Captivity is a condition of confinement, both in space and in time. The person inside the captivity is not exclusively or necessarily a prisoner, but becomes an inherent part of that space. In turn, the captivity space is not inert, rather it is characterized by who is contained there, it is also shaped by that experience.
Alzira was born, raised and lived the entire 91 years of her life in the same house: in the city of São João da Madeira, in the north of Portugal. Her life experiences are inseparable from the house’s walls and objects of intimacy. The film attempts to capture the relationship of mutual construction between this woman and this space, a construction performed by the time lived there. Time is what makes that house, that space, transcend its geometry and become the shelter of her recollections, of her memories, and of the wanderings of her mind. “Captivity” is thus a film about the time that belongs to memory, indelibly written within a space.

Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic a.k.a. Trans-Dniestr. Imagine a space where time has frozen. The country, whose independence has been recognized by only a few other states, remains an isolated multi-ethnic enclave held together by an authoritarian regime. It’s a country where you are only allowed to film out of the window of a train, the locals are afraid of being denounced but are glad to live in a comfortable refuge from the hectic modern world, and songs on television celebrate the president. Time has stopped and life is stuck in a shape resembling the era of the Soviet Union. Somehow, people got used to the reign of the secret police and the fear of being spied upon. Soviet-style propaganda of the authoritative, power-based regime of President Igor Smirnov turns most of the PMR residents into simple workmen, without any will to understand how unbearable their situation is. Smirnov has been leading this non-existing country for as long as twenty years.
The film focuses on a couple of characters stuck in this geo-political gap, in between the European Union and Russia, in between the present and the past, crime and decency, decadence and hope for change. Framed by the time of the presidential elections, the film is presented as a trip to a museum of communist totalitarianism and analyzes the organization of a “non-state” and the rules of a regular life within.

Ala’a Hassan, Samer, Tasneem and Waed are third-generation Palestinian refugees. They are part of “Les Chebabs”, a group they formed in their teenage years. In this spirited, staunchly humanistic film we follow these youths, living in the 50-year-old camp of Yarmouk in Syria, where rooms are left to leak and living quarters are stacked shoddily one upon the other.
With his observant camera in tow, Axel Salvatori-Sinz films these young people haunted by doubts about their future life choices, caught between loyalty to their friends and a desire to take flight, sometimes leaving the others far behind. Now on the eve of adulthood, they have a genuine thirst for life and for the absolute, while being all confronted to intricate situations.
Between the need for freedom and sticking to the group, between longing for revolt and the prospect of a well-ordered life, choices are hard to make – even more so if you’re a Palestinian refugee in the camp of Yarmouk in Syria.