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?
Anxious in Beirut is a personal diary that documents the events of the last two years in Lebanon – revolution, post-war, explosions, demonstrations. Living with constant anxiety, Zakaria, the film’s young director, narrates his own life while trying, on numerous occasions, to leave his country.
The Apocalyptic Is the Mother of All Christian Theology
Jim Finn
Though consumed with antisemitism and fascism, historically the Apostle Paul was a revolutionary. A psychedelic montage, a wild ride through 2000 years of rabid propaganda.
The Apocalyptic Is the Mother of All Christian Theology
The Apocalyptic Is the Mother of All Christian Theology
Jim Finn
Camera Lucida
Documentary Film
USA
2023
64 minutes
English
German premiere
Synopsis
A psychedelic portrait of the founding theorist of Christianity. The story of Paul the Apostle’s life, ideology and influence is told by piecing together 20th Century 16mm and cassette propaganda, board games, animation, reenactments, Roman Empire doom metal and covers of Catholic liturgical music. The gentle Paul themes with flute, acoustic guitar and mellotron contrast with the Demonic Roman Empire themes of electric guitar, drums and synth. Performance artist Linda Montano and filmmaker Usama Alshaibi portray Paul on his journeys. The film tries to capture the disturbing reaction Paul and his letters had in the early days of Christianity. The use of live-action, animation, found footage and original music was a way to recover his biography from the brains of 20th Century humans so that in some perhaps misguided Utopian impulse, we can build something new out of it for the future.
In her early twenties, Hiam Abbass left her native Palestinian village and became an internationally acclaimed actor. Years later, her filmmaker daughter returns there with her.
In her early twenties, Hiam Abbass left her native Palestinian village to follow her dream of becoming an actress in Europe, leaving behind her mother, grandmother, and seven sisters.
Thirty years later, her filmmaker daughter, Lina, returns with her to the village and questions for the first time her mother's bold choices, her chosen exile and the way the women in their family influenced both their lives. Set between past and present, Bye Bye Tiberias pieces together images of today, family footage from the nineties and historical archives to portray four generations of daring Palestinian women who keep their story and legacy alive through the strength of their bonds, despite exile, dispossession, and heartbreak.
The sun shines every day in Chagrin Valley, USA. Frozen in a 1950s-inspired artificial decor, this assisted living facility for people who suffer from dementia is home to fragile and ageing residents. Here, everyday life drags on slowly. Florence and her companions dream of an elusive elsewhere during their days punctuated by confusion, fleeting conflicts and overdue family visits. The caregivers – as kind as they are exhausted – run the show in this pastel-coloured, sanitised social theatre. Between two shifts, they confess their desire for a better future; one that is not so different from that of the residents, after all.
Srećko, Mirza and Mejra are survivors of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre. Their fates are revealed in the contrast between innocent everyday moments today and archive images from that period.
A construction site in the Central African Republic, two career dreams: The double portrait of a native day labourer and a Chinese construction manager becomes a parable of globalisation.
Luan, a Chinese immigrant, is in Bangui, Central African Republic, facing his greatest professional challenge to date: he must oversee the construction of a bank headquarters that is expected to be inaugurated soon by the President of the nation himself. At the opposite end of the same labour chain, Thomas, a local, must dive into the river to get the sand that Luan needs for his building. Both share the same goal: to progress in their careers and give their families a better life. Meanwhile, the erratic and difficult lives of their families manifest themselves at a distance in various ways. Luan receives phone calls from his wife who, living thousands of kilometres away, is feeling abandoned and attempts to commit suicide; while Thomas' wife and girlfriend have both abandoned him, leaving him in charge of all his children. Eat Bitter fluidly and honestly articulates the daily life of both men, revealing the traces of the presence of the large Chinese community in the region, as well as the scars of a country devastated by the experience of a long civil war and poverty for which no one seems to have any answers.
Fanni, a rejected trans, seeks refuge in Laci’s hut. The solitary homeless man becomes a father figure to her and together, they confront her inner demons and the harsh rejection by society.
On the outskirts of Budapest, in the heart of the woods, hides a ramshackle little hut. Inside, two social outcasts have formed the unlikeliest of bonds. Fanni, a 19-year-old transgender teenager, and Laci, a 60-year-old homeless man support each other in a makeshift family as father and daughter through hardship and change. Set on the margins of Hungarian society, life is tough but it is theirs. Let your conventions be challenged in this coming-of-age documentary about home, family and acceptance.
In southern California, date palms from the Middle East grow, tales from One Thousand and One Nights are told and a volcanic eruption is expected. A document of enchanting simultaneity.
Along the San Andreas fault line in Southern California, indigenous palm trees and date palms imported from the Middle East flourish. The people who tend to them reflect a landscape of frictions and affections shaped over generations by agriculture, luxury real estate, and border politics. Like the infinity storytelling of The 1001 Nights, stories fold into dreams and back into stories, a constellation of voices settle over mountains and into the earth. Intertwining colour 16mm with textural black and white film hand processed with the dates leftover from harvest and plants native to the valley, Feet in Water, Head on Fire is a sensory, polyvocal evocation of place.
In Eastern Serbia, in a town with a dual identity divided between magic and industry, a family whose destiny is intrinsically linked with both does their best to ensure the survival of their traditions and their future generations. Lifelong miner Dragan Markovic is the last in a line of dragon hunters, while his sister Desa is the widow of the union leader who is trying to continue his legacy by ensuring the rights of fellow mine-worker families.
Girls' stories, teenage days. Seemingly nothing happens, and so much changes. Jagoda and Zuzia are friends from the neighbourhood. They meet at the local square. Sometimes they go for ice cream or to the playground. And they always have a lot to talk about. Being a girl is a special experience, and they are just entering puberty. Biology, hormones, pimples, first rebellion, first love. The first period – when will it come? Will there be anything else? Adults can't always give support or answers. And the girls see more and more. School absurdities, unwanted rules, and dilemmas to be solved. Jagoda and Zuzia are great commentators: contradictory, ironic, independent, and scared. With a great appetite for life! They introduce us to the “girlish” world that every woman remembers and any boy, who watches the film, will finally be able to discover.
In Burkina Faso, in the gold-digging site of Bantara, 16-year-old Rasmané descends more than 100 meters deep in artisanal mines to extract gold. Anxious about accidents, Rasmané makes his way in this world of fierce adults in the hope of one day becoming emancipated…
While buying an apartment, a pair of siblings meet a woman who looks exactly like their dead sister. An intriguing true crime story unfolds bit by bit.
A divine premonition leads two sisters to buy an apartment in the small Swedish town of Gullspång. To their surprise, the seller looks identical to their older sister who committed suicide 30 years earlier. What begins as an eerie story of family reunification soon becomes a Pandora's Box as all three women's lives spiral out of control.
In this “telephone” road movie, Floriane Devigne (Ni d’Ève, ni d’Adam, VdR 2018; La Clé de la Chambre à Lessive, VdR 2013) takes us on a journey through so-called “peripheral” France. From remote villages to deserted areas, guided by telephone conversations collected from the last public telephone boxes, she casts an amused, critical and cutting gaze over our ever-changing society.
The son of Brooklyn's most admired Rabbi reveals the truth about the extreme and isolated cult his father established and the atrocities in it, that continue to this day.
A Hasidic True Crime Story. An astounding 300,000 people attended the funeral of Rabbi Schik – an admired American ultra-Orthodox Rabbi. Unbeknownst to his followers, Rabbi Schik was also the leader of a transatlantic crime organisation which established an extreme and segregated cult spanning between Brooklyn and Israel. While female members were forced into underage marriages and sustained sexual assaults, the money was flowing into the Rabbi's own pockets. This corrupt culture prevailed for decades, with no one ever daring to expose the painful truth – until now.
Over the course of seven years, the story follows the Rabbi's son and two women who ultimately left the cult. Together, they discover and expose the devastating legacy of the Rabbi and his community.
Design as a political act? In this animated collage, a contemporary advertising graphic designer explores the uncompromising work of the photomontage pioneer and anti-fascist John Heartfield.
The graphic designer Stefanie is in a creative crisis. Boring advertising assignments and a boss who does not value her work. On a visit to a museum, she is magically attracted by the satirical photomontages of the world-famous colleague and Nazi opponent John Heartfield. Then the miracle happens. She ends up in his studio, where she finally picks up scissors and paper again. An adventurous journey through Heartfield's extraordinary life 100 years ago begins.
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.