Straying home(2025)
a film essay with urban animals
Non-human animals have always been around us, shaping and being shaped by our shared worlds. Yet in the modern city, their presence is increasingly cast as a problem, and their ways of living as disruptions. By following their traces, this film essay points toward a different picture that questions the narratives we take for granted. Through more-than-human encounters filmed locally in Romania, and a critical detour from the official discourse, other ways of living begin to surface. Perhaps there’s more we can do to unmake the anthropocentric landscape. What would it take to coexist more justly with urban animals? This film strays with this question and its possible answers.
Movie: Straying home
Top 1 Billed Cast
Video Trailer Straying home
Video: Straying home - Film teaser (2025)
Straying home - Film teaser (2025)
Straying home. A film essay with urban animals
Recommendations Movies
Earthlings(en)
Using hidden cameras and never-before-seen footage, Earthlings chronicles the day-to-day practices of the largest industries in the world, all of which rely entirely on animals for profit.
The Year Earth Changed(en)
Never-before-seen footage shows how our living in lockdown opened the door for nature to bounce back and thrive. Across the seas, skies, and lands, Earth found its rhythm when we came to a stop.
Naqoyqatsi(en)
A visual montage portrait of our contemporary world dominated by globalized technology and violence.
Koyaanisqatsi(en)
Takes us to locations all around the US and shows us the heavy toll that modern technology is having on humans and the earth. The visual tone poem contains neither dialogue nor a vocalized narration: its tone is set by the juxtaposition of images and the exceptional music by Philip Glass.
Powaqqatsi(en)
An exploration of technologically developing nations and the effect the transition to Western-style modernization has had on them.
Inside the Mind of a Dog(en)
Embark on a delightful journey into the world of dogs in this documentary that reveals scientific and emotional insights about our lovable BFFs.
McQueen(en)
Alexander McQueen's rags-to-riches story is a modern-day fairy tale, laced with the gothic. Mirroring the savage beauty, boldness and vivacity of his design, this documentary is an intimate revelation of McQueen's own world, both tortured and inspired, which celebrates a radical and mesmerizing genius of profound influence.
Project Nim(en)
From the team behind Man on Wire comes the story of Nim, the chimpanzee who in the 1970s became the focus of a landmark experiment which aimed to show that an ape could learn to communicate with language if raised and nurtured like a human child. Following Nim's extraordinary journey through human society, and the enduring impact he makes on the people he meets along the way, the film is an unflinching and unsentimental biography of an animal we tried to make human. What we learn about his true nature - and indeed our own - is comic, revealing and profoundly unsettling.
In the Realms of the Unreal(en)
In the Realms of the Unreal is a documentary about the reclusive Chicago-based artist Henry Darger. Henry Darger was so reclusive that when he died his neighbors were surprised to find a 15,145-page manuscript along with hundreds of paintings depicting The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is Known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glodeco-Angelinnian War Storm, Cased by the Child Slave Rebellion.
John Candy: I Like Me(en)
Those who knew iconic funnyman John Candy best share his story, in their own words, through never-before-seen archival footage, imagery, and interviews.
Voyage of Time: The IMAX Experience(en)
A celebration of the universe, displaying the whole of time, from its start to its final collapse. This film examines all that occurred to prepare the world that stands before us now: science and spirit, birth and death, the grand cosmos and the minute life systems of our planet.
Heart of a Dog(en)
Lyrical and powerfully personal essay film that reflects on the deaths of her husband Lou Reed, her mother, her beloved dog, and such diverse subjects as family memories, surveillance, and Buddhist teachings.
James and the Giant Peach(en)
When the young orphan boy James spills a magic bag of crocodile tongues, he finds himself in possession of a giant peach that flies him away to strange lands.
Avatar: Creating the World of Pandora(en)
The Making-of James Cameron's Avatar. It shows interesting parts of the work on the set.
Baraka(en)
A paralysingly beautiful documentary with a global vision—an odyssey through landscape and time—that attempts to capture the essence of life.
Looking for Richard(en)
Al Pacino's deeply-felt rumination on Shakespeare's significance and relevance to the modern world through interviews and an in-depth analysis of "Richard III."
Similar Movies
Woodstock(en)
An intimate look at the Woodstock Music & Art Festival held in Bethel, NY in 1969, from preparation through cleanup, with historic access to insiders, blistering concert footage, and portraits of the concertgoers; negative and positive aspects are shown, from drug use by performers to naked fans sliding in the mud, from the collapse of the fences by the unexpected hordes to the surreal arrival of National Guard helicopters with food and medical assistance for the impromptu city of 500,000.
MOTHERLAND(hy)
Having left their home country for almost 20 years, a mother, her son and her daughter reminisce of their days in Armenia and reflect on how radically different their life is now. They also discuss the current political state of the country in the midst of an ongoing war.
The Pocket Film of Superstitions(en)
The film is described as a weird and wonderful merging of shades of folk horror, the supernatural with dadaist humour and a quaint British eccentricities that are long gone in the cinema of today.
Paula Says Hi(en)
A personal and intimate portrait of disabled, gender fluid cosplayer Paul/Paula. Inviting us into her world, Paula lives life to the full, embracing her passion for cosplay and sci-fi conventions. Paul offers his intimate thoughts on accepting their disability and the joy of gender euphoria.
Florida, Man(en)
Evan, a filmmaker from Mississippi, catches feelings for a gal he meets at a found footage film festival in San Francisco. They decide to make a movie together, exploring the haunted landscapes of Evan’s family history in the swamplands of Florida. Old wounds are reopened and generational trauma reveals itself to be perhaps the scariest part of this attempted mockumentary that ends up being a little too real.
Born into Brothels: Calcutta's Red Light Kids(en)
Documentary depicting the lives of child prostitutes in the red light district of Songachi, Calcutta. Director Zana Briski went to photograph the prostitutes when she met and became friends with their children. Briski began giving photography lessons to the children and became aware that their photography might be a way for them to lead better lives.
March of the Penguins(fr)
Every year, thousands of Antarctica's emperor penguins make an astonishing journey to breed their young. They walk, marching day and night in single file 70 miles into the darkest, driest and coldest continent on Earth. This amazing, true-life tale is touched with humour and alive with thrills. Breathtaking photography captures the transcendent beauty and staggering drama of devoted parent penguins who, in the fierce polar winter, take turns guarding their egg and trekking to the ocean in search of food. Predators hunt them, storms lash them. But the safety of their adorable chicks makes it all worthwhile. So follow the leader... to adventure!!
Girls State(en)
What would American democracy look like in the hands of teenage girls? In this documentary, young female leaders from wildly different backgrounds in Missouri navigate an immersive experiment to build a government from the ground up.
Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father(en)
In 2001, Andrew Bagby, a medical resident, is murdered not long after breaking up with his girlfriend. Soon after, when she announces she's pregnant, one of Andrew's many close friends, Kurt Kuenne, begins this film, a gift to the child.
Estamira Para Todos E Para Ninguém(pt)
The documentary brings new philosophical statements by Dona Estamira and portrays her relationship with her friends who inhabit the Jardim Gramacho Sanitary Landfill, in Rio de Janeiro.
To the Sea(es)
Before leaving for Rome with his mother, five year old Natan is taken by his father, Jorge, on an epic journey to the pristine Chinchorro reef off the coast of Mexico. As they fish, swim, and sail the turquoise waters of the open sea, Natan discovers the beauty of his Mayan heritage and learns to live in harmony with life above and below the surface, as the bond between father and son grows stronger before their inevitable farewell.
The Boy of The Fish(ar)
"The Boy Of The Fish" follows Noon, a young boy living in a Syrian refugee camp, who finds solace and a sense of freedom in a whale-shaped doll he names "Bahr." Set against the challenging realities of camp life, Noon’s journey is both a story of resilience and a testament to the boundless imagination of childhood. Through vivid symbolism and a unique soundscape, the film explores themes of loss, hope, and the longing for freedom amidst confinement. Shot entirely on an iPhone due to restrictions in the conflict zone, the film combines raw authenticity with poetic depth to capture the emotional landscape of a young soul navigating adversity.
Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films(en)
A documentary about the rise and fall of the Cannon Film Group, the legendary independent film company helmed by Israeli cousins Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus.
Man with a Movie Camera(ru)
A cameraman wanders around with a camera slung over his shoulder, documenting urban life with dazzling inventiveness.
Tehachapi(en)
French visual artist-director JR situates his latest social-art intervention in a Southern Californian supermax prison, where he has imagined an enormously ambitious collaboration with the facility’s inmates.
Cow(en)
A close-up portrait of the daily lives of a pair of cows: told by way of some narrative-free, intimate POV photography, with plenty of close shot images, we follow the daily routine of these animals as they live what can only be described as mundane, boring lives - all with an ultimate purpose within the human food chain.
The Hypergaussian Wars(en)
The Hypergaussian Wars is an AI-generated feature-length audiovisual work exploring algorithmic warfare, obsolete media and the transformation of images through repetition, saturation and collapse. Built from thousands of generated images, synthetic landscapes and references to 14th–16th century painting, the film stages a continuous conflict between historical visual culture and contemporary computational systems. Fragments of obsolete video games, ruined architectures, military simulations and post-human figures circulate through increasingly unstable environments. Rather than telling a linear story, the film operates as an image system in which visual excess progressively erodes meaning. The Hypergaussian Wars reflects on memory, obsolescence, artificial intelligence and the persistence of images after their original function has disappeared.
News from Taxi Driver(en)
The New York of News from Home was filmed in 1976, while the one of Taxi Driver was filmed in the summer of 1975. Both works reflect the same decadent city. Two visions that shift from the everyday to the existential complement each other. A resignification of Akerman's images through the voice-over of Scorsese's work.