On the age of 51, a father leaves his family to live as a carpenter. Away from the family and house burdens, he spends his last 15 years living alone. From the point of view of his child, the idealistic father then changes his mind to let go of everything and lives his dream of traveling.
Leonie’s dream is to become a pig farmer, just like her parents. She wanders happily around the farm, helping out in any way possible. She tends to the pigs, and is present from the fertilisation of the sows to the moment the truck leaves for the slaughterhouse. The family farm teaches her about the circle of life. However, new laws on nitrogen emissions have undermined the economic viability of the farm, and bankruptcy looms. Together with her cat Skeet, Leonie watches the last pigs disappear from the farm, and she realises that her dream of becoming a pig farmer might not come true.
MY NEXT STEP follows a young Kunqu Opera artist YANG Yang(28 year-old) over the course of several years. It offers its audience a glimpse into the world of Kunqu, and a magnifying look into the ambivalence of a young man struggling to find a way out for a fading art.
When a Mongolian nomadic family's newest camel colt is rejected by its mother, a musician is needed for a ritual to change her mind.
An Oscar nominated documentary about a middle-class American family who is torn apart when the father Arnold and son Jesse are accused of sexually abusing numerous children. Director Jarecki interviews people from different sides of this tragic story and raises the question of whether they were rightfully tried when they claim they were innocent and there was never any evidence against them.
A portrayal of the life of one of the most important samba musicians in Brazil, Bahian sambista Oscar da Penha, popularly known as Batatinha (1924 -1997). Through memories of their father, his nine children share their perspectives, as well as interviews with family, friends and musicians, to tell the story of Batatinha’s life, history and work.
What would your family reminiscences about dad sound like if he had been an early supporter of Hitler’s, a leader of the notorious SA and the Third Reich’s minister in charge of Slovakia, including its Final Solution? Executed as a war criminal in 1947, Hanns Ludin left behind a grieving widow and six young children, the youngest of whom became a filmmaker. It's a fascinating, maddening, sometimes even humorous look at what the director calls "a typical German story." (Film Forum)
An intimate portrait of the lives of Delvys and Carlos, siblings who live alone with their elderly mother in a rural part of a small Cuban town. The film portrays a family engulfed in their inner worlds. Between the sacrifices they make out of love for those who are present, and their longing for things that are absent, they struggle to find meaning as they reflect, contemplate, and carry the weight of existence, trying together, to move forward.
Chelsea Bledsoe and her husband Graig throw a surprise intervention for her old high school boyfriend, Henry, with a mismatched group of acquaintances from back in the day to fill out the guest list.
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.
Traces the lives of the Hartings, a blind Montreal family of three who make their living singing in the city's subway stations. The Hartings lost their only sighted child Hassan in a tragic drowning accident, and have since turned to the teachings of Russian mystic Grigori Grabovoi, hoping to resurrect their son. Resurrecting Hassan is an exploration of this family's legacy of grief, tragedy and abuse; the film will follow them on their path to redemption.
In Uganda, AIDS-infected mothers have begun writing what they call Memory Books for their children. Aware of the illness, it is a way for the family to come to terms with the inevitable death that it faces. Hopelessness and desperation are confronted through the collaborative effort of remembering and recording, a process that inspires unexpected strength and even solace in the face of death.
Thomas Haemmerli is about to celebrate his fortieth birthday when he learns of his mother's death. A further shock follows when he and his brother Erik discover her apartment, which is filthy and full to bursting with junk. It takes the brothers an entire month to clean out the place. Among the chaos, they find films going back to the 1930s, photos and other memorabilia.
Florida, Man is a "mostly real" faux documentary exploring filmmaker Evan Jordan's haunted past and future possibilities - shot on location in his hometown and featuring a roster of extended family, friends, and other colorful characters from the American South.
Reclaiming what was once stolen from him, a man journeys back to the place of his childhood nearly 80 years after his world came crashing down.
A student's increasingly intimate line of questioning causes his interview with a local horror host to take a vulnerable turn.
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.
Tips for what to expect when taking a vacation aboard a cruise ship, and how to make the most of the trip.