Festival films

As 14-year-old Hugo prepares for the French surfing championships in Biarritz, he learns that his family will have to stay in Guadeloupe. For the first time, he will be taking part in a competition without his mother. He will have to take responsibility and show maturity if he’s going to be up to the challenge in the Basque waves.

Between 2013 and 2014, a surveillance camera was secretly installed in front of the factory gate of a Chinese company which had been recently listed on the New York Stock Exchange. In 24 Cinematic Points of View of a Factory Gate in China, the surveillance footage is resituated within a genealogy that extends back to the Lumières’ seminal film showing workers walking out of a factory gate. As narrated by a fictional filmmaker who has been approached by an unnamed American investor to review the footage through a “cinematic point of view”, the film spans over a century of European, American and Chinese cinema to examine how the Revolution, which returned the country’s factories to its workers, has culminated in a scene of their near disappearance.

A Turkish funeral undertaker in Belgium and his counterpart in Turkey guide us on this macambre yet enjoyable journey that deconstructs the Great Mystery. 2m2 observes the way in which even this major event of human existence (Heidegger described it as the greatest), which has inspired humanity’s most profound philosophy, poetry, and art since the beginning of mankind, can ultimately inspire entrepreneurship, along with all this may entail. While maintaining a wonderfully delicate equilibrium between the gravity of its message and the dark humor of an extremely incisive commentary on the capitalist demystification and desacralization of death, this remarkable documentary affirms that there's no better way to exorcise your deepest fears than to have a good laugh.

Following the destruction of the Marshall Islands caused by US nuclear weapons testing between 1948 and 1951 (testing that led to a wide range of health problems among the islanders), mοre than 10,000 Marshallese currently live in Enid, Oklahoma, where they have been granted the right to reside and work, but without full rights. The psychological toll of adapting to a new cultural context is heavy, and the film, imbued with rare insight and sensitivity, guides us through the community and everyday life of these singular refugees. Systemic racism, the silent internalization of trauma, the deep yearning for homeland and identity, the erasure of History, and the inextinguishable spark of hope transform, through the lens of co-directors Kevin Ford and Ty McMahan, into an evocative, touching ode to human strength and resilience. An original and brave film, executive produced by the legendary Errol Morris.

In Orbán’s Hungary, a self-managed online media outlet, Index, gains great popularity, emerging as the only one capable of honoring independent journalism and exposing the wrongs of an authoritarian regime. When the regime finally finds a way to take control of it through orchestrating interventions, eighty journalists leave Index to create a new outlet with a similar philosophy, called Telex. Despite their good intentions, the enthusiasm for a fresh start and idealism, it’s not long before problems resurface. Shot by one of the journalists who played a key role in both outlets, 80 Angry Journalists offers an invaluable insider’s perspective to showcase how essential – yet precarious – every effort to meaningfully strengthen independent media coverage truly is, one of the most neglected pillars of public life in contemporary democracies.

In one of the worst air tragedies in Italy’s history, 115 passengers lost their lives when an Alitalia flight crashed outside Palermo in 1972. Among them was director Franco Indoniva, a collaborator of Antonioni and a significant voice in Italian cinema. The causes of this deadly and mysterious accident were never fully uncovered. Today, more than half a century later, Indoniva’s daughter, the actress Lorenza Indoniva attempts to re-open the case, fully insistent on finding “a better truth,” and wishing to piece together her father’s psyche from, quite literally, debris, splinters, and shards. Indoniva’s impressive directorial debut skillfully balances between a gripping crime thriller and a sharp socio-political commentary – but above all, it perfectly captures the pain of a child who has lost a parent and the absolution that comes from the truth.

An observational documentary that captures moments from the everyday life of Achilleas Kyriakidis. Between speech and silence, the man behind the writer, the translator and the filmmaker gradually emerges. A portrait of the unseen.

A documentary on cinema censorship during the dictatorship in Greece (1967–1974), based on never-before-seen state archives. The film includes clips of films that were either censored or banned, newsreels of that era, interviews with prominent directors, alongside confidential documents from the Censorship Committee's reports that were made public for the first time, offering a revealing picture of the regime’s control mechanisms while simultaneously composing a fresco of that time.

Can the system truly be overthrown from within? Who, if not Fergie Chambers, is better suited to answer such a question? The politically insurgent son of one of America’s wealthiest families, a staunch communist and sworn enemy of the plutocratic environment he was born and raised in, creates a revolutionary base in rural Massachusetts so as to fight against capitalism from within. With a subversive spirit and remarkable directorial finesse, the riveting All About the Money attempts an incredibly fascinating (and extremely alarming) study of the power and financial structures that dominate the modern world, while simultaneously outlining the portrait of a figure as mesmerizing as it is riddled with contradictions. Never before has the dream of a better, fairer world been a matter of concern for one of its natural, at least from a class-conscious, Marxist standpoint, opponents.

Alexandros, head of the cultural department of a well-known cultural center, spends his last day alone recalling great artistic moments, with lost friends and very important people of art with whom he lived there for the last 25 years, which he tells us based on archival material.

When three American doctors – Palestinian, Jewish, and Zoroastrian – enter Gaza to save lives, they find themselves caught between medicine and politics, risking everything to expose the truth. The war in Gaza has deeply involved another country: the United States. As the attacks intensified in Gaza and medical expertise and capabilities were decimated, American doctors felt a professional and moral obligation to act. Making the difficult but necessary triage decisions after an attack, caring for suffering children, and concerned for their own personal safety, the three physicians in American Doctor are impressive individuals from different backgrounds and experiences, unified in their desire to ease suffering and raise their voices as citizens to demand action from their own government. From Gaza hospitals to the halls of American power, director Poh Si Teng unflinchingly depicts a terrible reality and also shows a path forward to engage on such a difficult issue with humanity and collective action.

Amílcar Cabral was an agronomist, poet, and utopian visionary, often called the African Che Guevara, who led the anti-colonial struggle against Portugal in Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde. As a young student in Lisbon, he became acutely aware of the extent of Portuguese control over its colonies. With the founding of the PAIGC (African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde), Cabral took on the challenge of uniting two countries with distinct cultures in a shared struggle for liberation. Recognizing that armed resistance alone was insufficient for decolonization, he sought international support, bringing the PAIGC to global attention. European filmmakers documented and amplified the conflict. In 1973, eight months before Guinea-Bissau gained independence, he was assassinated. Today, the promise of his visionary ideas seems to lie dormant, like the dust settling on statues of Cabral still scattered across the land.

And if the body is a short film exploring the strange new world of neurotechnology, and its use in the treatment of spinal cord injury and other neuromuscular disorders. Filmed in clinical research labs among scientists, doctors, physical therapists, and their patients, it considers the changed bodies and selves emerging from these novel entanglements of humans and technology. A meditation on the disrupted body, and its re-enchantment.

Renée is a ghost. Forced to flee Thailand in 2022 after a Facebook post, she now seeks asylum in France. Her case remains unresolved, further complicated by being a trans woman. Alone and unprotected, she drifts through Paris, missing her cats and seeking connection – until, through her fragile lightness, a way home emerges.

Lost in the untouched landscapes of Paraguay, a strange community of Europeans attempts to build an enclosed “paradise,” far from everything they consider as decay in the modern world. Conspiracy theorists, right-wing extremists, and all sorts of eccentric people arrive in the community, whose founder and leader is a shrewd German man. Crafting the portrait of the community’s leader and tracing the stories of both the settlers and the Paraguayans around the sect that presents itself as a utopia, Around Paradise is an insightful film that – upon indirectly and allusively casting light on the so-called paradise through dark humor and a metaphysical lens – addresses a number of pressing issues of our time: from the rise of the far right and its historical roots to modern colonialism through the economy and digital technology. Unsettlingly revealing and with masterful aesthetics, Yulia Lokshina’s brilliant documentary stays etched in memory long after the end credits.

In the last quarter of the 20th century, Elizabeth E. Jean Caroll’s name became synonymous with the New Journalism movement in the American Press, as the first widely recognized female byline in male-dominated outlets such as Esquire or Playboy, as well as the longest-running advice columnist in Elle – in the style of “Dear Mary.” In the first quarter of the 21st century, E. Jean became the first woman who convincingly argued twice before the court to convict a former US president for rape, having already released the bestseller What Do We Need Men For? A Modest Proposal in 2019, in which she fearlessly recounted all the details of the sexual assault with unrelenting passion. From her early years as a cheerleader to her time covering the gonzo patriarch Hunter Thompson, and up to the present day, one of the most dedicated chroniclers of American political life delivers the portrait of a singular personality; a public figure who devoted herself to defining true emancipation and solidarity, armed solely with words and the courage that comes from self-awareness.

What does freedom mean without inner peace? A Song Without Home follows Adelina, a young trans woman who, after 11 years of confinement in a Georgian village, flees to Vienna in search of freedom. As she builds a new life, a past that refuses to release her continues to shape her sense of belonging. Created over a decade under political pressure and personal risk, the film is effectively illegal in Georgia under anti-LGBTQ+ laws, forcing its makers to complete it abroad. Expanding on the award-nominated short Prisoner of Society (2018), the documentary blends immersive imagery with an intimate mother-daughter story to explore identity, resilience, and the complex meaning of liberation - standing as a powerful act of resistance against the erasure of queer lives.

Danae works at a bar, but dreams of becoming a ballet dancer. She is one of the many young women in Athens struggling to make ends meet. She decides to become an egg donor. Why not? Sounds like it comes at no cost. But the procedure is not that simple.

An intimate, dreamlike, and masterfully crafted portrait of pioneering filmmaker Barbara Hammer, the iconic lesbian feminist artist who created some of the most significant works in the history of queer cinema. Tracing her rich body of work and its resonance today, incorporating previously unseen documents from her life, and remaining faithful to what Hammer herself called “tactical cinema” – playing on the word’s ambiguity to suggest a cinema of tactility that seems to devise a strategy for overturning the canon – this hommage harnesses the power of the archive to render visible the naked lives of those outside the norm, ultimately granting them a form of immortality.

"My family have begun to forget their Egyptian roots and, on asking my grandmother Malo to recount the first part of her life in Cairo, I am confronted by the memories of an exiled Arabic woman, lost in a troubled sea of memories, soon to be erased by the passage of time."

In multicultural Belleville, Paris, Matthieu, Solo, Kany, and their friends gather each evening at La Perm', a community center at the foot of the park. Here, the young residents find refuge from the pressures of the street and the inequalities they face in a society where opportunity is unevenly distributed. At La Perm’, they create, share, and support one another, guided by mentors who offer advice on pursuing education, finding work, and standing up for their rights. As they stand at the threshold of adulthood, they confront questions of identity, systemic racism, police violence, and their future in a rapidly changing neighborhood. A documentary full of rhythm, energy, and creative force, that follows their shared efforts to organize the Belleville en Vrai festival. A powerful portrait of resilience, friendship, and collective empowerment.