Praise of the Distance(2008)

La ruta de don Quijote(es)

A poetic journey through the paths and places of old Castile that were traveled and visited by the melancholic knight Don Quixote of La Mancha and his judicious squire Sancho Panza, the immortal characters of Miguel de Cervantes, which offers a candid depiction of rural life in Spain in the early 1930s and illustrates the first sentence of the first article of the Spanish Constitution of 1931, which proclaims that Spain is a democratic republic of workers of all kind.

Modern Life(fr)

For ten years, Raymond Depardon has followed the lives of farmer living in the mountain ranges. He allows us to enter their farms with astounding naturalness. This moving film speaks, with great serenity, of our roots and of the future of the people who work on the land. This the last part of Depardon's triptych "Profils paysans" about what it is like to be a farmer today in an isolated highland area in France. "La vie moderne" examines what has become of the persons he has followed for ten years, while featuring younger people who try to farm or raise cattle or poultry, come hell or high water.

A Place of Our Own(it)

Nous paysans(fr)

In barely a century, French peasants have seen their world profoundly turned upside down. While they once made up the vast majority of the country, today they are only a tiny minority and are faced with an immense challenge: to continue to feed France. From the figure of the simple tenant farmer described by Emile Guillaumin at the beginning of the 20th century to the heavy toll paid by peasants during the Great War, from the beginnings of mechanization in the inter-war period to the ambivalent figure of the peasant under the Occupation, From the unbridled race to industrialization in post-war France to the realization that it is now necessary to rethink the agricultural model and invent the agriculture of tomorrow, the film looks back at the long march of French peasants.

Nomad Meets the City(en)

Currently Mongolia’s capital has 1.5 million inhabitants - half the population of the country. 50-year Tumurbaatar is only one of many coming to the city to fulfil their dreams of a better life.

Miyama, Kyōto Prefecture(de)

The follow-up film to “Barstow, California” takes us to the mountains of Miyama, a remote forest and tourist area north of Kyoto. Uwe Walter, a shakuhachi player from Germany, lives there with his wife Mitsuyo for 30 years. Together with the villagers he prepares the annual Gion Festival. On the eve of the festival, the village representatives tell him that his self-built studio is to be demolished. This brings back memories for him of earlier times and his first steps as a Nō actor. In the manner of a fresco, the film interweaves rural depictions of everyday life with the story of its German protagonist. In the village community with its togetherness of generations, Uwe shares life with his neighbours, with farmers, hunters, woodsmen, poultry farmers and anglers, tills his kitchen garden, and like other tradition-conscious villagers, he also grows his rice. The film shows them in a harsh mountain landscape between the rainy season and the first snow.

A Life on the Farm(en)

A strange story from Somerset, England about a filmmaking farmer and the inspiring legacy of his long-lost home movies.

Plan 9 From Syracuse(en)

On August 15th, 2006, filmmaker Ryan Dacko set out to get a 30-minute meeting with a major Hollywood producer by running on foot from Syracuse, New York to Hollywood, California.

Vigo 1972(gl)

‘VIGO 1972’ narrates the events which took place in Vigo in September 1972, when the firing of five Citröen auto workers resulted in the largest general strike in the history of Galicia — with over thirty thousand workers — all of this during the Franco dictatorship in Spain.

Profils paysans : l'approche(fr)

The first of a documentary serie about rural France.

Profils paysans : le quotidien(fr)

Second documentary of a trilogy produced on the long term (together with Profils paysans: l'approche (2001) and Profils paysans: La vie moderne (2008)), showing the simple lives of farmers in contemporary Southern France.

Historias de las montañas de la bruma(es)

Arcadia(en)

A provocative and poetic exploration of how the British people have seen their own land through more than a century of cinema. A hallucinated journey of immense beauty and brutality. A kaleidoscopic essay on how magic and madness have linked human beings to nature since the beginning of time.

Escuros, Roncos e Compasados(gl)

Absorbed, Unnatural, Dismal, Deface, SOK, Wisdom, Detestor ... Names linked to a very specific movement such as Death Metal and to a time and place as the Galicia from the 1990s. In this documentary, through interviews with members of that movement, from band members to producers or fanzine writers, we try to pay homage to an underground movement as Galician Death Metal along the 90s, deepening its history and its stories.

Rioja: The Land of a Thousand Wines(es)

By telling the human stories behind the entire value chain that gives life to the Spanish wine with the greatest international projection, ‘Rioja, Land of the Thousand Wines’ portrays a currently blooming wine region underpinned by the talent and the work of the new generations of winemakers that operate side by side with the region’s historic wineries. The film puts the focus on the match between territory and product, wisdom and tradition, and lays a bridge between the origins and the future of Rioja. An immersion into a fascinating world that, through captivating cinematography and careful editing, attempts to find the keys to understanding what Rioja wine is and what makes it so special.

The Gleaners and I(fr)

Varda focuses her eye on gleaners: those who scour already-reaped fields for the odd potato or turnip. Her investigation leads from forgotten corners of the French countryside to off-hours at the green markets of Paris, following those who insist on finding a use for that which society has cast off, whether out of necessity or activism.

Carracedo(gl)

Cyrille(fr)

Cyrille, a young gay farmer from Auvergne, has only one friend, a homosexual like him. One day, he goes on vacation to a beach in Charente Maritime. He cannot swim and sees the sea for the first time. It was there that he met the director Rodolphe Marconi who decided to devote this sensitive and gentle portrait to him, plunging us into an agricultural world in crisis and into a life often lonely and made up of hard work rarely pays off.

Prime Farmland(en)

This documentary film follows farmers and activists fighting together to stop the Indiana Enterprise Center, a mega-sized industrial park planned west of South Bend, Indiana

A Kingdom of Tea & Strangers(en)

At L'Abri, a short-term "hospitality community" in the English countryside, five strangers spend a summer together exploring their big questions about faith, being human, and finding belonging back home.