Praise of the Distance(2008)

Nous paysans(fr)

In barely a century, French peasants have seen their world profoundly turned upside down. While they once made up the vast majority of the country, today they are only a tiny minority and are faced with an immense challenge: to continue to feed France. From the figure of the simple tenant farmer described by Emile Guillaumin at the beginning of the 20th century to the heavy toll paid by peasants during the Great War, from the beginnings of mechanization in the inter-war period to the ambivalent figure of the peasant under the Occupation, From the unbridled race to industrialization in post-war France to the realization that it is now necessary to rethink the agricultural model and invent the agriculture of tomorrow, the film looks back at the long march of French peasants.

Rioja: The Land of a Thousand Wines(es)

By telling the human stories behind the entire value chain that gives life to the Spanish wine with the greatest international projection, ‘Rioja, Land of the Thousand Wines’ portrays a currently blooming wine region underpinned by the talent and the work of the new generations of winemakers that operate side by side with the region’s historic wineries. The film puts the focus on the match between territory and product, wisdom and tradition, and lays a bridge between the origins and the future of Rioja. An immersion into a fascinating world that, through captivating cinematography and careful editing, attempts to find the keys to understanding what Rioja wine is and what makes it so special.

Arcadia(en)

A provocative and poetic exploration of how the British people have seen their own land through more than a century of cinema. A hallucinated journey of immense beauty and brutality. A kaleidoscopic essay on how magic and madness have linked human beings to nature since the beginning of time.

Miyama, Kyōto Prefecture(de)

The follow-up film to “Barstow, California” takes us to the mountains of Miyama, a remote forest and tourist area north of Kyoto. Uwe Walter, a shakuhachi player from Germany, lives there with his wife Mitsuyo for 30 years. Together with the villagers he prepares the annual Gion Festival. On the eve of the festival, the village representatives tell him that his self-built studio is to be demolished. This brings back memories for him of earlier times and his first steps as a Nō actor. In the manner of a fresco, the film interweaves rural depictions of everyday life with the story of its German protagonist. In the village community with its togetherness of generations, Uwe shares life with his neighbours, with farmers, hunters, woodsmen, poultry farmers and anglers, tills his kitchen garden, and like other tradition-conscious villagers, he also grows his rice. The film shows them in a harsh mountain landscape between the rainy season and the first snow.

Fuente Álamo, la caricia del tiempo(es)

The camera falls in love with the characters, the landscape and the objects and is installed with the tenderness that inoculates the life of the town itself. The camera is the thousand eyes of the gaze of a rigorous anthropologist, although in love, multiplying so as not to lose detail in 24 hours of people, activity, games, intimacy ... Recording every sound that pierces the oceanic silence of the countryside open.And night comes. And the gazpacho. And the party. You see.

The Birds Changed Names And The World Turned Into Ice(es)

Migrant families experience violence, but they also keep beautiful memories when they arrive in new lands. Fantastic and intimate stories, recalled from childhood, travel across time and space, magically intermingling with the help of the four elements and breaking the boundaries of cinema.

The Gleaners and I(fr)

Varda focuses her eye on gleaners: those who scour already-reaped fields for the odd potato or turnip. Her investigation leads from forgotten corners of the French countryside to off-hours at the green markets of Paris, following those who insist on finding a use for that which society has cast off, whether out of necessity or activism.

Cyrille(fr)

Cyrille, a young gay farmer from Auvergne, has only one friend, a homosexual like him. One day, he goes on vacation to a beach in Charente Maritime. He cannot swim and sees the sea for the first time. It was there that he met the director Rodolphe Marconi who decided to devote this sensitive and gentle portrait to him, plunging us into an agricultural world in crisis and into a life often lonely and made up of hard work rarely pays off.

A Life on the Farm(en)

A strange story from Somerset, England about a filmmaking farmer and the inspiring legacy of his long-lost home movies.

Seafighters(gl)

Living among the percebeiros of the Coast of Death (Galicia), this documentary shows a unique relationship between man and his surroundings, man and the sea. At the end of Europe, years after the Prestige oil spill disaster, these fishermen face an uncertain future.

Through the Garden Gate(en)

After a career filming across five continents, EMMY and BAFTA winning wildlife cameraman Stephen de Vere returns to the English countryside, to explore the hidden world beyond the garden gate. From playful fox cubs to the barn owl tending to her chicks, explore the extraordinary world waiting beyond the garden gate. The film is a personal view, giving an insight into what it’s like being a wildlife cameraman and reminding us that you don’t have to travel to all corners of the world to get close to nature.

The Hidden Battle(es)

During the Second World War, the Allies threaten to attack Spain, an allegedly neutral country, if the Francoist regime keeps allowing Nazi Germany to extract Galician tungsten, a strategic mineral, paramount to the war effort.

A la porra(es)

Bécquer and the Witches(es)

In 1864, the Spanish poet Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer (1836-70), suffering from health problems, retires to the monastery of Veruela. Far from the noise and worldly activity of the capital, he immerses himself in the landscape of the mysterious Moncayo mountain. There, he discovers a new world full of legends that converge in a small village located at the foot of the mountain: Trasmoz, the Village of the Witches, the only officially cursed village in Spain.

As Nature Intended(en)

Three girls on a tour of the English countryside meet up with two young women who introduce them to the joys of life in a nudist camp.

Werner We Love You(de)

When Werner Herzog was still a child, his father was beaten to death before his eyes. His mother was overwhelmed with his upbringing and thereupon shipped him off to one of the toughest youth welfare institutions in Freistatt. This was followed by a career as a bouncer in the city's most notorious music club and an attempt to start a family. Today, the 77-year-old from Bielefeld lives with his dog Lucky in a lonely house in the country. Despite adverse living conditions, he has survived in his own unique and inimitable way.

Four Roads(it)

In the absence of any physical connection, this short explores alternative forms of contact among neighbors by making use of an old 16mm camera, a zoom lens, and a few meters of expired film.

John Ford: The Man Who Invented America(fr)

Over a 50-year career and more than a hundred movies, filmmaker John Ford (1894-1973) forged the legend of the Far West. By giving a face to the underprivileged, from humble cowboys to persecuted minorities, he revealed like no one else the great social divisions that existed and still exist in the United States. More than four decades after his death, what remains of his legacy and humanistic values in the memory of those who love his work?

Rice People(ko)

Even in the push and pull era which is full of flour and sugar, rice firmly protects the table of the rice bowl nation! There are farmers who grow the rice in different ways. Nam Ho-hyeon, a young farmer who continues his father's family business, challenges farming with agricultural drones that spray coated rice seeds in large quantities, but new technologies that seemed to bring a rosy future leave only endless homework in a series of trials and errors. Lee Geun, an urban farmer who started farming on weekends and fell in love with farming, lives a life of small farmers who touch and cultivate them with their hands rather than machines, and studies and protects the world of traditional native rice that has disappeared in history. Our rice, which grows with sincerity, is filled with happiness, and conveys the power of life presented by nature for a long time! The moving journey begins now!

Fighting Soldiers(ja)

Documentary of an Imperial Japanese Army regiment's advance from Shanghai to Wuhan in 1938. This film was shelved before submission to Home Ministry censors amid rumors that Fumio was a Communist.