The Balcony Movie
Can anyone be a movie hero? Can the world be locked in one film frame? Director Paweł Łoziński is watching people from his balcony as they are passing by, he accosts them, asks questions, talks about how they deal with life. Every story is unique, and life always surpasses imagination. Maybe it’s enough to stop for a moment to get a deeper insight?
"quietly revelatory....a cumulative portrait of the struggles and moods of the times while exemplifying the humanist curiosity and formalist rigor of the unseen director behind the camera." - Museum of the Moving Image
Neirud
Neirud died shrouded in mystery, leaving behind no trace of her past. Confronting family secrets, the filmmaker pieces together the life of her enigmatic aunt, who toured Brazil as a wrestler in an underground all-female circus troupe throughout the 60s and 80s. As she investigates Neirud's controversial ring persona, Gorilla Woman, the filmmaker uncovers a taboo-breaking love story, revealing the surprising nature of Neirud's role in her own family.
"Buried secrets bubble to the surface in Brazilian film-maker Fernanda Faya’s tender and searching documentary...rich with an edgy visual texture that echoes the thorniness of Neirud’s identity, one that eschews simplistic societal binaries" - Guardian
The Life of Sean Delear
A blazingly colourful and exuberantly transgressive personality who dazzled Los Angeles' underground musical and artistic scenes in the late-1990s and 2000s, Sean DeLear (1964-2017) suddenly emerged as a genuinely seminal cultural figure via the posthumous 2022 publication of their intimate and explicit teenage diaries from 1979. The Life of Sean DeLear is a vibrantly multi-faceted, buoyantly propulsive documentary portrait of this irresistibly charismatic one-off, sketched in celebratory but commendably clear-eyed style.
"a sparkling, lively, cheerful, ironic and self-ironic documentary. A true hymn to life" - Cinema Austriaco
The Hamlet Syndrome
A few months prior to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, five young women and men participate in a unique stage production that attempts to relate their war experiences to Shakespeare’s Hamlet. For each of them, the stage is a platform to express their grief and trauma through the famous question, “to be or not to be,” a dilemma that applies to their own lives.
"This film brilliantly articulates Hamlet's dilemma for the Ukrainian youth. The film mediates their experiences of having to make hard choices when their options are very limited, because of a grinding war. A very elaborate filmic language forms a universal film“ - Locarno, *Winner*.- Semaine de la Critique, Grand Prix
Private Footage
In 2018, Brazilian artist and filmmaker Janaina Nagata stumbles upon a 16mm footage acquired online. The unassuming footage captures scenes from a white family's trip to South Africa during the 1960s. The seemingly innocent images lead to an insatiable investigation. Through a meticulous desktop sequence, Nagata examines the footage, dissecting the clues and signs embedded within this private and anonymous archive. Juxtaposing the analog material with digital resources, the film uncovers hidden narratives of Apartheid and South Africa's troubled past.
"After purchasing a seemingly innocuous home movie from South Africa online, the filmmaker begins peeling back its layers to uncover a strange and violent history of Apartheid in this riveting desktop thriller. Seeing Nagata’s mind at work as she isolates and expands details frame-by-frame is a masterclass in active viewing." - Prismatic Ground