Pérola do Atlântico

A glimpse into a visual representation of memory; A Christmas-time series of meals, coffees, and movies, with friends, lovers, and housemates. Faced with the compounding of faces and places, each moment begins to collide with one another: voices are muddled, and faces are broken. How is memory created? How are they separated from one another?

Ten years after an enormous open-pit gold mine began operations in Malartic, the hoped-for economic miracle is nothing more than a mirage. Filmmaker Nicolas Paquet explores the glaring contrast between the town’s decline and the wealth of the mining company, along with the mechanisms of an opaque decision-making system in which ordinary people have little say. Part anthropological study, part investigation into the corridors of power, Malartic addresses the fundamental issue of sustainable and fair land management.

As a young girl Victoria Arlen truly had the world ahead of her. But at the age of 11, she began to suffer from an illness that baffled her doctors and kept Victoria locked in her own body.

When 18 children – nine from Palestine and nine from Israel – come together to form a kids soccer team, they come face-to-face with the other side for the first time in their lives. United by the common goals of teamwork and dedication to a shared purpose, they confront generations of fear head on. Is peace through sports really possible, or is it hopelessly naive to think that a handful of 12-year-old soccer players can begin to change their world?

Exploring the intersection of indigenous folklore and Bigfoot fanatics, this documentary delves into the myths surrounding Bigfoot, offering a meticulous analysis of how indigenous cultural narratives are misused to justifying Bigfoot's existence.

A fantastic short documentary that explores an event that is staged in a cave in one of the oldest forests in Romania. The premise of the film - that people are bored and need something to do or perform is beside the point - there are people in Romania who will move an entire orchestra into a cave in the forest and thousands of people will arrive to watch a classical performance there. Breathtaking and fun at the same time.

The surrealist painter René Magritte questions the objective reality and emphasizes the arbitrariness of the relationship between an object, its image and its name: the evocation of mystery consists of images of familiar things gathered or transformed in such a way that they no longer conform to our ideas, whether naive or wise.

The Director Mohammed Soudani comes back to Algeria after 30 years with the photographer Michael von Graffenried to visit the Algerians he had photographed between 1991 and 2000 without them knowing it.

Generously included as a bonus DVD alongside the 502-page Bolaño salvaje, a book of essays about and reminiscences on the Chilean novelist/poet published by the Barcelona-based Editorial Candy. Bolaño cercano [a difficult to translate title approximating something like Bolaño, Up Close and Personal], which offers up a sympathetic portrait of Bolaño as a loving family man and tireless reader and writer and teases with ever so brief glimpses of his personal library and countless spiral notebooks filled with rough drafts of his novels and poetry and even comic book-like drawings and illustrations.

A documentary on Jan Slovak, a 55-year-old welder, who fell in love with acting. His desire began, when he got the lead role in a theatrical adaptation of the worst movie of all time, Plan 9 From Outer Space by Ed Wood Jr. The passion for theater became his destiny.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of ABBA’s iconic Eurovision victory, a milestone that calls for a celebratory cinematic tribute fitting for the ultimate pop band. ‘ABBA: Against the Odds’ unveils the epic journey of ABBA’s rise to global fame. Starting with the moment they won Eurovision, it tells the story of how they overcame critical backlash, societal attitudes and marital break-up to deliver their ground-breaking music and prove themselves as a live act.

A young immigrant arrives in Canada from France, and brings his Citroën 2CV with him. The iconic post-war car stands out on the streets of Vancouver, and before long he meets up with a group of like-minded car buffs.

From La Région Centrale (1971), Snow orchestrates new patterns of movement that exchanges the focus on landscape with the cityscape of Toronto.

Calçada

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.

About the tragic fate of the Estonian artist Julo Sooster and his work.

Hélikè, la cité engloutie

Shot in Atlanta, this is a collection of clips of Phanphiroj talking to handsome young men he has brought into his studio to photograph for a book project. So there are clips of him interviewing them, shooting photos and even having physical encounters. And there are several conversations that dig deeper into attitudes. The key point is that most of these guys are straight, and Ohm is flirting shamelessly with them. The film is loosely edited, jumping around between encounters as it explores ideas about attraction, lust and even porn. It's silly and relaxed, and of course very indulgent too.

Retrospective documentary on the making of the cult classic "Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory."

French filmmaker Armel Hostiou discovers he has a double in Kinshasa. Someone has created a fake Facebook profile in his name to hustle aspiring actors. So Armel heads to Congo’s vast capital to track him down, and there begins one of the wildest and most unpredictable films of the year. An elementally suspenseful and wildly entertaining detective story about a white filmmaker on foreign ground. But also a story which with hilarious self-irony and in one twist after another turns into a darker story about the internet, identities and post-colonial struggles in the 21st century.