Deserters is a film about a generation of Bosnian youth from the city of Mostar swept by the devastating war at the brink of their maturity and the tough decision to escape from it.
Deserters is a film about a generation of Bosnian youth from the city of Mostar swept by the devastating war at the brink of their maturity and the tough decision to escape from it. Their exile stories from the 90s, contained in letters mailed to the director of this film from refugee camps scattered across Europe, are confronted with the present condition of the city they were forced to leave. A film about a missing generation, exile, hard choices, and the answer to the most difficult question of any war: to stay or to run?
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.
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.
Amid the dunes of the Sahara, a Jaima, the traditional Saharawi tent. A woman, through the
tea ritual, takes us into the past and present of her people, persecuted and driven out of their
land. She offers us three teas: the first, bitter as life; the second, sweet as love; the third,
mild as death. The light of the desert is reflected on the Saharawi people, their life made up
of essentials and their struggle to endure.
News anchor Randi Isaksen struggles to help her sister navigate a broken mental health system in Recovery Channel. Told through the duelling prism of documentary and narrative storytelling, filmmaker Ellen Ugelstad exposes an oppressive system designed to control instead of heal the human condition. Informed by her own family experiences, Ugelstad creates a fictional TV channel to explore the injustices faced by those with mental health challenges and exposes the use of coercion in contemporary therapy.
Through a humanistic lens, she explores the negative impact of an oppressive system, while advocating for the recognition of mental health as a human right rather than an illness.
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.