The cross-frontier migrant's life 'within the system' - an endless, featureless, futureless round of queues - becomes even bleaker in December. Bipul doesn't want to admit it, but the arrival of Lidia, a Russian girl makes a difference. Hope? Surely not! A future? Get real! December is also the ninth month of Martina's pregnancy. But, just when the situation seems hopeless, help is at hand. A Christmas story.
Two shy young men start to work in an all-inclusive hotel. A new, absurd world opens up to them. Colourful bikinis, an abundance of food and the management's demands ensure they will never be the same again.
At night, a man stands in the middle of the road. He paints the white markings black. His mind gradually slips back into a faraway realm created by his illness. Some time later, at the mental institution, as he tries to retain a fragile grip on reality, the delusional account of his past begins to unravel. Losing his sense of reality disturbed his life, but at the same time creates an opening for a possible recovery and new hope.
Astronauts set foot on the red earth of the Oman desert before the unbelieving eyes of the Bedouin. Two high school girls build castles in the air. A young boy trains to jump as far as possible. And each character seems to wonder what their place in the universe is. Skilfully weaving together the links between nomadism, exploration, colonisation and desire for freedom—a surprising film about human ingenuity.
Ever since there’s only one male northern white rhino remaining on earth, armed bodyguards protect him, tourists are standing in line to make a selfie with him, journalists rush to Kenya to tell his story and scientists are determined to find ways to reproduce his species. What is so attractive about the threat of extinction? How does this reflect on us?
Biniam Girmay, a 17 year old promising cyclist from the African country Eritrea, dreams of one day riding the Tour de France, the most prestigious Grand Tour in the world. For years he thought the Tour was only for European or white cyclists, as over its more than 100 editions, only a handful of the participants were black. Biniam’s evolving performances give a rare insight into cycling in Africa. But to make it into an international Pro Team, Europe’s visa procedures are a constant hassle. And once he marries in Eritrea and becomes a father, the distance of 6.000kms takes its toll. Against all odds, Biniam climbs up the international rankings. When at age 21, he wins his first ‘Classic’, he proves African riders can win big races. He becomes a cycling hero overnight, but can he change cycling forever?
A depiction of the urge for freedom. Through 4 episodes we see 4 family members in a moment when they are tired of being a camel, as a beast of burden. They realise their tasks are meaningless and find themselves in a spiritual desert. The camel wants to become a lion. A spirit that fights against the false values in order to find his own place, his own freedom. Vincent, Renée, Alice and Robin are searching for the strength to undergo this transformation.
The wanderings of a retail trader, Jean-Simon, sketch the contours of a microcosmic informal economy in Congolese society. The financial urgency of everyday life is permeated by the political situation in Congo: a larger, more abstract urgency, which the diaspora experiences from a distance. The film finds itself somewhere in between these two imperatives, between here and somewhere else, the past and the present, small money and big money.
Why We Fight? is a cinematographic film that tries to understand the violence around us, but also within ourselves, in order to better cope with the world today.
Not Waving, But Drowning materialises the experience of Indian refugees during their arrest and detention by the harbour police in Zeebruges, Belgium. Within the tense, haunted context of the harbour and the seaside, and together with them, we slowly lose all sense of time and place. Without investigating their past or their future, the human traffic organisations or the Belgian legislation, the film transgresses into the timelessness in which our society imprisons people without papers. This subtle analysis of human exclusion and the reduction of human beings to the physical body makes us wonder if a human can be illegal at all?
In this VR film, two little sisters prepare for the Day of the Dead in the mystic mountains of Mexico, remembering the stories their shaman granny used to tell. A portal opens as the Mazatec community celebrates and we enter the interactive universe of their ancestors and the spirits of nature, each keeping a secret world to be unveiled.
Beneath a reservoir in Romania lies the drowned village of Bözödújfalu, where a community of different faiths lived in peace for centuries. However, due to the village destruction policy of Ceaucescu, the inhabitants were expropriated in 1989 and the village was overrun. 25 years after the evacuation, they meet again on the edge of the lake. The survivors organize a memorial moment, in a vain attempt to pass on the special values of their complex but beautiful society to the next generations.
After two intifadas and the construction of the Israeli wall, the only Palestinian zoo is still there and is now seeking for international recognition and to replace their lost giraffes.
At the far end of Europe, on the southern border of Spain, lies Almería. It is a huge province completely covered with white plastic, harbouring Europe’s largest vegetable garden. It is the place where our tomatoes come from, even in winter. But under all the plastic, strange things happen… Today, the vegetable garden inevitably moves to Morocco. Spanish farmers dive well under their prices to keep in the race. 120.000 migrants work in slave-like conditions on the plantations.
Poetic documentary portraying Giorgi Shakhsuvarian, an Armenian boxing coach from Tbilisi. Living and working in Belgium, he prepares a young boxer to become a European champion.
The film uses the oyster and its sensual and lavish associations as a symbol to explore human drives and desires. The oyster takes us on a trip around the world, in which protagonists that all have their own special relationship to the oyster share their ambitions, desires and existential fears. This cinematic documentary explores the intricate nature of our deepest yearnings and quest for self-fulfillment.
Nobody can escape the dance of life. Prisoners of the Ground is literally and symbolically about surviving in the dark: a portrait of an introvert, melancholic society; a Finnish tango in the shape of a movie.