Social & External
On Fanø, Denmark, three young families have their lives brutally turned upside down when the municipality suspects them of having abused their children. The suspicion is unfounded, but the damage is done, and the families are now dragged through a process involving child interviews, police interrogations, and more. Is the law on protecting children from abuse too far-reaching, or is it simply the price some must pay to prevent serious cases of mistreatment and neglect?
"It’s not easy to find a foster family for you," an orphanage supervisor explains to nine-year-old Alicia. "After all, you are a very special girl." Alicia is crying. "I’m not special. I’m just a girl." This disturbing scene sets the tone for this film about Alicia, who was taken away from her teenage mother by the Child Welfare Bureau when she was 12 months old. She’s been living in an orphanage since the age of five, and they have never managed to find a foster family for her. In Alicia, we watch as she becomes a teenager, still craving safety and love. Over the course of three years, filmmaker Maasja Ooms follows her daily life up close. Alicia's yearning and powerlessness are palpable in these observations, which painfully reveal the effects of having no prospects.
American states and parents in both Europe and the United States are engaging in a joint fight against digital giants to ensure their responsibility in the addiction of young people to screens and social media is recognized. Among them, five women have chosen to disrupt their daily lives: Alexis, Kathleen, Elisabet, Laure, and Socheata.
THE DEPARTMENT is a feature documentary which takes us inside the never-before-seen child protection system at work in NSW. Filmed in an observational style, it follows caseworkers across the state as they navigate the complexities of keeping children safe in families experiencing domestic violence, addiction, poverty, mental health issues and intergenerational trauma.
A direct, uncompromising look into the complex machinery of Quebec’s youth protection services (known as the DPJ). https://lustitia.com/en/productions/dpj/
In 1942, in an occupied Paris, the apolitical grocer Edmond Batignole lives with his wife and daughter in a small apartment in the building of his grocery. When his future son-in-law and collaborator of the German Pierre-Jean Lamour calls the Nazis to arrest the Jewish Bernstein family, they move to the confiscated apartment. Some days later, the young Simon Bernstein escapes from the Germans and comes to his former home. When Batignole finds him, he feels sorry for the boy and lodges him, hiding Simon from Pierre-Jean and also from his wife. Later, two cousins of Simon meet him in the cellar of the grocery. When Pierre-Jean finds the children, Batignole decides to travel with the children to Switzerland.
During World War II, South Sea beachcomber Walter Eckland is persuaded to spy on planes passing over his island. He gets more than he bargained for as schoolteacher Catherine Frenau arrives on the run from the Japanese with her pupils in tow!
Barbara was caring for her grandchildren when her granddaughter Tiara was taken from school by welfare workers. Barbara fought for the next seven months to have her returned and finally won but the consequences of the removal on the family will never go away.
In the brutal slums of Jordan, a volatile street rat who survives through intimidation and petty crime is suddenly pulled into a deadly power shift when the city’s underworld reorganizes turning survival into a matter of brutal instinct.
Once upon a time there was Louise and her friend, the magician. But his last trick left a bitter taste in her mouth. He disappeared in a curtain of smoke… never to appear again. This is too much for the young woman. Devastated by endless grief, Louise is sent to a psychiatric asylum, resigned to the idea that she will swallow pills till the end of her days. Yet nine months later she gives birth to a child who is likely to have a big problem for his future class pictures, since he’s invisible. But Louise doesn’t care. He’s her angel and, wanting to protect him from this cruel world, she decides to keep his existence a secret. Years later, Louise’s angel has grown up. He even managed to find a girlfriend; Madeleine. The two become inseparable, for Madeleine never judges him. And for good reason: she’s blind.
Wherever 9-year-old Benni ends up, she is expelled. She has become what child protection services call a “system crasher.” But she is not looking to change her ways, and has one goal: go back home to her mother. When anger management trainer Micha is hired to help, suddenly there is hope.
Angelina lives in a big city on the sea coast, where handsome men and beautiful women are strolling the streets with only one purpose: to have fun, flirt and love. But Angelina, being pretty, intelligent, and nice, finds herself lonely. She is a police officer and her job is helping abandoned kids, orphans, and troubled youngsters. One day one of her charges, a little boy, explains to Angelina how lonely, dull and useless she is. Those words have been bothering her ever since, and she decides to change herself.. Angelina starts her way through the darkness…
Masaru Aso was the lab assistant of geneticist Doctor Mochizuki, used as one of his experiments related the creation of the Neo Organism, enabling him to transform into a grasshopper-like being called Kamen Rider ZO. He fled into the mountainside and went into a coma before he was awakened by a telepathic call two years later with an unconscious urge to protect Hiroshi Mochizuki, the son of Doctor Mochizuki.
A young group of actors are preparing an updated version of Shakespeare's ROMEO & JULIET. Two boys perform the central roles - both of them struggling with their own questions of love alongside their roles on stage. And as rehearsals begin, reality soon starts to interfere with the play.
A documentary on the massacre of Planas in the Colombian east plains in 1970. An Indigenous community formed a cooperative to defend their rights from settlers and colonists, but the government organized a military operation to protect the latter and foreign companies.
A group of people are standing along the platform of a railway station in La Ciotat, waiting for a train. One is seen coming, at some distance, and eventually stops at the platform. Doors of the railway-cars open and attendants help passengers off and on. Popular legend has it that, when this film was shown, the first-night audience fled the café in terror, fearing being run over by the "approaching" train. This legend has since been identified as promotional embellishment, though there is evidence to suggest that people were astounded at the capabilities of the Lumières' cinématographe.
A German Documentary about the “village of friendship” that was created by American Veteran George Mizo to help the Vietnamese kids suffering from the Vietnam War.
A day in the city of Berlin, which experienced an industrial boom in the 1920s, and still provides an insight into the living and working conditions at that time. Germany had just recovered a little from the worst consequences of the First World War, the great economic crisis was still a few years away and Hitler was not yet an issue at the time.
In 35 years of one couple's shared life, a lot of things happen: from the moments of an absolute harmony to the dramatic falls. For the most of the time, the couple cares for common daily life issues and joys that come together with raising the children, running the household or running a business. And this is exactly the life of furniture shop owners Ivana and Vaclav Strnadovi, 2 characters that a director Helena Trestíková follows with her camera as of the year 1980 within a project The Marriage Story. Her new feature documentary about Strnad family is linked to TV films from this cycle, but most importantly it shows further shocking twists, that life brought to the couple and their children.
