Maura (2023)

Koyaanisqatsi

Takes us to locations all around the US and shows us the heavy toll that modern technology is having on humans and the earth. The visual tone poem contains neither dialogue nor a vocalized narration: its tone is set by the juxtaposition of images and the exceptional music by Philip Glass.

The Artist’s Garden: American Impressionism

Taking its lead from French artists like Renoir and Monet, the American impressionist movement followed its own path which over a forty-year period reveals as much about America as a nation as it does about its art as a creative power-house. It’s a story closely tied to a love of gardens and a desire to preserve nature in a rapidly urbanizing nation. Travelling to studios, gardens and iconic locations throughout the United States, UK and France, this mesmerising film is a feast for the eyes. The Artist’s Garden: American Impressionism features the sell-out exhibition The Artist’s Garden: American Impressionism and the Garden Movement, 1887–1920 that began at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and ended at the Florence Griswold Museum, Old Lyme, Connecticut.

The Pageant

Every year since 2011, a unique beauty contest has been taking place in Haifa. The contestants are female survivors of the Holocaust. In the midst of this flashy spectacle, their personal traumas remain as deep as ever. There are many things about this contest that are controversial: it is organized by the right Zionist organization, the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem, and the dubious contest itself rises the public indignation of various speakers, including other survivors.

Honeyland

When nomadic beekeepers break Honeyland’s basic rule (take half of the honey, but leave half to the bees), the last female beehunter in Europe must save the bees and restore natural balance.

North by Current

Filmmaker Angelo Madsen Minax returns to his rural Michigan hometown following the death of his infant niece and the subsequent arrest of his brother-in-law as the culprit. Using the audio-visual approaches of essay film, first-person cinema vérité, staged actions, and decades of home movies, Madsen navigates a town steeped in opioid addiction, economic depression, and religious fervor, while using the act of filmmaking to rebuild familial bonds and reimagine justice. Posing empathy as a tool for creating a more just world, North By Current does not seek to investigate a crime, but creates a relentless portrait of an enduring pastoral family, poised to reframe and reimagine narratives about incarceration, addiction, trans embodiment, and ruralness.

Horse Wrangler

Nando, a young horse wrangler in a rural Mexican village, has taken his own life following a disagreement with his father. Caballerango shows the boy’s family members and townspeople as they reckon with the new realities borne out of this inexplicable tragedy. Each account of Nando’s story reveals a different aspect of this rural town, which is deeply affected by modernization. The confrontation between the centuries-old ways of life and the modern-day world seems to be creating serious identity crises among the younger generation. The story is told in a patient, observational style with methodical shots of the landscape, ranches, and of the two white horses, whom Nando and his father tended to. Those horses, the last to see Nando alive, connect us to an ethereal sensation of almost otherworldly mystical beings.

Green Jail

The film follows the last 4 years life of Grandma Hashima, the last existent from colonial Taiwan, who knows the secrets of "Green Jail," the notorious coal mine before World War II on Iriomote Island, Okinawa, Japan.

Werner We Love You

When Werner Herzog was still a child, his father was beaten to death before his eyes. His mother was overwhelmed with his upbringing and thereupon shipped him off to one of the toughest youth welfare institutions in Freistatt. This was followed by a career as a bouncer in the city's most notorious music club and an attempt to start a family. Today, the 77-year-old from Bielefeld lives with his dog Lucky in a lonely house in the country. Despite adverse living conditions, he has survived in his own unique and inimitable way.

Argemira

Plot unavailable

Lida

"LIDA" takes place on the day of Lida's 70th birthday. This already special day is made more unusual by the recent arrival of her grandson, Lev, who had immigrated to the United States with his family in 2001. Returning to Ukraine for the first time as an adult, Lev documents his grandmother as she tends to the small homestead and prepares for the birthday celebration in the rural village in Ukraine. By capturing moments of arduous labor, as well as through personal conversation, Lev inquires into his grandmothers relationship to her home, land - and their family.

143 Sahara Street

Alone in a small white house on the edge of national road 1, the Trans-Saharan road, which connects Algiers to Tamanrasset crossing the immensity of the desert, Malika, 74, one day opened her door to the director Hassen Ferhani, who came there to scout with his friend Chawki Amari, journalist at El Watan and author of the story Nationale 1 which relates his journey on this north-south axis of more than 2000 km. The Malika of Amari's novel, which Ferhani admits to having first perceived as a "literary fantasy", suddenly takes on an unsuspected human depth in this environment naturally hostile to man. She lends herself to the film project as she welcomes her clients, with an economy of gestures and words, an impression reinforced by the mystery that surrounds her and the rare elements of her biography which suggest that she is not from the region, that she left the fertile north of Algeria to settle in the desert where she lives with a dog and a cat.

Coombs

Routine Pleasures, Slow Cinema.

The Blind Storytellers

Li Shouwang is the leader of a blind storytellers team, learned storytelling at the age of 19. His childernare living hard in other cities. Li's money amost goes to his children's pocket every year. But with urbanisation, the storytellers have lost almost all their audience. As the conflict between the storytelling team and the village team intensified, his son, who was far away from home, became the only spiritual sustains... When he was excited that his son would be taking his family home for Chinese New Year, what's await is a sigh.

Siberian Love

After 20 years of living in Berlin, the director Olga Delane goes back to her roots in a small Siberian village, where she is confronted with traditional views of relationships, life and love. The man is the master in the home; the woman’s task is to beget children and take care of the household (and everything else, too). Siberian Love provides unrivaled insights into the (love) life of a Siberian village and seeks the truth around the universal value of traditional relationships.

Friends

About an elderly woman in a country house, spending time with her only companion, a goat.

The Dread

The villagers of El Dorado, Argentina, shy away from doctors. Then again, they hardly need one. They have almost as many cures for ailments and illnesses as there are residents in the village. 65 year old Jorge can also cure the most dreaded ailment of them all, the much feared espanto.

Drei Frauen

Plot unavailable

With or Without You

Back in the days, Choi Maggi an old lady accepted Kim Chunhee as her husband’s second wife to continue the family tree as she has lost her two sons in the past due to measles and typhoon. This story is more dramatic than any drama because even after the death of their husband they live together. The director does a good job in expressing the lives of these two old ladies without any exaggeration. The daily life and relationship of the two ladies eating, washing and working is described in a very detailed script. Through this film you will feel the eager echo of the proposition of life that exceeds the standard of happiness and misfortune. (KIM Youngjin)

America's Hate Preachers

Director Hannah Livingston spends 6 months tracking two of America's most radical Christian hate groups - a notorious pastor from Arizona and a network of extremist preachers.

Prime Farmland

This documentary film follows farmers and activists fighting together to stop the Indiana Enterprise Center, a mega-sized industrial park planned west of South Bend, Indiana

Berbères des cimes

At the heart of the Moroccan High Atlas mountains, water is a resource in short supply. The village of Tizi N'Oucheg has undergone a transformation thanks to Rachid Mandili, who is well-aware that the development of his village depends on access to clean water and on his strong leadership of this project. Mandili rallies all the villagers together and calls upon the knowledge of French and Moroccan scientists to tap water sources, to purify, and reuse waste water for irrigation. The documentary highlights the Berbers' community ties and ingenuity in their dream of independently managing their village water resources. It equally paints a portrait of a man whose initiative and resourcefulness has opened Tizi N'Oucheg up to modernity while still conserving its cultural heritage. Tizi's example presents some of the problems of water access in semi-arid regions and puts forward concrete solutions to these problems.

Tren Paraguay

The Paraguayan railroad, created in 1861, fell in the late twentieth century in decline. Operated for decades by foreign companies and later by the Paraguayan State has been in a growing abandonment since the late 90s. Since then there have been projects of recovery, but the stations are empty and the main terminal was demolished late last year.

Mudder's Hands

A dash of youth, a pinch of age, and an unrecorded recipe: Mudder's Hands is a charming documentary conversation about arthritis, centered around the tradition of baking Newfoundland raisin bread.

Rabbit

A family from the Sierra Negra in Puebla spend their days between the cycles of the earth. From time to time, the parents feel anxious when they think what will happen to their beloved “yen Tochi” (the Rabbit), their youngest child, when they are not there to take care of him.

Aunt Iki

Sigrid Koetse, award-winning actor and grande dame of Dutch theater, lived most of her life in the public eye and was always surrounded by a crowd of admirers. With this short documentary, filmmaker Wytse Koetse shows how his aunt spends her days nowadays, lonely in her Amsterdam home.

Restricted Access to Residents

The way to the bus stop is the same everyday in this remote semi rural neighborhood. But when concrete blocks and trucks start to appear on the middle of the street, it's necessary to take a detour. The landscape and daily routine of the residents are completely changed.

The Art of Movement

A sensual and insightful film about three elderly dancers from Budapest. Irén, Éva and Ágnes - all between 90 and 100 years old - were once part of the early modern dance movement in Hungary. Taking the role of a dance student and dialogue partner Boglárka retraces how each of the elderly dancers transformed their lives and movement practices in order to survive the major socio-political changes of the last century. The film takes us into a personal and bodily encounter with three very different personalities and their relation to their past and present. Returning to the stage and performing in their private rooms, Irén, Éva and Ágnes reveal us an incredible richness of experience stored in their bodies. A choreography of memories.