Father Lenin (2019)

Fascinating India

"Fascinating India" spreads an impressive panorama of India’s historical and contemporary world. The film presents the most important cities, royal residences and temple precincts. It follows the trail of different religious denominations, which have influenced India up to the present day. Simon Busch and Alexander Sass travelled for months through the north of the Indian subcontinent to discover what is hidden under India’s exotic and enigmatic surface, and to show what is rarely revealed to foreigners. The film deals with daily life in India. In Varanasi, people burn their dead to ashes. At the Kumbh Mela, the biggest religious gathering of the world, 35 million pilgrims bathe in holy River Ganges. This is the first time India is presented in such an alluring and engaging fashion on screen.

Lighthouse

After the Indian Ocean Tsunami of 2004, widowed women struggled to receive aid due to their social status. Following the story of Mrs. Manjula along with many other women from Tamil Nadu, the challenges faced by millions of widows across the country are illuminated. From being ostracized to denied basic rights and economic opportunities, widows in India endure a cycle of discrimination and marginalization. “Kalangarai” meaning "lighthouse" in Tamil, is an organization dedicated to empowering women through initiatives such as self-help groups and educational programs. Throughout the film, "Lighthouse" illustrates the emotional journeys and resilience of these women, as well as the active change that Kalangarai strives to achieve. This documentary urges global awareness and support for widowed women’s rights, as the women’s struggles depict the intersectionality of gender, poverty, and social injustice.

Into Great Silence

An intimate portrayal of the everyday lives of Carthusian monks of the Grande Chartreuse, high in the French Alps (Chartreuse Mountains). The idea for the film was proposed to the monks in 1984, but the Carthusians said they wanted time to think about it. The Carthusians finally contacted Gröning 16 years later to say they were now willing to permit Gröning to shoot the movie, if he was still interested.

Like Stone Lions in the Gateway into Night

Between 1947 and 1951, more than 80 000 Greek men, women and children were deported to the isle of Makronissos (Greece) in reeducation camps created to ‘fight the spread of Communism’. Among those exiles were a number of writers and poets, including Yannis Ritsos and Tassos Livaditis. Despite the deprivation and torture, they managed to write poems which describe the struggle for survival in this world of internment. These texts, some of them buried in the camps, were later found. «Like Lions of stone at the gateway of night» blends these poetic writings with the reeducation propaganda speeches constantly piped through the camps’ loudspeakers. Long tracking shots take us on a trance-like journey through the camp ruins, interrupted along the way by segments from photographic archives. A cinematic essay, which revives the memory of forgotten ruins and a battle lost.

Top Gear: India Special

The gang embarks on a trade mission to India. Equipped with three old British cars and a range of uniquely British products, they set off on an epic road trip across one of the world's most fascinating and challenging countries.

One Ticket Please

A documentary about a 78-year-old Indian woman in New York who is the world's most passionate theatergoer. Nicki Cochrane has been seeing a play every day for more than 25 years, acquiring free tickets using a variety of ingenious means.

Madonna: The Celebration Tour in Rio

Madonna celebrates her four-decade career in a special concert for over 1.6 million people at the Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro.

Mind of Clay

In a poetic hour and a half, director Mani Kaul looks at the ancient art of making pottery from a wide variety of perspectives.

Communion

When adults are ineffectual, children have to grow up quickly. Ola is 14 and she takes care of her dysfunctional father, autistic brother and a mother who lives apart from them and is mainly heard the phone. Most of all she wants to reunite a family that simply doesn’t work — like a defective TV set. She lives in the hope of bringing her mother back home. Her 13 year old brother Nikodem’s Holy Communion is a pretext for the family to meet up. Ola is entirely responsible for preparing the perfect family celebration. “Communion” reveals the beauty of the rejected, the strength of the weak and the need for change when change seems impossible. This crash course in growing up teaches us that failure is not final. Especially when love is in question.

A Road in India

Life on the road in India, showing the traffic, people and animals.

Temples of India

Hindu temples at Benares and Belur and the mythologies associated with them.

Day at St Christopher's College and School

Behind the scenes at a Chennai teachers training college.

Leninland

At the peak of Perestroika, in 1987, in the village of Gorki, where Lenin spent his last years, after a long construction, the last and most grandiose museum of the Leader was opened. Soon after the opening, the ideology changed, and the flow of pilgrims gradually dried up. Despite this, the museum still works and the management is looking for ways to attract visitors. Faithful to the Lenin keepers of the museum as they can resist the onset of commercialization. The film tells about the modern life of this amazing museum-reserve and its employees.

Il fare politica

Fabiana, Carlo, Claudio and Vincenzo… I met them in 1982 in Mercatale, their village in Tuscany, near Florence. They were aged between 25 and 45 and were cheerful militants in the Italian Communist Party, that strange party which has made its mark on history and which was both a school and a family for them. I have filmed in Mercatale every two or three years for over 20 years (1982/2004). The fi lm takes the “long view” of their political and personal development against the backdrop of village life. Stories with both human and political interest spanning over a quarter of a century with relevance for present day issues: what has become of the plans to change the world in Berlusconi’s Italy? From a more global perspective: what else can politics do? When the time comes to take stock the paths of their rich and varied personal lives cross once more with all their doubts and allegiances.

Writing with Fire

In a cluttered news landscape dominated by men, emerges India’s only newspaper run by Dalit women. Armed with smartphones, Chief Reporter Meera and her journalists break traditions on the frontlines of India’s biggest issues and within the confines of their own homes, redefining what it means to be powerful.

Castro: The World's Most Watched Man

Fidel Castro employed a vast spy network that helped him remain in power.

Napalm

Napalm is the story of the breathtaking and brief encounter, in 1958, between a French member of the first Western European delegation officially invited to North Korea after the devastating Korean war and a nurse working for the Korean Red Cross hospital, in Pyongyang, capital of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

Dams: The Lethal Water Bombs

Documentary short about the disastrous dangers of aging, ailing dams.

Stanisław Lem: Autor Solaris

An account of the life and work of the Polish writer Stanisław Lem (1921-2006), a key figure in science fiction literature involved in mysteries and paradoxes that need to be enlightened.

Cuba and the Cameraman

This revealing portrait of Cuba follows the lives of Fidel Castro and three Cuban families affected by his policies over the last four decades.

The Arms Drop

One night in December 1995, 4 tons of weapons fall from the sky over India. A few days later a Danish man returns to Denmark with a grave secret. Only when an English arms dealer is arrested in India and faces death sentence, does the Dane appear in the large-scale international investigation of the case. With reconstructions and scenes resembling a feature film, the docu-thriller The Arms Drop tells the nerve-racking story of two men who gamble their lives on a joint mission with each their secret agenda, and the political, personal and diplomatic consequences 20 years later.

Ask the Sexpert

A sex columnist gains popularity even while a ban on comprehensive sex education in schools is adopted by approximately a third of India’s states.

A Suitable Girl

A Suitable Girl follows three young women in India struggling to maintain their identities and follow their dreams amid intense pressure to get married. The film examines the women's complex relationship with marriage, family, and society.

NINA G: STUTTERER INTERRUPTED

This one-of-a-kind comedy special showcases the comedian's riotous stand-up performance, exploring everything from the Disability experience to her Italian-Catholic upbringing to body image issues and more.

India Cabaret

A documentary exploring the "respectable" and "immoral" stereotypes of women in Indian society told from the point of view of 2 strip-tease dancers in a cabaret house in Bombay.

The Devil and Father Amorth

William Friedkin attends an exorcism with Father Gabriele Amorth, as he treats an Italian woman named Cristina for the ninth time. Prior to filming, Cristina had purportedly been experiencing behavioural changes and “fits” that could not be explained by psychiatry, and which became worse during Christian holidays.

A Monk's Secret

This short documentary tells the story of a cheese—the famous Oka—and of the monks who make it. The Trappists in Oka, Quebec, began making the cheese around 1890, when a Trappist monk from France taught them the recipe, which dates back to the 11th century. Today, Brother Albéric continues to make the cheese at an abbey in Manitoba according to traditional methods and a secret recipe written in a mysterious notebook.

Maya, la tigresse du Maharashtra

Plot unavailable

Communism + Sganzerla + Lumière

A fragment of reality about a less affected part of the third world, and how it got to the moon.