Abandoned factories, buildings and offices that are not longer in use… once prosperous in the automobile industry, today the city of Detroit is a urban landscape of ruins and empty places, inhabited by the memories of the people who lived in it and red
We are scum! We are barbarians ! (Jean-Gabriel Périot)
Kokou is a cleaner dreaming of becoming a football manager, Philo wants to become a business woman. Both are refugees in Israel, both learn Hebrew at night. Each has to deal with the disillusionment of facing racism in a country built up by victims of the
In 2008, just before ‚ÄòLehman Brothers bankruptcy’ (the biggest loan bankruptcy in US history and according to many, responsible for the economic crisis we are experiencing) emerged, the mayor of Cleveland filed lawsuit against 21 major banks responsible f
The mass grave of nine persons executed by the Franco’s supporters in 1939 is open. Hands follow the machines, discovering the skeletons, digging in layer by layer, revealing with an incredible delicacy the brutal violence of the murders. Light and wind drift over the scene, silent testimonies of the atrocities and companion to the grievers. (K. S.)
In a scenario that mixes animation and live image, people explain the international crisis, while a (bad) singer fills the air with familiar songs. Opinions vary, but everyone agrees on the amount of mistakes. A chaotic universe that represents well the questions of the people. A film that reflects animatedly on the state of the world. (P. C.)
This film testifies the end of demonization and negation of the humanity of the Black people in the USA through the decades of the 50’s and 60’s. Through a remarkable dialogue between image and sound, we follow the way leading from submitted Niggers to Black people eventually trying to build an own identity. (K. S.)
Nikolaus Geyrhalter has proved to be one of the most talented documentary filmmakers in Austrian production. In Danube Hospital, his camera travels through the many departments, corridors, rooms and cellars of one of the largest hospitals in Europe, where the movements and work routines that compose a harmonious whole of accuracy and precision are orchestrated. In this amazing visit, we feel like privileged spectators, opening doors to which patients normally have no access. A film that shows us how health, sickness, life and death are cared for by a complex institution in a country with a high level of development. (C. C.)
What happens when a filmmaker delivers seven cameras to seven children so they can film their maids for a week? Is the proximity space the same with all family members? What is the place of each member in a family structure? When are the boundaries of friendship outpaced and the roles mingled? Of all the possible answers, Gabriel Mascaro’s film brings some of the less common. The innocence with which the daily routines are filmed leads to a staging of intimacy and a result far less naive than its beginning, with genuinely funny moments. Housemaids is a mirror of Brazil, the walls between classes made of Leblon cement and Rocinha bricks. Images shot by children in five different cities were delivered raw to the director for a final editing. (M. M.)
Life on one of the borders of Europe, as seen by three different points of view. The director intertwine old family images with the reality of present day Ceuta and the life in the woods of African immigrants trying to enter Europe. A story made of steel fences where each and everyone is now locked in and locked out. (K. S.)
An animation that starts from real testimonies of a group of immigrants and transcends into a fun situation, where they have dinner and spend the night at a bear’s house. Each character is represented by a different animal and tells a personal story. A party ends the day while the bear smokes outdoors in silence. (A. P.)
Without waiting, in 1989 Jose Luis Garcia replaces his brother in the Argentine delegation going to North Korea to participate in the World Festival of Youth and Students, a political event “disguised” as vacation, with the support of the USSR after the Tiananmen massacre. Garcia takes a VHS camera on this trip of revolutionary tourism and captures images of a North Korea that opens itself for the first time to thousands of young people around the world. His focus is suddenly on Sukyung Lim, a young activist from South Korea, who comes to Pyongyang to defy the prohibition to travel between the two Koreas. Twenty years later, the image of Lim Sukyung crossing the border in Pyongyang still lives in Jose Luis Garcia’s memory and the reunion with the activist becomes an obsession that the filmmaker pursues, transporting us, on the one hand, to the political situation in Korea, and on the other, introducing us to the woman who in ’89 was the hope for reunification between the two regions. (C. C.)
A road-movie tracing 15 small places in the United States, all of them named Amsterdam. Two Dutch descent filmmakers, Rogier van Eck & Rob Rombout, cross the country from East to West Coast, from their arrival in New York (former Nieuw Amsterdam) to California. Through encounters and stories of the Amsterdams and of the road in between, this long and arbitrary adventure progressively weaves a singular image of the provincial and unknown small town America.