A Long Way to School (2021)

To Be and to Have

The documentary's title translates as "to be and to have", the two auxiliary verbs in the French language. It is about a primary school in the commune of Saint-Étienne-sur-Usson, Puy-de-Dôme, France, the population of which is just over 200. The school has one small class of mixed ages (from four to twelve years), with a dedicated teacher, Georges Lopez, who shows patience and respect for the children as we follow their story through a single school year.

A, B, C... Z

Children get ready to start the first grade. They start learning the first letters.

Film Ideer

Plot unavailable

Candle in the Wave

Project 1 _ Hong Hyung-sook The children who are enthusiastically painting and cutting a doll. What stories will be told at the Square? - Project 10 _ Kim Jeong-geun The janitorial worker from the Busan Subway Station, Kim Young-ja talks about how she hopes to see a clean world, just like how she cleans everywhere in the subway.

Maboul de Séoul

Plot unavailable

Bitter, Sweet, Seoul

Over 98 days from August 20th to November 25th 2013, 2821 people from around the world sent 11,852 video featuring many different faces of Seoul. 154 were selected, edited, and made into a movie.

First Day of School

A documentary about an Iranian boy's first day of school. The beginning of hardships and understanding the realities of life, and perhaps unwanted pain and suffering.

Pick up the Wind

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.

Family in the Bubble

My parents were real estate developers and dealers in the 1980s. They achieved the ‘middle class dream’ thanks to the development boom. However, the Asian financial crisis swept everything away.

Min Siste Morgenstemning

A year of making friends and building connections is over.

Education Week

Young scholars get busy for Newcastle-on-Tyne's 'Education Week' in the tour of Tyneside classrooms.

Elementary

In the Makarenko public elementary school in the Paris outskirts, children want to learn and to be cheered while teachers know they do not only teach, they also educate. With care, tenacity and efforts, children are trained to become not only responsible citizens but also human beings.

L'école de demain

Plot unavailable

Handicapped Future

A documentary by Werner Herzog exploring the different treatment accorded to the disabled in Germany and the USA.

Gooseberries, Mangoes, and the Guava...

Set against the vibrant backdrop of Kerala's legendary School Kalolsavam, this film is a heartfelt exploration of memory, identity, and tradition.

Temporary Identity

What does it mean to belong to a place, a country? In a south Tel Aviv elementary school, that question is addressed head-on by a fourth-grade class and their teacher. The children are asylum seekers whose families mostly do not have a legal status in Israel, yet learn, sing and play in Hebrew all the while examining their identity and sense of belonging.

34 Days in 2018

13-year-old Anderson Cefola documents his month-long grounding in 2018 with an old handheld camera he kept.

Black Out

Every evening during exam season, as the sun sets over Conakry, Guinea, hundreds of school children begin a nightly pilgrimage to the airport, petrol stations and wealthy parts of the city, searching for light to study. This evocative and poignant documentary shows how children reconcile their daily lives in one of the worlds poorest countries with their desire to learn.

On the Way to School

One year in the life of a Turkish teacher, teaching the Turkish language to Kurdish children in a remote village in Turkey. The children can't speak Turkish, the teacher can't speak Kurdish and is forced to become an exile in his own country. On the Way to School is a film about a Turkish teacher who is alone in a village as an authority of the state, and about his interaction with the Kurdish children who have to learn Turkish. The film witnesses the communication problem emphasizing the loneliness of a teacher in a different community and culture; and the changes brought up by his presence into this different community during one year. The film chronicles one school year, starting from September 2007 until the departure of the teacher for summer holiday in June 2008. During this period, they begin to know and understand each other mutually and slowly.

À la recherche du Trottebec

Artist-in-residence in Cherbourg, Laura Molton has worked with the children of the Simone Veil elementary school. They followed the Trottebec, a river that runs through the city. Besides the pupils, she went off to discover that waterway, partially underground, through drawing, moviemaking, and gathering tales from inhabitants. Together, they had explored landscape's recollection, and the city's transformations.

May I Be Happy

Through poetic cinematography and stories of teachers sharing their wisdom with children from a range of backgrounds, the film showcases the benefits of mindfulness as a way out of violence and suffering, and as an attainable solution for younger generations.

Distinction

Two high school students from very different backgrounds participate in a musical with mentally disabled children, which eventually leads to the realisation of their dreams and aspirations.

Factory Complex

The drastic economic development in South Korea once surprised the rest of the world. However, behind of it was an oppression the marginalized female laborers had to endure. The film invites us to the lives of the working class women engaged in the textile industry of the 1960s, all the way through the stories of flight attendants, cashiers, and non-regular workers of today. As we encounter the vista of female factory workers in Cambodia that poignantly resembles the labor history of Korea, the form of labor changes its appearance but the essence of the bread-and-butter question remains still.

In the Garden of Sounds

«Nel giardino dei suoni» («In The Garden of Sounds») is a touching, poetic exploration of the relationship between mind, body and sound, and a cinematic journey to the borders of communication. Nicola Bellucci tells the extraordinary story of Wolfgang Fasser, a blind musician and soundscape artist who works with severely handicapped children, helping them to find their place in a world not made for them. On his own way into the darkness, Fasser discovered the world of sounds, a parallel universe to our visual world. His far-reaching explorations of sound’s effect on mind and body led him to the field of music therapy.