Praise of the Distance(2008)

It's Hard By Oneself...(pl)

The documentary takes the viewer to the Polish countryside of the mid-1970s. Andrzej, Leszek, Eugeniusz, Ryszard and Jerzy are young men who dream of finding their other half. The film's protagonists have advertised in newspapers and talk frankly and without inhibition about their search and the dilemmas it involves. The picture is complemented by the statements of their parents, who watch their sons' efforts to start a family with love but also concern. The film also gives an insight into the problems farmers face - not only love but also hard work on the land awaits the chosen one of their hearts. "Either get married or quit this farm", "What's one to do on a farm?" - say the characters in the film. The countryside is not a place made for living alone.

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

Renaixem(ca)

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.

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.

Under the Cold Stars(it)

Set in the mountains of northeast Italy, this film may be considered an observational documentary about rural life. Although this is undeniably the case, at the same time Under the cold stars can hardly be considered a documentary: the microcosm on which it focuses appears to be a reflection of a broader reality and perhaps a way to deal with the themes of man’s existence and his relationship with animals, nature and, most importantly, with time. As written by Franco Piavoli "it is a film which essentially relies on images and sound, where words themselves are sound and the music of life, of the relentless flow of time."

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.

First Ascent / Last Ascent(en)

Best friends Hazel Findlay and Maddy Cope journey to the rocky outer reaches of Mongolia, on a quixotic search for new trad routes.

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.

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.

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.

L'Amour vache(fr)

Constable: A Country Rebel(en)

The Haywain by John Constable is such a comfortingly familiar image of rural Britain that it is difficult to believe it was ever regarded as a revolutionary painting, but in this film, made in conjunction with a landmark exhibition at the V&A, Alastair Sooke discovers that Constable was painting in a way that was completely new and groundbreaking at the time. Through experimentation and innovation, he managed to make a sublime art from humble things and, though he struggled in his own country during his lifetime, his genius was surprisingly widely admired in France.

The Golden Age(fr)

Titou will soon be forty. He lives high up in a sheep shed in the Corbières mountains. With Soledad, who lives in a nearby caravan, they make their own wine, compose their music, live their love in step with the seasons – much as you might cultivate resistance.

All this Roughness(es)

An unnamed passer-by is forced to trace a circular route inside an abandoned tram station, facing loss and time. The broken walls act as a channel, transmitting fragmentary, blurred and analogical memories. 

De okända utvandrarna(sv)

Documentary about Swedish emigration to Argentina via Brazil.

Al-Nasr Al Tair(es)

Tierra de mujeres(es)

The reality of four rural women in the Metropolitan District of Quito. Despite their pain and difficulties, they have managed to forge a life that in maturity unfolds all the beauty of wisdom.

Queimar cando morra(gl)