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The documentary, which was part of the exhibition of the same name, captures moments of birds and people meeting together in urban space. The most glaring sign of the incongruity in such relationships is the great number of injuries with which these winged inhabitants of metropolises end up at rescue stations. Wounds and irreversible damage are inflicted on them through intentional and unintentional human activity, but also by human creations that serve the everyday functioning of society. At the other end of the spectrum, there are individuals who are not only interested in the life of birds, but also care about their welfare and, in a figurative sense, communicate with our avian companions.“Birds are made up of stories. No bird ever dies, even if it does. All birds that have ever lived have a common memory. Birds taught people how to build their cities out of rocky mountains.”Source: Galerie Jeleni

Vtáčnik is a small hill on the outskirts of Bratislava, which a few decades ago was decorated with vineyards and forests. For the director, like the other locals living there, it once represented a picturesque oasis of peace where birds took refuge. Today, however, it is being transformed beyond recognition by the cranes and excavators of property developers. Told from a detailed human and bird's eye perspective, this personal documentary composes an impartial mosaic of diverse, often conflicting accounts and ideas of what life in such a place should be like. Questions about economic concerns and the pursuit of a quality life in harmony with nature collide with the author's memories of her childhood. “My intention was not to divide people into good and bad, but to point out the system that leads people to elevate their individual interests above the common good and to enrich themselves at the expense of others.” — Eva Križková Source: Pravda Magazine

Static shots, mostly long and extreme long shots, and not much seems to happen in them. As if someone often turned the camera on only after the important thing had already been done – in moments when cleaning crews and almost always invisible women with dusters, mops and buckets arrive. When is it necessary to prepare everything for the next round of operation and use under conditions that we have come to perceive as healthy. The minimalist observational documentary lets us glimpse the different forms of how human culture gets rid of dirt and other deposits. Starting with hand washing in healthcare, through various manifestations of mental hygiene and sacred rituals, to cleaning in Holocaust memorials, it is always the same cyclical process. It is the necessity and self-evident nature of the actions accompanying purification that make them a social force of fundamental importance. Above the associative sequence of slow images of cleaned places and washed people, we can reflect on the symbolic and pragmatic meanings of everyday rituals, without which our civilization would collapse.“In my opinion, the current effort is mainly to achieve efficiency and productivity in the neoliberal sense of the word. After that, however, any colour and variety disappears.”Quote source: International Film Festival Bratislava

Enric Miralles, one of the most gifted Spanish architects of his generation, died prematurely in 2000 at the age of 45. He found his final resting place in Barcelona's Igualada Cemetery, which embodies everything that characterised Miralles' work. In the seemingly unfinished space of the forest burial ground, it is difficult to separate the inside from the outside, and nature permeates the architecture. The documentary portrait of an extraordinary personality unfolds as a dialogue between the author's lyrical subject and Miralles' presence in the buildings he designed. The architect himself saw his work almost musically, as a “variation of the same thing”, the same motif and melody. The documentary film, which introduces us to eleven of Miralles' exceptional buildings, is in tune with this wave. Whether it's the Santa Caterina market in Barcelona, the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh or the boarding school in Morell, there is always a clear imprint of the same authorial hand. An artist always defying conventions and, above all, all boundaries, real and imaginary.“Moving with freedom through different places and floating in the city of Barcelona, the narrator's voice, written by one of the most interesting Spanish authors of the moment Sara Mesa, talks to a ghost; it searches for him, evokes him in its spaces, asks questions about his architectures, crossing the threshold between death and life.”Quote source: FilmFreeway

Fifty-five-year-old Hajar, who has spent her entire life in the nomadic Iranian tribe of Bakhtiari, is betrayed and disappointed by her closest family, who want to force her to settle down and peacefully live out her life in the city. Although the circumstances, including the patriarchal social system, increasing urbanization and climate change, are not in her favour, Hajar is not going to give up her flock of sheep or her nomadic freedom. In her extremely empathetic, partly personal documentary debut, director Marjan Khosravi creates a portrait of a strong woman who, even in the face of turbulent modernity, does not want to let herself be deprived of the most valuable things she has – memories, traditions, contact with nature and the joy of free movement.“I immediately figured out that Hajar and her personal story is the concept of my new film and I decided to make a film about her and all the other women like her: traditional women and their struggles with modern life. Their families always decide for them, yet they are never happy with these decisions. These women are not heard by anyone.” — Marjan KhosraviSource: Variety

Khlong Toei is one of Bangkok's central districts, home to the largest slum in the exponentially growing Thai metropolis. The place, which accommodates 100,000 inhabitants, could at first glance be characterised by chaos, overcrowding and pollution. However, the pure, immersive observation of the masterful duo Bêka & Lemoine, capturing the rhythms of day and night life in this fascinating environment, proves that it is in fact a living organism in which order reigns and time passes slowly but surely. The means of private and public transport that arrive and depart without ceasing, the cycle of life being born and fading away in the midst of the huge market that is the beating heart of the neighbourhood and the origin of the most diverse interpersonal interactions, the cleaning crews responsible for its cleanliness and its systematised space, children playing and eating together in narrow alleys and cozy rooms shared by entire families – all of these are humanly subtle yet authentically raw images of everyday life that shatter the stereotypical notion of slum life.“Deconstructing the clichés associated with slums, such as violence, gangs and illicit trafficking, the film is a full immersion and close observation of the living conditions, daily rhythms, micro economies and neighborhood relationships binding this community together.”

The final stops of buses, trams and trolleybuses in the suburbs of Riga. “Non-places” with no specific character, where nothing special happens and yet there is no stopping movement. Some people go from here to work or school, others return home. Or they work in their flower and vegetable stalls near the bus stops. Morning, evening, in snow and rain. Weekdays and holidays. Laila Pakalniņa captures their work, waiting and passing, calm and impatient, in tight moving shots. Gints Bērziņš's black and white camera stays at one point, describing a circle that begins and ends nowhere. Ordinary stopping points, which we use without thinking about their function, become important crossroads in a wordless urban symphony, to whose unchanging rhythm the entire metropolis must submit. Exploring the poetry in everyday routine and repetition, the film completes the director's ornamental trilogy on public transport, complemented by The Bus (2004) and Homes (2021).“The ever-moving camera creates the form of the film, peering through the window of a bus, trolleybus, or tram, observing the world.”Quote source: Riga International Film Festival

A cross between a reportage film and a video essay, the film follows an ordinary evening with the Pugnant Film Series, a Greek independent organisation that organises unconventional screenings for audiences who want to see the most interesting things from the world of independent, auteur and experimental film. This time, the venue for the cinephilic event is an abandoned house in the centre of Athens. Its empty spaces are transformed into cinema halls, which, through the influence of culture and a shared cinematic experience, momentarily return to life. “The empty houses are ours to do what we want with them.”

The director Tomáš Hlaváček is loosely building upon the time-lapse documentary Housing Against Everyone, in which he captured the dispute surrounding the Rapid Re-Housing project in Brno. The topic of decent housing for families in need is also addressed in The Impossibility. People occupying rental apartments in Brno's “Kuncovka” wanted hot water, electricity and fair negotiations. Instead, they received bullying and threats from the owner, who, in his own words, “does not like coloured people”. Neither the police nor the city helped them. So they joined forces with activists and lawyers to fight for their rights. Hlaváček chronicles the months-long conflict with its legal follow-up as an engaged observer. "When I first set foot in that house, I came roughly against the gap between theoretical understanding and the real experience of extreme poverty and inequality that plunges the lot of the inhabitants into lived hopelessness. I observed a space where defending one’s own rights, let alone human dignity, is so expensive and dangerous that claiming it is tantamount to existential endangerment of self and family. At Kuncovka, I learned that to be poor is to become a commodity of abuse that no one wants to hear, because poverty is itself a guilt. It wasn’t a matter of just turning my head and pretending that this world didn’t exist." - Tomáš Hlaváček

James Joyce created his monumental work on the basis of Homer's epic. The Belarusian director decided to “scrape” words from the writer's text and “write” his own modern odyssey through it. In his film-palimpsest, he not only refers to the famous modernist novel by the Irish writer, but uses the opening scene to bring into play the no-less-famous attempt at a film adaptation from 1967. Only Dublin was replaced by Minsk, and instead of a Jewish busybody, Ruslyk, the personal director of President Lukashenko wanders the labyrinth of the city all day long. On his convoluted postmodern pilgrimage, he meets doctors, politicians, propagandists, artists, drunkards and outcasts. He conducts blasphemous dialogues with them about the rotten nature of the ruling regime, vents creative and personal frustrations, or just tries to borrow a cell phone to call home to his wife. The cinematic colossus that unfolds over nine hours fascinates with the omnipresence of intense moments, ordered one after the other with a wild rhythmic cadence.“I thought it would be nice to show the real Minsk. That’s the diss track aspect of it.”Quote source: Mubi