Two research trips into a possible future of humanity and the very real past of a family history combine to form a narrative about our relationship to time.
A new father visits the hometown of his mother in 1976, accompanied by his wife and baby. At the same time, the NASA Viking lander is sending the first images back to Earth from the surface of another planet. Using the father’s travel journal as a guide, and re-contextualising archival footage and photographs, this film explores our yearning to bridge a gap: the gap between parents and children, between points in space, and between the present and the past.
What if from one day to the next, you’re no longer seen but instead, you're stared at? The leading characters in All You See have ended up in a new world where suddenly nothing seems to align. In their new lives in the Netherlands, they unintentionally provoke reactions on a daily basis. Even after many years, they still hear the same questions over and over again: Where are you from? Do you speak Dutch? Do you tan in the sun?
A ghostly search for traces, based on the 1965 U.S. embargo against “communist” real hair wigs from Asia. Is every wig inhabited by a ghost from the imperial past?
This film is about the haunting memories of Asia’s late-20th-century modernisation. The story departs from a 1965 United States embargo on the hair trade, known as the “Communist Hair Ban”. In every wig resides a ghost from the imperial past.
The cutting down of a cherry tree becomes the starting point of an intimate dialogue about transgenerational trauma between a mother and a daughter. The line between the need for investigation and the desire for healing becomes blurry when a persistent camera depicts the felling of the tree. The short documentary is an attempt to find a shared language for the unspeakable consequences of child sexual abuse within my own family. Content warning: The film contains descriptions of experiences of sexual violence.
The little beetle tries unsuccessfully to get out of the sink. When the tap is opened, the watery whirlpool takes him into the wide world. The beginning of a wonderful journey.
Little Beetle's attempt to escape from the sink has been unsuccessful, but the trouble that comes in the form of water will prove to be the beginning of a wonderful journey.
In search of memories of her childhood, Asmae El Moudir recreates her Casablanca neighbourhood as an elaborate miniature and in the process comes across a trauma of Moroccan history.
Moroccan filmmaker Asmae El Moudir wants to know why she only has one photograph from her childhood, and why the girl in the picture isn't even her. When her family refuses to answer her questions about the past, she hits on another solution: on a handmade replica recreating the Casablanca neighbourhood where she grew up, El Moudir begins to interrogate the tales her mother, father and grandmother tell about their home and their country. Slowly, she starts to unravel the layers of deception and intentional forgetting that have shaped her life. The truth is hard to face, but in this sometimes surreal nonfiction film, El Moudir begins to draw what's real to the surface.
Twenty years ago, the filmmaker fled from Bagdad with his family – why has always been a taboo. For his son, he breaks his silence in this filmic family therapy.
Twenty years ago, filmmaker Wiam Al-Zabari and his family fled Baghdad in the middle of the night. His father was waiting for them in the Netherlands. Since then, no one in the family has spoken about it. Now that Wiam is a father himself, he is confronted with his past life in Iraq. This raises questions. Why did they have to flee in the first place? And what are the repercussions of the escape from Iraq and their arrival in the Netherlands? To find out, Wiam breaks the silence for the first time and starts talking to his family. Can he let go of the past to embrace a future in the Netherlands?
How do you grow up on a planet that is being destroyed by humanity? The two friends Bo and Luca are enthusiastic climate activists whom the film follows for four years.
How does one grow up on a planet that is destroying itself? Filmmaker Pieter Van Eecke provides a possible response to this urgent question. For four years, he has followed the beautiful and mischievous friendship between Bo and Luca, two teenagers who are as enthusiastic in their ecological activism as they are in their experience of the contradictory and surprising travails of growing up.
Abkhazia, a place of memory and at the same time a blind spot for the director. Almost impossible to enter from Georgia, she chooses an associative and personal approach to the split-off territory.
An abandoned house opens the door to revisit the past by bringing to life a unique, nearly destroyed image archive from the unrecognised territory on the border of the Black Sea: Abkhazia. A place normally inaccessible for Georgians because of the ethnic conflict that happened between Georgia and Abkhazia back in 1993. Combining voice, archive and recent footage, the film examines a lost and split identity stuck between the margins. The audio-visual fragments of this archive are intricately woven together to create a personal and political biography which recalls the complicated and controversial historical past of Georgian-Abkhaz relationships.
The highly personal narration delves into the complexities of nationalism and identity in times of war and global displacement. Ultimately, these reflections on recent history become a potential manual for what can come next, once the wars are over.
A consensual union becomes a brutal assimilation that ends in death and a new beginning. Powerfully moving colours and fascinating sounds transport irritating emotions.
In this film, two individuals with strong personalities are ultimately driven to ruin by selfish possessiveness. But in the end, their death, and their rebirth after corruption is just a part of this continuum called natural life, no matter whether their behaviours should be morally criticised or introspected by us.
What are the costs of the half-truths that politicians tell? In 2012, the Georgian president wanted to make the nation smile. In the race for reelection, the incumbent's party was promising subsidised dental care to the country's least well-off. Across the land, state medical practitioners began removing rotten teeth with the promise of replacements in the months that followed – then the president lost. Through interviews with those worst affected by that campaign, Smiling Georgia tells a story about the whims of political power and the defiance of those who usually hold the least of it – a film short on teeth, yes, but far from toothless.
A short animated documentary exploring the immigration experience through the eyes of a little Israeli girl learning how to swim with clothes on in the Netherlands.
A high-rise in Kyiv, an apartment on the 15th floor. A zoom out of a still image. On the telephone, Mariia shares her memories of this place, of coming-of-age and community – before the war.
Three windows on the southwest and a balcony on the southeast is what you can see on the facade of Mariia's apartment. In three conversations, Mariia reflects on her experiences related to the place of her upbringing in Kyiv and attempts to claim back the image of her home.
The main character of the film is Tahrir Square in Baghdad, Iraq and the story is told through the eyes of ten characters during the October Revolution in 2019.
Tuk Tuk Eye is a film that documents the stories of protestors from different backgrounds and ages, that summarise the popular movement against corruption known as the October Revolution. The revolutionary journey starts in Tahrir Square, a place in Baghdad that stands for the demand for freedom and the defeat of injustice. The main character of the film is Tahrir Square and from there, ten short stories are revealed. Stories that complement each other, forming one. All inspired by the history of the monument on the Square. The focus remains on the background of the people and how they began revolting against pain and corruption. The October Revolution that took place in Iraq in 2019 is our starting point. The film aims to portray the motivations and purposes of the demonstrators and the events that are neglected by mass media.
Evolutionary biologist Toby Kiers takes us along on her epic quest to map the world's fungi networks and understand their behaviour before it's too late.
Beneath our feet lies a mystery. A complex underground network of mycorrhizal fungi keeps our ecosystem alive by exchanging nutrients and carbon with almost all plants on Earth. Remarkably, no one knows exactly how these sophisticated and ancient systems operate, or how they are affected by climate change.
The Underground Astronaut follows evolutionary biologist Toby Kiers, named one of the 2022 TIME100 Next Innovators, on her quest to map the world's fungi networks and understand their behaviour before it's too late. A fragrant and high-stakes journey into the soil. “No fungi, no future.”
The Underground Astronaut is part of Ammodo Docs, a series of short documentaries about original minds in arts and science.
DOK Industry is realised with the support of Creative Europe MEDIA Programme of the European Union, the Mitteldeutsche Medienförderung (MDM) and the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media upon a Decision of the German Bundestag.