Being mother is the most natural thing in the world. Or so it seems. Yet the demands on women with children have rarely been as overloaded and contradictory as they are in today’s Western world. Promises of happiness are often followed by disadvantages, excessive demands and feelings of guilt. The mother has become an artificially glorified ideal, which nevertheless is often legitimized by the „nature of the woman“. We live in a time when three people could claim to be the same child’s mother: egg donors give their genes to beget children, surrogate mothers deliver babies which they give away immediately after birth, and men raise children by themselves – without a woman at their side. Hence the question arises: What makes a human being a real mother?
The documentary Schwarze Adler (Black Eagles) lets black players of the German national football team tell their personal stories for the first time. What road did they take before they got to where we cheer for them? What hurdles did they have to overcome? What prejudices and racist hostility were they exposed to – and what was it like in the past, what is it like today?
The mis-adventures of three Polish-Jews on the road to Gdansk is the basis for this German comedy that was filmed in New York, Germany, and Poland. Genovefa and Moshe have been married and living in New York for 30 years. Physically the couple resembles Mr. and Mrs. Jack Sprat. The two have decided to return to Poland for a visit. They intend to have Moshe's best friend Isaac, an unlucky, depressive German, take care of their house while they are gone. Unfortunately, Isaac loses his job before they go and ends up accompanying them on a Polish freighter. When the ship dies in a German port, the threesome must go overland to Gdansk. They encounter many mishaps along the way.
John is a young Journalism student, he worked for years in a telemarketing service untill the burnout crisis. Now he wants to suit the enterprise for harassment at work, back and mental problems.
Let’s get SICK’NING for the Holidays! RuPaul’s Drag Race legend Laganja Estanja is here for Hey Qween’s Very Green Christmas Special!
The Dangers of the Fly is an educational film made by Ernesto Gunche and Eduardo Martínez de la Pera, also responsible for Gaucho Nobility (1915), the biggest blockbuster of Argentinean silent cinema. De la Pera was a talented photographer, always willing to try new gadgets and techniques. This film experiments with microphotography in the style of Jean Comandon's films for Pathé and it is part of a series which included a film about mosquitoes and paludism and another one about cancer, which are considered lost. Flies were a popular subject of silent films and there are more than a dozen titles featuring them in the teens and early twenties.
In Sao Paulo, Janaína and João take care of each other. She has epilepsy. He is in a relationship with a man who prefers to keep his distance. Above their lives floats the vague trauma of a mudslide that may have buried men and machines alike. Together, they try to protect their bodies from the evil that seems to spread like a fever.
Stephen Hawking has warned that the creation of powerful artificial intelligence will be “either the best, or the worst thing, ever to happen to humanity”. Inspired by Brian Christian’s study The Most Human Human: What Artificial Intelligence Teaches Us About Being Alive, the filmmakers set out on an international investigation highlighting the effects of AI - scenes from our daily lives destructive and constructive.
Welcome to “The Academy Awards of quilting”, a weeklong spectacle in which quilters from all over the world gather in Paducah, Kentucky every year for its huge quilt competition.
Family drama set in the Danish countryside in the turn of the century. A wealthy landowner is an evil and corrupt womaniser with several illegitimate offspring in addition to his beautiful family. Nobody stands up to him except his feisty 17-year-old daughter.
A fictional documentary that portrays the city of Dakar, Senegal, as we hear the conversation between a Senegalese man (the director, Djibril Diop Mambéty) and a French woman, Inge Hirschnitz. As we travel through the city in a picturesque horse drawn wagon, we chaotically rush into this and that popular neighborhood of the capital, discovering contrast after contrast: A small African community waiting at the Church's door, Muslims praying on the sidewalk, the Rococo architecture of the Government buildings, the modest stores of the craftsmen near the main market.
A portrait of the first year of peace in Bosnia. This is a human story played out before a background of a war which still makes itself felt, a story of a possible life together, which has on the other hand become impossible in many cases. Rajko, the Serbian mechanic and his family must leave their home for the second time. Nermin, the actor, lost both legs in the war and might have the chance to learn a new role. Halid, a shepherd from the Muslim-controlled region, risks his life to visit friends on the western (Croatian) side of Mostar.
A bottle of Pepsi was in communist Romania any child's dream. Istvan, 9, is lucky to find such a bottle in the house of a security officer, who is in charge for his and his mother's emigration to the F.R. of Germany.
A beautiful young unwed mother-to-be from Tainan arrives in Taipei city in search of the father is sidetracked by a smart-Aleck Hong Kong expatriate taxi driver who aids her search but eventually falls in love with the girl after her efforts to reunite with the absentee father prove fruitless.
Elsa returns to her homeland, Caldas da Rainha, in Portugal to meet her mother. Through this little adventure, we discover the city and the mysterious activities of its inhabitants, as well as elements of Elsa's family history. A crossed impressionist portrait is woven, temporalities become confused, and dreams mingle with reality.
An ironic tale about seeking for mutual understanding between desperate Ukrainian porters and their alien clients during annual Rosh-Hashanah pilgrimage of Hasidim to the town of Uman'.
Yesspeak is a film chronicling the then current lineup of the progressive rock group Yes (featuring Jon Anderson, Steve Howe, Rick Wakeman, Chris Squire, and Alan White) directed by Robert Garofalo and narrated by Roger Daltrey. It was premiered in theatres across the United States on January 26, 2004, and was followed by a closed-circuit live acoustic performance by Yes in front of a small studio audience (resulting in the DVD Yes Acoustic: Guaranteed No Hiss). Divided into ten chapters, the programme systematically covers the background, history, and outlook of the group before an extended interview with each of the five members of the group. There are also discussions with members on the band's music and glimpses of the band's 2003 world tour.
After the earthquake, my grandmother is facing the loss of her apartment.
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.
Examines the intergenerational impact of addiction by chronicling the love, labor, loss, and uncertainty of one woman’s struggle to live a life of sobriety. Weaving together moments of glee, fulfillment, acceptance, sorrow, and disappointment, this documentary takes an intimate look at the bonds that hold one family together and a disease that threatens to tear them apart.
fifteen zero three nineteenth of january two thousand sixteen explores how everyday routines and gestures are transformed when a mother loses her child in the violence impacting Swedish outskirts since the early 2000s. The film resists simplistic media depictions of the suburbs and shows how a home can hold both mourning and the mobilization of women to fight for their own and others' children.
In Uganda, AIDS-infected mothers have begun writing what they call Memory Books for their children. Aware of the illness, it is a way for the family to come to terms with the inevitable death that it faces. Hopelessness and desperation are confronted through the collaborative effort of remembering and recording, a process that inspires unexpected strength and even solace in the face of death.
Pearl Randall, a 66-year-old widow, announces that she is planning to remarry, but her three grown children express conflicting emotions. Daughter Terri captures on tape the family's attempts to come to grips with Pearl's new romance.
Thomas Haemmerli is about to celebrate his fortieth birthday when he learns of his mother's death. A further shock follows when he and his brother Erik discover her apartment, which is filthy and full to bursting with junk. It takes the brothers an entire month to clean out the place. Among the chaos, they find films going back to the 1930s, photos and other memorabilia.
In Mexico City's wealthiest neighborhoods, the Ochoa family runs a for-profit ambulance, competing with other unlicensed EMTs for patients in need of urgent care. In this cutthroat industry, they struggle to keep their financial needs from compromising the people in their care.
In a hybrid film, both documentary and fiction, five young women describe the feeling of grief when losing a parent at a young age. Anna returns to her father's home, a year after his death. In one weekend, she lives through a storm of emotions as these may come and go in the process of grief.
Sonia Reich- who survived the Holocaust as a child by running and hiding, suddenly believes that she is being hunted again, 60 years later.
Five men delve deep into the mountains of Utah, hitting five national parks within five days. What seems to be a typical hiking trip manages to turn into a reflective odyssey, with nostalgia bursting at the seams. Hikes swell into past moments already experienced, and current moments turn into those that will be remembered and told for lifetimes to come.
Growing up Mell wished her autistic brother could speak - now, in adulthood, she realises you don’t have to talk to explain what you need. KIN is a coming of age story between two sisters (Mell and Janine) and their neurodivergent and autistic brother (Carl), exploring sibling relationships, family duty and care.
A "Chinese" father reflects on the changing relationship of China and US during his trip to Beijing to retrieve his 3-year-old "American" daughter who has been stranded because of the recent "decoupling" of the two countries. Born in China and living in the American Midwest, filmmaker Yinan Wang attempts to unpack his own experience of how a transnational migrant family deals with the distress caused by identity, nationalism, and geopolitics.
A heartfelt look at the life of a wonderful person and the legacy she has left behind, looking into her love, patience, kindness and the grief of her passing.
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.
What is a family? Rosie O'Donnell looks at the many answers to this question in this documentary that features original songs and thoughtful kids musing on love and family. The show provides a less than moving portrait of the remarkable diversity of so called families today, including same-sex parents, mixed-heritage families, and stories of adoption. Animated songs and musical performances by kids and families spice up the festivities along with performances and recordings by artists including Ziggy Marley, Bonnie Raitt, Doris Day, Sweet Honey in the Rock, Frank Sinatra, Rosie O'Donnell and They Might Be Giants.
The documentary's title translates as "to be and to have", the two auxiliary verbs in the French language. It is about a primary school in the commune of Saint-Étienne-sur-Usson, Puy-de-Dôme, France, the population of which is just over 200. The school has one small class of mixed ages (from four to twelve years), with a dedicated teacher, Georges Lopez, who shows patience and respect for the children as we follow their story through a single school year.
Silence - the stuff of assumptions and confusion - is a legacy inherited by many grandchildren of Japanese Americans interned during WWII. Shortly after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, Masuo Yasui, a respected figure of Hood River Valley, Oregon was arrested by the FBI as a "potentially dangerous enemy alien." In A FAMILY GATHERING, Lise Yasui, a granddaughter that Masuo never knew, shows that courageous journeys into the past can bring greater understanding of family and personal history to the present.