Georgia’s former prime minister has found a unique hobby. He collects century-old trees, some as tall as 15-story buildings, from communities along the Georgian coast. At a great expense and inconvenience, these ancient giants are uprooted from their lands to be transplanted in his private garden.
Tracing a decade of East German football, survivors of the Cold War tell a story of betrayal, murder, and manipulation in a revealing insight into how the Stasi secret police saw football as more than a game.
This is the tale of a young woman, growing up in the age of the internet and turning the search for oneself into a public spectacle, allowing kids from all over the world to live their life through hers. Through her fragmented personalities you see the emergence of a new generation, in which the concept of a fixed identity has grown old.
In the wilderness of the Bucharest Delta, nine children and their parents lived in perfect harmony with nature for 20 years – until they are chased out and forced to adapt to life in the big city.
Markus Becker is hit by a car, dragged along, his head bashed on a curb and he falls into a coma. The doctors don’t believe that the 45-year-old will survive the next five to ten days. His father makes preparations for the funeral. Markus’ brother Michael refuses to accept this fate and begins an extraordinary battle. In his brother’s apartment he seals Markus’ clothes to preserve the smell. He records the neighbors’ voices. Every day, Michael exposes his brother to things that are familiar and films everything that is part of Markus’ life with a DV camera. He wants to keep him in his world and to bring this world to his bedside. He documents every step of Markus’ development, risking his own life in the process, wishing that his brother will one day regain the ability to lead a normal life. This full-length documentary accompanies Michael Becker for 10 years on his unwavering and creative mission to bring his brother Markus back to life.
When the world was on fire, they called Hans Blix. This is how the Swedish diplomat is introduced in ‘Blix Not Bombs’. And if there is one fire he is particularly associated with, it is the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Prior to the invasion, Blix led the delegation of UN officials to find out whether weapons of mass destruction were present in Iraq. And it is the invasion and its consequences that we get Blix’s formidably insightful analysis of in a thorough and honest conversation with director Greta Stocklassa. Few others understand the complexities of international politics on the world stage like Blix, and none can explain it with his intellectual elegance. But Stocklassa’s film is also a portrait of the man himself, now an elderly gentleman, writing his memoirs, walking with a cane and watching birds through the window of his apartment. His outlook and commitment is as urgent as ever, as Blix takes stock of the invasion of Iraq and the state of the world today.
A Sherpa family breaks a taboo and climbs the most holy of mountains to earn money for their son’s education. They accompany a western expedition on East Wall of the Khumbakarna Mountain, a wall that has never been climbed before. ‘The Wall of Shadows’ tells the story of an encounter between a young Sherpa boy and an experienced western mountaineer at the foot of the sacred mountain. Will they face the wrath of mountain Gods?
The story of two people going through crises coincides with the reality of the last sanatorium of its kind. For over 100 years, people have come to this place in the hope of being cured. So do Nina and Henri, both in mid-life, burnt out, and from different backgrounds. Their paths cross between the dining room and therapy, at a time when they are struggling to find their inner peace. Then the place is snowed in and everything becomes slow and quiet. The ghosts and stories from the long corridors become their companions. While the two read each other the riot act and try to forget their loneliness, a historian digs through the house archives for documents from the early days of the sanatorium. She researches the sanatorium as a focal point of the modern history of exhaustion and traces a narrative from neurasthenia to the inner restlessness of the present for her dissertation. The house becomes a setting for an archaeology of exhaustion.
A documentary about the efforts to ban the global khat trade in Great Britain that routes its way from from war-torn Somalia to the streets of London.
For the first time in history, a former child soldier is being indicted at the International Criminal Court in The Hague (ICC). The Film follows his defence team at the ICC and in Uganda, as they gather evidence, materials, and witnesses.
It tells the story of Robi, a priest and a father of three. It showcases how he deals with his profession and his forbidden private life.
Unemployed youths, many looking to leave the country for want of better options, are swelling the ranks of gangs that sow violence in Zinder, in Niger. Aïcha Macky explores the origins of the radicalization that is spreading through her hometown and the prospects for escaping it.
What can be more dreadful for a daughter than getting a postcard from Thailand with the words: "My girl, everything is fine here - I eat paddy-thai and drink beer. Yes, I met someone, she is your age. I love you, Dad".
In 1981 establishing a women's national team was of no interest to the German Football Association. Therefore an invitation to the Women's World Cup in Taipei went to the reigning club champions from the small town of Bergisch Gladbach, Germany. In the film the former players talk about the absurd conditions in which they had to fight for their great dream of playing football. Accompanied by historical footage - testimonies of a men's world that today seem all the more anachronistic - the film tells a story that is about much more than sporting success, namely equality and recognition.
