Twenty-five years after she moved away, Canadian filmmaker Kristina Wagenbauer (a participant in the 2019 Talent Lab) returns to her native Russia to visit her grandmother – her Babushka – with whom she spent part of her childhood, in this film brimming with tenderness and humour. The two women reflected in the mirror bear an undeniable resemblance, and each seeks to recognize herself in the other. Plumbing her memories, Wagenbauer hopes to re-establish a lost bond of intimacy and to confront the wounds of the past. Babushka has survived the Second World War, the break-up of the Soviet Union, the void that her daughter and granddaughter left behind when they moved abroad, and, more recently, the death of the love of her life. Despite all of this, she holds to life with a strong spirit of resilience.


Twenty-five years after she moved away, Canadian filmmaker Kristina Wagenbauer (a participant in the 2019 Talent Lab) returns to her native Russia to visit her grandmother – her Babushka – with whom she spent part of her childhood, in this film brimming with tenderness and humour. The two women reflected in the mirror bear an undeniable resemblance, and each seeks to recognize herself in the other. Plumbing her memories, Wagenbauer hopes to re-establish a lost bond of intimacy and to confront the wounds of the past. Babushka has survived the Second World War, the break-up of the Soviet Union, the void that her daughter and granddaughter left behind when they moved abroad, and, more recently, the death of the love of her life. Despite all of this, she holds to life with a strong spirit of resilience.
2021-11-12
0
A Canadian director visits her grandmother in Russia after 25 years of separation. Travelling through family memories and those of a country, this roller coaster of emotions invites us into an intimate space for reconciliation.
0.0An Austrian director followed five successful African music and dance artists with his camera and followed their lives for a year. The artists, from villages in Ghana, Gambia and Congo, were the subjects of Africa! Africa! touring across Europe, but they have unbreakable roots to their homeland and their families. Schmiderer lovingly portrays his heroes, who tell their stories about themselves, their art and what it means to them to be African with captivating honesty. The interviews are interwoven with dance scenes and colourful vignettes set to authentic music.
8.2This documentary offers a deeply intimate look at extraordinary teenager Billie Eilish. Award-winning filmmaker R.J. Cutler follows her journey on the road, onstage, and at home with her family as the writing and recording of her debut album changes her life.
0.0A young trans woman travels back to places she visited as a child with her mother, reflecting on memory, loss, and grief.
0.0Two elderly sisters share the delicate art of making traditional Hungarian strudel and reveal a deeply personal family story about their mother, who taught them everything they know.
8.0A candid, fly-on-the-wall BBC television documentary portrait of Russian Nationalist politician, Vladimir Zhirinovsky. The film shows the leader on a cruise surrounded by two hundred supporters getting plenty of media attention in New York. We are left with the nagging question: to what extent is Zhirinovsky really dangerous? To take that further, to what extent are populist politicians truly dangerous?
0.0Between 1968 and 1970, J M Goodger, a lecturer at the University of Salford, made a film record of the living conditions in the slums of Ordsall, Salford, which were then in the process of being demolished. Under the title 'The Changing face of Salford', the film was in two parts: 'Life in the slums' and 'Bloody slums'.
0.0Angels Gather Here’ follows Jacki Trapman’s journey back to her hometown of Brewarrina to celebrate her parents, Bill and Barbara’s 60th Wedding Anniversary. Going home is never easy for Jacki. Amidst the family celebrations she reflects on her life; her story symbolising the strength, dignity and resilience of many Aboriginal people in the face of adversity.
0.0A journey into the lives of the famed Vachon wrestling family through the eyes of Paul “The Butcher” Vachon, the last living member of the dynasty.
0.0"My mother is spending all her time with her dying father. I’m spending all my time filming her. As the end is getting closer, my mother and I start doing the filming more and more together. It becomes our way of dealing with the time we have left." —Marius Dybwad Brandrud
0.0Homelessness 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.
8.2Thomas 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.
0.0After four years away, Huiju returns home to South Korea. Exchanges with her loved ones are awkward and clumsy. Huiju turns once again to her familiar rituals: pruning the trees, preparing a sauce, tying a braid.
5.2The Kitades run a butcher shop in Kaizuka City outside Osaka, raising and slaughtering cattle to sell the meat in their store. The seventh generation of their family's business, they are descendants of the buraku people, a social minority held over from the caste system abolished in the 19th century that is still subject to discrimination. As the Kitades are forced to make the difficult decision to shut down their slaughterhouse, the question posed by the film is whether doing this will also result in the deconstruction of the prejudices imposed on them. Though primarily documenting the process of their work with meticulous detail, Aya Hanabusa also touches on the Kitades' participation in the buraku liberation movement. Hanabusa's heartfelt portrait expands from the story of an old-fashioned family business competing with corporate supermarkets, toward a subtle and sophisticated critique of social exclusion and the persistence of ancient prejudices.
0.0"Gaza Is Our Home" is a profoundly personal documentary that peels back the layers of devastation within the Gaza Strip, as witnessed through the lens of filmmaker Monear Shaer. His debut documentary was created out of agony as a timely, impactful, and tragic response to the collective anguish of all who call Gaza home... What began as an auto-generated slideshow on Monear’s iPhone of his own trip to see his family in 2021, has since transformed into a feature-length documentary. Through a tapestry of intimate interviews, unfiltered personal footage, and raw storytelling, "Gaza Is Our Home" transcends the political rhetoric and confronts audiences with the agonizing reality and ongoing cruelty thrust upon the film-makers own family. It is more than just a documentary... Rather, "Gaza Is Our Home" stands as a testament to the humanity behind the over 33,362 innocent lives massacred since Oct 2023...
The documentary Custodians – A Story of Ancient Echoes follows the journey of a local community in Herschel, Saskatchewan during the summer of 2021 as they work to preserve and protect the pastureland, native grasslands, and important Indigenous artifacts found near the village. Upon discoveries of dinosaurs, marine fossils and significant Indigenous sites and petroglyphs on nearby farmland, an aging population of community volunteers come together to preserve the land and its stories including the Indigenous history, paleontology, and local ecology. “We have found a living library” says Métis Artist Jo Cooper who has spent the past 20 years in Herschel working alongside locals. The stories of the land and the echoes of the past form new friendships, unravel mysteries and model a potential for deep justice, reconciliation and healing between people and the land.
0.0A poetic and intimate look at the life and work of photographer Luis Humberto.