

Hundreds of thousands − perhaps even millions − of protestors have taken to the streets of Hong Kong since early June. Sparked initially by the government's plans for a controversial extradition bill, the movement has now transformed into a broader push for greater freedoms and democracy, with anger over police brutality fuelling a cycle of violence. The protests are Hong Kong's biggest challenge to Beijing since its return to China in 1997. If We Burn looks at the movement through the eyes of Hong Kongers whose fates, like their city's future, now hang in the balance.
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Hundreds of thousands − perhaps even millions − of protestors have taken to the streets of Hong Kong since early June. Sparked initially by the government's plans for a controversial extradition bill, the movement has now transformed into a broader push for greater freedoms and democracy, with anger over police brutality fuelling a cycle of violence. The protests are Hong Kong's biggest challenge to Beijing since its return to China in 1997. If We Burn looks at the movement through the eyes of Hong Kongers whose fates, like their city's future, now hang in the balance.
2023-01-25
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7.1Takes us inside the world of Anonymous, the radical "hacktivist" collective that has redefined civil disobedience for the digital age. The film explores early hacktivist groups like Cult of the Dead Cow and Electronic Disturbance Theater, then moves to Anonymous' raucous beginnings on the website 4chan. Through interviews with current members, people recently returned from prison or facing trial, writers, academics, activists and major players in various "raids," the documentary traces Anonymous’ evolution from merry pranksters to a full-blown movement with a global reach, the most transformative civil disobedience of our time.
7.3This revealing documentary honors the legendary Sidney Poitier—iconic actor, filmmaker, and civil rights activist. Featuring interviews with Denzel Washington, Spike Lee, Halle Berry, and more.
8.4A chronicle of the rise and fall of O.J. Simpson, whose high-profile murder trial exposed the extent of American racial tensions, revealing a fractured and divided nation.
8.2A paralysingly beautiful documentary with a global vision—an odyssey through landscape and time—that attempts to capture the essence of life.
7.1A detailing of the rise to prominence and global sporting superstardom of six supremely talented young Manchester United football players (David Beckham, Nicky Butt, Ryan Giggs, Paul Scholes, Phil and Gary Neville). The film covers the period 1992-1999, culminating in Manchester United's European Cup triumph.
7.6Wildlife activists and investigators put their lives on the line to battle the illegal African ivory trade, in this suspenseful on-the-ground documentary.
8.1Amid the failing counteroffensive, a journalist follows a Ukrainian platoon on their mission to traverse one mile of heavily fortified forest and liberate a strategic village from Russian occupation. But the farther they advance through their destroyed homeland, the more they realize that this war may never end.
6.8A behind-the-scenes documentary about the Clinton for President campaign, focusing on the adventures of spin doctors James Carville and George Stephanopoulos.
7.1Girl next door, activist, so-called traitor, fitness tycoon, Oscar winner: Jane Fonda has lived a life of controversy, tragedy and transformation – and she’s done it all in the public eye. An intimate look at one woman’s singular journey.
7.4This documentary follows oceanographer Sylvia Earle's campaign to save the world's oceans from threats such as overfishing and toxic waste.
7.1Documentary filmmaker Amy Berg investigates the life of 30-year pedophile Father Oliver O'Grady and exposes the corruption inside the Catholic Church that allowed him to abuse countless children. Victims' stories and a disturbing interview with O'Grady offer a view into the troubled mind of the spiritual leader who moved from parish to parish gaining trust ... all the while betraying so many.
7.6Riding Giants is story about big wave surfers who have become heroes and legends in their sport. Directed by the skateboard guru Stacy Peralta.
6.5Film adaptation of French economist Thomas Piketty's ground-breaking global bestseller of the same name: an eye-opening journey through wealth and power.
8.0Through deeply personal interviews with her siblings and an examination of the photographs, letters, and belongings left behind, Mariska assembles a new portrait of her mother Jayne Mansfield, an extraordinary and complex woman.
7.5This revealing portrait of Cuba follows the lives of Fidel Castro and three Cuban families affected by his policies over the last four decades.
6.4An in-depth investigation into the private world of the American writer J. D. Salinger (1919-2010), who lived most of his life behind the impenetrable wall of a self-imposed seclusion: how his dramatic experiences during World War II influenced his life and work, his relationships with very young women, his obsessive writing methods, his many literary secrets.
7.4A startling expose of rape crimes on US campuses, their institutional cover-ups, and the devastating toll they take on students and their families. The film follows the lives of several undergraduate assault survivors as they attempt to pursue—despite incredible push back, harassment and traumatic aftermath—both their education and justice.
6.7As a visually radical memoir, CAMERAPERSON draws on the remarkable footage that filmmaker Kirsten Johnson has shot and reframes it in ways that illuminate moments and situations that have personally affected her. What emerges is an elegant meditation on the relationship between truth and the camera frame, as Johnson transforms scenes that have been presented on Festival screens as one kind of truth into another kind of story—one about personal journey, craft, and direct human connection.
7.4In 2019, Nepalese mountain climber Nirmal “Nims” Purja set out to do the unthinkable by climbing the world’s fourteen highest summits in less than seven months. (The previous record was eight years). He called the effort “Project Possible 14/7” and saw it as a way to inspire others to strive for greater heights in any pursuit. The film follows his team as they seek to defy naysayers and push the limits of human endurance.
6.6Capturing the story of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange with unprecedented access, director Laura Poitras finds herself caught between the motives and contradictions of Assange and his inner circle in a documentary portrait of power, betrayal, truth and sacrifice.
8.5On September 16, 2022, in Teheran, the murder by police of the young Mahsa Amini, arrested for "wearing a headscarf contrary to the law", sparked off an unprecedented insurrection. Within hours, a spontaneous movement formed around the rallying cry: "Woman, life, freedom". For the first time, women, joined by men and students, took the initiative and removed their veils, the hated symbol of the Islamic Republic. The Iranian population, from all regions and social categories, rose up in protest. Social networks went wild. The diaspora (between 5–8 million Iranians) took up the cause, and the whole world discovered the scale of this mobilization: could the theocratic regime be overthrown this time?
7.0What does the looming A.I. revolution mean for us as individuals and as a society?
0.0Black White & Blue covers race issues in America, police brutality, the Black Lives Matter movement, the Flint Water Crisis, and the 2016 election of President Donald Trump. The film features one-on-one interviews with notable African-Americans: Michigan Senator Coleman Young II, Baltimore attorney William "Billy" Murphy Jr., rapper Killer Mike, former NYPD Officer Michael Dowd and others.
0.0A schoolteacher and an artist, two newlyweds, leave their lives in Hong Kong and wrestle with the promise of freedom in Canada.
6.6THE ARYANS is Mo Asumang's personal journey into the madness of racism during which she meets German neo-Nazis, the US leading racist, the notorious Tom Metzger and Ku Klux Klan members in the alarming twilight of the Midwest. In The ARYANS Mo questions the completely wrong interpretation of "Aryanism" - a phenomenon of the tall, blond and blue-eyed master race.
5.6Steal This Film focuses on Pirate Bay founders Gottfrid Svartholm, Fredrik Neij and Peter Sunde, prominent members of the Swedish filesharing community. The makers claimed that 'Old Media' documentary crews couldn't understand the internet culture that filesharers took part in, and that they saw peer-to-peer organization as a threat to their livelihoods. Because of that, they were determined to accurately represent the filesharing community from within. Notably, Steal This Film was released and distributed, free of charge, through the same filesharing networks that the film documents.
8.0« Emmanuelle » was released 50 years ago. Its main character, played by the young Sylvia Kristel, delve freely into her sexuality, without taboo. This bold movie became one of the great success of french cinema in the 70s, and Emmanuelle became the face of sexual liberation. Through the gaze of a woman, the character is back on the screen in 2024. This new Emmanuelle, written by Audrey Diwan, go in quest of a lost pleasure.
0.0On May 1st, unions all over Japan celebrate May Day, the international day for workers. Workers gather together at parks and hold demonstrations and parades. May Day has its origins in a strike that occurred in the United States on May 1, 1886, a strike that called for an eight-hour workday. Prokino recorded the May Day every year from 1927 to 1932. Among these films, this work is the only one that has survived. However, only its first part has survived. The original film depicts the march to the Ueno Park where the rally was dismissed. Iwasaki Akira coordinated the entire Tokyo Prokino organization as it photographed the 1931 May Day celebrations. They shot in both 16mm and 35mm (other 35mm productions were planned, but this is the only one that achieved completion). A 16mm print was circulated around the countryside by mobile projection units, and a 35mm print was shown at Soviet film nights in Tokyo and Osaka.
0.0In Pakistan, veils hide one of the country's most terrible secrets. Driven by revenge, jealousy or sexual non-co-operation some men subject their wives to horrific attacks with acid that is freely available in the street. Completely disfigured, the victims are often ostracized by their families and become prisoners in their own home. This chilling documentary is a terrifying insight into the shattered lives of these women.
0.0Stalin’s statue in the garden of a nunnery provokes discussion – plenty of it – in a small Georgian village. Some of the locals used to know Stalin personally because he visited the village several times when he was young, and they continue to see him as a benign ruler from the good old days rather than the brutal dictator he was. Whenever an episode of purge shook the Soviet Union’s republics, they hid the statue in the woods. The church also plays an important role in people’s lives. All in all, the film reveals a fundamental conflict in Georgian society.
7.5In 2017, twenty years after the British handed over Hong Kong to China in 1997, young people, more politicized than any previous generation and proud of their land, do not feel Chinese and actively fight against the oligarchs who want to subdue them to China's authoritarian power.
5.5An analysis of the rise of the European far-right, increasingly present in both politics and everyday life: an inquisitive journey through France, Germany and Belgium.
8.0Documentary on Les Charlots, known as The Crazy Boys in the English-speaking world, a group of French musicians, singers, comedians and film actors who were popular in the 1960s, 1970s, and early 1980s.
In the panorama of Kurdish music, Koma Berxwedan (Group Resistance) is one of the most interesting, innovative, experimental groups. To a deep love for music research the group has always associated a strong political commitment. Some of its members have joined the PKK guerrillas in the mountains of Kurdistan. Three of them died in combat. Some have been forced to live in exile and others continued to challenge the Turkish authorities by carrying out their work in Kurdistan.
7.5October 7, 2023: Hamas terrorists attack Israel, murder and take hostages. Israel reacts with severity. The goal: the destruction of Hamas. But with the war in Gaza, Israel is awakening the great trauma of the Palestinians: the expulsion of 1948. How can the lack of empathy on both sides be explained?
3.0Obsessively referring to the traumas and wounds that the Spanish civil war (1936-39) and Franco's dictatorship (1939-75) caused in their day no longer serves to explain the impassable abyss of incomprehension and hatred that the abject policies and radical positions adopted by both the right and the left in recent decades have opened up before the citizens of a country that is barely known beyond hackneyed cultural clichés.
7.8In barely a century, French peasants have seen their world profoundly turned upside down. While they once made up the vast majority of the country, today they are only a tiny minority and are faced with an immense challenge: to continue to feed France. From the figure of the simple tenant farmer described by Emile Guillaumin at the beginning of the 20th century to the heavy toll paid by peasants during the Great War, from the beginnings of mechanization in the inter-war period to the ambivalent figure of the peasant under the Occupation, From the unbridled race to industrialization in post-war France to the realization that it is now necessary to rethink the agricultural model and invent the agriculture of tomorrow, the film looks back at the long march of French peasants.
6.0This film from Bill Moyers is the first documentary to focus exclusively on people formerly detained in New York City’s notorious Rikers Island Jail. They tell their compelling stories direct to the camera, revealing the violent arc of the Rikers experience – from the trauma of entry to extortion and control by inmates, to oppressive corrections officers, violence and solitary confinement.
Personal accounts from the Alta actions in the years 1979 to 1981. Large police forces were deployed against the demonstrators. The dispute over the Alta river began as an environmental issue, but became a major turning point for the Sámi people's struggle for equal rights in Norway.
0.0Despite their children's reluctance, Radi and Mounira, a 65-year-old puppeteer couple, set off on tour between Israel and Palestine in their outdated van. They are exhausted from having to set up and take down the stage, from performing three shows in a row in front of hundreds of wild children under a burning sky. Lost in Jericho, frightened by the bombs falling near Majd Al Shams, destabilized by the Bedouin children of the Negev unable to determine their own identity, they no longer know if their mission is still relevant. Safeguarding the identity of their people through their shows, but at what cost? A quest for Palestinian identity.