Arthur Guérin-Boëri is suffocating in his local swimming pool. His swim lane has become a dead end. The French athlete, multiple world champion in dynamic apnea, decides to leave the warmth of his pool and plunge into the frozen waters of a Finnish lake to set a new record. His journey then led him to immerse himself almost naked under a block of ice, in an attempt to set a new record in the icy waters of a Canadian lake. In his quest for legitimacy, which brings him close to death on several occasions, Arthur ends up finding himself.
In Polynesia, as humpback whales come to breed in the warm waters of the Pacific, Natoo immerses herself in a timeless experience.
Le Silence de la carpe
On the shores of Jeju Island, a fierce group of South Korean divers fight to save their vanishing culture from looming threats.
Weighing more than 15 tons, a sperm whale has a brain larger than any other animal on earth and is considered one of the more social whale species. Over the years, Patrick Dykstra has worked with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to learn how whales communicate, how they perceive other creatures in the water, and how they behave in his immediate presence. With sensitivity and experience, he gets closer to whales than nearly anyone else, leading to once-in-a-lifetime experiences and personal bonds with specific whales.
As well as providing the subject for Luc Besson’s The Big Blue, Jacques Mayol did more than anyone to establish the sport of free diving to enormous depths without an oxygen supply. Using breathing techniques derived from yoga, he went to 50, 60, and even 100 meters—depths no one had considered to be within the bounds of human possibility. Mayol was a sportsman, a mystic, a vagabond, but above all, a man who believed in testing the limits of experience. This visually stunning tribute shows a man’s quest to be at one with the vastness of the ocean and to have no fear of the abyss within, where lurks serenity, freedom and finally, death.
Bonded by their love of freediving, a record-setting champion and a heroic safety diver try to make history with a remarkable feat, ready to risk it all.
Follow free diver Johanna Nordblad in this documentary as she attempts to break the world record for distance traveled under ice with one breath.
The Song of Haenyeo
Attention: A Life in Extremes
The story of Captain Cousteau’s chief diver, Bernard Delemotte, and freediving champion Jacques Mayol, who crossed the Atlantic Ocean with two little girls to dive with dolphins and whales.
Childhood friends Jacques and Enzo share a passion for the danger of free diving. Jacques, following in the footsteps of his father, who died at sea when Jacques was a boy, harbors a remarkable ability to adjust his heart rate and breathing patterns in the water, with his vital signs more closely resembling those of dolphins than men.
A young ex-con risks his newfound freedom to track down the estranged daughter of a fellow inmate, and unknowingly brings a devil from her past straight to her doorstep.
The film tells the story of a member of the Polish underground who acted as a courier during World War II and whose most prominent mission was to inform the Allied powers of Nazi crimes against the Jews of Europe in an effort to prevent the Holocaust.
Night Labor follows Sherman Frank Merchant, a forty-six year old 6'6" Downeaster during his transition from an independent and rugged clam digger by day to manning a factory at night. With his white smock, arsenal of knives, and signature black beret, Sherman performs the tasks of preparing and arranging tools for the day laborers who arrive to their 6am shift.
Is modern youth ministry contrary to scripture? That is the core question of Divided the movie, an hour long youth ministry documentary film by Philip and Chris Leclerc. It is backed by The National Center for Family-Integrated Churches, so naturally the film is biased towards youth being integrated into a church service rather than in silos of age segregated classrooms.
This film selects intangible cultural heritage items such as porcelain carving, colored glaze (glass art), and Lu-style interior painting (inside-bottle painting), telling the stories of their origins, development, inheritance, and innovation, as well as the heartwarming stories behind the inheritors.
When Mark L. Feinsod was in middle school in the ‘80s, he and his friends Mike and Steve had an intense Dungeons & Dragons campaign. One time, their friend Bindul joined in. They encountered a dragon and Bindul insisted he wanted to have sex with it. Decades later, nobody can agree upon what happened next in this comedy about memory, friendship and childhood.
Five friends set out on what becomes their final trip together, spending two nights and a day in the desert. As time slows and the distance from everything familiar grows, they experience moments of joy, discomfort, and quiet reflection. Drifting through a hazy, almost psychedelic state, the journey begins to feel less like an escape and more like a goodbye all captured through the lens of a camcorder.
Taking Beijing Subway's "Time Train" as the main narrative thread, and centering on subway enthusiasts, designers, constructors and operators, the story recounts the construction of China's first subway line, the harmonious coexistence between Beijing Subway and cultural relics, as well as the various changes in subway tickets, carriages and construction brought by the passing of time as trains travel back and forth.