Samen Sterk

The Scars(eu)

The personal stories lived by the Uncle, the Father and the Son, respectively, form a tragic experience that is drawn along a line in time. This line is comparable to a crease in the pages of the family album, but also to a crack in the walls of the paternal house. It resembles the open wound created when drilling into a mountain, but also a scar in the collective imaginary of a society, where the idea of salvation finds its tragic destiny in the political struggle. What is at the end of that line? Will old war songs be enough to circumvent that destiny?

Surviving Clotilda(en)

In July 1860, the schooner Clotilda slipped quietly into the dark waters of Mobile, Ala., holding 110 Africans stolen from their homes and families, smuggled across the sea, and illegally imported to be sold into slavery. Surviving Clotilda is the extraordinary story of the last slave ship ever to reach America's shores: the brash captain who built and sailed her, the wealthy white businessman whose bet set the cruel plan in motion, and the 110 men, women, and children whose resilience turned horror into hope.

An Intervention(en)

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.

I Am Gay(en)

After working abroad for five years, filmmaker Ajahnis Charley returns home to Oshawa, Ontario, in the age of quarantine. In addition to reuniting with his family, he returns with a mission to share some deep personal truths. Surprising conversations ensue with his mother and three siblings creating, in this humorous and heart-wrenching story about our need to seek love and acceptance within our own families.

L'été des 20 bougies(fr)

Blush: An Extraordinary Voyage(fi)

For 18-year-old Finnish–Kosovan Fatu, a simple visit to the grocery store feels as nerve-racking as a lunar expedition: for the first time in his life, he’s wearing makeup in public. Luckily his best friend Rai, a young woman on the spectrum of autism, is there to ferociously support him through the voyage.

Pauline From 2 to 3(en)

Pauline, a plucky Super Ager from Erie, Pennsylvania lives her 102nd and 103rd years on camera, revealing the power that family, faith, purpose, a sense of humor and some good genetics play in a long, well-lived life. An intimate portrayal of grit and resilience emerges with a needed acknowledgment of the often overlooked role of women in America's "Greatest Generation."

memories/fortress(en)

An Indonesian student in London attempts to deal with the absurdity of confinement and immobility due to then-ongoing coronavirus lockdown by talking to his parents – who also face similar movement restrictions in Jakarta – over the phone.

Pura(gl)

Raíz y Miajas(es)

Things of a Lifetime, Intimate Archeological Exercises(fr)

The filmmaker’s grandmother moved into this house in 1971. When Rolande Ségalini died, everything remained as it was during her lifetime. But what to do with all the accumulated things? As her granddaughter Céline begins to film this material legacy, she realises that her grandmother has remained an enigma to her to this day. Room by room, she inventories, classes, counts, sorts the possessions retrieved from wardrobes, drawers, cabinets and boxes and arranges the objects into new still lives. It is an attempt to understand the deceased woman better and find out more about her. Step by step, the heiress discovers various connections to France’s colonial history.

While The Night Falls(es)

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.

Dancing in the rain(fr)

Self-portrait of a 38-year-old mother from Abitibi, struggling with breast cancer.

Tscharniblues II(de)

Bern, 1979: a tower block called Tscharnergut. Together with a few friends (among them famous Swiss actor Stefan Kurt), director Aron Nick's father and uncle shoot the idealistic Super 8 film "Dr Tscharniblues" ("The Tscharni Blues") – a wild, unvarnished self-portrait of their generation. 40 years later, Nick gathers the friends at Tscharnergut and asks what has happened to them and their ideals in the meantime. What have the achieved? What have they lost? Past, present, and future clash and form a journey of personal disappointments, hopes, and a collective search for identity. In "Tscharniblues II," Aron Nick discovers a kind of friendship that can weather anything.

Mrs. B., a North Korean Woman(ko)

Portrait of Mrs. B., a tough charismatic North Korean woman who smuggles between North Korea, China and South Korea. With the money she gets, she plans to reunite with her two North Korean sons after years of separation.

Century of Smoke(lo)

Laosan, a young family man, spends all his time smoking opium. For his community, lost in the heart of the Laotian jungle, opium farming is the only way to survive. But opium is also the poison that puts men to sleep and kills their desires.

Dr Tscharniblues(de)

Bern, 1979: a tower block called Tscharnergut. A group of friends get together to make a film about their experiences growing up in suburban Switzerland.

Eine vo dene(de)

Bern, 1980: A caleidoscopic portrait of Swiss urban life in the early 1980s.

Mama Micra(de)

The mother of animation director Rebecca Blöcher didn’t want to live an ordinary life. She wanted “something more,” she explains in this stop-motion film. The people around her didn’t understand—in a letter written in 1968, a girlfriend criticizes her for going out on her own and making men jealous, while advising her to dress in a more “feminine” way and to join a cooking course. Blöcher’s mother brushed aside the advice. Years later still, she divorced her husband and stepped into the big wide world.

El pisto(es)