Documentary

A photographer documents his nightly expeditions through Japan’s world of sex for hire.

Filmed across 120 nights in Japan’s brothels and presented in 120 fragments ― divided into 6 chapters and 6 female prostitutes.Read More »

Guy Gilles’ view of Mexico focuses mainly on the dreams of ordinary Mexicans and their ways of expression: fun and festivity.Read More »

An exploration of the lives of 107 mothers in the Odesa prison in Ukraine, where mothers are allowed to serve their sentences with their children until their third birthday.

10 wins, 17 nominations.Read More »

Synopsis

A FILM ABOUT PEOPLE LIKE YOU AND ME

“Master” is the name of a 12-story apartment building in Copacabana, Rio de Janeiro’s neighborhood for nightlife. Over the course of four weeks in 2001, Eduardo Coutinho’s film crew rented one of the 276 apartments and used it as home base to make a film about the building’s residents. We get to know the building manager, who succeeded in turning the troubled residence into a family complex within just a few years. Using interviews and a few stolen moments in the corridors of the building, Coutinho explores this world. Most of the building’s residents come from the lower middle class and are just getting by, but that’s just about the only thing they have in common – so many people, so many stories, sometimes told in a self-confident tone, sometimes with averted eyes. The fact that a film crew is interested in their stories puzzles some of them. Hope, fear, dreams, memories, love and loneliness all appear from behind the doors of this average apartment building.Read More »

This is a true story of a woman as old as a century. Every day for 17 years, at the same time, at the same station, an elderly lady with a hump and a cart boards the same train. She leaves the train at a far away station and starts her journey through the woods. Something unusually mysterious is depicted in her image. As we follow this old woman through the icy streets, her story and that of Russia’s unfolds. Striking archival materials from 20th century Russia are accompanied by simple, yet lyrical images of contemporary Russia and our heroine as she goes about her day. And as her poignant routine is revealed, a hundred years of Russian history unfolds through her personal retelling.Read More »

Quote:
Independent Welsh filmmaker Karl Francis uses amateur and professional actors to explore the community impact of the 1975 closure of the Ogilvie Colliery in the Rhymney Valley, a few miles from his family home. Critical of the National Coal Board and the trade unions, the film focuses on the fractious interactions between politicians and union leaders, teasing out the forces that are attempting to divide the community.Read More »

Quote:
Charles Ferguson’s “Inside Job” is strong, fair, and rational. The director tries mightily to untangle the complex architecture of the financial meltdown that has cost millions their jobs, their homes, and their savings. If you consider skipping it because it sounds boring, please think again. My blood is still boiling.Read More »

In 2016, French writer and photographer Carole Achache took her own life. After Carole’s death, her daughter Mona Achache, a film director, discovers thousands of photos, letters and recordings that Carole left behind, but these buried secrets make her disappearance even more of an enigma. Through the power of filmmaking and the beauty of incarnation with the help of actress Marion Cotillard, the director brings her mother back to life to retrace her journey and find out who she really was.Read More »

This film was prepared as a introduction to a series of opera broadcasts on German television. It depicts the behind-the-scenes maneuverings in preparation for the annual opera festival in Bayreuth.Read More »