Social & External
In Fear, documentary filmmaker Michiel van Erp creates a collage of inhabitants of the city of Amsterdam who struggle with various anxiety disorders. Today, more patients with anxiety disorders seek professional help than those who suffer from depression, making anxiety the number one mental illness in the Netherlands. This film will show how a small number of those patients attempt to overcome their fears, in order to get on with their lives in the crowded cosmopolitan city that Amsterdam is today.
Buenos Aires is a complex, chaotic city. It has European style and a Latin American heart. It has oscillated between dictatorship and democracy for over a century, and its citizens have faced brutal oppression and economic disaster. Throughout all this, successive generations of activists and artists have taken to the streets of this city to express themselves through art. This has given the walls a powerful and symbolic role: they have become the city’s voice. This tradition of expression in public space, of art and activism interweaving, has made the streets of Buenos Aires into a riot of colour and communication, giving the world a lesson in how to make resistance beautiful.
Journalist Dermi Azevedo has never stopped fighting for human rights and now, three decades after the end of the military dictatorship in Brazil, he's witnessing the return of those same practices.
SOUND OF THE SOUL is a compelling portrait of an Arab country where Muslims, Christians, and Jews have lived together in relative peace for centuries. Beautifully photographed during the Fez Festival of World Sacred Music, the film presents unforgettable performances from groups from Morocco, Ireland, Russia, Afghanistan, Mauritania, the USA, Portugal and France, which carry viewers into what the film's Moroccan sufi guide calls "the hearing of the heart": the essential Oneness at the core of all religions and faiths.
This raucous journey into the heart of democracy captures an unusual rite of passage: 1,100 teenage boys from across Texas coming together to build a representative government from the ground up.
Charting the recent advancements in weaponized communication by investigating the rise and fall of the world’s most notorious public relations and reputation management firm: the British multinational Bell Pottinger.
Bible expert Bill Gallatin explores biblical prophecies from the Book of Revelation that have transpired, with a discussion of whether these events signify that we are now living in the End Times preceding the return of Jesus Christ. Gallatin touches on events such as the increasingly acute difficulties in the Middle East, numerous environmental catastrophes, earthquakes and more, explaining how they connect to scriptural writings.
Filmmaker Steve York explores the controversial 2004 Ukrainian presidential election, during which candidate Viktor Yushchenko suffered a near-fatal poisoning and his unpopular opponent, Viktor Yanukovych, was declared the winner. In the aftermath, more than a million people -- including the ailing Yushchenko -- took to the streets of Kiev, protesting the results that contradicted exit polls showing Yushchenko with an impressive lead.
At the peak of Perestroika, in 1987, in the village of Gorki, where Lenin spent his last years, after a long construction, the last and most grandiose museum of the Leader was opened. Soon after the opening, the ideology changed, and the flow of pilgrims gradually dried up. Despite this, the museum still works and the management is looking for ways to attract visitors. Faithful to the Lenin keepers of the museum as they can resist the onset of commercialization. The film tells about the modern life of this amazing museum-reserve and its employees.
Following the Prophet Muhammad’s (PBUH) recommendation to journey to three mosques - (in Makkah, Madinah and Jerusalem), this film sets out in the company of British bass player Danny ‘Hamza’ Thompson to discover the reasons why the last of these three holds such an important place in the hearts of Muslims everywhere.
The historical memory of torture, persecution and killings of homosexuals and lesbians in Spain during Franco's dictatorship provides an opportunity to tell about discrimination and homophobia in the rest of the world. Those who lived through that period recall times when being gay was a crime and the Church was completely indifferent; even the movie (and the fashion) world turned their backs. Today Spain is actually a model for enlightened social attitudes and for the freedoms achieved by the GLBT community. So it is important to remind the young of the high price paid by the older generations. One of the directors of the film, Enrique del Pozo, is a singer and actor who is openly bisexual and very famous in Spain.
A series of interviews are conducted concerning people's beliefs towards the possibility of an afterlife. The interviews are filmed against a set of strange backdrops, and are intercut with clips from classic films and a variety of stock footage.
Julia Sweeney's third autobiographical monologue, Letting Go of God takes the audience through her Catholic upbringing and how personal events in her life and that of her family led her to a disbelief in a personal universal deity.
A rare close-up of the Abakuá —an Afro-Cuban religious brotherhood that has been hidden from outsiders until recently. A symbol of resistance for over 200 years, the Abakuá society has managed to survive slavery, the Spanish domination and the Revolution, spite of all the bias and misunderstandings about their traditions and rituals.
Smartphones, computers, gaming consoles or digital tablets are now givens in our daily lives. The electronic intrusion is causing controversy and collective hysteria. Are we damaging our brains with all these screens? How will unprecedented exposure to screens impact humanity? To find out, the filmmakers examine how science has been applied to distinguish between truth and falsehoods, and explore the suspected side-effects of screen exposure. The documentary travels through the US and Europe to meet and speak to researchers who are leaders in this field.
"What could be more unsettling than a man close to death whose profound arrogance drives him relentlessly to hang onto both his power and his writing, to the bitter end?" In the twilight of his second seven-year term, François Mitterrand was alone. Ravaged by illness and abandoned by a large majority of the Socialist Party, who would not forgive him for the disastrous outcome of the March 1993 elections, the Head of State was preparing to tackle a second round of cohabitation with the right wing. However a series of unexpected tragedies and revelations would arise, casting a shadow over the end of his reign…
In 2008 French filmmaker Julie Gali traveled to the US to film the election of Barack Obama. In spite of this victory for civil rights, it soon became apparent that the rights of another minority were under threat. In California the passing of Proposition 8 marked the only time in U.S. history that a civil right was actually taken away after it had been granted. Upon seeing this, Ms. Gali decided to immerse herself in the growing grassroots struggle of the gay community, which culminated in the October 11, 2009 March for Equality in Washington DC.
The story of the University of Brasília, since it was only a project in Darcy Ribeiro's head until the fateful events in August 1968 when its campus was invaded by the police, during the military dictatorship, thus putting an end to its independence.
Shut Up and Sing is a documentary about the country band from Texas called the Dixie Chicks and how one tiny comment against President Bush dropped their number one hit off the charts and caused fans to hate them, destroy their CD’s, and protest at their concerts. A film about freedom of speech gone out of control and the three girls lives that were forever changed by a small anti-Bush comment
Pouvoir Oublier is a political documentary first constructed from the words of the speakers whose lives changed on the tragic day of May 10, 1972 in Sept-Îles. Their word will be juxtaposed with archival material from the events, some of which are unpublished, which will reflect the collective euphoria in which Sept-Îles and all of Quebec were then bathed.
