"Where it begins"
Original images of nature are accompanied by the director's personal reflections, presented through subtitles, forming a quiet and contemplative cinematic experience
Social & External
The people behind it
A man desperately searches for his girlfriend on the Costa del Sol.
In 1900, in an arid region of Berry, France, drought had been raging for over a year. The trees had dried up, the crops were lost, and the animals were dying of thirst. A desperate farmer appealed to an old woman who lived in an isolated tower. She promised him rain in exchange for a sacrifice: his newborn son.
Dramatization of Muir’s struggle to preserve our scenic wonders.
When an ornithologist’s funding gets cut, her nurturing of abandoned bird eggs leads to a transformation as her marriage crumbles.
At a national park in Kenya, English game warden George Adamson and his wife, Joy, care for three orphaned lion cubs. After the two larger lions are shipped off to a zoo in the Netherlands, the smallest of the three, Elsa, stays with the couple. When Elsa is blamed for causing an elephant stampede in the nearby village, head warden John Kendall demands the young lion either be trained to survive in the wilds of the Serengeti or be sent to a zoo.
On the South Pacific island of Bora Bora, a young couple's love is threatened when the tribal chief declares the girl a sacred virgin.
A dying man in his forties recalls his childhood, his mother, the war and personal moments that tell of and juxtapose pivotal moments in Soviet history with daily life.
With a keen sense of visual beauty, director Markku Lehmuskallio has created a thought-provoking, aesthetic film about a married couple and an old man living in a remote part of Finland. The young husband goes out hunting but only to support himself and his wife, not to kill off hordes of animals. He sets traps, and that gets him in trouble with the police who proceed to ticket him for using the devices. The forest cycles themselves are intimated when an old tree is shown falling to earth -- perhaps a reflection on the old man's passing years. In contrast to these few people living off the land and basically keeping the ecological balance intact, a highway construction crew is shown at work felling trees. Soon the antagonism grows between encroaching civilization and the quiet life of the young couple and elderly man.
A group of friends from a summer village. Over the past few years, they've been seeing each other less and less. Bruna invites them to lunch to celebrate her birthday, in the village, in the place where they have shared so many moments together, to relive it once more, perhaps for the last time.
The mother of a severely traumatized daughter enlists the aid of a unique horse trainer to help the girl's equally injured horse.
In a recording studio, five mothers read the testimonies of other anonymous mothers and open up, laying bare their regret about motherhood. On an imagined island, these five mothers are locked away in an open-air prison. They are under surveillance and forced into hard labor.
A young woman leaves the city to return to her hometown in the countryside. Seeking to escape the hustle and bustle of the city, she becomes self-sufficient in a bid to reconnect with nature.
When the laws of mankind no longer exist, what becomes of ones humanity when survival is their only focus?
An empathic, young plant doctor gifted with extrasensory powers and an emotionally fragile, isolated artist, must rescue each other to rediscover the essence of living. A coming of age story about two women from different generations, who have more in common than they are willing to admit.
Secrets of a Soul: Margarethe, Creator of bizarre sculptures! Night club dancer? Mad woman? Victim of an occult conspiracy?! Dark menaces steal her soul and organs. Though dead they keep her alive...
Record high oil prices, global warming, and an insatiable demand for energy: these issues define our generation. The film exposes shocking connections between the auto industry, the oil industry, and the government, while exploring alternative energies such as solar, wind, electricity, and non-food-based biofuels.
Norman is not just an admirer of nature, he's a part of it. He survives the harshness of the climate and the wildlife by coexisting with it. With his wife Nebraska, they live almost entirely off the land, making money by selling their furs.
An experimental journey on the echoes of an ambiguous relationship.
In a suburban landscape, the lives of several families interlace with loss, despair and personal crisis. Esther Gold has lost focus on all but caring for her comatose son, Paul, and neglects her daughter and husband. Lawyer Jim Train is devoted to his career, not his family. Helen Christianson wants to find a new spark in life, while Annette Jennings tries to rebuild hers.
94-year-old Eleanor Morgenstein tries to rebuild her life after the death of her best friend. As a result, she moves back to New York City after living in Florida for decades.
A poor, struggling South Carolinian mother and daughter face painful choices with their resolve and pride. Bone, the eldest daughter, and Anney her tired mother, grow both closer and farther apart: Anney sees Glen as her last chance.
While serving life in prison, a young man looks back at the people, the circumstances and the system that set him on the path toward his crime.
Thomas Montgomery, a married father of two young daughters, gets seduced by the world of online gambling and chat rooms where a virtual romance and sexual obsession ultimately leads to the murder of an innocent man.
Two separate stories mesh - in the first, a young music teacher, Maggie Andrews, begins dying of a heart condition and her son Nathan tries to get a pair of Christmas shoes for her before she dies. In the second, lawyer Robert Layton and his wife Kate are slowly drifting apart and the matter comes to a head during Christmas when Kate takes over for Maggie for the school choir.
Tom and Mae Garvey are a Tennessee farming couple battling violent floods to save their land. In addition to natural disasters, the Garveys fight to stop a selfish land developer and a local corporation from foreclosing on their farm. While Mae stays at home to care for their children and tend to the crops, Tom finds work as a scab at a steel mill to preserve his family's property.
A psychotherapist helps a law student cope with schizophrenia in one of five interconnected tales dealing with mental illness.
A mother and her teenage daughter must confront Death when it arrives in the form of an astonishing talking bird.
Four siblings' lives change drastically when their ailing mother takes a turn for the worse over the holiday season.
During the 1976 Soweto uprising, a white school teacher's life and values are threatened when he asks questions about the death of a young black boy who died in police custody.
Julie is a new mom and children's book author, who escapes into the bright Crayola-colored world of her creation in order to leave behind the darkness caused by her post-partum depression.
A woman and her new husband returns to her hometown roots in coastal northern Florida, and must deal with family, business, and encroaching real estate development.
Feeling awkward and isolated, an imaginative and strong-willed teenage girl runs away from home with an older punk rock drifter.
An 11-year-old girl watches her father come down with a crippling depression. Over one summer, she learns answers to several mysteries and comes to terms with love and loss.
When lapsed Jew and former cardiologist Harry suddenly decides to spend his retirement as a pig farmer in Nazareth, Israel, the move deeply shocks his family and his new neighbours. Back in New York, Harry’s ex-wife Monica is trying to manage the lives of their adult children, Annabelle and David, as well as her own.
A pro ball player with a substance abuse problem is forced into rehab in his hometown, finding new hope when he gets honest about his checkered past, and takes on coaching duties for a misfit Little League team
In order to be reinstated to the bar and recover custody of her daughter, a hotshot lawyer, now in recovery and on probation, must take on the appeal of a woman wrongfully convicted of murder.
Agnes and her two sisters struggle through a day in a home overrun by gamblers, thieves, and johns.
More interested in partying and flirting with young musicians than work, veteran rock journalist Ellie Klug has one last chance to prove her value to her magazine’s editor: a no-stone-unturned search to discover what really happened to long lost rock god, Matt Smith, who also happens to be her ex-boyfriend. Teaming up with an eccentric amateur documentary filmmaker, Ellie hits the road in search of answers.