2023-08-09
0
A group of people are standing along the platform of a railway station in La Ciotat, waiting for a train. One is seen coming, at some distance, and eventually stops at the platform. Doors of the railway-cars open and attendants help passengers off and on. Popular legend has it that, when this film was shown, the first-night audience fled the café in terror, fearing being run over by the "approaching" train. This legend has since been identified as promotional embellishment, though there is evidence to suggest that people were astounded at the capabilities of the Lumières' cinématographe.
By 2045, twenty localities in Germany will be resettled because of brown coal open pit mining. The film Waste Land follows the inhabitants of three villages in the Rhenish coal-mining district during their last years in their old home and documents how an entire region prepares for its collective relocation.
During his waking hours, Kais is in his bed or mobility device, completely dependent on his devoted family for round-the-clock care. At night, he dreams of himself as a manga character, starring in a story of love and bravery that mirrors the selflessness of his parents and siblings.
It’s 2020 and Minsk, the capital city of Belarus, is overflowing with anti-government protests. A dreamy figure – Mara – takes us on a journey alongside the protesting crowds. Mara’s symbolic presence is a stark contrast to the harsh reality of the street. There is a determination to Mara, but also a fragility – as if her persona reflects the collective mental state of the protesters witnessing their dream for freedom turn into a nightmare.
Documentary about the murder of Vincent Chin in 1982 and the aftermath. The documentary also explores the modern Asian-American identity when so few Asian-American youths are aware of who Vincent Chin is.
This documentary follows the French soccer team on their way to victory in the 1998 World Cup in France. Stéphane Meunier spent the whole time filming the players, the coach and some other important characters of this victory, giving us a very intimate and nice view of them, as if we were with them.
Shelley is a timid elderly lady who is competing in the Miss Senior USA pageant. Immersion in an extravagant world that also touches on the universal need for visibility, beauty and being included.
Filmmaker Sophie Dros enters into a dialogue with strong women in a powerfull document about being a woman in the Netherlands today. Inspired by Simone de Beauvoir's essay The second sex, filmmaker Sophie Dros (winner of the NFF Debut Competition 2017) talks to four women and a group of young girls. Together they go in search of universal stories; about dealing with expectations, empathy and connection, desires, fear, need for confirmation and losing control.
In southern Italy, stateless migrants pick the tomatoes the rest of the world will taste. But what about these workers’ European dreams? Will they be ground to a pulp? Our canned tomatoes are picked by migrant workers who have come to southern Italy to realise their dream of Europe. However, they never get beyond the tomato fields. This documentary shows how the tomato broaches a broader issue. Will the pickers keep believing in their dream, or fight against a Europe where others reap the sweet rewards of their disillusion?
Dialoguing directly with the trilogy of documentaries “Images of the Unconscious”, made between 1983 and 1986 and based on clinical cases and therapies with a humanist approach and artistic expression, conducted by the pioneering psychiatrist Nise da Silveira (1905-1999) – screenwriter of that film –, here is presented, in two parts, an interview with the doctor, a student of Carl Jung and a pioneer in the application of non-violent treatments for psychiatric patients, given to director Leon Hirszman, in 1986. The conversation is divided in two parts: the first, "The emotion of dealing", the second, "The egress".
"I was visiting Jerome Hill. Jerome loved France, especially Provence. He spent all his summers in Cassis. My window overlooked the sea. I sat in my little room, reading or writing, and looked at the sea. I decided to place my Bolex exactly at the angle of light as what Signac saw from his studio which was just behind where I was staying, and film the view from morning till after sunset, frame by frame. One day of the Cassis port filmed in one shot." -JM
What happened in France just after WWII, between 1945 and 1949? An interesting historic documentary looks at the fate of male and female (presumed) collaborators with the Nazis, the use of the POW in the reconstruction of the plundered and devastated country.
In a series of long interviews, 12 prime ministers talk about their experience in the upper echelons of power. The function of prime minister, torn between the president and the parliament, appointed without necessarily being elected but responsible for everything, is at the center of debate. With the exception of Jacques Chirac (1974-1976 and 1986-1988), deliberately left out because of his image as French President, those who governed France for the past 35 years agreed to discuss the exercise of power, as seen through archive footage, but also how they experienced it personally. Filmed in the same studio and sitting in the same chair, 12 French prime ministers talk freely about their time in office, from their appointment until their resignation.
In 2002, serial killer Patrice Alègre was sentenced to life imprisonment for five murders. Gendarme Roussel, the main investigator of this case, believes that he will make him confess to other unsolved crimes in Toulouse. Two ex-prostitutes give a series of names of presumed accomplices of the killer, among them Dominique Baudis, then president of the CSA. He decides to face the case alone. Around him, it is silence: not an official support of his political family. Almost twenty years later, we return to the Baudis affair to try to understand it, with the testimonies of Pierre and Benjamin Baudis, his sons, François Hollande, Camille Pascal and the main protagonists.
This is the unlikely story of 21 ministers and prime ministers who have crossed or are crossing the french Fifth Republic today. Twenty-one politicians who, from one day to the next, find themselves at the head of a ministry by the grace of a President of the Republic and his Prime Minister. The formation of the government, conflicts of attribution, reshuffles, rumours of appointments, evictions, casting errors: it is all the capricious backstage of the games of power examined here under the angle of confidence and which sheds light on the prestigious but unknown function of minister. An original and instructive political saga on the reality of those who hold or have held this prestigious position.
The duel between Pierre Péan and Edwy Plenel revisits some of the great moments of French political life and tells the story of more than 30 years of journalism in France. From distrust to attack, from revenge to caricature, the two icons of French journalism, Pierre Péan and Edwy Plenel, have always been at war. Everything opposes them: their working methods, their vision of the profession and even their way of being. Pierre Péan has always worked alone, in secret, while Edwy Plenel was looking for his place in the collective, heading for the upper echelons of the media... In the 1980s, both men became stars of journalism. In the 1990s, with his best-selling investigations, Péan invented his own independent business model, while Plenel became editor of Le Monde. Their exceptional careers have changed the way news is reported in France
"What could be more unsettling than a man close to death whose profound arrogance drives him relentlessly to hang onto both his power and his writing, to the bitter end?" In the twilight of his second seven-year term, François Mitterrand was alone. Ravaged by illness and abandoned by a large majority of the Socialist Party, who would not forgive him for the disastrous outcome of the March 1993 elections, the Head of State was preparing to tackle a second round of cohabitation with the right wing. However a series of unexpected tragedies and revelations would arise, casting a shadow over the end of his reign…