De Profundis

I Am Gentrification. Confessions of a Scoundrel(de)

Is the city of Zurich suffering from ‘density stress’? What is it like to live in mega cities such as São Paulo, Mexico City and Tiflis? Filmmaker Thomas Haemmerli broaches the topics of city development, architecture, density, housing market, xenophobia and gentrification from an autobiographical perspective. The path of his life has led him from a childhood in the villa district of Zürichberg, through his teenage years as squatter to flat shares, yuppie apartments and finally second homes in various cities. Only recently having become a dad, he plans to further enhance Zurich’s price appreciation by purchasing a huge, extended city apartment… This multifaceted essay not only humorously questions the filmmaker’s decisions, but also those of the right-wing conservatives, who are afraid of losing their space to immigrants, and the political left, who fail to embrace modern-age architecture.

Tricky Memory(en)

The lastest neuroscience discoveries show surprising results: false memories, distortion, modification, déjà vus. Our memory is affected in many ways, and deceives us every day. The very fact of recalling souvenirs modifies them. The everyday consequences are manyfold. To what extent can we rely on our souvenirs? How much credit can we give them during trials? Even more shocking, scientists have proved to be able to manipulate our memory: creating artificial souvenirs, deleting, emphasizing or restoring them on demand.

L'Épopée des gueules noires(fr)

Kingdom of Us(en)

How does a traumatic event shape a family? How do you sift through the memories to find hidden clues and unlock a collective grief? Kingdom of Us takes a look at a mother and her seven children, whose father's suicide left them in financial ruin. Through home movies and raw moments, the Shanks family travels the rocky road towards hope.

History and Memory: For Akiko and Takashige(en)

This film is a poetic composition of recorded history and non-recorded memory. Filmmaker Rea Tajiri’s family was among the 120,000 Japanese and Japanese Americans who were imprisoned in internment camps after the attack on Pearl Harbor. And like so many who were in the camps, Tajiri’s family wrapped their memories of that experience in a shroud of silence and forgetting. This film raises questions about collective history – questions that prompt Tajiri to daringly re-imagine and re-create what has been stolen and what has been lost.

Break the Silence(ar)

Following the death of Amina Filali, a 16 year-old girl who killed herself after she was allegedly forced to marry the man who raped her, a young woman carries a personal investigation into the representation and perception of rape in Morocco. Here rapists are offered to marry their victims as a means to save the "honour" of the family. By liberating the voices of these victims, 475 : Break the Silence gives an unprecedented view of family, the deceit of love, relationships, marriage and honour in urban deprived areas of a country seeking to find its identity between modernity and tradition.

Carnations(en)

Seven strangers are interviewed to talk about the relationship they have with their mother.

Dysphonias(es)

After a premonition of an unusual bird, a father loses his voice. His daughter undertakes a search to rediscover him, through an intimate narrative that explores the past, the new facets and the silences of a man who is no longer the same.

Faces of Death(en)

A collection of death scenes, ranging from TV-material to home-made super-8 movies. The common factor is death by some means.

Strijdmakker(nl)

VPRO icon Wim Brands died on April 4, 2016. He was known to the general public as a presenter of the VPRO Boeken program and also closer, with six collections of poetry to his name. This documentary about his life and work, built entirely from archive material, pays tribute to this television personality. A portrait in which attention is also paid to his complicated relationship with death. With a.o. Karl Ove Knausgård, David Sedaris, Ellen Deckwitz and Pieter Boskma. Brands' work merges with his rich inner life and that he chose death at the age of 56 casts a shadow over everything.

Survival in Berlin-Neukölln(de)

About Stefan Stricker, who calls himself Juwelia and has been running a gallery on Sanderstraße in Berlin Neukölln for many years. Every weekend he invites guests to shamelessly recount from his life and to sing poetic songs written with his friend from Hollywood Jose Promis. Juwelia has been poor and sexy all her life, has always struggled for recognition, but only partially.

Please Hold(en)

An experimental documentary engaging with decades of DIY activist media, two death bed/legacy videos, and the wisdom of many living AIDS workers, as we all sit together in one (changing) format, video—VHS, hi-8, digital, Zoom—to address these and other questions: How do neighborhoods, sweaters and scarves, videotapes and queer bars hold ghosts? How do we let them go?

L'heure exquise(fr)

In the streets of Marseille, René Allio encounters, once again, the spaces of his childhood, and remembers his family history.

Blue-Eyed Helsinki(fi)

A boat trip in the Helsinki archipelago: images of water, light and people on the cruise. The same people are met in the city in different situations: at work, with their family, in conversations with a circle of friends, meditating and figuring out their duties. Work and aspirations are important and encouraging to them. They all seem to have something personal to say about their time, their views and their imaginations.

Moments in Helsinki(fi)

A compilation of excerpts from old Helsinki-themed documentaries and new material.

La détresse au bout du rang(fr)

Too Young To Die(nl)

Dertien Dagen(nl)

So They Won't Say We Don't Remember(uk)

The short film is based on events surrounding a 1977 mining accident in the Donbas region that ultimately led to the mine’s closure. In the film, locals, artists, and curators traverse the surface, paralleling one of the underground routes of the Novator mine. The procession ends at the monument to the dead miners, which is located just above the site of the underground accident that led to the death of the workers. Participants walk across the postindustrial landscape of Donbas, over the plowed fields, by bushes and courtyards, connecting the ground and the underground spaces through the choreography of their bodies.

Benny och kulturhuset(sv)

A portrait of Benny Fredriksson who for 16 years was CEO of Kulturhuset / Stadsteatern. He also had a background as an actor and director. In connection with a media hunt he resigned and later took his own life.