Film Archive

Joana Gusmão

André Gil Mata

Maria Hermínia Gil Mata

André Gil Mata

Tomás Baltazar

André Gil Mata

Pedro Augusto

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.

Doc Alliance Selection 2013

Fortress Lukáš Kokeš, Klára Tasovská

Trans-Dniestr: a living museum of Soviet-style communism on the borders of the Moldavian Republic. Propaganda, secret police, and a bizarre refuge from the dangers of modern life.

Documentary Film

Czech Republic

2012

70'

Fortress

Doc Alliance Selection

2013

Documentary Film

Czech Republic

2012

70 minutes

Russian

subtitles:

English

Credits

Pavla Kubečková, Tomas Hruby, nutprodukce

Lukáš Kokeš, Klára Tasovská

Lukáš Kokeš

Alexandra Gojdičová

Lukáš Kokeš, Klára Tasovská

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.

Doc Alliance Selection 2016

Fragment 53 Carlo Gabriele Tribbioli, Federico Lodoli

Former warlords talk about their actions in the Liberian civil war. Extremely intense, meticulously researched and formally austere study of violence and brutality.

Documentary Film

Italy

Switzerland

2015

71'

Fragment 53

Doc Alliance Selection

2016

Documentary Film

Italy,

Switzerland

2015

71 minutes

English

subtitles:

English

Credits

Tommaso Bertani, Federica Schiavo

Carlo Gabriele Tribbioli, Federico Lodoli

Carlo Gabriele Tribbioli, Federico Lodoli

Carlo Gabriele Tribbioli, Federico Lodoli

Carlo Gabriele Tribbioli, Federico Lodoli

Extremly condensed, meticulously researched and journalistic study of Liberia’s recent history. Seven former warlords of different ranks talk in interviews about cruelties they committed on their own or following orders during the first Liberian civil war in the early 1990s. Memories of brutal orgies of violence are recited with almost bureaucratic precision, interrupted only by precisely framed shots of the beautiful landscape in which – as we gradually realise – the now invisible horror took place.

Lina Dinkla

Doc Alliance Selection 2021

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Gabi, Between Ages 8 and 13 Engeli Broberg

Five years with Gabi, who doesn’t believe that there are any material differences between boys and girls. A sensitive portrait about the challenge of being oneself.

Documentary Film

Sweden

2021

75'

Gabi, Between Ages 8 and 13

Gabi, mellan åren 8 till 13

Engeli Broberg

Doc Alliance Selection 2021

Documentary Film

Sweden

2021

75 minutes

Swedish,

English

subtitles:

English

Credits

Engeli Broberg

Anna J Ljungmark

Kari Anne Moe

Gudmundur Gunnarsson

Tommy Olsson

Kalle Lindberg

Engeli Broberg

Sofia Hallgren

Kjetil Schjanderluhr

Gabi, eight years old, isn’t interested in “girl stuff”, but in Lego and football. Many months later, little has changed about this. Nevertheless, Gabi, now in cap and shorts, stands out more. The onset of puberty stirs up fears, raises new questions. Once again Gabi sits at the hairdresser’s and her hair gets a little shorter. The “hairstyle” problem comes up regularly, for her mother would like her daughter to look a little more feminine from time to time. No such luck. Gabi is convinced that there is no difference between boys and girls, apart from a few hormones. Sensitively, Engeli Broberg observes this young person over a period of five years as they try to stay true to themselves.

Carolin Weidner

Small Worlds, Big People

Doc Alliance Selection 2016

Gulîstan, Land of Roses Zaynê Akyol

PKK women fighters in the mountains and deserts of Kurdistan: training for combat, celebrations, laughs, and some profound insights into their convictions, fears and grief.

Documentary Film

Canada

Germany

2016

86'

Gulîstan, Land of Roses

Doc Alliance Selection

2016

Documentary Film

Canada,

Germany

2016

86 minutes

Kurdish

subtitles:

English

Credits

Sarah Mannering, Fanny Drew, Yanick Létourneau (Périphéria), Mehmet Aktaş (Mîtosfilm), Nathalie Cloutier (NFB), Denis McCready (NFB)

Zaynê Akyol

Christophe Lamarche-Ledoux

Étienne Roussy

Mathieu Bouchard-Malo

Zaynê Akyol

Olivier Calvert

Zaynê Akyol follows female PKK fighters in the Kurdish territories of Iraq and Syria to take a nuanced look at the guerrilla war. In between focused preparations for their missions against Isis the women take time for personal hygiene, laugh and celebrate exuberantly with their male comrades.

The protagonists, always at the centre of the frame, talk openly about their fears and ideals. They have taken a life decision – out of conviction. But one that also brings grief.

Lina Dinkla

Doc Alliance Selection 2015

Haunted Liwaa yazji

Imagine a war. Where do you go? What do you take with you? People in Syria about mentally coping with the horror that can erupt any time.

Documentary Film

Syria

2014

117'

Haunted

Doc Alliance Selection

2015

Documentary Film

Syria

2014

117 minutes

subtitles:

English

Credits

Liwaa Yazji

Liwaa yazji

Kinan Abou Afach

Talal Khoury, Joude Gorani, Liwaa Yazji

Carine Doumit

Liwaa Yazji

DB Studio

Imagine there’s a war. Where do you go? What do you take? For the people of Syria this is not just an intellectual game. Nobody wants to leave their home. They all try to stay to the last. They wonder what will be left when they leave everything behind. Perhaps the cup of coffee in the morning will be their last? Bombs are falling in the background. Images of devastated cities and interviews with people who still live there show that war is not abstract. It’s happening now.

Kim Busch

Doc Alliance Selection 2015

Homeland (Iraq Year Zero) Abbas Fahdel

A long-term chronicle of family life in Bagdad before and after the Iraq war. The attempt to live a normal life in war. An intimate, intense and stunning saga.

Documentary Film

Iraq

2015

334'

Homeland (Iraq Year Zero)

Doc Alliance Selection

2015

Documentary Film

Iraq

2015

334 minutes

subtitles:

English

Credits

Abbas Fahdel

Abbas Fahdel

Abbas Fahdel

Abbas Fahdel

Abbas Fahdel

In 2002, a year before the U.S. invasion, Abbas Fahdel began to film his family in Bagdad. His 12-year-old nephew Haidar was sure about one thing: you don’t have to go to school in a war. Everyone seemed to be waiting, nobody knew what to expect. In 2003, a few weeks after the official end of the fighting, Fahdel returns – the joy about the U.S. invasion has given way to a strong sense of disillusionment and chaos.

An intense chronicle of ordinary life in a war without showing the war itself.

Lina Dinkla

International Programme 2019

In Touch Paweł Ziemilski

A third of the inhabitants of a Polish village have emigrated to Iceland. They stay in touch via Skype. Projections of a supposedly better life on a supposedly worse life.

Documentary Film

Iceland

Poland

2018

61'

In Touch

International Programme

2019

Documentary Film

Iceland,

Poland

2018

61 minutes

Icelandic

Polish

subtitles:

English

Credits

Łukasz Długołęcki, Haukur M. Hrafnsson

Paweł Ziemilski

Arni Valur Kristinsson, Martina Bertoni

Filip Drożdż

Dorota Wardęszkiewicz

Paweł Ziemilski, Łukasz Długołęcki, Haukur M. Hrafnsson

Piotr Kubiak, Paweł Szygendowski

On the road to a better life you are inevitably forced to leave many things behind. The Polish village of Stare Juchy is such a left-behind place. Since the 1980s, a third of its population emigrated to Iceland and none of them have returned to date. The relatives who stayed in Poland – usually the emigrants’ parents and grandparents – participate via Skype and Facebook in the lives of those who left. They rarely manage to visit each other. In the village, which is still getting emptier, time stands still and its inhabitants become the observers of events far from their surroundings. Their children have careers as police officers or construction managers, their grandchildren sing Icelandic pop songs, and they themselves have no choice but to report on the weather or the mushroom harvest. Every so often, a tentative missing feeling, even a menacing longing, creeps into the conversations. The hope for a reunion dies last.

Paweł Ziemilski uses sequences shot in Iceland that he projects on every imaginable surface in the Polish village. Thus polar lights shine in the living room, a grandfather plays football with his grandson’s image and a gym becomes an icy coast. This aesthetic trick emphasizes the melancholy and absurdity of a situation in which the supposedly better and the supposedly worse life are closely interlinked.

Kim Busch

Doc Alliance Selection 2021

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Looking for Horses Stefan Pavlović

Improbable things happen in the middle of the Bosnian wilderness, where a friendship between a war veteran turned fisherman and a young director brings to light what was buried.

Documentary Film

Netherlands

Bosnia & Herzegovina

France

2021

88'

Looking for Horses

Stefan Pavlović

Doc Alliance Selection 2021

Documentary Film

Netherlands,

Bosnia & Herzegovina,

France

2021

88 minutes

Bosnian,

English

subtitles:

English

Credits

Stefan Pavlović

Koštana Banović

Eyal Sivan

Anna Berthollet

Sabine Groenewegen

Stefan Pavlović

Karsten Fundal

Stefan Pavlović

Stefan Pavlović

Two men by themselves: Zdravko, a war veteran with a hearing impairment who lives as a fisherman in the wilderness, and Stefan, a director with Bosnian roots who has forgotten his mother tongue. The unlikely friendship develops against a both sparse and mysterious background. For while Stefan superimposes his thoughts in text form on the shots, Zdravko sends sounds into the depth with a wooden stick. They are meant to attract catfish that make their rounds in a lake. In the process, the two men summon each other, so to speak, bring to light what was buried, fraternize, overcome inner barriers.

Carolin Weidner

Sense and Being

Doc Alliance Selection 2014

Striplife Andrea Zambelli, Valeria Testagrossa, Nicola Grignani, Alberto Mussolini, Luca Scaffidi

Gardening, sporting boys and a demonstration. Life as usual – if it wasn’t for the shots, explosions and missile fragments on the beach. Life in Gaza.

Documentary Film

Italy

2013

64'

Striplife

Doc Alliance Selection

2014

Documentary Film

Italy

2013

64 minutes

subtitles:

English

Credits

Raffaele Aspide

Andrea Zambelli, Valeria Testagrossa, Nicola Grignani, Alberto Mussolini, Luca Scaffidi

Walter Buonanno

Andrea Zambelli, Valeria Testagrossa, Nicola Grignani, Alberto Mussolini, Luca Scaffidi

Luca Gasparini

A young man wakes up his brother. Someone works in the garden. A few boys do sports together. A photographer takes pictures of a demonstration. And if the young man wasn’t responsible for his brother because their parents are dead, if there were no shots ringing out while the man is gardening, if we didn’t see explosions behind the athletes and if the photographer was not in a wheelchair because both his legs were amputated, one might almost take this for normality. All of this takes place in Gaza, which looks like a twilight world. A world in which there are supermarkets crammed with goods, but also masses of missile fragments on the beach. The film portrays the people in Gaza and how they adapt to impossible living conditions, the inconsistencies of this region and the calm in the eye of the storm.

Late Harvest 2019

That Which Does Not Kill Alexe Poukine

An unagitated, performative stocktaking of the subject of rape. Alexe Poukine recovers the offence from the dark zone and lets victims and perpetrators speak.

Documentary Film

Belgium

France

2019

85'

That Which Does Not Kill

Late Harvest

2019

Documentary Film

Belgium,

France

2019

85 minutes

French

subtitles:

English

Credits

Cyril Bibas (CVB), Cécile Lestrade, Elise Hug (Alter Ego)

Alexe Poukine

Elin Kirschfink

Agnès Bruckert

Ada Leiris

Bruno Schweisguth

Conchita Paz, Epona Guillaume, Aurore Fattier, Marijke Pinoy, Marie Préchac, Sophie Sénécaut, Anne Jacob, Tristan Lamour, Noémie Boes, Maxime Maes, Yves-Marina Gnahoua, Tiphaine Gentilleau, Séverine Degilhage, Laurence Rosier

It’s well-established that the majority of sexualised violence doesn’t take place in the public sphere but in the seemingly protected realm of family, partnership and friends. This is also true of a young woman who was raped by a good friend on a private date. Her report was the occasion and basis of this film which interprets it first performatively, then analytically by women and men playing various roles.

In addition to the act itself, it addresses its consequences and how to deal with feelings of guilt, shame, paralysis and repression – but soon the performers’ own experiences as victims of perpetrators, too. In its directness and detail, speaking out is sometimes agonising for all participants. But talking and listening are the only chance to get hold of the phantoms and demons of the past and thus heal the wounds. Alexe Poukine’s differentiated and multi-faceted approach to an issue usually discussed in sensationalist terms offers us, the audience, a chance to dispassionately re-adjust our perspective on the act of rape.

Silvia Hallensleben

Doc Alliance Selection 2012

The Anabasis of May and Fusako Shigenobu, Masao Adachi, and 27 Years without Images Eric Baudelaire

A leader of the extreme left Japanese Red Army, who spent the past 30 years in hiding in Beirut, her daughter, and a highly convoluted journey home between yesterday and today.

Documentary Film

France

2011

66'

The Anabasis of May and Fusako Shigenobu, Masao Adachi, and 27 Years without Images

Doc Alliance Selection

2012

Documentary Film

France

2011

66 minutes

English

French

Japanese

subtitles:

English

Credits

Eric Baudelaire

Eric Baudelaire

Eric Baudelaire

Eric Baudelaire

Eric Baudelaire

Diego Eiguchi

Who are May and Fusako Shigenobu? Fusako –leader of a small extreme left-wing group, the Japanese Red Army– has been hiding in Beirut for nigh on 30 years. May, her daughter, only discovered Japan at the age of 27. And Masao Adachi? A screenwriter and radical, activist filmmaker, committed to the armed struggle. Amongst other things, he is also the instigator of a ‘theory of landscape’ – fukeiron: through filming landscapes Adachi seeks to reveal the patterns of oppression. Anabasis? This, ever since Xenophon, has been the name given to difficult or even circuitous homeward journeys. It is this complex, dark story, always full of tension that Eric Baudelaire has chosen to evoke using the documentary format. Shot in Super 8, and in the manner of fukeiron, contemporary views of Tokyo and Beirut are blended in with archive footage, TV clips and excerpts from films to spread out the backdrop for May and Adachi’s voices and memories. They speak of everyday life, of being a little girl in hiding, of exile, politics and cinema and the fascinating relationships between them.
– Jean-Pierre Rehm (FID Marseille 2011)

Doc Alliance Selection 2014

The Great Night Petr Hátle

In praise of the night! Sadness and ecstasy, loneliness and crystal. The fates of people in Prague gradually emerge from the shadows. The pull of darkness, set to baroque arias.

Documentary Film

Czech Republic

2013

72'

The Great Night

Doc Alliance Selection

2014

Documentary Film

Czech Republic

2013

72 minutes

Czech

subtitles:

English

Credits

Tomáš Hrubý, Pavla Kubečková, Tereza Polachová, Hana Kastelicová

Petr Hátle

Prokop Souček

Šimon Hájek

Petr Hátle

Martin Klusák

Without light there are no colours. And that’s what they look like, these people of the night – as if they had been drained of all colour. Who knows whether they became this way because their life happens at night or whether they entered the night because of its fading colours. At any rate, they are looking for surrogates of everything they left behind or that simply stayed behind in a world ruled by a certain degree of timelessness and instability. Drugs, sex, alcohol, and gambling provide help or occasions to while away the time, pass the night and perhaps avoid delving into the oppressive blackness they carry inside and around themselves. “People are exactly like a bench or metal. People are only objects. They disappear like fog and leave nothing behind”, says Zdeněk, one of the protagonists. Maybe it doesn’t matter then when the great night begins and how it ends.

Doc Alliance Selection 2014

The Quest of the Schooner Creoula André Valentim Almeida

A group of scientists on Portugal’s biggest scientific expedition to date to the Ilhas Selvagens in the Atlantic Ocean. A journey of discovery, including one’s own past.

Documentary Film

Portugal

2013

87'

The Quest of the Schooner Creoula

Doc Alliance Selection

2014

Documentary Film

Portugal

2013

87 minutes

Portuguese

subtitles:

English

Credits

Joana Miranda

André Valentim Almeida

André Valentim Almeida

André Valentim Almeida

André Valentim Almeida

André Valentim Almeida, Paulo Cunha Martins

In 2010, André Valentim Almeida set out on a journey of discovery. In an age when everything seems to have been explored and new land may only be found in space, perhaps a journey of discovery inevitably makes one look especially closely at and back at everything one encounters. On the schooner “Creoula” he meets a group of scientists who have embarked on Portugal’s greatest scientific expedition to the Ilhas Selvagens in the Atlantic Ocean. During the journey the filmmaker discovers connections to his uncle, a ship’s captain who used to fish in Newfoundland, Portugal’s maritime past and always himself. He looks at the past, the present and the future and discovers more than he expected from this expedition. And then, somehow, there is the World Championship and for a brief moment everyone is euphoric.

Doc Alliance Selection 2013

The Shebabs of Yarmouk Axel Salvatori-Sinz

Young Palestinians in Syria, third generation refugees. Nights on the roof, discussions between loyalty and wanderlust, a group on the threshold of adulthood.

Documentary Film

France

2012

78'

The Shebabs of Yarmouk

Doc Alliance Selection

2013

Documentary Film

France

2012

78 minutes

subtitles:

English

French

Credits

Magali Chirouze, Adalios

Axel Salvatori-Sinz

Reem Kelani

Axel Salvatori-Sinz

Aurélie Jourdan

Axel Salvatori-Sinz

Axel Salvatori-Sinz

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.

Doc Alliance Selection 2012

The Will Christian Sønderby Jepsen

Three brothers who inherit a fortune from their grandfather and a no-holds-barred family war. A story even Hollywood wouldn’t believe.

Documentary Film

Denmark

2011

87'

The Will

Doc Alliance Selection

2012

Documentary Film

Denmark

2011

87 minutes

Danish

subtitles:

English

Credits

Julie E.B. Pedersen, Sarita Christensen, Copenhagen Bombay

Christian Sønderby Jepsen

Jonas Colstrup

Christian Sønderby Jepsen

Rasmus Stensgaard Madsen