Staden brinner (2025)

Racist Trees

Can a tree be racist? A few years ago, debate on this issue reached as far as Fox News. The focus was a row of tamarisk trees along a huge golf course in Palm Springs, which screened off the neighborhood of Crossley Tract. This is a historically Black neighborhood, named after its founder Lawrence Crossley, who was one of the first Black residents to settle in the largely white tourist paradise, established on indigenous land over a century ago.

Be Water

In 1971, after being rejected by Hollywood, Bruce Lee returned to his parents’ homeland of Hong Kong to complete four iconic films. Charting his struggles between two worlds, this portrait explores questions of identity and representation through the use of rare archival footage, interviews with loved ones and Bruce’s own writings.

Coded Bias

Exploring the fallout of MIT Media Lab researcher Joy Buolamwini's startling discovery that facial recognition does not see dark-skinned faces accurately, and her journey to push for the first-ever legislation in the U.S. to govern against bias in the algorithms that impact us all.

Too Black to Be French?

Approximately, because so-called "ethnic" statistics are prohibited, there are an estimated 3.3 million black French citizens. Distant descendants of slaves from the Caribbean or "indigenous" peoples from the French colonial empire in Africa, they constitute a minority that is often discriminated against. Isabelle Boni-Claverie, a mixed-race woman raised in the affluent neighborhoods of Paris, daughter of an Ivorian politician and granddaughter of Alphonse Boni, a Black man who became a magistrate of the French Republic in the 1930s, examines what is blocking the social advancement of Black French people and the full recognition of their citizenship.

Negra

I was about seven years old the first time someone called me \"black\" on the street. I turned around to see who they were talking to, until I realized they were talking to me.

La banlieue, c’est le paradis

In the 1960s, the suburbs were meant to be modern havens for newcomers from rural France, Portugal, Spain, North Africa, and Africa, helping rebuild post-war France. Large housing complexes symbolized this ideal, offering comfort, heating, and electricity. But by the 1980s, disillusionment set in as economic crisis, unemployment, poverty, crime, racism, and police violence took hold. Mohamed Bouhafsi tells the story of a dream that didn’t last.

Briser le code

Plot unavailable

They Won't Call It Murder

Police have been killing people in Columbus, Ohio, with near impunity for more than two decades, leaving behind a community bound together by grief – and a system that refuses to call these killings murder. In a searing indictment of the police and justice system at large, educator and curator Ingrid Raphael and journalist Melissa Gira Grant have collaborated in this short film, which spotlights the testimonies and resistance strategies of the loved ones of Henry Green, Tyre King, Donna Dalton and Julius Tate. These are the mothers, sisters, and grandmothers of those who were killed by Columbus police, women seeking justice for their family members, despite knowing that it is unlikely to be found within the system that caused their wrongful deaths.

Mr. Trump, Pardon the Interruption

An analysis of the impact on the United States Latino community of immigration policies promoted by President Donald Trump.

The Venerable W.

A view of the religious tensions between Muslims and Buddhist through the portrait of the Buddhist monk Ashin Wirathu, leader of anti-Muslim movement in Myanmar.

The Tulsa Lynching of 1921: A Hidden Story

Documents the race riot of 1921 and the destruction of the African-American community of Greenwood in Tulsa, Oklahoma. With testimony by eyewitnesses and background accounts by historians.

Death Squadrons: The French School

After the Battle of Algiers, France and its army exported, as true experts, anti-subversive methods to Latin America and the United States in the 1960s. After more than a year of investigation in Argentina , in Chile, Brazil, the United States and France, the director collected, sometimes under the cover of a hidden camera, recorded conversations, the exclusive testimonies of the main protagonists. From General Aussaresses to former Minister of the Armed Forces Pierre Messmer, including General Reynaldo Bignone (head of the military junta in Argentina from 1982 to 1984), General Albano Harguindéguy, General Manuel Contreras, and Generals John Johns and Carl Bernard, this investigation gives us a hidden reality of the country of Human Rights.

The Rumba Kings

In the fifties, when the future Democratic Republic of Congo was still a Belgian colony, an entire generation of musicians fused traditional African tunes with Afro-Cuban music to create the electrifying Congolese rumba, a style that conquered the entire continent thanks to an infectious rhythm, captivating guitar sounds and smooth vocals.

No Other Land

This film made by a Palestinian-Israeli collective shows the destruction of the occupied West Bank's Masafer Yatta by Israeli soldiers and the alliance which develops between the Palestinian activist Basel and Israeli journalist Yuval.

Incarceration Nation

An examination of the connection between relentless government intervention since colonisation to the trauma and disadvantage experiences by Indigenous Australians - the two key drivers of incarceration.

Statues Also Die

Commissioned by the journal Présence Africaine, this short documentary examines how African art is devalued and alienated through colonial and museum contexts. Beginning with the question of why African works are confined to ethnographic displays while Greek or Egyptian art is celebrated, the film became a landmark of anti-colonial cinema and was banned in France for eight years.

Flag Wars

Filmed over four years, this documentary focuses on the impacts of gentrification as gay white professionals move into a largely black working-class neighborhood in Columbus, Ohio.

Play with the Devil – Becoming Zeal & Ardor

Zeal & Ardor catapults Swiss musician Manuel Gagneux from the underground to the world stage. Religion, racism, segregation and appropriation: Gagneux makes music against taboos. But being a leader against his will scares the introverted artist. Can he remix the game?

Danças Negras

A debate about the presence of black culture in Brazilian contemporaneity, as well as the various paradoxes found in the environment of a society marked by a racist and slavery tradition.

The Musicians' Green Book: An Enduring Legacy

Stories and music of Black artists who relied on an underground travel guide to navigate the injustices of racial segregation while on the road. The Negro Travelers’ Green Book was a directory of lodgings, restaurants, and entertainment venues where African Americans were welcomed. Features performances and interviews with vocalists, musicians, activists, historians, and others.

Alt-Right: Age of Rage

In the first year of Trump’s Presidency, Daryle Lamont Jenkins, an Antifa activist, combats the rise of the Alt-Right movement, while Richard Spencer, an Alt-Right leader, fights to gain ground, culminating in a tragic showdown in Charlottesville.

Save Our Souls

Bobbing around on Mediterranean waters aboard the Ocean Viking, aid workers from the French relief service SOS Méditerranée gaze at the horizon. Is that a rubber dinghy in the distance, or is it garbage? The organization sails up and down the Libyan coast looking to pick up refugees in boats. On board is a 30-strong team ready to offer help and support refugees with their asylum applications.

What Happened, Miss Simone?

The film chronicles Nina Simone's journey from child piano prodigy to iconic musician and passionate activist, told in her own words.

HALEMEH

In the Gaza refugee camp of Jerash, Palestinians face the critical issue of lacking identification documents. This situation undermines their rights and hinders access to essential services and opportunities.

Welcome to Leith

In September 2012, the tiny prairie town of Leith, North Dakota, sees its population of 24 grow by one. As the new resident's behavior becomes more threatening, tensions soar, and the residents desperately look for ways to expel their unwanted neighbor.