

How are biographies charted? How is identity constructed? Can we relive our past, reinvent it, rearrange or recycle it? Can we really know who we are if we ignore where do we come from?

How are biographies charted? How is identity constructed? Can we relive our past, reinvent it, rearrange or recycle it? Can we really know who we are if we ignore where do we come from?
2014-03-26
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I made this trip to meet you again.
0.0Shot during three seasons, Kenuajuak's documentary tenderly portrays village life and the elements that forge the character of his people: their history, the great open spaces and their unflagging humour. Though Kenuajuak appreciates the amenities of southern civilization that have made their way north, he remains attached to the traditional way of life and the land: its vast tundra, the sea teeming with Arctic char, the sky full of Canada geese. My Village in Nunavik is an unsentimental film by a young Inuk who is open to the outside world but clearly loves his village. With subtitles.
0.0Spontaneous portrait of an endearing and cheerful teenager living in balance between traditionalism and modernity. She presents her regalia to us and we share her pride in being Innu.
"Africa Light" - as white local citizens call Namibia. The name suggests romance, the beauty of nature and promises a life without any problems in a country where the difference between rich and poor could hardly be greater. Namibia does not give that impression of it. If you look at its surface it seems like Africa in its most innocent and civilized form. It is a country that is so inviting to dream by its spectacular landscape, stunning scenery and fascinating wildlife. It has a very strong tourism structure and the government gets a lot of money with its magical attraction. But despite its grandiose splendor it is an endless gray zone as well. It oscillates between tradition and modernity, between the cattle in the country and the slums in the city. It shuttles from colonial times, land property reform to minimum wage for everyone. It fluctuates between socialism and cold calculated market economy.
7.87-year-old Sasha has always known that she is a girl. Sasha’s family has recently accepted her gender identity, embracing their daughter for who she truly is while working to confront outdated norms and find affirmation in a small community of rural France.
8.0“An Untitled Film” by George Alshevskij-Jones is a short documentary/visual essay about the struggles of moving to seek a better future in a different country. The research for the film was done by observing and talking to people who have left their home country. It doesn’t matter what country a person has left and in which country he has found himself, the general experiences and emotions stay the same. The most important message that I want the film to convey is that everything is possible and home is not a place on a map, but a place in the soul of each person that I spoke to. The unconventional way of showing many people as one is not just a way of making the film more convenient to create, but a way to fit a much information into one consistent image, that the audience is more likely to understand and perceive as the author intended it. My own experience blended in with the experiences of others.
0.0From unlikely origins in northern Québec at the height of the Cold War, Voïvod’s post-apocalyptic sci-fi aesthetic, fuelled by a youthful obsession with their instruments, took them from underground success to sharing dates and tours with Iron Maiden, Rush, and Metallica. Despite adversity, and perhaps by cosmic intervention or just serendipity, Voïvod found guitarist Daniel “Chewy” Mongrain; subsequently, the band re-ignited their engines and laid a course back to Morgöth via numerous live shows around the world, a comeback album in Target Earth, singles, EPs, and finally, the late-career triumph, The Wake. In 2019, Voïvod were recognized by the Canadian Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences with a Juno Award for best hard rock/metal album of the year for The Wake.
6.1A verité legal drama about Judge Kholoud Al-Faqih, the first woman appointed to a Shari'a court in the Middle East, whose career provides rare insights into both Islamic law and gendered justice.
6.5In order to rescue his father's ramshackle grill restaurant, filmmaker and vegetarian Dario Aguirre is traveling back to his homeland Ecuador. What starts out as a strange debate about opening times, chips and Excel spread sheets, develops into a moving family drama.
10.012 years ago, Rolf suffered a violent accident that caused him severe amnesia. During his long rehabilitation, Rolf had to rebuild his identity from scratch and, while doing so, he invented a flying machine that would give him the freedom of a bird. In a very intimate following of a four year period we discover Rolf´s way of perceiving the world and the contradictions of a character who suffers at discovering that he has fathered two girls and that he has to make up his mind either at becoming an adult or persuing his life long dream of the flying machine.
5.3A look at the world of webcam workers who find economic freedom, empowerment, intimacy and creative self expression from the comfort of their own homes.
0.0Filmmaker Sophie Dros enters into a dialogue with strong women in a powerfull document about being a woman in the Netherlands today. Inspired by Simone de Beauvoir's essay The second sex, filmmaker Sophie Dros (winner of the NFF Debut Competition 2017) talks to four women and a group of young girls. Together they go in search of universal stories; about dealing with expectations, empathy and connection, desires, fear, need for confirmation and losing control.
7.1In late eighties, in Ceausescu's Romania, a black market VHS bootlegger and a courageous female translator brought the magic of Western films to the Romanian people and sowed the seeds of a revolution.
0.0Sociologist David W. Wahl explores the identity work involved in Kay Parker shifting from being a legend of the adult film industry to her current occupation as a metaphysical counselor.
0.0While millions of birds migrate freely in the skies above, Fadia, a Palestinian refugee stranded in Lebanon, yearns for the ancestral homeland she is denied. When a chance meeting introduces her to the director, Sarah, she challenges her to find an ancient mulberry tree that once grew next to her grandfather’s house in historic Palestine, a tree that stands witness to her family’s existence.
9.0The documentary proposes a unique meeting with the speakers of several indigenous and inuit languages of Quebec – all threatened with extinction. The film starts with the discovery of these unsung tongues through listening to the daily life of those who still speak them today. Buttressed by an exploration and creation of archives, the film allows us to better understand the musicality of these languages and reveals the cultural and human importance of these venerable oral traditions by nourishing a collective reflection on the consequences of their disappearance.
6.2What kind of power is accessible through the discovery of a voice? Morgan Quaintance interlinks two anti-racist and anti-authoritarian liberation movements in South London and Chicago’s South Side with his own biography to explore what happens when speech is ignored, and the voice fades.
0.0Narrated in the Nahuatl language, it portrays the journey of a child looking for his parents, who will face a world full of prejudices to rediscover his identity.