The Last Season: Shawaks

Köy(de)

KÖY (Turkish for village) is about the longing for home, for belonging and the freedom of the self. Three women from three generations are united by their Kurdish roots.

Incomplete Sentences(tr)

Aslı Erdoğan, world-renowned author and activist, has fallen into silence after she fled to Germany. Incomplete Sentences is a feature documentary on her literature and life, leading to exile in Frankfurt, after the Turkish regime’s oppression results in her unlawful imprisonment. Now, she struggles in exile while everybody is waiting for her to write again. Right after getting out of prison Aslı starts telling her story to the director, wandering in the streets of Istanbul she recites parts from her books and explains the stories behind. When Aslı goes to Germany to receive the Erich Maria Remarque Award she cannot return; thus her exile, which she likens to a semi-open prison, begins. As her health deteriorates and keeps her from writing, the tragedy in her books becomes her own reality.

Six Days(en)

Three women, three wars, one dream. Lanja is a journalist in Iraq fearlessly fighting against honor violence. Maia in Abkhazia battles archaic customs like 'bride kidnapping'. Nelly runs a women's shelter in the slums of Monrovia, Liberia. A universal story of women's courage and survival in the aftermath of war.

Monologue(ku)

Sivan Encü, a young Kurdish man, provided for his family by "smuggling" through the Turkish-Iraqi border. When he was murdered in the 2011 Robozik (Roboski) Massacre, the responsibility of family's welfare was taken over by his younger brother Sinan, who lost his life in an unfortunate accident. This is the story of their grief-stricken mother Heyam and her resilience. Alongside Heyam's struggle, the film brings the voices of Robozik elders and notables to the forefront, who have experienced first-hand the social, political and economic dimensions of smuggling, which has been the backbone of survival for the locals for many generations.

Wallachian Nomads(mk)

Early Balkan footage.

The Hatchet Wielding Hitchhiker(en)

This shocking documentary chronicles a happy-go-lucky nomad's ascent to viral stardom and the steep downward spiral that resulted in his imprisonment.

The White Caravan(it)

The neon sign ‘Circus’ illuminates the wide street of Naples’ suburbs: four circus families were abandoned by the institutions, and now they’re awaiting the pandemic will disappear, like a magic show. The circus has stopped, but their lives go on.

Refugee Poetry(ku)

The Kurdish Iraqi poet and actor Zeravan Khalil travels with his dog through an Alpine gorge after fleeing from IS war and genocide. As he remembers the abomination, he writes a poem with the title “You drive me mad” in Kurmanji Kurdish. In his home country, Yazidic Kurds are forbidden to work in his profession. Then he eats his apple and wanders through Europe’s middle with more hope.

Last Nomads in Anatolia: Sarikecilis(tr)

Sarikecilis are the last representatives in Anatolia of the centuries-old tradition of nomadism. Making their way to sea level in winter, and to the highlands in summer, they spend seven months of the year in transit, living off of the goats they keep. This documentary film is telling the story of the last Nomadic tribe in Anatolia within their natural habitat.

Baglar(tr)

An underdog basketball team under the helm of an idealist school teacher from hard scrabble Diyarbakir in Southeastern Turkey goes beyond winning games in their mission to rise above prejudice, poverty and political turmoil created by the decades long conflict between the Turkish state and Kurdish rebels who are fighting for local autonomy and cultural rights.

Binxet - Under the border(it)

“Binxet – Under the border” is a journey between life and death, dignity and pain, struggle and freedom. It takes place along the 911 km of the turkish-Syrian border. On the one hand the ISIS, in the other Erdogan’s Turkey. In the middle the borders and one hope. This hope is called Rojava, only one point on the chart of a troubled region, a region of resistance and an example of grassroots democracy that speaks about gender equality, self-determination of peoples and peaceful coexistence.

Black Box Syria: The Dirty War(de)

A look back over nine years of the Syrian Civil War, an inextricable conflict, like a black box, due to the competing interests of the many factions in presence and those of the foreign powers.

The Desert Wagon(es)

A couple of artists travels through the Mexico desert to present their puppet show.

Amin(en)

AMIN portrays Qashqai musician Amin Aghaie, a young modern nomad and his family who despite facing steep financial, cultural and political obstacles are dedicated to their art and culture. Amin travels to remote towns and villages to record the music of the surviving masters whose numbers decline each year. His nomadic family are selling their meager belongings to help support their son's education in performance and ethnomusicology at Tchaikovsky's Conservatory in Kyiv, Ukraine, but it is not enough. Amin, desperate to finish his academic education, sells his violins one at a time just to pay for his tuition.

A Gesar Bard's Tale(bo)

As a boy, Dawa was an illiterate Tibetan nomad whose life revolved around herding yaks. At 13, his life changed: through a series of visions, Dawa acquired the gift of telling the epic story of Tibet’s King Gesar. Now, at 35, Dawa receives a salary from the government as a guardian of national cultural heritage and is regarded as a holy man by his community. When an earthquake reduces his hometown to rubble, redevelopment of the region takes a giant leap forward. In the midst of such seismic shifts, Dawa seeks healing from King Gesar and other divine protectors of the land.

The Saltmen of Tibet(en)

Four men from a nomadic Tibetan tribe undertake their annual, ritualistic pilgrimage to a sacred salt lake. Salt gathered in this traditional fashion will be sold to provide the economic livelihood of the tribe for the coming year. The journey, necessary for the group's survival, also incorporates a number of rituals necessary for their culture to survive in the modern world.

This Rain Will Never Stop(uk)

This Rain Will Never Stop takes the audience on a powerful, visually arresting journey through humanity’s endless cycle of war and peace. The film follows 20-year-old Andriy Suleyman as he tries to secure a sustainable future while navigating the human toll of armed conflict. From the Syrian civil war to strife in Ukraine, Andriy’s existence is framed by the seemingly eternal flow of life and death.

The Last of the Nomads(en)

Like an antipodean version of Romeo and Juliet, it emerges that Warri and Yatungka became the last nomads because they had married outside their tribal laws and eloped to the most inaccessible of regions. In 1977 the land was stricken by a severe drought and their tribal elders mounted a search for them with the help of a party of white men led by Dr Bill Peasley and one of their own number, a childhood friend named Mudjon. The film takes Dr Peasley back into the desert to relive his momentous journey with Mudjon and culminates with poignant archival footage of the elderly couple found naked and starving.

Walkers of time(es)

María is an Amorúa girl; an indigenous group that traveled the savannas of Orinoquía as nomads. She lives with her grandmother Matilde, her sister diana and her cousins in Puerto Carreño, in the Colombia-Venezuela border. The amorúa are considered wild and are not literate. Matilde wants her granddaughters to learn to write and read to live better in this town of "rational whites" as they call us. The director follows María's life for 8 years from her childhood to her adolescence and invites her to travel the places her grandma did as a nomad.

Aslanbek(en)

We get to meet Aslanbek—a teenage shepherd in the mountains of Kyrgyzstan. “Aslanbek” is a story exploring the dynamics of relationship between humans and animals, what we can learn from the mountains, and about dreams. In short, it's a story about our forgotten values.

People(fr)

People is a film shot behind closed doors in a workshop/house on the outskirts of Paris and features a dozen characters. It is based on an interweaving of scenes of moaning and sex. The house is the characters' common space, but the question of ownership is distended, they don't all inhabit it in the same way. As the sequences progress, we don't find the same characters but the same interdependent relationships. Through the alternation between lament and sexuality, physical and verbal communication are put on the same level. The film then deconstructs, through its repetitive structure, our relational myths.

Cherrie - ut ur mörkret(sv)

Beyond the Barricade(da)

Family man Poul Berg is tempted by a questionable investement offer and indebts himself to a point where suicide seems like the only way out. His widow struggles to maintain even a simple standard of living for herself and their three children, who are fatally marked by their fathers deed. (stumfilm.dk)

Night of the Living Dead: Re-Animation(en)

After inheriting the family mortuary, a pyrophobic mortician accidentally exposes hundreds of un-cremated bodies to toxic medical waste. As the corpses re-animate, the mortician's inheritance-seeking younger brother unexpectantly shows up, stumbling upon a full zombie outbreak!

With a Right to Kill(da)

This documentary looks at the Danish resistance movement's execution of 400 informers during the Nazi occupation and the ensuing cover-up.

People(en)

The Red Mountain Tribe hangs out in my backyard. "Lipton's lovely home movie PEOPLE, in its affection for valuable inconsequential gestures, indicates in the course of its three minutes why there has to be a continuing alternative to the commercial cinema." – Roger Greenspun, The New York Times

There Are No Saints(en)

A man is imprisoned for a crime he didn't commit. When his wife is murdered and his son kidnapped and taken to Mexico, he devises an elaborate and dangerous plan to rescue his son and avenge the murder.

El jinete justiciero en retando a la muerte(es)

Guy gets mugged on horseback and left for dead; farmgal nurses him back to health and when he's on his feet again, he puts a domino on and swings into J J action.

The Song of the Tree(ky)

Esen, a young man who has been expelled from his village, escapes with the daughter of one of the most powerful men in the village. Whilst being pursued, he is forced to fight for her hand in a battle that results in the destruction of a sacred totem tree. This puts the whole village in jeopardy, and it is up to Esen to redeem himself and save them all.

Beethoven's 5th(en)

When Sara takes Beethoven to spend summer vacation with wacky Uncle Freddie in an old mining town, the mischievous canine "digs up" the missing clue to a legendary hidden fortune of Rita and Moe Selig. Now everybody wants to be the dog's best friend as his discovery unleashes a frenzy of treasure hunting among the community's cast of kooky creatures. With help from Uncle Freddie and Garrett (a friend or maybe more), Sara and Beethoven try to help uncover a secret that has been in the crazy little town for years.

Sissi: The Young Empress(de)

Sissi is now the empress of Austria and attempts to learn etiquette. While she is busy being empress she also has to deal with her difficult new mother-in-law, while the arch-duchess Sophie is trying to tell the emperor how to rule and also Sissi how to be a mother.

'o Re(it)

One of the key factors in Italian unification was the overthrow in 1860 of Francesco, the King of Naples and the two Sicilies, who went into elegant but impoverished exile in Rome with his Queen, Maria Sofia. This seriocomic drama follows the deposed royals as they adapt to their new lives. The former king has recognized the political finality of his deposition, but his queen has taken to traveling in men's clothing all over Italy trying to foment an uprising to restore them to the throne. She is also frantic to have a baby, an heir, but the king has become celibate as a kind of homage to his beloved mother; he spends all his time lobbying the Vatican to get her declared a saint.

Almost People(ja)

Four dramas about brothers and sisters, each of whom lacks a certain emotion.

Joy in Moscow(fr)

Pretty Joy and her friend come to Moscow to shoot a commercial. A taxi driver, who recruits girls for an underground organization run by a distant descendant of Rasputin, suggests they visit the Rasputin Museum. During the tour, the girls are hypnotized by the evil character, who hypnotizes his victims before using their charms to seduce the rich tourists.

People(en)

Six vignettes pit an assortment of characters against each other in everyday situations.

Lord(ro)

Although he hates dogs, Toni is engaged in finding lost animals and then sentimentally blackmails the masters in order to obtain beautiful large amounts of money. Because of an old and ugly Pekinese that Toni cannot succeed of getting rid of, feelings of affection awake in him that surprise even Toni.

People(en)

PEOPLE is a new collaboration of riders and filmers from Mack Dawg Productions. Directed by Pierre Minhondo and Justin Eeles. This newly formed collective combines the talents, attitude, and fun-loving folks from such films as kidsKNOW’s “Burning Bridges,” and Neoproto’s “Some Kinda Life”. Learn, watch, and follow these PEOPLE as they show you real snowboarding in their own form. From our cities to yours, look forward to watching: Jon Kooley, Justin Hebbel, Nima Jalali, Jordan Mendenhall, Curtis Woodman, Mitch Nelson, Bryan Fox, Etienne Gilbert, Robbie Sell, Stephen Duke, Pat McCarthy, Shaun McKay, Josh Mills, Marius Otterstad, Jussi Tarvainen, and Ryan Thompson. -Released August 2006.

Don't Hug Me I'm Scared 5(en)

The two remaining puppets learn about eating healthy, but things go awry when they receive a mysterious phone call.

Wad(en)

The Dutch 'Wad' (coastal mud flats) is a strange place. At low tide, many square miles of mud flats surface between the mainland and the northern islands. The Netherlands grow and shrink with the movement of the moon. Sudden incoming tide make these flats 'sea' again, sometimes drowning hikers by surprise. The Wad does not know what to make of itself. Land, see, mud, ocean floor... Two characters (and their dog) are stranded there in that desolate place. The only dramatic elements in this comical short are the sea, the wind, the sand and a lonely sea gull. Drawn in mud and tar on wet sandpaper.