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 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.
One day the dachshund lady Dede dies. The little boy mourns her and doesn’t know how to deal with this feeling. In the end he discovers that Dede is dead, but not completely gone.
How does one deal with the unexpected death of a loved one? This film tells the story of a boy and his dog Dede, and shows their final moments together before Dede dies (...and after).
For years, Michelle has been trying to prove her imprisoned husband’s innocence. A documentary thriller about a tireless struggle against the U.S. American justice system.
When Michelle married her long-time friend Jermaine on the bleak visiting floor of a maximum-security prison, she hoped they would soon share a life in freedom. Jermaine claims to be wrongfully convicted. He is serving a sentence of 22 years to life at the notorious Sing Sing prison near New York City. For years, Michelle has fought tirelessly to prove his innocence while also caring for her teenage children, Paul and Kaylea, as a single mother. In a gruelling routine of short phone calls, letter-writing and brief visits to the correctional facility, she dreams of an idyllic family life outside of the prison walls. As Paul and Kaylea are about to start their own lives, Michelle's quest becomes increasingly urgent. Then, a new piece of evidence is discovered in Jermaine's legal case, raising her hopes for his immediate release. Almost a decade in the making, For the Time Being is an intimate exploration of female resilience and a timely look at the far-reaching consequences of the ailing U.S. justice system.
Gedanken-Aufschluss Prize, DOK Leipzig, Germany (2023)
SWISS FILMS & Visions du Réel present
Full Tank
Julia Bünter, Benjamin Bucher
Esteban, a Swiss entrepreneur, dreams of taking part in the 24 Hours of Le Mans. A dream he turns into reality, which results in him competing alongside professional drivers.
Esteban, a Swiss entrepreneur, dreams of taking part in the 24 Hours of Le Mans. A dream he turns into reality, which results in him competing alongside professional drivers. Laps follow each other endlessly among the exhilaration of these exceptional vehicles. Full Tank humorously immerses itself in this testosterone-driven microcosm, subtly highlighting the excesses of motorsport.
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…
The sister draws a swimming hedgehog. Does this work in real life? Worth a try, the brother thinks, throws a hedgehog into the pool … and gets a wet surprise.
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.
Hoping to become closer with his father, whom he hardly knows, Samir decides to accompany him on a hunting expedition in the mountains. The hunt thus provides the pretext for their difficult reunion, where time spent waiting, stalking and shooting reveals the tensions and misunderstandings between the protagonists. Despite the cultural and generational barriers that separate them, their encounter is punctuated by the occasional humorous and tender moment, set against the picturesque backdrop of the Valais region. A third man, Charlot, intervenes in the father-son dynamic, offering a different, more congenial vision of hunting and companionship. The expedition becomes an opportunity for director Juliette Riccaboni to subtly examine the complexity of modern family life, as evidenced in this father-son relationship marked by dissent.
Lamine and his family recently moved to a farm in Senegal. There’s always a lot to do, but the afternoons are too hot. So it’s off to the beach with his new friend.
Lamine is seven years old and has just moved to Senegal with his family. His dad is half-Senegalese but was born and raised in Germany. The family of five has given up everything in Germany and is planning their future in West Africa. With their savings, they have bought a piece of land in the savannah where they want to build their own eco-farm. This has been their dream for years. The project is called “Gorgorlou” and means “life artist” in the local language Wolof. Their goal is to grow fruit and vegetables without soil in a sustainable and climate-friendly way and to keep animals in a species-appropriate way. Everything that forms nutrients is used. But there is still a lot to do before it all goes right: a huge greenhouse, a large chicken garden with space for 2,000 chickens, fish ponds and a small residential house, which they want to move into quickly because the farm has to be guarded day and night and because it is so nice to live in the middle of nature.
Lamine wants to learn everything from the beginning to become a real eco-farmer later on. He thinks it's great that he has so much freedom here. In the evening, he meets his new friend Samba on the beach for a mango picnic and finds out that mangoes are pretty much the best thing in Senegal!
In Denmark the police offer voluntary boot camps for girls. 12-year-old Tatheer from Copenhagen takes part. Far away from home, she will have grown a few centimetres before the end.
12-year-old Tatheer embarks on a week-long police boot camp for girls from a social housing estate in Copenhagen. Far from home, deep in the woods, she navigates gruelling rituals, elusive social dynamics, and personal setbacks to find her place in this tender and revealing coming-of-age story.
Countless chunks of stone are lying around. A red-haired boy assembles them to build many impressive towers. One by one, the towers are made to shine again.
We follow a little man's journey in his sacrificial attempt to keep alive his beloved lighthouses.
Rooted in a love letter in absentia, this short animation poetically reenacts the stages of a broken heart, after the heart finds itself in a void of sudden nothingness.
In this void, the sound of waves and oceanic wind become the first anchors of something remotely familiar. Then the appearance of a sand trail ignites the memories of happy times and the heart starts walking up and down this path, in search of that love and bustling life on the shore, only to discover the memories are broken in this new lonely universe.
In an attempt to salvage what is now broken, the heart starts fixing the lighthouse with the only tool she has – her own pumping power. Step by step and lighthouse by lighthouse, she pours her life into these artefacts of happy memories until she comes to an acceptance – her own form of closure.
A new Musifants episode! This time, Charlie bakes a birthday cake. No sooner is it on the table, smelling delicious, than someone takes a sneaky bite. Who is the cheeky rascal?
It's the little green cactus' birthday and Charlie bakes him a cake. But fresh out of the oven, someone has already had a bite of the cake. Charlie sets out to find the culprit by comparing the different bite marks of the forest dwellers.
Leonie helps where she can on her parents’ farm. She wants to be a pig-farmer when she grows up. When they are forced to give up the farm, Leonie says goodbye to her dream.
Leonie's biggest dream is to become a pig farmer. On her parents' farm, she is happily wandering around with her best friend, Skeet, the cat. She is always helping out in any way possible: fertilising the sows, tending to the pigs and helping load the fully grown hogs onto the truck that will bring them to the slaughterhouse. The family farm is helping Leonie learn about the circle of life. However, new laws surrounding nitrogen emissions set by the government are threatening Leonie's parents' life work – their company – into bankruptcy. Together with her cat Skeet, Leonie sees the last pigs disappear from the farm and realises that her dream of living as a pig farmer might not come true.
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.
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.