Alphas

Java, l'âme de l'Indonésie

For ten years, Raymond Depardon has followed the lives of farmer living in the mountain ranges. He allows us to enter their farms with astounding naturalness. This moving film speaks, with great serenity, of our roots and of the future of the people who work on the land. This the last part of Depardon's triptych "Profils paysans" about what it is like to be a farmer today in an isolated highland area in France. "La vie moderne" examines what has become of the persons he has followed for ten years, while featuring younger people who try to farm or raise cattle or poultry, come hell or high water.

It was a different time! The female contestants on an Irish TV show with an iconic gentleman host look back on a beige-coloured chapter in TV history. More than entertaining kitsch, and with some delightfully quick-witted ladies in the winning role.

A hard-hitting documentary that tackles head-on a controversial but increasingly alarming subject: young men's obsession with the perfect body, and the use of performance-enhancing drugs to achieve it. Once the preserve of top-level athletes, the use of anabolic steroids has become endemic among teenagers and young men with a passion for bodybuilding. Daring to tackle head-on the taboo of male beauty standards, Adonis offers a field investigation into the heart of this muscle-building machine, questioning the reasons behind and the physical, psychological and social risks of this race to the perfect body. As he stages his own vulnerability, the filmmaker lifts the veil on the scale of the public health crisis that is looming.

We don’t like to talk about it, but it can be challenging to be a man in the world today, and even more challenging to raise boys to be good men. Maybe it’s time for a conversation.

'Mod' is an attempt by the filmmaker at communicating with the young men who hang out at the ‘notorious’ water tank in her neighbourhood in Pratap Vihar, Ghaziabad. The water tank is a space that is frequented by the so-called ‘no-gooders’ of the locality, a place where they play cricket, play cards, drink and smoke up. When she enters the space with her camera, the boys are curious and at the same time wary of it and her. They sometimes resist, sometimes protest, and at times, open up. As the film unfolds we get a hint of the lives the boys lead and the fragile world they create for themselves at the water tank.

In France, as in the United States, an ideological divide is widening between girls and boys: "Young women born between 1995 and 2010 are hyper-progressive, while men of the same age are hyper-conservative," according to Alice Evans, a researcher at Stanford University. "Tens of millions of people who live in the same cities, work in the same places, attend the same classrooms, and even live in the same houses no longer share the same views. This is unprecedented. Generation Z is actually two generations, not one."

One Voice: Searching for Michael Spears

A short film following Anthony, a young child from the small, rural town of San Antonio de los Baños, Cuba. We see him in different moments of his daily life as he interacts with different forms of environmental, familial, and social influences. While Anthony displays contradictory traits of creativity, destruction, rigidity, and tenderness as he interacts with his external and internal worlds, we see a story built from the the multidimensionality of Anthony's layered personality as a young man.

Sean Penn is almost a living legend. His filmography paints a picture of an 'other America': the lower class, the oppressed and the outsiders. Whether as an actor or director, he turns all the great myths upside down.

Filmed over 23 years, Rise of the Warrior Apes tells the epic story of an extraordinary troop of chimpanzees in Ngogo, Uganda – featuring four mighty warriors who rule through moral ambiguity, questionable politics, strategic alliances and destroyed trust.

In 2018, a user called AnathematicAnarchist published a suicide note in an online forum for incels – a subculture of heterosexual men whose self-pity, misogyny and fantasies of violence dominate the internet in many places and trigger offline actions in some. Did he really take his own life? Is America responsible for his death, as he claims in his text? A search for clues in the darkest corners of the net, an essay about pain and loneliness in the age of algorithms.

Finnish men in sauna, speaking straight from the heart.

It used be that everyone knew what it meant to be a man. A man was rugged and reliable and got the job done. But then came the worst recession in 80 years. So what happens now that the job is gone? The End of Men is a compelling new documentary that takes a profound look at how men are coping with the evolving role of masculinity in today's world, where the old rules no longer apply.

What does mean to be gay and be a man? There's no straight answer for sure. From the Castro culture of the 1970s to today’s Bears and gym rats, this fascinating investigation of gay men and sexuality blows the lid off old stereotypes and showcases a battalion of interviewees including muscle men, rodeo riders, rugby players and cops. The men speak candidly on topics from homophobia to metrosexuality to embracing effeminacy as they reveal what it means to be a gay man in America today.

In this powerful new film based on his bestselling book, sociologist Michael Kimmel maps the troubling social world where boys become men -- a new stage of development he calls "Guyland." Arguing that the traditional adult signposts and cultural signals that once helped boys navigate their way to manhood are no longer clear, Kimmel provides an astonishing glimpse into a world where more and more young men are trying desperately to prove their masculinity to other young men -- with frequently disastrous consequences for young women and other young men. Guyland offers a way for all of us -- parents, young men and women, community members, and professors and administrators -- to envision new ways to support young men as they navigate this often perilous world.

Qui veut brûler le Père Noël ?

You could be forgiven for mistaking Charlie Siem for James Bond. Whether he's driving an orange Porsche to his cliff-top Monaco mansion, ordering martinis or looking suave in a designer suit, he is a man on a mission. It isn't to hunt down SPECTRE, but to find perfection in everything he does. Whether it's performing on stage, recording albums, or selecting a suit, Charlie demands the best, of himself and others. Despite an entourage dubbed ‘Charlie's Angels', he's lonesome, and complains that people can't relate to him. Danish filmmaker Eva Mulvad, with patience and panache, delves into this life of privilege to find commonalities of ambition and desire.

The cult of the Madonna dell'Arco dates back to the 1400s, when a young believer, after losing a game of pallamaglio, threw a ball in anger at a portrait of the Madonna under a Roman arch. The Madonna began to bleed. The crowd wanted to punish the boy for his wicked deed. The Count of Sarno decided to have him hanged from a tree. A few hours later, the tree withered. This is the myth that has always accompanied the oldest Marian cult in Campania (Italy).

What makes a voice “gay”? A breakup with his boyfriend sets journalist David Thorpe on a quest to unravel a linguistic mystery.