Albanian Heroic Women

Dear Albania(en)

Eliza Dushku takes on her homeland of Albania.

Honderd beledigingen per dag(nl)

Sisters!(en)

Sisters! follows the work of Southall Black Sisters (SBS). It foregrounds the ongoing activism of the organisation and the daily challenges faced when fighting for social and political change.

Albania(sq)

Made by the highly influential Russian cameraman Roman Karmen, this documentary vividly features Albanian life immediately after the communists came to power in 1944. The film is especially memorable since it’s missing much of the heavy socialist realism that marked Albanian doc making. Shortly after he completed the film, Karmen set off for Berlin to shoot the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany.

Le Parti du cinéma(fr)

A, B, C... Z(sq)

Children get ready to start the first grade. They start learning the first letters.

The Prostitutes of Lyon Speak(fr)

Documentary about the Lyon sex workers who occupied the church of St. Nizier on June 3, 1975.

Que faire ?(fr)

How did the end of the Soviet Union change the way of thinking, the way of behaviour of militant French Communists ? For the first time and during several months meetings of a Communist Party cell in one of Paris' industrial suburbs were filmed by André Van In. Set against these meetings, the militants are filmed discussing their commitments, their dreams, their mistakes. Beyond questions about power or the political machinery, they share their faith in militancy and their hopes for a fairer society.

Seeing Allred(en)

Gloria Allred overcame trauma and personal setbacks to become one of the nation’s most famous women’s rights attorneys. Now the feminist firebrand takes on two of the biggest adversaries of her career, Bill Cosby and Donald Trump, as sexual violence allegations grip the nation and keep her in the spotlight.

The Albanian Challenge(fr)

Albania is the country in Europe that Europe probably knows the least about. Underdeveloped yesterday, Marxist today, breaking with the Kremlin, in friendship with Red China, we hardly know more. For journalists, the country of Enver Hoxha is one of the most closed 'hunting' territories in the world.

Wind(es)

In 2013, a woman was taken to a maximum security prison, accused of a crime she did not commit, where her life was taken from her for a year and a half. Even after her release, justice remains only a simulation.

Mat and Her Mates(fr)

In a squat in Nantes, Mat and her friends organise a self-gynaecology workshop to “look at oneself and know oneself”. A lively and intimate portrait of a young woman, filmed through her personal and collective questioning of the relationship with oneself, love, sex and the links that they all maintain between each other.

Gjama(sq)

“Gjama” is a rarely practiced mourning ritual that was performed by Albanian men throughout the centuries. By shouting specific phrases and acting out a strict choreography, it is a way of paying respect to the deceased but also overcoming grief and pain over the loss of a loved one. Through the documentation of the re-enactment of the ritual, Zgjim Elshani seeks to recover fragments of the practice in the communities where this form of collective grieving is still a way of overcoming loss. By doing so, the project intends to rethink collective grieving and what it means to publicly display emotions in a male-headed society.

Vendetta - Obliged to kill(sq)

A dramatic depiction of honor, family feuds and thousand-year-old traditions. In Albania, the tradition of avenging an injustice according to the motto "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth" still lives on. This has led to people being trapped in their homes for fear of being murdered due to a family feud.

Feminists: What Were They Thinking?(en)

In 1977, a book of photographs captured an awakening - women shedding the cultural restrictions of their childhoods and embracing their full humanity. This documentary revisits those photos, those women and those times and takes aim at our culture today that alarmingly shows the need for continued change.

Thrust(sv)

Juck (literally Hump) is a dance group that made its breakthrough in a 2013 viral video, where they pushed the limits of how the female body is allowed to express itself and make a statement. Since then they have 'humped' all over the world. A film that swings between documentary, dance and fiction asks the question, "What is femininity?".

The Witches' Carnival(ko)

In 1988, workers at the 'Busan Working Women's House' study the Labor Standards Act, receive overdue salaries, and take menstrual leave and pre- and post-partum leave. As the subdivided women's movement develops, Busan women also take to the streets to fight against domestic and sexual violence. Around the same time, female students in Busan and South Gyeongsang Province actively campaigned to create school rules to regulate sexual violence in universities. In 2000, Pusan ​​National University's first feminist festival

The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu(ro)

The three-hour-long documentary covers 25 years in the life of Nicolae Ceaușescu and was made using 1,000 hours of original footage from the National Archives of Romania.

A Vida de Sara(pt)

The life of Sara Winter - former Brazilian feminist and founder of FEMEN in Brazil - told by herself; since the troubled youth, through the years of prostitution and feminist militance, until the discovery of motherhood and God.

Ynang-Bayan: To be a Woman is to Live at a Time of War(tl)

A documentary film, which focuses on the subject of women’s movement in the Philippines. Myth and legend overlap with history and politics as the women’s struggle is laid to bear in the individual stories and achievements of those featured in the film. The fragmented mosaic of voices and scenes allow for a plurality of views and opinions to account for the multifaceted and complex nature of Filipinas. From poetry to dance, politics to poetry – women chart their own lives in the auspicious event of change happening with the ascent of a woman to the country’s pinnacle of power.