Think School(2015)

Regard sur l'école inclusive(fr)

Talkers(lv)

The three speakers represent two of the dialects, with the most common one - the middle dialect spoken in Riga and central parts of Latvia - not featured in the film. In intimate surroundings, a farmer, a schoolteacher, and a herder of ostriches talk about perceived differences between Latvian speakers, and about language policy and their lives.

To Be and to Have(fr)

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.

Children of Utopia(de)

Twelve years after they went to school together, six children from Berlin with and without disabilities are interviewed on the topic of inclusion in the German school system.

Seekers(lv)

This film probes the activities of the bezvests.lv NGO that looks for missing persons and instructs others on how to find them. Since they started in 2009, they’ve helped find more than 90 people who had gone missing. It follows volunteers during training and on a search mission – theirs is a nerve-wracking task as in many cases they only locate the expired body of the missing person.

Trillium(lv)

There are about 250 people with a unique ancestry. Livonians – one of the smallest and most endangered nations. Each of Livonians has a duty to preserve their identity and the great history of their ancestors. Trillium follows the footsteps of a poet and researcher Valts Ernštreits, who is one of 20 people able to speak fluent Livonian – an indigenous language related to Estonian and Finnish – in his efforts to look after the language and culture of these ancient settlers of the Baltic Sea coast.

School of Hope(ar)

In the vast expanse of desert East of Atlas Mountains in Morocco, seasonal rain and snow once supported livestock, but now the drought seems to never end. Hardly a blade of grass can be seen, and families travel miles on foot to get water from a muddy hole in the ground. Yet the children willingly ride donkeys and bicycles or walk for miles across rocks to a "school of hope" built of clay. Following both the students and the teachers in the Oulad Boukais Tribe's community school for over three years, SCHOOL OF HOPE shows students Mohamed, Miloud, Fatima, and their classmates, responding with childish glee to the school's altruistic young teacher, Mohamed. Each child faces individual obstacles - supporting their aging parents; avoiding restrictions from relatives based on traditional gender roles - while their young teacher makes do in a house with no electricity or water.

Ikuska 1: Ikastolak(eu)

The first film of the 'Ikuska' series, on the situation of schools in Basque language.

Pour de vrai, pour de faux(fr)

The Inked Family(lv)

“The Inked Family” follows a couple of married Latvian-born tattoo artists – Anrijs and Monami Frost of online fame. They’re now living in Liverpool with their daughter, and their previous lives in Latvia seem almost surreal to them. The film traces Monami’s past, and the couple’s current lives and the success they’ve found as tattoo artists.

The Last Day of School(lv)

After receiving an edict from the municipal authorities about the closing of their school, the students at Mežvidi primary school continue to attend lessons and exercise creativity and fun, but it’s all clouded in a sense of fatality. They aren’t many students, and because of that the school resembles a large family rather than an institution. Near the Russian border, deep in the Latgale region, this place will become a nowhere-land once the youth depart. In an intimate message about a national problem, the story focuses on three sisters for whom life is about to drastically change. Through their daily lives and small adventures we try to understand the real meaning of the contention that “the countryside is dying”. And we see hope.

Min Siste Morgenstemning(nb)

A year of making friends and building connections is over.

Acabou a Paz: Isto Aqui Vai Virar o Chile(pt)

Residents(lv)

The documentary “Residents” probes problems in Latvia in general and Latvia’s medicine in particular with the story of two energetic young interns, Kārlis and Laura.

Waiting for "Superman"(en)

Gripping, heartbreaking, and ultimately hopeful, Waiting for Superman is an impassioned indictment of the American school system from An Inconvenient Truth director Davis Guggenheim.

Rise Above the Mark(en)

The purpose of Rise Above the Mark, narrated by Peter Coyote, is to educate the general public about the “corporate takeover” of Indiana public schools and what parents, community members and educators can do to protect their local public schools. Legislators are calling the shots and putting public schools in an ever-shrinking box. WLCSC Board of School Trustees and Superintendent of Schools, Rocky Killion, want to secure resources and legislative relief necessary to achieve the school district’s mission of creating a world-class educational system for all children. The school district’s strategic plan will introduce a model of education that puts decision making back into the hands of local communities and public school teachers, rather than leaving it in the hands of legislators and ultimately lining the pockets of corporations.

Sylvie à l'école(fr)

Sylvie Giroux doesn’t have kids, but every year, from September to June, about 10 teenagers aged 16 to 21 add a bit of magic to her life. These youngsters suffer from autism, Down syndrome, dyspraxia, severe anxiety and intellectual handicaps.

First Case, Second Case(fa)

First Case, Second Case is a documentary about a teacher who sends a group of pupils out of the classroom when one of them does not own up to talking behind the master's back.

A, B, C... Z(sq)

Children get ready to start the first grade. They start learning the first letters.

Grandfather's Father(lv)

In this film a young man and his curmudgeonly grandfather are going 1,800 km to northern Russia in an old Zhiguli car, hoping to find the grave of their great-grandfather, who was deported. The grandfather Andris is sceptic over the lofty quest, initiated by his grand-son, as it’s not known what awaits them at their destination. Andris thinks they won’t find anything and will come back to Latvia without ever learning what happened to his father. However ever-optimistic Kārlis wants to use the journey not only to find answers about the past but also become closer to his grandfather who raised him. They both lost their parents as children.