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.
0.0In 1973, eleven year old Miguelito was discovered singing in the San Juan airport by the legendary New York record producer Harvey Averne. Within the year, he went from the slums of Manuel A Perez, to recording an album with some of the finest salsa musicians of the time to finally performing with Eddie Palmieri at Madison Square Garden in front of 20,000 people. Throughout Latin America his songs ‘Payaso’ and ‘Canto a Borinquen’ had become cult hits. And then he simply disappeared...
7.87-year-old Sasha has always known that she is a girl. Sasha’s family has recently accepted her gender identity, embracing their daughter for who she truly is while working to confront outdated norms and find affirmation in a small community of rural France.
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0.0Un germà explores the emotional and physical distance between two brothers, through archival footage and present-day material, the film blends past and present to show the difficulties they face in reconnecting.
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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.
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