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.
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.
Marionette master U Sein Aye Myint has practised his art for more than forty years, continuing the traditional skills passed down from his father. But the Covid pandemic and the military coup have prevented him and his puppets from performing. When the roof of his small workshop in Yangon’s North Dagon starts leaking in the monsoon, he has to clamber up to fix it himself to ensure his beloved puppets do not get wet. Observing him with age-old wisdom in their eyes, his puppets seem to sense all the things that are weighing heavily on his mind: his lack of income, his precarious future – and just how much he misses his audience.
A young Burmese woman who was trafficked to China and sold into marriage tells her story. Based on the real-life protagonist’s words and beautifully rendered in pen-and-ink, this animation portrays a woman torn between her love for the child she was forced to bear and her longing for the country to which she may never be able to return.
Vasyl is a former ski jumper who now works as a coach at the ski jumping school for children in the Carpathians. He is a loner, and sports is his whole life. Zhenya is Vasyl's favourite trainee. In the last 5 years, he spends a lot of energy making her a champion. With her success, his dreams can come true. When the girl grows up, she decides to try in another area of life not connected to sports. Vasyl's work seems to no longer make sense. But he finds the strength to start all over again.
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.
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.
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.
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 story of the friendship between Ania and her mother-in-law, Lidka. Ania is strong-minded and determined. Lidka, who has just left her abusive husband, is her opposite – shy and reserved. As they meet inside the newsstand kiosk run by Ania, the two women work on a divorce petition that would enable Lidka to begin a new life free of fear and violence. Despite many harsh words and continuing challenges, they slowly develop a bond that gives them courage and strength.
The Kiosk is a highly emotional film about female solidarity in the face of abuse. As we enter their limited space, we feel that the characters are within our reach. Each gesture, look and tear become incredibly powerful when seen up close.
Built in the 19th century, this Tamil Hindu temple in Thanlyin, across the Bago River from Yangon, is unique in the largely Buddhist Myanmar: this is a place where people from different religious backgrounds come to pray in the hope that their wishes will be fulfilled. Fortune-teller “Yellow Mother” is one of four inhabitants of Pilikan village who – in between lively spectacles of leaping cows and cow-catching – explain what the temple and its rituals mean to them.
A documentary film about the development of relations between the majority of society and the non-heteronormative part of the population in Poland during the last decade.
Polish Rainbow is a documentary film about the 10-year development of relations between the majority of society and the non-heteronormative part of the population in Poland. It captures the far-right scene in the public space, which gradually transforms into the main political influence in the country. The effort of the LGBT community to equalise same-sex relationships is becoming an active political tool of conservative and far-right parties for the polarisation of opinion and culture in society. Dehumanisation and the spread of hatred cause traumatic experiences that often end tragically for people from rainbow communities. Against the backdrop of the fight for basic human rights of the LGBTIQA+ community, we get to know Bart Staszewski. As an LGBT activist, Bart travels to Polish cities and towns that have declared themselves "LGBT-free" zones in order to change this dehumanising homophobic campaign.
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.
Shan folk singer Nan Mya was a star when she was young. Her metaphorical verses reflect the deep sense of loss that pervades a people battered by Myanmar's ruinous politics.
Shan State in Myanmar is home to a rich culture filled with ancient songs, traditional dances and beliefs. It is also a place where civil war has been raging for over sixty years. Shan folk singer Nan Mya Han was a star when she was young. Now she is older, her metaphorical verses reflect the deep sense of loss that pervades a people battered by Myanmar's ruinous politics. Interweaving her songs with compelling scenes of rituals around healing, death and birth, the film transcends the purely observational to become a multilayered, elliptical exploration of decay and impermanence that is both moving and totally mesmerising.
The Lisu people's bond with nature is a profoundly spiritual one. The harvest season may have come to an end but the souls of villagers have a habit of lingering in the fields.
The Lisu people's bond with nature is a profoundly spiritual one. Theirs is a world that is filled with the spirits of the forests and mountains where they live and farm. The harvest season may have come to an end but the souls of many a villager have a habit of lingering in the fields of the uplands where they can cause all kinds of mischief. This richly atmospheric exploration of Lisu animism brings us closer to the mellifluous-voiced shaman Byar Wu, whose job it is to summon these lost souls back into the bodies of his community in Chaung Gyi village in Shan State and by doing so prevent sickness and disease.
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.