Wuhan: The Long Night(2020)

The first wave - Milan in the time of Covid-19(it)

The choral work of 57 directors and filmmakers who tell stories of Milan at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Yugto(tl)

Yugto is a short documentary of the lives of Filipinos during the COVID-19 pandemic. Shot by various and willing Filipinos during the onset of the country’s General Community Quarantine, Yugto showcases sneak peeks into their struggles, hopes, and transformations.

China Jam(en)

In their infinite quest for virgin big walls, adventurers Sean Villanueva O’Driscoll, Nicolas Favresse, Stephane Hanssens and Evrard Wendenbaum, head in September 2013 to a remote valley in the westernmost region of China. There, they found a fantastic 1200m vertical pillar, culminating at 5842m. They spent 14 days on the wall facing snow storms and harsh conditions to finally achieve this amazing ascent with some frost bites but never forgetting to have a lot of fun and to play unreal musical sessions.

Coronavirus(en)

Struggling with fear, tension, and anxiety amid the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, a high school student reflects upon what really matters.

Hard ♡(fr)

Since 2013, the Casual Gabberz collective has been storming dancefloors and the stages of the biggest festivals with its gabber surge, that hardcore techno sound born in Holland in the 90s. Until a virus causes the planet to go haywire. And triggered an existential crisis within the collective.

Crocodile in the Yangtze(en)

Crocodile in the Yangtze follows China's first Internet entrepreneur and former English teacher, Jack Ma, as he battles US giant eBay on the way to building China's first global Internet company, Alibaba Group. An independent memoir written, directed and produced by an American who worked in Ma's company for eight years, Crocodile in the Yangtze captures the emotional ups and downs of life in a Chinese Internet startup at a time when the Internet brought China face-to-face with the West. Crocodile in the Yangtze draws on 200 hours of archival footage filmed by over 35 sources between 1995 and 2009. The film presents a strikingly candid portrait of Ma and his company, told from the point of view of an “American fly on a Chinese wall” who witnessed the successes and the mistakes Alibaba encountered as it grew from a small apartment into a global company employing 16,000 staff.

Dwarves Kingdom(en)

Dwarves Kingdom is a documentary film about a theme park featuring performances by little people with dwarfism who live in a fantasy recreation of a magical empire. Built by a wealthy Chinese businessman, this other-worldly kingdom, officially called World Ecological Garden of Butterfly and Little People Kingdom, is located in the mountains surrounding the city of Kunming in Western China.

Only Day and Night(pl)

A pandemic, a time of hard lockdown, when contact with other people is severely limited. The most common means of communication are online conversations, which the director uses to talk to people who, like him, are stuck alone in their apartments.

Conversations Between Shifts(en)

A portrait of Chicagoland ICU nurse Jeanette Alvarez-Basem captured through the perspective of her son Ben Basem. Between her night shifts and Illinois Nurses Association union meetings, Jeanette navigates what it means to be a nurse and a human during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Du Fu: China's Greatest Poet(en)

Sir Ian McKellen reads the poetry, Michael Wood traces the journey on the ground. Together they conjure up the extraordinary life, times and words of China’s greatest poet, Du Fu. In this film, the first to ever be made about Du Fu in the west, Michael follows his tracks by road, train and riverboat. Along the way, he meets ordinary people, dancers and musicians, who help to tell the amazing story of a poet whose words have resonated through the centuries, describing the experiences of ordinary people caught up in war, corruption, famine and natural disasters. "I am one of the privileged. If my life is so bitter, then how much worse is the life of the common people?"

Youth (Spring)(zh)

This film was shot between 2014 and 2019 in the town of Zhili, a district of Huzhou City in Zhejiang province, China. Zhili is home to over 18,000 privately-run workshops producing children's clothes, mostly for the domestic market, but some also for export. The workshops employ around 300,000 migrant workers, chiefly from the rural provinces of Yunnan, Guizhou, Anhui, Jiangxi, Henan and Jiangsu.

I Stay Home(it)

On the morning of 10 March 2020 all Italians woke up in quarantine. Io Resto a Casa ("I Stay Home") depicts the filmmaker's first 14 days of the Italian lockdown, without ever leaving the house, made entirely on the web through the stories of five Youtubers and dozens of videos and photographs made and shared all over Italy. Fourteen days of fears, hopes, enthusiasm, boredom, normality and extraordinariness. Fourteen days that we will always remember.

A Day in the Life of Coronavirus Britain(en)

How does the UK function under the shadow of the coronavirus? This documentary, shot over 24 hours, touches on the funny and the poignant, and gauges the impact of CV19 on the country.

Open 24 Hours(zh)

In a street in the north of Shanghai we find a small restaurant, dirty and run-down, but with lots of personality, where Chinese noodles (miantiao) are made 24 hours a day. It’s run by an ethnic Hui Muslim family from the region of Qinghai, in Northwest China. ‘Abierto 24 horas’ presents a chronological account of the 24 hours of life in this establishment.

Christmas In Florida(en)

A canceled Thanksgiving parade and no options professionally or personally, Kimberly DiPersia and Alex R. Wagner decide it would be a perfect opportunity to travel to Florida.

Isolation(en)

A collective documentary film, from five european directors asked to witness the revolutions and dramas caused in their own countries by the pandemic. Among them, “Two Fathers”, directed by Julia von Heinz (20’). After the death of his father, Hans-Michael von Heinz, the director finds out the truth about her parent true sexual identity. In order to know more, she starts emailing persons who got to know him over the last years, among them his closest friend, director Rosa von Praunheim.

10 Questions for the Dalai Lama(en)

How do you reconcile a commitment to non-violence when faced with violence? Why do the poor often seem happier than the rich? Must a society lose its traditions in order to move into the future? These are some of the questions posed to His Holiness the Dalai Lama by filmmaker and explorer Rick Ray. Ray examines some of the fundamental questions of our time by weaving together observations from his own journeys throughout India and the Middle East, and the wisdom of an extraordinary spiritual leader. This is his story, as told and filmed by Rick Ray during a private visit to his monastery in Dharamsala, India over the course of several months. Also included is rare historical footage as well as footage supplied by individuals who at great personal risk, filmed with hidden cameras within Tibet.

Chinese Spring(cs)

Yulu(zh)

The film uses a documentary approach to tell the stories of 12 Chinese pioneers, chosen from the fields of business and the arts. The protagonists reflect upon their life journeys against the backdrop of modern China.

The China Hustle(en)

An unsettling and eye-opening Wall Street horror story about Chinese companies, the American stock market, and the opportunistic greed behind the biggest heist you've never heard of.