The death of the older brother of Medias Gayet, a young entrepreneur from Benin, has greatly affected his family. Alongside the very sensitive portrait of this bereaved African family, the director explores the different facets of the rich African spirituality of the cradle of Voodoo, Benin. Passing by the importance of the sacred in the animist religion, by the meeting
Shot in the arid landscape of West Bali, Indonesia, Tajen, Balinese for cockfight, follows multiple narrative threads of this ancient spectacle–that of the blade, the rooster, the cockfighter. It is the moment when these elements come together during the bloody match that the real drama begins.
Wasi (to see) is the story of a day of seeing (themselves) in the Arhuaco community in Kutunzama (Magdalena, Colombia). From the hand of the Arhuaco filmmaker Amado Villafaña, we enter into what it means to see for the indigenas Arhuacos. From the viewing of photographs and films, we approach how the Arhuaco people have been visually represented from the
Ormajeevikal (Memory Beings) is an impressionistic film that paints a picture of the town Kozhikode situated in North Kerala, a region in South India, and the spiritual immersion of ordinary town dwellers in music.The film is a reflective essay traversing sounds and spaces that build a portrait of a small town ( dominantly Muslim) with a music culture that is
After 25 years in France, I return to Bulgaria when a vertiginous suspicion arises: what if my family had collaborated with the secret police of the totalitarian regime?
Nimble fingers belong to the Vietnamese women who work in factories owned by some of the most popular electronic brands. Bay is one of the thousands of young migrant workers. She comes from a remote Muong village on the highlands of Northern Vietnam. Now she lives, with the other workers, in a Hanoi suburb, a district developed around one of
An epic drama on cross-cultural marriages between Thai women and Danish fishermen, co-directed by Janus Metz (Armadillo, True Detective, Borg Vs Mc Enroe). Over a decade the directors follow four couples as they struggle to find a way out of poverty and loneliness and see their children grow up to heap the seeds or pay the price of their mothers
“le ciel, la terre et l’homme” tries to get hold of the impressions of the Moroccan desert landscape, through which perpetually blows the wind, as well as of the people living there and to tell their stories. In the reality of the film a space of encounters with Ahmed, Yussef, Lahcen, and Idir is being developed and their stories enable
Guided by ayahuasca chants, Green River. The time of the Yakurunas is a poetic journey into the depths of the Amazon. The film explores the perception of time in three small villages intertwined by the flowing waters of the Amazon river, immersing the viewer in a landscape inhabited by shamans and archetypical societies.
OYATE is a film about life on Pine Ridge Reservation in southwestern South Dakota. It follows two families on Pine Ridge as they go about their daily activities over the course of a single summer. They attend rodeos, shoot clay pigeons, and participate in pow wows. Family members get married, have children, and celebrate the 4th of July. All the
Sicily, summer. A wall of barbed wire separates the biggest refugee camp in Europe from a deserted, unwelcoming hinterland. The camp is the CARA of Mineo. Here migrants are blocked in endless waits, with their lives dotted with dreamy, absurd, even comical situations.
Pomelo people live in the heart of the growing city of Hanoi, Vietnam. It is a neighbourhood where people from different rural provinces come and work. Living in the grounds of an ongoing ring road construction, they go through processes of demolition and land eviction.
For years, the stories of West African migrants and refugees have been told through the lenses of foreign journalists. Now there is a story from the inside.
Grierson award-winning director Iris Zaki enters the heart of Tekoa, an Israeli settlement in the West-Bank,and sits down to talk to the locals. Though fearful at first of the left-wing invader, settlers from various backgrounds gradually open up to her. Their honest, surprising and sometimes funny conversations offer a fresh take on Israeli reality from both sides of the Green
Unes is paralyzed after a massive stroke. He lies in bed in the family’s living room, watching the live feed from security cameras installed at the perimeter of his home – a matter of protection after several assaults on his family. “We are guilty, we’ve brought shame on ourselves,” this is how Unes summarizes decades of collaboration with Israeli security
In Sarawak (Borneo), “the ones who live upstream” are the first affected by deforestation. The Penan, (ex) nomadic hunters, are caught in the eye of that storm : how to go on living when one’s entire world is being taken apart, when the landscape, which brought meaning to existence, literally disappears and with it language, customs and the spirits ?
Kiribati faces the unstoppable rise of the sea, which will engulf the nation before long. The people of Kiribati will soon be the world’s first “climate change refugees.” Can these people survive as their country disappears?
Island Soldier interweaves the personal stories of Micronesian soldiers serving in the U.S. military, following their journey from the most remote islands in the Pacific to the front lines of war in Afghanistan, and back again. These non-U.S. citizens are fighting in America’s wars – yet they serve, and die, at five times the rate per capita of their American
Sri Lanka 1983, Jude Ratnam is five years old. On a red train, he flees the massacre of the Tamils instigated by the Pro-Sinhalese majoritarian government. Now a filmmaker, he takes the same train from South to North.
Tribal Justice is a feature documentary about a little known, underreported but effective criminal justice reform movement in America today: the efforts of tribal courts to create alternative justice systems based on their traditions. In California, the state with the largest number of Indian people and tribes, two formidable Native American women are among those leading the way. Abby Abinanti,
Weaving together the stories and interactions of five activists (Joshua Wong, Denise Ho, Wong Yeung Tat, Ed Lau and Derek Lam) and their friends with astonishing fluidity as they come to terms with life in a post-Umbrella Movement Hong Kong and the realisation that life is the sum of all their choices. Director Matthew Torne (Lessons in Dissent [2014], Joshua:
In recent years the political tension in Poland has been escalating unprecedentedly. This film presents the dramatic developments through the eyes of 2 women on opposite sides of the political barricade.
“Rituals of Resistance” looks at the evolving generational responses by pacifist Tibetans under 65 years of Chinese occupation. Through first-hand oral accounts by three Tibetan exiles living in disparate parts of the world, the film traces the three paths of resistance from the active and the brutal, to the realm of the symbolic and sacrificial. The film creatively explores the
Twice, the people went into the streets. Twice, the police drove them away. What began as protests became uprisings. In the once-prosperous industrial city of Maribor, Slovenia, anger over political corruption became unruly revolt. This participatory documentary places audiences in the midst of the third and largest uprising as crowds surround and ransack City Hall under a hailstorm of tear
The Bastion Point occupation was one of the most important protests in the struggle for Maori land rights in New Zealand. The protest began in 1977 when the government proposed to subdivide Maori land in the Bastion Point region of Auckland, New Zealand’s largest city. The Ngati Whatua tribe resisted these plans and occupied the site for 506 days. This
The sudden death of pioneering Maori filmmaker Merata Mita in 2010, led her son on a journey to uncover a story of mother’s love that changed the landscape of indigenous films forever. Indeed, she opened doors for indigenous voices we celebrate today; Warwick Thornton, Taika Waititi, Sterlin Harjo and Zoe Hopkins to name a few.
In 2017, we went to Gutian county, where the story of The Golden Wing (Lin Yueh-hwa 1944) took place, in Fujian Province, China, to produce a film about the Chinese customs of eating tangyuan (rice dumpling in English) and filial piety on Winter Solstice. This film is based on a myth that one dutiful son guided his ape mother to go home by this
According to Indigenous elders, the process of standing up for tests to win the qualification to wear the feather headdress is a symbol of becoming a man (Tamdaw) for the Pangcah people of Taiwan. The process of qualification has changed over time in recent days due to the lost of traditional environment and lifestyle.
Anais and Daisy meet a midwife, a dying profession, and have a new understand of life and death. Since then, they’ve chosen a birthing process that is differently from 99% of the women in Taiwan.
Globalization has a great impact on the farming villages in Taiwan. With it come the agricultural transition, the old farmers’ thought and the homecoming of young people.
After 1989, the military training of college freshmen extended to nationwide universities.In 2017, the last batch of post-90s college students and the first group of post-00 college students entered the university campus together. The film records the management and operation of military training at a key university in southern China in the summer of 2017, based on direct cinema.
“In the Palakuwan not only become good man by yourself. It is the collective all be great and strong!”
“Mainay u? (Do you want to be a man?)”
In 1932, Muakai from the Zingrur royal family of the Kaviyangan village was accessioned into the Taihoku imperial University (former name of the National Taiwan University, abbr. NTU) and stood silently in the corner of the Museum of Anthropology. Considering to applying for the National Treasure, Professor Chia-yu Hu of NTU went back to village since 2014 and discussed related
After being abandoned for nearly seven decades, the old tribal village is difficult to reach with almost no roads leading to it. The only guide on our journey in search of our roots is Wilang, who drags his octogenarian body up the mountain. As we follow Wilang’s footsteps, we travel a tunnel back in time…
