85 years old and never married, Shizu has spent the past 3 decades living in one "Danchi" - the Japanese word for public housing - and filling it with the lifetime of souvenirs that have always kept her company. When the danchi is scheduled for demolition, Shizu and neighbors must say goodbye to their homes, and move into newer danchi that are too small to hold all of Shizu's mementos. This intimate documentary captures Shizu's sense of humor, and profound nostalgia, as she sorts through relics of her past, and chooses which memories she must fit into her new home, and which ones she can let go of.
Herself
An immersive documentary about four nurses working in retirement houses in Alzheimer units. Near to Claire, Luca, Antoinette and Lika, we discover how the nurses work, how the care is possible, with patience, ability, intelligence, tenderness and love.
For over 80 years, Merle Hayden has crusaded to recruit members to the utopian movement Lawsonomy. Founded by aircraft pioneer Alfred Lawson, Lawsonomy advocates for economic reform and clean, communal living that transforms followers into a "New Species" that will benefit the human race either in this life or the next. Merle joined Lawson as a teenager and never looked back. His high school sweetheart Betty Kasch, however, is tired of Lawson coming between them. Reunited after over 60 years apart, non-believer Betty wants Merle to join her in Florida. Merle's commitment to preserving Lawson's legacy, artifacts currently rotting in a barn alongside a Wisconsin highway, has Betty worried Merle may leave her for Lawson once again.
Fernando is an actor and theater teacher who, at the age of 74, is impelled to be the protagonist of himself in an experience that blurs the boundaries between the documentary and the fictional. Faced with a delicate problem in his heart, he follows a life full of love for art, where education emerges as a powerful transforming element of reality.
Can Homo sapiens evolve into Homo spatius? For over 50 years now, we have been testing our human nature in our effort to conquer outer space, and still 30 years away from a possible human exploration of Mars, a question remains: Can our body take such travels? Will it ever adapt? Combining human adventure and the exploration of the human body, this film offers unique insights into the physical and psychological effects of space travel on the Astronauts and measures the impact on medical sciences.
Juan Méndez Bernal leaves his house on the 9th of april of 1936 to fight in the imminent Spanish Civil War. 83 years later, his body is still one of the Grass Dwellers. The only thing that he leaves from those years on the front is a collection of 28 letters in his own writing.
An intimate portrait of the lives of Delvys and Carlos, siblings who live alone with their elderly mother in a rural part of a small Cuban town. The film portrays a family engulfed in their inner worlds. Between the sacrifices they make out of love for those who are present, and their longing for things that are absent, they struggle to find meaning as they reflect, contemplate, and carry the weight of existence, trying together, to move forward.
The intimate life of the mythical Candy Dubois, from her childhood in a correctional facility to her success with the "Blue Ballet" in the great "BIM BAM BUM".
Shot over the course of 18 months in New York City's Lower East Side, METHADONIA sheds light on the inherent flaws of legal methadone treatments for heroin addiction by profiling eight addicts, in various stages of recovery and relapse, who attend the New York Center for Addiction Treatment Services (NYCATS).
Who Wants to Live Forever, the Wisdom of Aging is a one hour documentary film about the myths, facts and contradictions in the never-ending battle for both longevity and healthy aging.
ATENTAMENTE is a film that, through the sensation of the time passing by and the presence of the death that wanders into a nursing home, allows us to feel the life through the illusion that love brings along. Libardo and Alba, a couple of elders who met each other at the nursing home where they live, they fall for, they become boyfriends and start to struggle in order to find fifty thousand pesos to rent a room for one night at a hotel so they can have a privacy moment, since at the nursing home where they live is not possible to have that. While struggling they must face each other, face their fears, their limitations, their pains, their time as well as their fragility so they can construct that moment in which they meet love. A struggle that seems to be easy, but for them is an odyssey against time, against their limitations and their own ghosts.
Details fade from the mind, just like memories. Clarity in memory becomes blurred, and our bodies are the marked spaces once inhabited by others. When nothingness becomes memory, what do we remember? Reflecting on the past, present, and future, different bodies will connect, sharing their feelings and emotions through touch. Skin, with its textures and uniqueness, becomes the link to the absent other, and in the need for details, we seek to remember what has been forgotten.
As Niagara Falls transformed from honeymoon capital of the world to Las Vegas North, corporate hotel chains and casinos cast a long shadow over the independent motels that once populated the town. The Continental survived the transition by converting its rooms into affordable housing units, becoming a home for those with few places to go. The night manager, Brian, once a freelance photographer who survived the horrors of war in Vietnam, shares his duties with his colleague Linda. Together they manage both the Continental and the individual struggles of its tenants, providing more than a roof over the heads of those who live under their supervision. Bringing a fresh focus to one of the most photographed places on Earth, director and cinematographer Jesse McCracken develops an intimate and caring portrait of the residents of this modest micro-community set against the backdrop of neon-lit tourist attractions.
Short Croatian documentary by Ante Babaja that centers around the everyday lives of elderly Yugoslav women.
In the midst of the chaos of México City, a group of eight bachelor millennials who call themselves ´The Hermits´, open the doors to their tiny apartments in the historic Ermita Building, in the yet-to-be gentrified neighborhood of Tacubaya, and share their life experiences in a time when precarity changes the way in which we love, feel and relate to each other. As we explore the homes of these eight neighbors, we also witness their personalities intersect in a Whatsapp chat, a virtual space that functions as a supporting system that helps them face the adversities that living alone in this city brings.
Hansel's grandfather's wife died. They have lived together for over fifty years. For three years he has been living alone, cannot find a place for himself and constantly misses her.
Alone in a small white house on the edge of national road 1, the Trans-Saharan road, which connects Algiers to Tamanrasset crossing the immensity of the desert, Malika, 74, one day opened her door to the director Hassen Ferhani, who came there to scout with his friend Chawki Amari, journalist at El Watan and author of the story Nationale 1 which relates his journey on this north-south axis of more than 2000 km. The Malika of Amari's novel, which Ferhani admits to having first perceived as a "literary fantasy", suddenly takes on an unsuspected human depth in this environment naturally hostile to man. She lends herself to the film project as she welcomes her clients, with an economy of gestures and words, an impression reinforced by the mystery that surrounds her and the rare elements of her biography which suggest that she is not from the region, that she left the fertile north of Algeria to settle in the desert where she lives with a dog and a cat.
Contrary to the public stereotype of a youthful homosexual community, gay men and women do grow old. Silent Pioneers presents an upbeat focus on the lives of these people today, showing them living full and diverse lives and sharing concerns on ageing, health and housing, with other senior citizens. It also considers how support networks within the gay and lesbian community have enriched and strengthened their individual lives.
Karate, a forty-year-old woman without a relationship, contacts ten different women via dating apps from Tinder, OkCupid or Badoo and meets some of them to escape the desert of loneliness in this big city during post-pandemic times of crisis and learns a lot about life, complex relationship structures, loneliness and herself during these very different encounters.