1970
In 1970, protests broke out in several coastal cities in Communist Poland, with workers going on strike to object to price increases and food shortages. Growing numbers of protesters walked out onto the streets, and as the situation became tense, a crisis team gathered in the capital.
"Choosing to adopt the point of view of the politicians and the military, the filmmaker translates the way in which the violent repression quickly manifests itself...a precise and prodigious film." - Visions du Reel, *Winner*, Special Jury Award
Much Ado About Dying
Simon Chambers is shooting a film in India when his uncle David calls him with a message of doom: “I think I may be dying.” What the viewer doesn’t yet know is that David is a total drama queen, a former actor and Shakespeare-lover who has grown old on a diet of attention and applause. Simon finds his life drastically interrupted and everything that could go wrong does go wrong as he tries to help his uncle have a good death.
"Simon Chambers’ family-filming-family masterpiece is a tender and often funny chronicle of a dying man who secretes his brilliant charisma every moment the camera finds him awake." - The Film Verdict
Kapr Code
A Documentary Opera featuring the contradictory life of progressive composer and prominent communist Jan Kapr (1914-88), Stalin award laureate, later banned in socialist Czechoslovakia. While Kapr’s life escalates towards pivotal moments, we follow opera songs reflecting these crucial life junctures, those establishing an artist’s fate. The film explores the nature of memory, and narration, using Kapr’s personal, never before seen amateur films manifesting his humor, inner struggles and desire to leave traces for eternity.
"In this masterful orchestration of music and images, Lucie Králová reaffirms the importance of creation as a political act." - Visions du Reel
Dead Birds Flying High
350 dead birds. 3000 butterflies, mushrooms and bugs. The collection is odd. Filmmaker Sönje Storm explores the life of farmer and photographer Jürgen F. Mahrt (1882-1940), who collected birds and butterflies and staged them in his farmhouse.
"a coherent work of art that reflects both the dramatic changes in nature and the fatal influence of humans on their environment” - DOK Leipzig, Winner, Golden Dove
A Man and a Camera
An enigmatic entity roams the Dutch hinterlands, silently pointing a camera at all that it encounters. Soon it finds itself standing in front of a doorway. Met with an uninvited, inscrutable camera operator, how will the region’s inhabitants respond? Amusing and unsettling, mundane and otherworldly, A man and a camera is an endlessly surprising provocation: an upending of documentary power dynamics, an inquiry into human nature, a rendezvous with the real.
"both recognisable and fascinatingly alienating, at times also causing vicarious shame on the viewer’s part....This successful, original work also gives rise to a creeping sense of unease in the viewer. What would you do, and why?" - IFFR