A ghost ride through Finnish TV archives of the 1960s grazes the moon landing, American TV shows, a war in Africa. But how to connect with the world when dancing is forbidden?!
The anonymous narrator is a kind of web-adventurous flâneuse, neurotic and endlessly curious. A disturbance in the proprioception, which is the ability to sense the position, movement and location of the body and its parts, makes her perceive the world in a new way. Seemingly random anecdotes found on the internet and instructions from her cryptic physiotherapist start to come together in surprising ways. The found material forms a mosaic that reflects a world full of gazes, rules and technologies that separate us. Lines from the present and the distant past take our narrator to the 1960s, where medieval dance bans, televised wars, lost bones, space utopias and American TV stars collide. This film reflects how we can be and live in the world within ourselves and with each other. With those who are near and with those who are far. Along with all this, the film recommends dancing to everyone.
A shaman, half human, half animal, performs a breakneck dance in the jungle. Ingeniously, he tries to fool the crocodiles in the river to reach the other bank.
The film’s stop-motion animation puppets are made using Taiwan’s unique papermaking technique rooted in traditional funeral ceremonies. At the beginning of the film, a shadow puppet mirror transforms into a shaman-like animal dancer. The film uses the perspective of a fly to create a montage film language using the metaphor of the compound eye. Through the use of choreography in the style of the Taiwanese “yi zhen” folk dance, the film portrays the Southeast Asian folktale The Mousedeer Crossing the River through multiple perspectives, reinterpreting the story’s layered facets across cultures.
The audience views the narrative through the vision of the fly’s compound eye, where the folktale represents a form of container, filled with symbolic metaphors such as the mirror and shadows, reflecting the flow of cultural identity, ethnicity and the transitional nature of local and global contexts. The film interprets cultures from around the world and while seemingly different on the surface, they in fact reveal a similar structure at their core.
A Taiwanese boss and Burmese laborers seek ways of getting rich by shrimp farming. However a life gone on the process. It's all about trust, gender power, and culture conflicts.
With 20 years of experience in shrimp farming in Taiwan, Du came to Myanmar alone. Even though he saw only endless wilderness before him, he believed that “when the going gets tough, the tough get going,” nothing is impossible on this earth. He did not expect that what followed were white powders and guns.
A Burmese-Chinese girl, Sue, who also dreamt of shrimp farming, decided to settle down in the shrimp farm her father had started to develop 20 years ago, after the marriage to her Burmese husband, Jojo. She was determined to carry out the unfulfilled ambition of her father. Struggling to confront the false accusation, Du encountered Sue by chance. Together, they decided to farm and rear shrimps in the wilderness and build their “Diamond Marine World.”
It took five years to shoot and produce this film, recording the turns of humanity and the conflicts falling one after the other like the rain in Myanmar.
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.
As a dancer coming from an immigrant family, Çağdaş often feels more like a performer around them than on the stage. When he decides to contact his estranged father in Turkey, the boundary between real and performed begins to blur as his story is woven into the production of a new piece by internationally renowned Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch. How much does the absence of his father and the traumatic silence that has filled the void contribute to him feeling like an outsider in the only place he's ever called home? In Four Movements weaves dance and documentary through an intimate journey of self-discovery as Çağdaş faces his past, his performance, and his desire for belonging.
The competition between the two brothers begins at the seaside. As brothers, they know each other best and become each other's most prominent opponents. The younger brother admires his older brother's natural talents. However, the older brother secretly has a “fatal” weakness. In the three rounds of the competition, lasting two minutes each, they express their secrets to each other.
A woman lives alone with her cat in the city. The small miracles of life can be found in all kinds of everyday moments, and loneliness turns into a happy melody.
Rosl’s Suitcase is the story of my Jewish grandmother, who left Vienna for New York with my father in 1939 and of my own fact-finding quest about truth and what I had been told.
Rosl’s Suitcase is the story of my Viennese and Jewish grandmother, who emigrated to New York with my teenage father in 1939. The contents of the suitcase reveal discrepancies in what I had been told. With this discovery, I begin my quest to find out what really happened and what had been hidden.
Rosl’s Suitcase interweaves current-day Vienna with home movies and recordings by three generations of women: great aunt Ada's 1947 movies after her arrival in the U.S.; Aunt Helen's audio descriptions of her youth in Vienna and immigration to New York; my own 1960's Northern California coming-of-age 8mm films and light show movies.
French-American singer of Viennese origin, Adah Dylan Jungk, reads/performs Rosl's letters against backdrops and front projections of the Vienna High Court, the University courtyard and wartime films of the city. We follow Adah to “locations of memory”, crosscutting between places today and the same places shown in historical film archives. The city's landmarks are recharged through the prism of the pre-and post-war Vienna of my grandmother, father and my own lens.
In the shadow of the Covid-19 pandemic, a writer embarks on a deeply personal journey to heal a family wound, seeking answers in his Indonesian ancestral roots, where an indigenous agrarian culture centered on traditional palm wine merges with a centuries-old Catholic devotion within the world's largest Muslim-majority nation. With a blend of poignant personal narratives and arresting visuals, the film offers viewers a glimpse into a resilient and unique culture.
Will the Skateboarding God descend upon a twelve-year-old child? If possible, please let the wind carry its message. Yang has prayed countless times in his heart, but reality doesn't quite match his imagination. “No risk, no reward”. Perhaps a life of skateboarding is destined to be an adventurous journey.
Little Stone, the boy from the mountain, left his grandmother - they depended on each other for life. In his lonely waiting, he counted the days that passed by. Unfortunately, there was no time for them to say goodbye.
Will time really wash everything away? Little Stone believes that time will eventually make them meet again.
Who, If Not Us? The Fight for Democracy in Belarus
Juliane Tutein
The political climate in Belarus is growing more restrictive every day, activists are constantly facing imprisonment. This film is dedicated to three courageous rebels.
Who, If Not Us? The Fight for Democracy in Belarus
Wer, wenn nicht wir? Der Kampf für Demokratie in Belarus
Juliane Tutein
Panorama: Central and Eastern Europe
Documentary Film
Germany
2023
77 minutes
,
Belarusian,
Russian,
Ukrainian
World premiere
Trailer
Synopsis
The documentary Who, If Not Us? chronicles the fight for democracy in Belarus through the experiences of three women from different generations. The film captures the spirit and determination of the Belarusian opposition as they struggle against Lukashenko's authoritarian regime that has held power for decades.
The film follows three women: Nina Baginskaya, who lived through the Soviet era and was already active in the fight for independence in the 1980s, becoming an icon of the Belarusian opposition protests; Tanya Hatsura-Yavorskaya, a human rights activist and founder of the human rights film festival “Watch Docs Belarus”; and Darya Rublevskaya, a young activist who works for Viasna, the NGO founded by Ales Bialiatski, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2022.
The film offers a singular glimpse into the daily lives of three women in the aftermath of the 2020 protests, which were the largest in Belarusian history and brutally repressed by the Lukashenko regime. By concluding amidst the ongoing war in Ukraine, the film powerfully illustrates the intertwined destiny of Belarus and Ukraine. Many Belarusians share the belief that without a free Ukraine, there will be no democratic future for Belarus.
Heydi returns to the old hunting grounds with her nephew to retrace the path and inspect the new hunting trails. She leads Ibaw step by step into her hunting world.
This film is about Heydi Mijung, the only female hunter in the Truku tribe, who follows the ancestral tradition of Gaya, practices the traditional hunting skills of the Truku, and maintains the balance of the entire forest with her hunting methods. The Woman Carrying the Prey expresses women's perseverance and strength by extension – “carrying” is not only about the physical weight but also about the continuation of the hunter's traditional hunting culture.
The relationship between human, ecology and animal interdependence is gradually built up through the daily life of a female hunter in the mountains.
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.