Home and Hatred

2020: A Very Particular Year(de)

At the beginning of the year 2020, a relentless plague sweeps the planet and, as a consequence, a global lockdown is gradually decreed: how did people from very different latitudes, living necessarily very different situations, experience this shared solitude? How did people adapt to the restriction by decree of their personal freedoms and the transformation of many bustling metropolises into ghost cities?

Kasama Kang Tumanda(tl)

A filmmaker follows her grandparents’ daily life after her chain-smoker and alcoholic grandmother is forced to stop drinking beer for a month.

There Is a Beautiful Birth Place, But...(en)

An abstract film consists of static shots of a small house-like being demolished through temporal ellipsis.

Ensaio sobre a Imutação(pt)

Doris Dörrie - Die Flaneuse(de)

Kuyashii Gonzo: Blood Visions and Chaos Magic(en)

Kuyashii Gonzo: Blood Visions and Chaos Magic is a Gonzo documentary about trying to make a no-budget feature film against the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, unemployment, and death. To never give up, no matter how hard things get.

Fajr(ar)

In the Moroccan desert night dilutes forms and silence slides through sand. Dawn starts then to draw silhouettes of dunes while motionless figures punctuate landscape. From night´s abstraction, light returns its dimension to space and their volume to bodies. Stillness concentrates gaze and duration densify it. The adhan -muslim call to pray- sounds and immobility, that was condensing, begins to irradiate. And now the bodies are those which dissolves into the desert.

Documentary of AKB48: AKB48+1+10(ja)

We’re back for round two! Much like “AKB48+1”, this documentary goes through the English alphabet talking about a different aspect of the group for each letter. While still featuring tons of behind the scenes footage, it focuses more on member relations and the events of the past year (2012). Again, this documentary is a brilliant look into the diversity of the AKB48 experience. There’s so much about this group to learn, and the two bonus “AKB48+1” and “AKB48+1+10” documentaries provide a detailed look in a fun way.

The Universe of the Manas(ru)

It has been a lifelong dream of Kyrgyz director Melis Ubukeyev to create an elaborate film version of the Kyrgyz national epic 'Manas'. He spent years working with the National Academy of Sciences of Kyrgyzstan to gather material for this film project, which was ultimately to remain a dream. However, the director's efforts were not in vain: Not only did he make films in 1962 and 1988 about the highly respected Manasçı – folk singers who passed on the epic over countless generations in melodic speech –, but in 1995, on the occasion of the 1,000th anniversary of 'Manas', he also made a beguiling essay film that not only outlines the plot of the epic with the help of magnificent images and lavish costumes, but also gives a semi-documentary account of the history of the Kyrgyz people interwoven with the myth. Long inaccessible, the essay film has recently been restored by the film studio Kyrgyzfilm and uploaded to YouTube in 4K.

Bananaland: Blood, Bullets & Poison(en)

For consumers, bananas are a delicious and nutritious start to the day, a healthy snack and a fixture in our fruit bowls. For millions of residents in the banana lands, the production of bananas means social upheaval, violence and pesticide poisoning. Banana Land explores the origins of these disparate realities, and opens the conversation on how workers, producers and consumers can address this disconnect.

Les Derniers Secrets de l'humanité(fr)

Préhistoire en Asie : L'Aventure humaine(fr)

Marilyn Monroe: Death of an Icon(de)

Documentary about Marilyn Monroe: 1962: America loses its blonde icon. Marilyn Monroe dies under mysterious circumstances. How did she die? The police report states: probable suicide. But there are many things that point to murder: a corpse draped too beautifully, an investigation that was cut short, evidence that disappeared. Plus Marilyn's affairs with the then US President John F. Kennedy and his brother Bobby. What really happened on that fateful summer night? After her housekeeper discovers the body, six hours pass before the police are called. She finds a beautifully draped corpse, sleeping pills in the blood but no pill residue in the stomach, witnesses who seem uncertain. The first investigator thinks about murder - and is taken off the case. Today no police files can be found.

Florent raconte Pagny(fr)

Ladies, All The Ladies(en)

Ladies, All The Ladies is the result of Lady Lucy’s self-imposed search to meet other Ladies.

Lament to Waters(pt)

May our smiles not be forced for your enjoyment and may our pains no longer be hidden. May my mother Yemanja help me. A short film about the pain we carry alone and that we only confess to the sea, which is life, but for us, black people from the diaspora, it's also a memory of a past of sadness and death.

Letter from Tokyo(ja)

Letter from Tokyo is a documentary film that looks at art, culture and politics in Tokyo, Japan. Shot over three months during the summer of 2018, and with a particular focus on grass roots arts initiatives, the use of public space, and queer politics, the film provides a snapshot of Japan’s capital in the run up to the 2020 olympics.

Human Not Human(fr)

After losing his job during lockdown, Natan signs up to a microtask website. Having become a “Turker” alongside tens of thousands of others, he is paid a cent for each face he erases on Google Street View. Under the guise of Otto, a fictional character, he embarks on an experimental and playful investigation into “clickworkers”, haunted by the spectre of Beckett.

Three Promises(ar)

Yousef Srouji’s childhood in Palestine wasn’t something that he and his parents spoke of as a family, so when he found a box of his mother’s home videos from the early 2000s, an especially perilous and tumultuous period in the West Bank, the tapes became a means for remembering and comprehending a painful past. The stories she captured illuminate the nature of life in a war zone, and familial bonds that cannot be broken. – Bedatri Choudhury (DocNYC)

Documentary Movie: Idol(ja)

"Idols" have become a representative part of Japanese culture. This film is a documentary that delves into the undiscovered "underside of idols". SKE48 was established in July 2008 in Sakae, Nagoya, as the first group of AKB48's national expansion. SKE48 was the forerunner of the 48 Project, which later expanded nationwide and then worldwide. The group is full of girls who are trying to make their dreams as idols come true. The film portrays in graphic detail the emotions of these girls who have foregone an ordinary girl's life to choose the profession of an "idol".