks frozen milk. You see the Drenthe countryside changing with the weather. You see animations, archive material and you hear the mysterious sounds of IJswee in the music of Wietse de Haan. And there are two trumpet players, who welcome winter with their music and say goodbye to it.

The one-night-only celebration honoring the life and legacy of the famed producer features intimate conversations, special performances and surprise reunions that pay homage to the man behind some of television’s greatest stories in celebration of his 100th birthday.

This is a documentary film about the land and people which will never restore their power of the past. A story about negations and many historical moments are enveloped in the veil of secret. Through the modern personalities and archives "The Last Macedonian from Macedonia" approaches to the truth revealing the never spoken moments and linking the past, present, but also the future. The film was shot on locations in Bitola and its surroundings.

In the middle of June the village of Santo Antonio de Mixoes da Serra in the Valdreu region of Northern Portugal honours its Patron Saint with a very special festival. On this day the local farmers bring their animals to the church – cows, horses, dogs, cats, chickens, rabbits – to be blessed. This ancient tradition is passed from generation to generation, and today, just as hundreds of years ago, animals and people flock up the mountain roads to the church square to become a part of the religious festival. The film is about this miracle.

In its portraits of three monks, Erik Praus’s documentary captures the inimitable spiritual ambiance and mysticism of Pochayiv Lavra, an Eastern Orthodox monastery on a hill above the town of Pochayiv in western Ukraine’s Ternopil Oblast. Fathers Gabriel, Vicilentius and Nazarij have left their past traumas behind, finding peace, balance and their lives’ meaning at the monastery. Their stories are allegories of spiritualization and purification from human passions against the backdrop of the turbulent Ukrainian reality. Motivated by material need and spiritual desperation, the faithful flock to this place of pilgrimage in search of new strength and forgiveness. The film respectfully observes the monks’ everyday lives, while also noticing the opulent splendour of their surroundings. The road to faith is not a privilege of the chosen few; it is open to all who hear its “calling”.

A film about three teenagers - Klara, Mina and Tanutscha - from the Berlin district of Kreuzberg. The trio have known each other since Kindergarten and have plenty in common. The three 15-year-olds are the best of friends; they are spending the summer at Prinzenbad, a large open-air swimming pool at the heart of the district where they live. They're feeling pretty grown up, and are convinced they've now left their childhood behind.

In rural Kosovo, identical houses are built for family members working abroad, in the hope that they will one day return to settle in their old homeland.

On 25th December 2011 the Georgian Patriarch Ilia II described his 34 year-long leadership as head of the Georgian Orthodox Church as a ‘sunny night’. Beginning in 1989, and going up to the present, the film essay Sunny Night tells of political and social events since Georgian Independence. A variety of formats and sources, disparate images and voices report on protests, recommencements, uproars and wars, and religious identity that centres around the dominant religion of the nation. In the midst of the ongoing shifts and the various state of affairs, the patriarch stands out as the only constant figure. Meanwhile the sermonised religion begins to take on radical forms, going as far as priests forming front row human-chains, leading protests of several thousand orthodox believers chasing a handful of LGBT activist throughout the streets of Tbilisi in May 2013.

A behind-the-scenes look at the confectioner that has been crafting Easter eggs since 1875, producing approximately 500 million each year. The program covers the origins of the Easter egg and how George and Richard Cadbury were pivotal in making them a Victorian-era sensation, up to the collaboration with Domino's Pizza to create Creme Egg cookies, a concoction that has stirred up the chocolate and pizza world.

A simple story, but larger than life portrayal of the universal human saga represented through Dionis, a retiring biology professor, his wife and his fantasy of turning his unusual car collection into a museum in a small uneventful town.

What is tradition? This is the question posed by yodeller and food researcher Meinrad Koch from Canton Appenzell. In search of an answer, he embarks on a journey.