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.
A bicycle accident causes a crack in the protective shell Alice has grown to be able to bear the oppressive confinement of her daily life. Can she finally dance her way out?
Alice is 27 years old today. Even though she is suffocating a bit, she still lives with her parents and tends to dwell on her dreams to escape her dreary everyday life. After a psychedelic party on a factory roof, she has a serious drunken bike accident. Will this give her the courage to become an adult?
Rodica (40) and her children, Maria (14) and Patrick (18), struggle to find each other's coordinates in order to have a balanced family life. Blue is a film about love, fear, anxiety, and the emotions that emerge at their intersection.
Els is in her late forties, divorced and in love again. For her, falling in love was not easy: it meant that she had to accept, that she has a life even if her twenty-year-old daughter wants to die and has already asked for psychiatric euthanasia which her mother can do nothing about. In the storm of her own emotions, mixed with guilt, anger, fear and hope, love is what teaches Els to try stepping forward even if it seems impossible.
Falling is a lyrical, found-footage-based testimony from a mother who faces not only the taboos surrounding motherhood but also the most difficult situation in her life.
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.
There is Portugal, there is the Portuguese language and there is a Ukrainian filmmaker who learns the language and approaches the role of the potential migrant. There is also a play of words: zangar and o zangāo. How is it possible to express such an empowering emotion like anger in the fragile attempts of a beginner? The video essay is woven from the filmmaker's narration, language classes, personal videos and archival images from Kyiv – revealing the split reality of anyone who is finding a safe place abroad while longing for home, which is under the constant danger of war.
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.
Cleaning up after a forest fire in the mountains of Portugal: New trees are planted, nature begins to sprout again. But will the fire devour everything one day?
In Portugal, in the mountainous region of Serra da Estrela, guards posted in small towers keep watch over the forest. The cyclical danger of fire hangs over the pine and granite landscape like a ghost. Some inhabitants rely on legends to explain the devastating events, while others show their resilience by rebuilding the recently burnt land with their bare hands. In the heart of this post-apocalyptic landscape, the relationship between man and nature is gradually revealed, oscillating between magic, exploitation and cohabitation.
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.
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.