relationships

The director, a young man in his thirties going through a life crisis, approaches his estranged parents to help him paint his apartment. Conversations accompanied by a paint roller and paint thinner open up old wrongs while revealing the complexity of interpersonal relationships. The absence of communication, or the lack of will to communicate, as a symptom of contemporary family ties, stands in contrast to caring for a family of pigeons that has made its nest on the director's balcony. The film, in its civility and authenticity, follows the lessons of a book dedicated to amateur filmmakers and thus enters into a subversive dialogue with the paradigms of film pedagogy. How can we live today, how can we create?“A family portrait of a diary-like, commemorative nature is a very good lesson for a beginner.” Source: Camera tortura and the book KUČERA, Jan: Filmová tvorba amatéra

The protagonist of Dajori (mother in Romani) is forty-five-year-old Marie Hučková, who lives with her husband in Varnsdorf. After her younger sister Iveta ends up on the streets with her nine children, she decides to take her own fate and theirs firmly into her own hands and attempts to break out of the vicious circle of poverty that characterises their hometown. This sensitive film, which captures three years of a newly formed family's life together, follows the small joys and daily challenges of caring for others and asks whether a mother's love can overcome the dysfunctional system in which socially excluded localities find themselves. “We realised that there was a conflict unfolding before our eyes on several levels. Firstly, there was Mary's inner contradiction, where it was unthinkable for her not to help her relatives in need, but at the same time she was aware of the negative effects of the whole situation on her and her close family. Another level of conflict then played out at the level of the city, and consequently the state. The whole event was related to the housing crisis and the business of poverty in socially excluded localities.” — Martin Páv 

Matěj and Zuzana Dolinay are a married couple who are devoted to zoology. Through their YouTube channel, Living Zoology, they aim to introduce the general public to animals that are often marginalised and don't have the best reputation with the public. This includes mambas, one of the most venomous genera of snakes, which Matěj and Zuzana set out to find in Togo, Africa. The different stages of their expedition and work with the deadly reptiles gradually reveal characteristics similar to the basic pillars of a healthy partnership. The adventure documentary Figures is not only a testament to how educational popular video content can be created today, but above all highlights the authenticity of a journey through nature, partnership and life.“Figures is a heartfelt adventure that is gripping for the wildlife enthusiast and romantics alike. It is a testament to love – love for wildlife, love for education, and love between two passionate individuals. At its core, this film is a real life, behind the scenes look into how professional wildlife filmmakers get the job done.”Source: https://figuresfilm.com/about

Footage of the everyday life of an ordinary Ukrainian family from the city of Svitlodarsk in the Donetsk region shows a life marred by the Russian occupation, where martial law has become the norm. The picture contrasts children's games, doing homework and having dinner in front of the TV with the panorama of the bombed-out buildings of a ghost town.“In war and the army, the worst thing is deathly silence. When there is silence, something is going to happen.”

Some doctors refer to the situation of babies born long before term as a grey zone. At 24 weeks, the fetus is not yet legally perceived as a full human being and the pregnancy can be terminated prematurely. This introspective documentary puts us in the position of a mother inextricably linked to her child who, directly from birth, is given only slim chances of survival by the doctors. The film's tribute to mothers and families of premature babies stands out for the harrowing yet disarming honesty with which the director speaks of her own feelings of fear, humiliation, hopelessness, and hope as her son makes further progress. “Through the intimate confession of a mother, the documentary portrays the often traumatic reality of premature birth, the special care for a premature newborn or later a child with special needs or disabilities.” Source quote: Film profile at AVF

The closed ward of the psychiatric hospital in the city of Cadillac is intended for people who, due to mental illness, are a danger to themselves or those around them. Some wound up there voluntarily, some against their will. The film crew spent one month behind the walls of the institution. The idea was to adapt to its rhythm and disrupt the daily routine as little as possible. The protagonists of the film – Théo, Lucie, Louisette, Hervé or Benjamin – are therefore filmed in long, stationary shots, whether they conduct dialogues and monologues about their dreams and troubles or just smoke cigarettes in the garden. The more time we spend with them, the less we consider the environment they are in and begin to perceive them as dispassionately as the camera does. Not as patients with a diagnosis, but as people with a rich inner life and great imagination who yearn for closeness and understanding. The wall separating the normal from the abnormal thins and the film about institutional care becomes a reflection on the ability to co-exist despite differences.

Me + You follows twin sisters Sanaa and Zohra. What begins as Zohra’s exploration of their Moroccan heritage gradually reveals the shifting dynamics of their relationship, as Sanaa’s deepening love for Islam becomes more apparent. The film unfolds as a journey of mutual understanding — a cinematic dialogue fueled by their desire to connect. An intimate portrait of sisterly love and independence. “Me + You endeavours to celebrate the nuances, complexities, and idiosyncrasies of being a young Belgian-Moroccan woman, with the hope of resonating with those who are still searching for their place in this world, as well as with those who value the meaningfulness of such an evolvement.” - Zohra BenhammouQuote source: Business Doc Europe

During the summer holidays of 1994, an act of sexual violence took place in the Austrian alps. Nineteen years later, Philip Treschan confronts his mother with his trauma in a documentary essay. The family album is a nostalgic illusion, a gateway to an unspoken reality and a tool for an intimate conversation with the past and for piecing together the fragments of memory into a comprehensible whole.“Memory is not an unchanging vessel for carrying the past into the present; memory is a process, not a thing, and it works differently at different points in time.”Source: Philip TreschanTrigger warning: Film deals with topic of abuse.

Hard work, insecure earnings and a whole family in debt. These are the circumstances faced by gem prospectors in the abandoned mines of Myanmar. After mining was banned, the local population has been drawn to them, hand-picking through thousands of stones, eager to find the right one – and the better life it will bring.“Sometimes no matter how much you dig, you don’t find a thing. But one good gemstone can make you rich.”

Forest observation in negative colours captures the night life of wildlife out of the sight of man, but within his earshot. An anthropocentric element creeps into the natural still life in the form of noise from a nearby battle line. The night vision camera transforms the forest animals into fantasy creatures with glowing eyes and their home into a mythical space of love and war. Both, according to Jean-Luc Godard, exist side by side, like the quietly falling snow and bomb explosions, or the lovers' phone call and Putin's voice from hell. A poetic post-apocalyptic purgatory and homage to dead creators, it represents the eerie adjacency of life and death.“Jean-Luc Godard is dead. The only two subjects he ever dealt with were love and war, which were intertwined more firmly than he wished for them to be.”

A lyrical tapestry of life and landscape, The Unfixing reveals one mother’s path from illness to healing and from climate despair to environmental awakening. American filmmaker Nicole Betancourt fell ill in 2014. For a long time, she did not know the cause of the disease affecting her body and mind. But she could not devote herself properly to her work or raising two children. The stress, uncertainty and isolation made her stop and reflect. She began to perceive the health problems of herself and her loved ones in the context of the destruction of the entire planet. Her journey to the roots of personal and global grief takes the form of a layered collage in which themes and visual styles alternate cyclically. Through an intimate diary, animation, archival family films or interviews with doctors, indigenous teachers, and systems thinkers she looks for parallels between her own life and the landscape and finds hope at the intersection of both.“I hope that this film offers another way to face the sickness in our bodies and the earth, a path of allowing, listening, receiving – all things I thought were passive. Now I know they are active, courageous, and acts of rebellion.” — Nicole BetancourtSource: The Unfixing

This playful poetic documentary finds its whole world in the library. In libraries, that is, because they are all connected in an imaginary universe made up of aisles, book spines, letters, words and stories. Night after night, two female travellers venture into it; sometimes their steps cross and they remain in brief conversation, sometimes they wander along their own routes of their thoughts and imaginations. Because in books you can find literally everything beyond the walls of the library. And all it takes is a slight change of letters, a red becomes read, an isle becomes aisle, and the whole cosmos is spun on its axis by the single powerful force of creativity and imagination. “I’m interested in the feeling and movement of everyday life and ordinary places. I start my films intuitively around that—the structure often comes from circumstances around making the film.” Source quote: Innersense

An astral comedy that shows how to resurrect one’s love for a husband, find a woman to start a family or reconcile with your father. Just go to Alaska, Greenland or Lebanon, advises Italian astrologer Luciana, who works as a psychotherapist and personal coach in her office. This touchingly real guide to emotional turmoil, human longing and hope is based on the techniques of fiction film. A layered group portrait with a polished character typology portrays a world driven by chance, disguised as mirage, self-delusion or miracle. “I dreamed of making an 'Italian' film full of passionate love, strong emotions, humour and Vespa motorcycles. But there was a catch. I'm not Italian, I don't understand the language and I have a melancholic Hungarian character combined with an ironic sense of humour.” — Peter Kerekes Source: Artcam Films