Being mother is the most natural thing in the world. Or so it seems. Yet the demands on women with children have rarely been as overloaded and contradictory as they are in today’s Western world. Promises of happiness are often followed by disadvantages, excessive demands and feelings of guilt. The mother has become an artificially glorified ideal, which nevertheless is often legitimized by the „nature of the woman“. We live in a time when three people could claim to be the same child’s mother: egg donors give their genes to beget children, surrogate mothers deliver babies which they give away immediately after birth, and men raise children by themselves – without a woman at their side. Hence the question arises: What makes a human being a real mother?
The documentary Schwarze Adler (Black Eagles) lets black players of the German national football team tell their personal stories for the first time. What road did they take before they got to where we cheer for them? What hurdles did they have to overcome? What prejudices and racist hostility were they exposed to – and what was it like in the past, what is it like today?
The mis-adventures of three Polish-Jews on the road to Gdansk is the basis for this German comedy that was filmed in New York, Germany, and Poland. Genovefa and Moshe have been married and living in New York for 30 years. Physically the couple resembles Mr. and Mrs. Jack Sprat. The two have decided to return to Poland for a visit. They intend to have Moshe's best friend Isaac, an unlucky, depressive German, take care of their house while they are gone. Unfortunately, Isaac loses his job before they go and ends up accompanying them on a Polish freighter. When the ship dies in a German port, the threesome must go overland to Gdansk. They encounter many mishaps along the way.
John is a young Journalism student, he worked for years in a telemarketing service untill the burnout crisis. Now he wants to suit the enterprise for harassment at work, back and mental problems.
Let’s get SICK’NING for the Holidays! RuPaul’s Drag Race legend Laganja Estanja is here for Hey Qween’s Very Green Christmas Special!
The Dangers of the Fly is an educational film made by Ernesto Gunche and Eduardo Martínez de la Pera, also responsible for Gaucho Nobility (1915), the biggest blockbuster of Argentinean silent cinema. De la Pera was a talented photographer, always willing to try new gadgets and techniques. This film experiments with microphotography in the style of Jean Comandon's films for Pathé and it is part of a series which included a film about mosquitoes and paludism and another one about cancer, which are considered lost. Flies were a popular subject of silent films and there are more than a dozen titles featuring them in the teens and early twenties.
In Sao Paulo, Janaína and João take care of each other. She has epilepsy. He is in a relationship with a man who prefers to keep his distance. Above their lives floats the vague trauma of a mudslide that may have buried men and machines alike. Together, they try to protect their bodies from the evil that seems to spread like a fever.
Stephen Hawking has warned that the creation of powerful artificial intelligence will be “either the best, or the worst thing, ever to happen to humanity”. Inspired by Brian Christian’s study The Most Human Human: What Artificial Intelligence Teaches Us About Being Alive, the filmmakers set out on an international investigation highlighting the effects of AI - scenes from our daily lives destructive and constructive.
Welcome to “The Academy Awards of quilting”, a weeklong spectacle in which quilters from all over the world gather in Paducah, Kentucky every year for its huge quilt competition.
Family drama set in the Danish countryside in the turn of the century. A wealthy landowner is an evil and corrupt womaniser with several illegitimate offspring in addition to his beautiful family. Nobody stands up to him except his feisty 17-year-old daughter.
A fictional documentary that portrays the city of Dakar, Senegal, as we hear the conversation between a Senegalese man (the director, Djibril Diop Mambéty) and a French woman, Inge Hirschnitz. As we travel through the city in a picturesque horse drawn wagon, we chaotically rush into this and that popular neighborhood of the capital, discovering contrast after contrast: A small African community waiting at the Church's door, Muslims praying on the sidewalk, the Rococo architecture of the Government buildings, the modest stores of the craftsmen near the main market.
A portrait of the first year of peace in Bosnia. This is a human story played out before a background of a war which still makes itself felt, a story of a possible life together, which has on the other hand become impossible in many cases. Rajko, the Serbian mechanic and his family must leave their home for the second time. Nermin, the actor, lost both legs in the war and might have the chance to learn a new role. Halid, a shepherd from the Muslim-controlled region, risks his life to visit friends on the western (Croatian) side of Mostar.
A bottle of Pepsi was in communist Romania any child's dream. Istvan, 9, is lucky to find such a bottle in the house of a security officer, who is in charge for his and his mother's emigration to the F.R. of Germany.
A beautiful young unwed mother-to-be from Tainan arrives in Taipei city in search of the father is sidetracked by a smart-Aleck Hong Kong expatriate taxi driver who aids her search but eventually falls in love with the girl after her efforts to reunite with the absentee father prove fruitless.
Elsa returns to her homeland, Caldas da Rainha, in Portugal to meet her mother. Through this little adventure, we discover the city and the mysterious activities of its inhabitants, as well as elements of Elsa's family history. A crossed impressionist portrait is woven, temporalities become confused, and dreams mingle with reality.
An ironic tale about seeking for mutual understanding between desperate Ukrainian porters and their alien clients during annual Rosh-Hashanah pilgrimage of Hasidim to the town of Uman'.
Yesspeak is a film chronicling the then current lineup of the progressive rock group Yes (featuring Jon Anderson, Steve Howe, Rick Wakeman, Chris Squire, and Alan White) directed by Robert Garofalo and narrated by Roger Daltrey. It was premiered in theatres across the United States on January 26, 2004, and was followed by a closed-circuit live acoustic performance by Yes in front of a small studio audience (resulting in the DVD Yes Acoustic: Guaranteed No Hiss). Divided into ten chapters, the programme systematically covers the background, history, and outlook of the group before an extended interview with each of the five members of the group. There are also discussions with members on the band's music and glimpses of the band's 2003 world tour.
At the end of the 1960s, Vanesa’s parents fled the Franco-regime’s deep poverty to pursue their dream in the Netherlands. Working their blue-collar jobs for hours and hours, for over 45 years, their purpose was to return to Spain wealthy and comfortable. There, in a house full of Dutch porcelain and shiny gold, they can now finally rest. Vanesa was raised as Dutch, but still feels trapped in their expectant illusion, even with the distance between them. Torn between two homes, she starts to re-examine her past.
During the pandemic, living under an extreme right-wing government, filmmakers Bel Bechara and Sandro Serpa receive the news that would change their lives: there was a baby to be adopted.
When filmmaker Mari Soppela took her children and husband to live for a year on a sacred mountain in her native Finland, she was fulfilling a lifelong dream to share the arctic wilderness of her childhood with her family. But when years later her children turn the camera onto her, she is forced to confront her motivation for filming their lives in this searching and searingly honest cinematic exploration of identity, belonging and motherhood. Filmed over the course of 27 years, Mother Land challenges us all to examine the landscapes we carry within us and the narratives we create to make sense of our lives.
A "Chinese" father reflects on the changing relationship of China and US during his trip to Beijing to retrieve his 3-year-old "American" daughter who has been stranded because of the recent "decoupling" of the two countries. Born in China and living in the American Midwest, filmmaker Yinan Wang attempts to unpack his own experience of how a transnational migrant family deals with the distress caused by identity, nationalism, and geopolitics.
A family’s difficult but endearing journey that re-defines motherhood: is it through nature or nurture? Yasmine is a young woman forced to raise her 3 younger siblings after being struck with life’s difficult circumstances. Trying to provide for their stability, she begins working random part time jobs to make quick and easy money and is constantly trying to balance between her personal life and work life. This family’s journey is difficult, but it is surely heartwarming. Throughout the film, we discover why Yasmine has to be responsible for her siblings despite her age.
This short documentary is a tribute to the unknown father. Emerging filmmaker Danic Champoux poses the question "How many men still have to uproot themselves and leave their families to get work?" as he sets out to search for his own father. He wonders about these men who are labourers, itinerants, and mostly nameless, but who are all exemplary providers. But at what cost? This film was produced as part of the Libres Courts collection of first-time documentary shorts.
Every weekend for six years, Jessica takes a bus from NYC, where she lives and works as a set decorator, to Boston, her hometown, where she cares for her dad, Aloysius, who is 87 and has advanced Alzheimer's disease.
In this documentary shot at Canadian Forces Base Petawawa during a troop deployment to Afghanistan, children and teens talk about the particular circumstances of having soldiers as parents. Directed by Claire Corriveau, Children of Soldiers lifts the veil on a reality shared by thousands of young Canadians, and on the difficulty of finding a balance between loyalty to the troops and staying true to themselves.
Sonia Reich- who survived the Holocaust as a child by running and hiding, suddenly believes that she is being hunted again, 60 years later.
Homeless man Robert (Bobby) Webb discovers the art of filmmaking, turning pages of his life into a heartfelt reel. Through his journey he finds hope and new meanings in unexpected aspects of his life as he relives them.
A double-edged letter in the midst of confinement. Javier starts sending videos to his son to catch him up on his new life. Through these videos, Nico will try to respond to his father.
fifteen zero three nineteenth of january two thousand sixteen explores how everyday routines and gestures are transformed when a mother loses her child in the violence impacting Swedish outskirts since the early 2000s. The film resists simplistic media depictions of the suburbs and shows how a home can hold both mourning and the mobilization of women to fight for their own and others' children.
Markku built a house for his family with his own bare hands like a strong man is supposed to do. He worked hard from dawn to dusk, so that his seven children would have a roof above their heads. Unfortunately, the task ended up being too hard and Markku burnt out. One day, he left his family and disappeared abroad. The filmmaker travels to his childhood home to face his father, who he never got to know properly. Together they build a steel gate in front of the unfinished house, and try to create a relationship between each other.
A sensitive heart-warming story of an Indian transman's acceptance, by himself and his family. Merlin, born as a girl, felt right from his childhood that he was trapped in the wrong gender.
An Oscar nominated documentary about a middle-class American family who is torn apart when the father Arnold and son Jesse are accused of sexually abusing numerous children. Director Jarecki interviews people from different sides of this tragic story and raises the question of whether they were rightfully tried when they claim they were innocent and there was never any evidence against them.
In Mexico City's wealthiest neighborhoods, the Ochoa family runs a for-profit ambulance, competing with other unlicensed EMTs for patients in need of urgent care. In this cutthroat industry, they struggle to keep their financial needs from compromising the people in their care.