Guranay(2019)

Along the Railway(zh)

This important, patient documentary follows a year in the life of the sidings dwellers who eke out a living, begging, foraging, stealing and sleeping rough near the Baoji railway station in Shaanxi.

The Sahara: The Forgotten History of the World's Harshest Desert(en)

At once a vast expanse of mesmerizing desolation and the crucible of human history, the Sahara Desert has been both the battlefield of empires and the haunted wilderness at the margins of the known world for thousands of years. Shot on location, this exhilarating documentary brings to life the Sahara’s cruel history and the conflicts that still plague its people. THE SAHARA recounts the story of kings who once led caravans of 30,000 people across the desert, bearing riches beyond imagination. It tells of Roman death squads that exterminated the citizens of the Empire’s most bitter rival and how the Foreign Legion crafted a legend out of last stands and lost causes. From the fabled metropolis of Timbuktu to the shores of Tripoli, THE SAHARA is an illuminating exploration of this unforgiving and remote land of myth and mirage.

Falling From the Sky(zh)

The little-known Hunan Suining County is an ordinary but full of magical places. As the theoretical point of the rocket wreckage launched by the Xichang Satellite Launch Center, it has greeted the rocket wreckage from the sky dozens of times in the past 20 years since 1990. This mysterious and dangerous “out-of-town visitor” broke the poor and peaceful life of the 160,000 locals in the jurisdiction. 2008 is China's "Olympic Year" and "Aerospace Year." The people of Suining, like the people of the whole country, are looking forward to the Olympics to pay attention to the Olympics and are proud of the growing strength of the comprehensive national strength including aerospace strength. They also have to bear the fate of falling from the sky.

Cierzo(es)

At the border between Navarre and Aragon we find the moors known as the Bardenas Reales, characterized by the dust and the omnipresence of the northern wind. This is a portrait of a land, but also a journey through Pilar’s memories. It is a glance at the past but also the present, and about how everything has changed, for better or worse.

Kaktus Hotel(de)

Aunt(zh)

Zhang Ming went back to hometown to visit his aunt.

The Desert Wagon(es)

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

A Day in Death Valley(en)

A tour of the arid, inhospitable region of the southern California desert known as Death Valley, originally named because of the many travelers in the 1840s who died of thirst, starvation and/or exposure trying to cross it.

The Rocking Sky(zh)

To commemorate the 70th anniversary of the victory of WWII, this documentary film describes the eight years of dauntless air-force fighting of the republic of China during the Anti-Japanese War, with only 300 combat-capable aircraft from China while Japan had over 2000.

The Garden of Stones(fa)

Secrets and mysteries lose power when they are spread too widely. This is what the villagers discover when they invade an old man's vision-inspired shrine to the namelessly holy.

Nazca Desert Mystery(en)

One of the world’s greatest ancient enigmas, the Nazca lines are a dense network of criss-crossing lines, geometric shapes, and animal figures etched across 200 square miles of Peruvian desert. Who created them and why? Ever since they were discovered in the 1920s, scholars and enthusiasts have raised countless theories about their purpose. Now, archaeologists have discovered hundreds of long-hidden lines and figures as well as evidence of ancient rituals, offering new clues to the origins and motivations behind the giant desert symbols.

Pepedrilo(es)

Pepedrilo and his peculiar connection with nature are embodied by the care and protection of a crocodile sanctuary, whose stability is put in danger day by day by the threat of men.

Go Further(en)

"Go Further" explores the idea that the single individual is the key to large-scale transformational change. The film follows actor Woody Harrelson as he takes a small group of friends on a bio-fueled bus-ride down the Pacific Coast Highway. Their goal? To show the people they encounter that there are viable alternatives.

The Making of the Fittest: Natural Selection and Adaptation(en)

The rock pocket mouse is a living example of Darwin's process of natural selection. Evolution is happening right now everywhere around us, and adaptive changes can occur in a population with remarkable speed. This is essential if you're a mouse living in an environment where a volcanic eruption can reverse selective pressure in nearly an instant. The film features Dr. Michael Nachman, whose work on pocket mice reveals a complete story, from ecosystem to molecules, that demonstrates how random changes in the genome can take many paths to the same adaptation-a colored coat that hides them from predators.

Greening the Desert(en)

Permaculture expert Geoff Lawton describes how he and a team of volunteers grew an oasis in arid, salty lowland, despite extremely high temperatures and minimal irrigation. The site is the lowest dryland expanse on Earth: a plain in Jordan, two kilometres northeast of the Dead Sea, and 400 metres below sea level.

L'expérience biosphère : 120 jours dans le désert(fr)

Rachel Carson, la mère de l'écologie(fr)

In 1962, Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring opened America's eyes to the dangers of pesticides and man's place in nature. This episode of the "Before/After" series dives into the genesis of a poetic and powerful text, which inspired modern environmentalist thought.

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.

Pathway(zh)

Xu Xin’s film “Dao Lu” (China 2012) offers an exclusive “in camera” encounter with Zheng Yan, an 83 year-old veteran of the Chinese Red Army, who calmly relates how he has navigated his country’s turbulent history over three-quarters of a century.Born to a wealthy family in a foreign concession, Yan joined the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 1941 because he sincerely believed in the socialist project, and in its immediate capacity to free China from the Japanese yoke and eradicate deep-rooted corruption.

I Don’t Feel at Home Anywhere Anymore(zh)

A wistful but witty account of a trip to Beijing by filmmaker Viv Li, a Chinese art student who has been living abroad for ten years. Her stay with her family mercilessly exposes how uprooted she has become by her life abroad.