Documentary

Claus Räfle’s “The Invisibles” tells the true story of four Jewish teenagers—Cioma Schönhaus (Max Mauff), Hanni Lévy (Alice Dwyer), Ruth Arndt-Gumpel (Ruby O. Fee), Eugen Friede (Aaron Altaras)—who chose to remain in Berlin during the Holocaust. We are provided a title card which states that 7,000 Jewish people chose to stay in the city. Only 1,500 survived. For the most part, the film is a compelling docudrama, smooth and confident in juggling reenactments, interviews of actual survivors, and black-and-white footages—occasionally in color—of Nazi occupied Berlin. And yet, appropriately, it is not a sentimental or melodramatic picture. Instead, it aspires to be a grave reminder of a horrible past beyond imagination and an admonition of a potential future should we fail to learn from our history.(Cinéologist , letterboxd)Read More »

An intimate glimpse into the experiences of a young Tibetan family struggling to reconcile their traditional way of life with a rapidly modernizing world.Read More »

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Thomas Heise’s documentary portrays the meeting of officials and citizens in the district office of Berlin-Mitte in 1984.The movie uniquely displays how socialist officals and citizens interact.
Since finishing the film in GDR times was impossible for political reasons (it was in fact illegaly shot) it was first performed in 2001.Read More »

In 1991 Werner Herzog is the director of Viennale (Vienna International Film Festival), during that days he organizes a series of meetings, a series of lessons about cinema. In these lessons he doesn’t speak about manuals, books of cinema or techniques but about the determination of a subject to do something and the various competences he must have to realize his projects. One guest per day to talk about cinema and everything else. He interviews his guests on the art of filmmaking including clips, lectures and paintings.

The guests are: the tightrope walker Philippe Petit, the magician Jeff Sheridan, the filmmakers Michael Kreihsl and Volker Schloendorff, the writer Peter Turrini, the cosmological physic Kama Saiful Islam and the journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski.Read More »

1941. An Italian soldier heads to the Eastern Front, the bloodiest theater of conflict of World War II. 2018. Another war starts in the same area, reopening old wounds in Europe.Read More »

Three shores is the portrait of an imaginary river. By crossing it, from east to west, or by making a detour to the south, from red to green, from the undergrowth to the city, to its industrial zone: the film attempts to map the functioning and organization of our society through the time of flowing water.Read More »

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Locals emerge from their shelters, corpses are lying in the streets of Bucha. The trauma is clear to see. But life needs to go on. At first, all is despair-But these Ukrainians reveal their resilience.Russians bombarded Bucha, Borodyanka, Irpin and other cities in the region following their invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022. By the time they retreated a month later, the damage was huge: buildings had been destroyed and there were corpses lying in the streets. Filmmakers Mila Teshaieva and Marcus Lenz went in immediately, in time to film local people emerging from their shelters, but never showing the actual atrocities. That wasn’t necessary, as the trauma of war is clear to see on everyone’s faces, including those of the volunteers who rushed in from far and wide to help. Read More »

In celebration of the 50th anniversary of the 25 de Abril revolution.
50 years of freedom.

Fátima Rolo Duarte wrote:
The speed of each image sewn together with the speed of each image in the blink of an eye. For what is worth, memory remains intact after all. The walls turn outwards, emerge from the darkness, vibrate. Sound accompanies things, signs, seemingly disordered fragments. Ana Hatherly is the director-weaver of this monument in honor of the immediate 25th of April. Alive, crazy and praised for its vertiginous editing, “incoactive mosaics”, to use a felicitous expression by Marie-José Mondzain. Read More »

PLOT: This movie is about a day in life of the settlement for people with mental problems. Located in a peaceful countryside, it conveys an image of a pure, happy place, where people live and work together, in complete harmony. But there is a growing unexplainable feeling of anxiety and hopelessness.Read More »