ZAAD(2025)

MANIA(en)

In 2020 / 2021, I suffered from severe Bipolar mania. This is a reflection on my encounter with Bipolar mania and back.

Garbo: Where Did You Go?(en)

An urgent, timely and compelling portrait of Hollywood icon Greta Garbo, whose fame, isolation and loneliness still captures us.

What You'll Remember(en)

Homelessness in the United States takes many forms. For Elizabeth Herrera, David Lima and their four children, housing instability has meant moving between unsafe apartments, motels, relatives’ couches, shelters, the streets and their car. After 15 years of this uncertainty, the family moved into their first stable housing — an apartment in the San Francisco Bay Area — in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic.

Today is the First Day of the Rest of Your Life(pt)

During the pandemic, living under an extreme right-wing government, filmmakers Bel Bechara and Sandro Serpa receive the news that would change their lives: there was a baby to be adopted.

Big Boys Don't Cry(en)

Big Boys Don't Cry' follows Joe Marler as he discusses his own struggles and learns new methods of managing mental wellbeing. The England and Harlequins player has opened up about his battles with mental health during his private life and his time playing rugby on the international stage. The documentary follows Marler as he travels around the UK to open up the conversation around mental health challenges and to learn about how people manage with their mental wellbeing - from taking the plunge in cold water swimming and getting involved in singing in a choir along the way.

Is Your Story Making You Sick?(en)

Humans are story-telling creatures. By thinking, we all unconsciously "author" a self-story in our heads. Most often, the characters and plot of our story is framed by negative experiences from childhood. These painful "stories" then determine our emotions, leading to unhealthy stress, and changes in body chemistry. This is how a person's self-story can turn into a stress-related illness.

1997: The Birth of the Camera Phone(en)

On June 11th, 1997, Philippe Kahn created the first camera phone solution to share pictures instantly on public networks. The impetus for this invention was the birth of Kahn's daughter, when he jerry-rigged a mobile phone with a digital camera and sent photos in real time. In 2016 Time Magazine included Kahn's first camera phone photo in their list of the 100 most influential photos of all time.

La Femme Equi-Libre(fr)

In Prince Edward Island, Josée Gallant-Gordon is reinventing mental health care through her bilingual equine therapy centre, proving that with ideas, one person can transform their community.

The Echo(es)

In the remote village of El Echo that exists outside of time, the children care for the sheep and their elders. While the frost and drought punish the land, they learn to understand death, illness and love with each act, word and silence of their parents. A story about the echo of what clings to the soul, about the certainty of shelter provided by those around us, about rebellion and vertigo in the face of life. About growing up.

Aitamaako'tamisskapi Natosi: Before the Sun(en)

An intimate and thrilling portrait of a young Siksika woman and the deep bonds between her father and family in the golden plains of Blackfoot Territory as she prepares for one of the most dangerous horse races in the world… bareback.

Auf demselben Planeten(de)

The filmmaker delves into her family's past and the seemingly intact world of childhood begins to fall apart. Here, the private sphere reflects the helplessness and excessive demands of German society in the 1970s - between the shadows of the National Socialist past and new utopias.

Under Construction(fi)

Markku built a house for his family with his own bare hands like a strong man is supposed to do. He worked hard from dawn to dusk, so that his seven children would have a roof above their heads. Unfortunately, the task ended up being too hard and Markku burnt out. One day, he left his family and disappeared abroad. The filmmaker travels to his childhood home to face his father, who he never got to know properly. Together they build a steel gate in front of the unfinished house, and try to create a relationship between each other.

Forms of Forgetting(tr)

Nesrin and Erdem talk about their relationship, which they don’t remember in exactly the same way. Çevik’s visually stunning essay uses their conversations to forge a pensive treatise on what it means to forget, where word and image play an equal role.

The Wolf Suit(en)

How much can you trust your childhood memories? Director Sam Firth investigates, sweeping her parents into the experiment and on a journey into the past.

Our Home(ca)

A film in which the author seeks to express the love he feels for the central figure of the family: his grandmother. By documenting her daily life and interviewing family members about their feelings toward her, this documentary becomes a love letter.

Den värsta lögnen är den dokumentära(ru)

For three years, filmmaker Staffan Julén has traveled with Svetlana Alexievich in Belarus and Russia to document her working method when her reportage books are created. At first, filmmaker Staffan Julén wanted to make a traditional writer portrait on Nobel Prize laureate Svetlana Alexievich which she was not interested in. Her suggestion was instead that he would tag along with her in her ongoing projects and follow her when she talks to people about love.

What's Going On?(en)

​The audience is taken through a range of years through archival footage exploring the ups and downs of our lives and the thing that connects us all, love. Seven interview subjects: a philosophy professor, a film professor, a humanities professor, a retired lawyer turned archivist, a volunteer, a dance student, and a fashion student, explore their backgrounds with religion, their current personal philosophies, whether or not they believe we have a purpose, or if the things we do have any meaning at all. Eventually everything wraps back around to love.

Gözde the Fighter(tr)

Drawing from Memory(de)

An autobiographical film about my childhood in Syria, the war and my escape from it. My childhood was happy but unusual: my mother raised me as a girl. When I became a teenager I was buoyed up by the energy of youth and a desire to change the world. Then the war broke out and I had to leave everything behind.

Freefalling: A Love Story(en)

I meet Herbert in the same week I get diagnosed with cancer. We fall madly in love and plan to stay together for the rest of our lives. Three months later, he is dead. Herbert was a BASE Jumper. Leaping off a cliff with nothing but a parachute, he loses his balance, slams into the rock face and falls to his death. His loss in the midst of my chemotherapy completely throws me. Why does he gamble his life away, while I fight for mine? Desperate for answers, I return to Lauterbrunnen, the scene of the accident where Andreas, his best friend and coach, introduces me to the world of BASE. The jumpers teach me not only about the sport, but about facing fears, harnessing and controlling them. To make the most of the life we get. In the Swiss Death Valley I slowly find my way back to life.