Films A-Z 2020

A Great Ride

A Great Ride” is a documentary about older lesbians aging with dynamism and zest for life. When they were young these women forged a social movement to come out as true to themselves. Now they are pioneers once again as they face the next daunting challenge: growing old, which can come with frailty, loneliness, and the death of dear friends. In this group portrait, these women are courageous role models for aging, which they do with determination, engagement, an independent and irreverent spirit and a heartening delight in living.

Deborah Craig

As Up to Now

Hope is what brings us forward. All the characters in the movie – the main character Margit, and her daughter Judit- become part of a hope giving lie. Margit suffers from a serious skin cancer, but her daughter arranges that her mother be treated. She goes to the treatments alone, and her life become more active and the relationship with her daughter seems to get better.

Katalin Moldovai

Astronaut

Once upon a time, there was a broke guy who left the earth in a thrift store space suit. Astronaut is a no budget Space Odyssey, a voyage into the imaginary world of a hero who, night after night, explores the universe seeking for a safe haven.

Pierre Ponchant

Best Seller

When the reigning queen of the Home Shopping Network is killed live on-the-air during a hair drying demonstration gone wrong, her three venomous, power-hungry disciples enter into a cutthroat competition for her coveted time slot.

Nora Kirkpatrick

Caroline Buxton’s Lipstick Posse

Trying to forge new destinies beyond their backwater town, an offbeat housewife and her cosmetic peddlers embark in door-to-door sales, under the nose of her authoritative husband.

Claude on the Run

65-year-old Claude zooms about on her little motorbike, scratching scratch cards and living off bogus cheques. But the local population has had enough. The old lady must either settle down or disappear.

Thomas Buisson

Clay

20-something year old Agnes, seeks independence in traveling to Iceland on her own. With a promising job as an au pair for two twin girls, she seems to have found the perfect base for her search in personal reinvention. But once arriving, Agnes quickly meets a darker truth as she is thrown into a world of distress, with a mother fully embodying the word ‘abuse’.Henceforth, she is forced to take action in a desperate attempt to sort out the situation – whilst not being completely sorted out herself.

Leonard Rääf

Cracked Actors

The world of entertainment through the eyes of the backbiting Players that make this world a reality

DAR(k)WIN Project

This fictional animal documentary places us in a distant imaginary future where life underwater as we know it today has been completely replaced by a new generation of species, made of plastic. The massive human pollution of the oceans has led to a profound disruption of our eco-systems, the laws of evolution have been jostled and led to the creation of new submarine mutants, observed in their natural environment.

Loris Lamunière, Charles Mercier

Deathless, I Cry in My Dreams

A young woman's friend dies in an accident, but she doesn't cry. She finds a bag full of money and is more affected by the joy of the money, than she is troubled by the sorrow of her loss. In her dreams she is haunted by her dead friend, who asks her why she isn’t crying.

August Aabo

Domino Effect

By 2030, the fraction of the population aged 65 and over will exceed 30% in wealthy nations. In 2050, for the first time in human history, the elderly population will be more numerous than the young population. In a thermal bath town that withstands mass tourism, a builder and his surveyor partner start up an ambitious project: converting twenty abandoned hotels into luxury residences for wealthy retired people. The lack of financial support from the banks and investors triggers a domino effect in their destiny that forever subverts reality.

Alessandro Rossetto

Ever, Rêve

Ever, Rêve, Hélène Cixous films the roads to creation of an African & French feminist legend, a 1968 activist, a famous playwright and poet who shares all the “wars of liberation” of our time. With friends like the Algerian-born philosopher Jacques Derrida, the Algerian-born artist Adel Abdessemed, with Ariane Mnouchkine and her cosmopolitan theatre company, Cixous explores the wounds our time and allows us to ear the cry of literature. The history of dozens of members of her German-Jewish family who were assassinated in the death camps, and the trauma of the wars of decolonization in Africa are never far, for this major figure who was born in Oran, Algeria shortly before the start of the Second World War. It flows like a work of fiction. Ever, Rêve, Hélène Cixous is a poetic journey. The characters are depicted by a cinematic language that privileges a non-authoritative technique, with no interviews and through a sequential progression whose goal is to unveil the mysteries of an artist’s creative search, of her intimate inspirations, and of her anti-racist and anti-sexist political involvements as a public intellectual.

Olivier Morel

Fashion Victims

Tamil Nadu, Southern India. Millions of adolescents and young women work in the textile industry, from the cotton weaving to the production of ready-to-wear garments, for both the local and the international market. They often come from poor and rural areas, where there are no income alternatives neither for them nor for their families, especially given the constant and persistent decline of agriculture. It is in these villages that the “brokers”, acting as intermediaries between the companies in need of a sizable and docile workforce, and a local population ever more desperate, every year recruit hundreds of thousands of girls. The girls are taken to the companies, where, besides working, they will also be living in factory hostels, although often they – nor their families and even some brokers – are not aware of this. They are enrolled through so called recruitment and exploitation schemes; one of the most known is the ‘Sumangali scheme’. Under the scheme, the girls must work between three and five years: exhausting shifts, up to twenty hours a day, in dangerous conditions, they are deprived of the freedom of movement and to communicate with the outside world, and they do not receive a monthly salary, but only a very small amount of money for their daily needs. At the end of the stated period of work, they should receive the cumulative payment of what they have earned over the years – between five hundred and eight hundred euro. They dream of being able to use that money as a dowry for their wedding. Instead, what often happens are work accidents, missed payments, escapes, suicides, sexual violence, and even murders. The girls themselves, by narrating their past and their future, draw a picture of the daily cruelty of a production system in which the first fashion victims are they themselves, violated in the body and in their dreams, to produce what we wear everyday.

Alessandro Brasile

Fathers

Kasper is hurt when his father almost misses out on seeing his new-born granddaughter simply because he refuses to set foot in the same room as his ex-wife – Kasper’s mother – is in. He decides to make an ultimatum towards his father, demanding that he participate unconditionally in his grandchild’s life – now and forevermore, whatever it takes.

Albert Sverrisson

Flowers

It is All Saints’ Day. Bérénice wanders through the city. She must find flowers for the grave. Sacha, her son, has other plans. Too bad. She must find flowers for the grave.

Baptiste Petit-Gats

Foggy Days

Stockholm. In a time where social media gives us performance anxiety and confirmation is becoming increasingly important, Clara meets Peter. Clara wants the world. Peter wants nothing but to be loved. The usually confident Peter quickly becomes inferior to the charismatic Clara, leaving him with only one last option: to confront her with his true feelings. Together they are drawn into a world where love is a currency to feed their own ego. Their relationship is a battle without a winner. Foggy Days is a modern love story that questions how we live today and what happens when we only focus on ourselves and ignore everybody else. The usually confident Peter quickly becomes inferior to the charismatic Clara, leaving him with only one last option: to confront her with his true feelings. Together they are drawn into a world where love is a currency to feed their own ego. Their relationship is a battle without a winner. Foggy Days is a modern love story that questions how we live today and what happens when we only focus on ourselves and ignore everybody else.

Martin Sandin

Formation – Soundtrack

Grit

Winner of 10 international film awards, Emmy nominated. An international drilling company Lapindo carelessly unleashes an unstoppable toxic mudflow into East Java—burying dozens of nearby villages and displacing tens of thousands of Indonesians in the process. Directors Cynthia Wade (Academy Award® winner) and award-winning director Sasha Friedlander focus the tragedy around 16-year-old Dian, a survivor who is routinely ignored by her government, despite the unforgiving sludge continuing to engulf her home for over a decade. Chronicling the teenager’s transformation from a young girl into an outspoken advocate for her community, GRIT is a timely showcase of the urgent need for political activism, the duty to hold those in power accountable, and the perseverance of the human spirit amidst social and environmental strife.

Cynthia Wade, Sasha Friedlander

Head Burst

Markus, a good-looking, likable and respected architect, is a paedophile. Bodies of little boys excite him. He suffers tremendously because of this inclination. He tortures himself for it and is disgusted by himself. Nevertheless, the arousal is there. And there is nothing he can do about it. He struggles the most when he is about to become sexual with a boy for the first time. That is when he senses that he will not be able to keep his desire under control for much longer. He is getting more and more isolated. Markus struggles to resist the ever-rising calls in his head to finally do more with a boy.

Savas Ceviz

Heron – Fragrance of Violence

The short art film HÉRON consists of three storylines / events that are displayed in parallel throughout the film. The first part of the film was filmed in the forests of Småland in Sweden. The doll house, playing a central role in many scenes, is built to be a copy of a stout house in Småland in the years of 1700-1800. During this period there was famine and poverty in Sweden, especially in the regions of Småland. This led to a massive emigration to America. Letters from the emigrants told stories depicting a land of possibilities, religious diversity and political freedom. I relate to this because my family emigrated from Finland to Sweden, and I use this experience and transform it into art. Unfortunatly the original house in Småland, including all the furniture, declined and had to be torn down to build new housing. But the doll house and the miniatyre furniture still exists, and have been documented in Héron – fragrance of violence. The other two parts were shot partly in Ramnäs, a large burnt down forest outside of Sala in Sweden, and in a green screen studio that we set up at Cité International des Arts in Paris. The material is combined in an experimental way / process; the different parts of the film coexist simultaneously and together they carry new meaning – through the variation of images and sounddesign when juxtaposed. The purpose was to create an 'automatic' art, developing the material directly from the subconscious, without being filtered through reason, morality or aesthetics. We played with the so- called 'automism' – a kind of random stream of inner images. In Paris we added elements not originally in the script, strong colors and new props; large bird heads and a blonde doll-woman. Me and David Nord shot and developed the new story threads in the green screen studio (we spent 2 month there). The “Doll shots” were inserted into the doll house that we filmed in Småland. I play all the grown-up characters in the film, and the children we shot in the forest are played by Siri Sutinen, Illyan Sutinen and Elvin Kander. Daniel Bingert composed the music for the film, David Nord did the sound design in collaboration with me. Editing, compositing and postproduction was done by David Nord. The main inspiration for the film derives from my childhood summer place in Majkkala järvi in Finland.

Natalie Sutinen

Hold the Sun in Your Hands: The Erika Jacoby Story

Mixed media animation and personal testimony illustrate the story of a child survivor of the Holocaust. Created by students in the Righteous Conversations Project, a collaboration of Holocaust survivors and teens, during Harvard-Westlake Summer Film.

Talia Abel, Xenia Bernal, Ian Kim, Alejandro Moses, Hank Schoen, India Spencer, Eva Suissa, Michael Zambrano

Island Road

The Isle de Jean Charles is found on the Bayou, in southeast Louisiana. The location is currently inhabited by descendants of Choctaw, Biloxi and Chitimacha Native American tribes representing fifty residents or so. Since the 18th century, fishing has been the community’s means of sustenance. This strip of land, however, is slowly disappearing due to rising water levels, a combination of hurricanes and overall climate changes. The ecosystem is also being weakened by the construction of canals used by oil companies in the Gulf of Mexico. The U.S. State Department initiated a relocation project for Native American communities on this land. But the Isle de Jean Charles was not integrated to the Mississippi’s containment project given the high costs that it would entail. In such a context of forced migration, the remaining dwellers are beginning to question their isolation between resistance and abandonment.

Francescu Artily

Kalcium

Sebastian, a young boy living in a basement with his two brothers has to learn how to work together with his fellow prisoners to escape the man who's holding them captured.

Alex Ströbeck

Ketchup Brothers

Ketchup Brothers is the “blood” oath between two lost souls united by destiny: Vero, who has just escaped from jail with a stolen car, and Samuel, a child who wanders through the streets of Barcelona stealing wallets.

Eric Boadella

Killing Stacy

Marcus is the guitarist and leading force behind struggling rock band, Killing Stacy. On the night of their biggest gig yet, everything is falling apart and Marcus is desperately trying to save the show. Unbeknownst to his band mates, Marcus has gotten an offer to join a highly successful band if he plays an impressive show. Can Marcus overcome his band's dysfunctional nature and pull of their best gig to date, all in order to leave his friends behind?

Liva Lervig Haue, Alexander Sørensen

Learning to Skateboard in a Warzone (if you’re a girl)

This film tells the story of young Afghan girls learning to read, write – and skateboard – in Kabul. After years of conflict, and with Afghanistan still dubbed 'one of the worst places to be born a girl', an organisation called ‘Skateistan’ recruits kids from poor neighbourhoods and teaches them skills so they can return to public school and get a start in life. For girls, the chance to skateboard presents a unique experience – to compete, to play, to learn their strength and to gain courage. We follow a class of girls at Skateistan growing through the joy of skating and the warmth of the women who teach them.

Carol Dysinger

Like

Based on the true story of two British teenage girls who were charged with murder after posting images of the crime on social media. 'Like' explores the complicated toxic relationship of these two best friends and how online activity can determine social status and acceptance. The film was shot entirely by the actors with mobile phones and Go Pro camera.

M. Frank

Line 881

At first glance Dormagen is a perfect, green and pastoral town just a short distance from the big city. Its residents opened the gates of the city with love to the stream of refugees that filled Germany, but the warm welcome carries with it a hidden fear from the future. On one bus line that crosses the entire city you can see a social microcosm. From refugees who have just arrived to adult Germans, all are destined to travel in the metal pipe that creates forced intimacy. Through the stories of the passengers on this bus line, the whole story of Germany after the wave of immigration is told.

Ron Goldin

Mono No Aware

Often considered to be untranslatable, the Japanese term MONO NO AWARE refers to the bittersweet realization of the ephemeral nature of all things. It is the awareness that everything in existence is temporary. The fleetingness of youth, the fading of romance, and the changing of seasons are not to be mourned, but cherished and appreciated in their impermanence, for that is where their beauty comes from. This art video is made in collaboration between the music collective C'mon Tigre and the artist Maurizio Anzeri, animating the Anzeri original artworks to tell a story of the beauty of ephemeral human beings life, flying over places like a bird, observing people who live in those places in a dimension where history and future converge. Maurizio Anzeri makes his portraits by drawing on tracing paper, which he laid on top of old photographs, and after by sewing directly into the photographs. His embroidered patterns garnish the figures like elaborate costumes, but also suggest a psychological aura, as if revealing the person’s thoughts or feelings. The antique appearance of the photographs is often at odds with the sharp lines and silky shimmer of the threads.The artist’s recent expansion of his practice to include landscapes stems from an interest in the idea of ‘electricity’: electricity that we emanate and absorb and its manifestations. In his altered landscapes, mysterious emanations suggest unseen phenomena, and allude to the spiritual and mystical.

Marco Molinelli

Motherland

What if fighting for your country meant going against some of its most traditional values? Motherland is a documentary about the women who shake tradition to rid their country of landmines leftover from a devastating ethnic war. Individually outcast; together, a collective – the deminers support each other as they take on the dangerous role of breaking stereotypes and securing the future of their war-torn republic.

Emily Mkrtichian, Jesse Soursourian

Mothers Of

El Salvador has some of the most extreme anti-abortion laws in the world. It is one of a handful of countries in the world where abortion is banned under all circumstances, including cases of rape and when a pregnancy poses a clinically verifiable risk to a woman’s health. As an extreme consequence of the law, women who have naturally occurring obstetric emergencies are routinely imprisoned on homicide charges. When they seek emergency care after miscarriages or stillbirths, doctors report them to the police on the suspicion of having an abortion. Between 2000 and 2011, 129 women in El Salvador were prosecuted for abortion or homicide when the fetal deaths occurred in the last months of pregnancy. 'Mothers of' explores the hyper-strict abortion regulations in El Salvador through the story of Teodora del Carmen Vásquez, a woman forced to serve over 10 years in jail after suffering a stillbirth in her 9th month of pregnancy. Through Teodora’s perspective, we begin to understand how loss and motherhood are felt in the face of bitter social injustice.

Ross Lai

Nest

After her parents passed, Janna took over the family farm where she lives with her disabled brother. The daily care for her brother takes a toll on Janna. Watching her peers moving on in life and building relationships makes the situation even more unbearable. Will she ever be able to leave her nest?

Liza Koifman

NYET! – a Brexit UK Border Farce

Boris (Dimitri Gripari) and Olga (Gabriella Moran) have travelled across Europe to the port of Dover with precious cargo from Russia. When Border Control guards Steve (Garry Mountaine) and Liz (Beatie Edney) unearth far more than they were expecting, an interrogation ensues, overseen by the formidable Head of Border Control Mrs. Pyke (Olivia Williams). Her strong and stable methods uncover truths hidden – quite literally – within our protagonists.

Alex Helfrecht, Jörg Tittel

Okami

It's a story about a lonely and scared boy locked in his small room. Being inspired by Okami (wolf), he goes on a journey to explore the world outside to find the strength in himself to overcome his fear. It's an experimental animation with Projection Mapping and 2D animation techniques. All the outdoor scenes were filmed in Red Hook, Brooklyn.

Motomichi Nakamura

Passage

Finding herself in a state of limbo, an Indian woman revisits her immigration journey and voyages through a tempestuous emotional landscape of memory, identity, belonging and the illusion of the American Dream.

Asavari Kumar

Playing With Fire

A deserted, ruined cottage and rural property were the scenes of bullying and a murderous arson attack 30 years ago and now they are visited by a family – the perpetrator and his children – only to encounter mesmerizing and lifelike spirits from whom there is no escape until revenge is complete.

Carolyn Jennifer Corkindale

Pollux

No summer camp this year for 13-year-old Vivian and Max because of the imminent closure of the factory where their parents are working. But Vivian has a plan to make money and allow them to go to the camp anyway. Accompanied by Tom, their childhood friend, they will run into a race against time.

Michael Dichter

Postludium

Joachim has come to take care of his self-destructive and suicidal father Ulrich, who lives on the countryside. They have not spoken nor seen each other for several years. It’s a story about family and betrayal. They will both have to let go of their failure, shame and guilt to move on, even though the outcome might be hard.

Svend Colding

Raven People Rising

The Heiltsuk Nation upholds an unbroken lineage of ancestral teachings that powerfully connect people to place. When the Nathan E. Stewart ran aground in their Great Bear Rainforest home, the Heiltsuk took to the courts. Witness how, in the wake of the devastating spill, the Heiltsuk are working to enshrine Indigenous governance of their homelands and waters into law. They are taking power back from regulators asleep at the wheel to ensure that the Pacific coast is protected for future generations. Their work will ensure marine safety for anyone who cares about the coast, the climate and future generations. The Nathan E. Stewart sank: but the Heiltsuk are rising. Stunning footage combines with compelling storytelling to paint an urgent picture of a Nation poised to change the conversation about Indigenous rights and climate justice.

Andrea Palframan

Ray’s Great Escape

Ray is a little monster who lives on the edge of a volcano that is about to erupt, which pushes him to find a way to move his house. From being accustomed to earthquakes to wishing to take away all his beloved objects, Ray experiences a painful struggle in his heart. In the end, with his wisdom and hands, he transformes his wooden house into a small boat and embarkes on the adventure of a long road. In this poem-like short film, the simple and lovely Ray not only brings us laughter but also brings us the courage to choose a new life in order to face a new environment.

Jie Weng

Reined

A father and son get into a disagreement over the fate of an animal on their farm.

Alex Ströbeck

Remote

Fascinated by remote, isolated places and why people live there, I set off to Bardsey Island; home to just 4 permanent residents.

Edouard Paquet

Rituals

When daily struggles and depression become too much to bear, Sofia flees to her family summer house. Secluded in the Gothenburg Archipelago and surrounded by nostalgia of her childhood, Sofia retraces her youth as she confronts her demons. A chance encounter, rituals, and friendship shine a light in the dark. 'Rituals' is the second project by CORRE, a creative audio-visual collaboration. The concept explores themes of mental health, friendship and nostalgia set to the frozen backdrop of Gothenburg's Archipelago in Sweden. The project brings together a team of British and Swedish artists and creatives to produce a story that spans many forms. As an album, a visual piece, and a short film, 'Rituals' breaks the norm of a standard music release, captivating audiences with sound, picture and story.

Josh Aarons

Running in Circles

Running in Circles' is an animated music video for Wax Fang, realised combining cut out images and archive footage in order to visually reflect the surreal imagery evoked by the lyrics. The music video was produced as part of the final project for the Masters in Postproduction with Visual Effects at the University of York's Theatre, Film and Television Department.

Bianca Cassinelli

Santa Barbara

Santa Barbara is a retelling of my family’s journey to America, from breadlines in the former Soviet Union, to our arrival in California, and the honeymoon that followed. Inspired by the 1980s American soap opera, my mother became a mail-order bride from Russia to America, tak-ing my brother and me with her to California, specifically to the town of Santa Barbara. And this is where the story begins: the idea of touching something that felt untouchable.

Diana Markosian

Secret Library

It’s Christmas Eve, 1896, when three children at a holiday party enter the basement of a law firm, stumbling upon the hidden doorway to labyrinthine tunnels. Curious, they explore the tunnels and discover a huge library. But this is no ordinary library. It has grown for centuries, hidden in the subterranean depths of New York City to ensure its continued existence until the children arrive, uninvited. Once they enter, the children are trapped. Their only hope lies with the quick-thinking, determined rescuers who race to discover the library’s depraved history, brave the horrifying evil of its ancient inhabitants, and fight for the lives of the children and themselves. Secret Library is a suspense-thriller horror film with a strong ensemble cast; a terrifyingly evil antagonist; three small children held hostage by vicious creatures; mysterious early American history; and several twists and turns that lead to a violent, unexpected ending. It is a story of betrayal, longing, sacrifice, and courage in the face of nightmares come to life.

Selma After the Rain

Selma is a trans woman who built her life away from the family. One day she gets a call to go to her elderly mother, who suffers from Alzheimer's and needs treatment. In this encounter, lost in confused memories, the two women remember forgotten pains and desires, and revisit lost guilt and affection.

Loli Menezes

Shallow Water Blackout aka The Vegan Toothbrush

As residential cruise vessel The World sails by the pristine, Arctic archipelago of Lofoten, climate revolutionary children Amelia and Steven hijack the ship as part of their scheme to rid society of what they consider a threat worse than global warming: ignorant adults. In Shallow Water Blackout aka The Vegan Toothbrush the by now familiar arguments from the climate debate are growing increasingly hollow, as CO2 utopians, the religious, the sceptics and the denialists, warriors and eco liberals, are all at grave risk of ending up dead at the ocean floor as the children take over The World. The film looks into the various camps of the climate debate – and their typical slogans. We meet among others a PR executive from lobby organisation The Heartland Institute, a green-washed tourist guide, and 14-year old Amelia who speaks exclusively in Greta Thunberg quotes.

Trygve Luktvasslimo

Snow in the Summer

A Veteran Magician finds a magic ring that contains the memory of her and her lover at the ruin of her old studio.

Daun Han

Some Beasts

Planning to develop a tourist resort, a family enthusiastically disembarks on an uninhabited island of the southern coast of Chile. When the man who brought them from the mainland disappears, the family is left prisoner of the island. Their smiles fade with the cold ocean winds and lack of water and, as the tension mounts, dark demons emerge…

Jorge Riquelme Serrano

Sternenkind

A young couple awaits their first child. But it will die before birth. As they struggle to find reason they flee to the countryside where he drives to work every day and she is left alone with the unborn child. While she is waiting for the child to die (inside her), the differences between the couple emerge and destroy their relationship.

Daniel Michalos

Sticker

After an unsuccessful attempt to renew his car registration, Dejan (37) falls in a bureaucratic trap that tests his determination to be a responsible father.

Georgi M. Unkovski

Sunshine

The 7-year-old girl, Solvej, lives alone with her mentally ill mother in a messy apartment. Her mother is sick, but Solvej cannot see why, because the sickness is inside her mothers head. Solvej eats canned food and goes to school in her dirty clothes. Amidst all the mess, Solvej dreams herself away in her drawings, which come alive to take her away from the world, she's been placed in. In her troubled daily life, there are only small beams of hope. When her mothers mental illness worsens, it is up to Solvej to fight and accept the terms, she and her mother are faced with.

Carla Malling Agger

The Fading Village

Unlike the other young people, Hou Junli has not left for the city but has remained with his family in their forlorn mountain village. Just as elsewhere in the country, members of the younger generation living in the northern Chinese province of Shanxi must leave their homes because traditional work can no longer provide them a sustainable wage. The dilapidated houses continue to resist the snow and rain, but how long can the village survive if all family ties have been severed? This long-term observational documentary presents an engaging and comprehensive look at one year in the life of humble people who love their birthplace despite its harsh realities.

liu feifang

The List

Two women meet during their chemotherapy sessions for breast cancer, decide to complete their bucket list, and embark on a road trip through the south of Spain and Morocco, that would change their lives.

Alvaro Diaz lorenzo

The New Hospital

Innovation and scientific discoveries are rapidly changing our healthcare system. Rejuvenation, robotization, genetic alteration and organ cultivation will change our society forever. But to what extent can we engineer our own bodies? In the documentary ‘The new hospital’, we experience these dilemmas through several characters that work at the Erasmus University Hospital and who are confronted with these questions every day. After 18 years of renovation, the new Erasmus MC will open its doors. But how do you create a future proof hospital?

Marleine van der Werf

The Puzzle of Christina

The personality puzzle Over the course of 24 years, documentarian Pål Winsents has followed his niece Christina (24) in her attempt to navigate her way through life with the rare genetic diagnosis Kleefstra syndrome. The result is a down to earth, empathic and earnest portrayal of a unique individual’s experience of reality, which provides a compassionate perspective on the challenges people with mental disabilities meet in their day to day lives, in school and at work.

Pål Winsents

The taste of tobacco

Xiaoyu, the heroine, is in the environment of a divorced family. Because she doesn't understand the love relationship between her mother and her new boyfriend Meng Lin, and because she is attached to her mother's family, she hopes to regain the emotional possession of her mother, so she launches a revenge action. Xiaoyu collaborated with Wei Xiaolong, an undergraduate at her school, to break up the relationship between her mother and Menglin by secretly filming a private video of Menglin's tryst with another lover.Xiaoyu realizes that with the development of things, he and Xiaolong have developed an attachment and love affair, but at the same time, Xiaolong is arrested by the police for breaking into the private house. Xiaoyu suddenly realized that she was just, kind but simple and childish, which did not make her get a perfect emotional ending.

Gary Chen

Theirstory

We’ve been taught that men were the only ones doing anything worthwhile in pre-history. Theirstory introduces the archaeologists and anthropologists who dared to ask, “where was the other half of the species?” complicating assumptions of gender and our understanding of ourselves.

Sarah Cahlan

Under the Lemon Tree

In this documentary, we spend a day under the shade of a lemon tree with a Palestinian woman named Khaldieh who was abruptly exiled from her hometown of Tulkarem in the year 1967. Preparing herself a humble breakfast of za’tar and inhaling the smell of sage, she recreates her homeland through an assemblage of simple elements.Though they may seem trivial, for many Palestinians they are among the only tangible pieces of their lost homeland that they still possess. She retreats into her memories of her early life in Palestine and, taking the viewer with her, gives voice to her deep longing for her land and home and reminiscences on the hardships of exile, the things she experienced, witnessed and lost. She unfolds the trauma of her sudden expulsion from the town she and all her ancestors grew up in. Holding onto a mere key to their home, she shares with us the pain of leaving her house for the last time, which she relates to her constant dreams of return.

Noor Alasswad

Under the Moonlight

The Daliang Mountains is an undeveloped rural area in southwestern China known for its poverty and cultural uniqueness. The Daliang Mountains has been able to remain culturally untainted due to its severe lack of transportation and educational resources. In this area lives the Yi people, a Chinese ethnic minority group. Under the Moonlight (2019) is a music video based on a Yi ethnic poem, “阿莫尼惹”. Sung only in Yi ethnic language, this poem is about mother-daughter relationships in Yi heritage. The story in Under the Moonlight (2019) is a third-person narrative about a girl born in the Daliang Mountains. She visualizes her past growing up in the village. Even though she feels blessed about her roots, she reflects on how she had longed for a better future.

Jia Shijun

We the Bathers

In this short documentary, fourteen people from across the world reveal their unique connection to water. We the Bathers holds up an intimate lens to a series of disparate lives, leading us to consider how our bathing rituals might be shaped by our identities. Through a startling juxtaposition of circumstances, from a grieving widower in East London, to a transgender sex worker in Sicily, to a Buddhist monk in Japan, each person is given a platform to speak candidly about their experiences without restraint. Water is life.

Phoebe Arnstein