Starfuckers

A scenario that has repeated itself countless times. Somewhere in Hollywood, a sexual encounter ends with a promise: “I’ll make you a star”. However, the rest of the night absolutely does not go as one would expect.

Love, Deutschmarks and Death

Turkish emigration to Germany leads the community forming in the new country to create its own cultural and musical scene, far from the eyes of popular culture and the media. This documentary gives space to the stories and icons that shaped the voice of expatriates. But it also unravels the financial, political and social complexities that have affected this subculture.

Fragile

A film with a daring musical vein that seeks to distinguish the night experiences of a group of friends from this place of alienation, exclusivity and consumption that is the “club”. There’s nothing more important than defiance against the system—especially when it’s practiced with friends.

The Sower of Stars

Patiño films Tokyo at night as if it were something out of a dream, under the signs of solitude and futurism. The hypnotic quality of the images, where the city lights lull us, is enhanced by the poetry of the narration, like a book of aphorisms.

Patti Smith, Electric Poet

Patti Smith is now 74, has lived several lives as an artist and continues to test the limits of her work. Poet, writer, singer, musician, there are countless facets to her. And her stamp is felt, even without much fuss. A punk at heart, with only one commercial success in her pocket but a lot of rock’n’roll in her baggage, Smith is literally a living legend, full of stories to tell.

Luce and the Rock

A circular village begins its day as usual and Luce soon starts playing, adding small stones to her collection. Behold, an unexpected guest arrives and is not very well received: a huge rock that blocks all doors. But is it just a stone, or something else?

Songs for Drella

A concert film, from 1990, now in a restored version. Ed Lachman captured, three years after Andy Warhol’s death, a stage performance by Lou Reed and John Cale of the album they wrote together in honor of their mentor — Drella, a combination of Dracula and Cinderella, which was a nickname used by his crowd. The songs on the album talk about his perspective, his life and the relationship between the two musicians and Warhol himself.

Sekundenarbeiten

Visual artist Lieselott Beschorner prefers to be alone, living in the artistic universe that she never stops creating. But, still, she allows herself to be filmed, including the moments when drawings sprout from her hands in seconds. Domineering and fun, she has the last word.

Ghost Song

“Houston, Texas: oil, sex, alcohol and drugs”. This is the setting for Nicolas Peduzzi’s documentary, which follows Alexandra, Will and Nate as they try to survive in a city that likes to devour dreams, especially those of an ex-gang leader or of a rich boy disowned due to his addiction. In the background, the coming hurricane isn’t a metaphor at all.

The Great Movement

We’re in Bolivia, with Elder, on the way to La Paz, the third largest city in the country. Elder wants to get his job back, but ends up losing his health. Shortness of breath and asphyxiation are the troubles that haunt him and the help he needs may be unorthodox. As he worsens, Mamá Pancha sets him out to find Max, a witch hermit.

Medusa

In Medusa, Anita Rocha da Silveira’s Brazil is a state dominated by the forces of Christianity and fascism, where a group of young evangelicals function as a force of oppression, attacking any woman they consider “impure” or threatening in the face of the dogma they glorify. But not everything goes without resistance, even within this group of zealots, and Mariana, a young nursing student, begins to question everything she believes in.

Soy Libre

Arnaud, the director’s brother, has always been tempestuous. The adults looked at him as if he was always screwing up and he ended up proving them right, embracing the expectation. For this film, it all started when Arnaud went to a closed educational center and Laure to the Institut Supérieur des Arts. She has been filming her brother ever since. Fifteen years and many difficult moments later, here is a film about, by and with Arnaud.

Super Natural

Inhabiting the blurred boundaries between documentary and fiction, this is a film that experiments with form — between curiosities, video clips and confessions — which is not surprising since it started out as a spectacle for the stage and not for the screen. Madeira’s autochthonous lusciouness is where the possibilities open up to think about everything we consider to be “natural” and whether we should expand the notion to encompass much more complexity.

Journey to the Sun

A film that uses images from family archives to highlight the testimonies of children coming from Austria to Portugal, in the post-Second World War period. This reflection on a migration from an area marked by war, to another without the traces of that same destruction, gives space for dominant narratives to be confronted with first-hand experiences. The film proposes to look at a past that may resonate in the present.

Steakhouse

Franc is awaiting this moment with unyielding enthusiasm. The table has been set neatly, the steak has been marinating and the skillet is ready to turn it into a delicacy. The occasion is Liza’s birthday. A small delay reduces everything to ashes.

Neon Phantom

A musical that has as its literal unsung heroes those who make home deliveries, usually through apps that don’t see the well-being of employees as a priority. The motto is a simple dream: buying a motorcycle, so that the work is made easier.

Sonosfera Telectu

The avant-garde duo Telectu, composed of Vítor Rua and Jorge Lima Barreto, is accompanied in their life on the road, on trips around the world, throughout the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s. The architecture of the documentary is the result of the curatorship of a vast archive of images, from which the current Telectu, Rua and Ilda Teresa Castro, created its operatic structure.

Returning to Reims

A loose adaptation of the eponymous book by Didier Eribon, Jean-Gabriel Périot draws on archival wealth to tell a story — collective and intimate, political and personal — of the French working class since the 1950s. The testimonies of workers, men and women, shape a story that is not always at your fingertips.