The Explorer(2020)

The Gift(en)

The Gift follows fun, vibrant artist, Barbara Bird, during the final year of her life and beyond her death. Fighting a severe form of breast cancer, we share time with Barbara as she comes to terms with - and celebrates - her own mortality, challenging what makes a good life, a good death, a person? Is it what they say, what they do or the memories they leave with us?

Chunauti(ne)

Chunauti is an action-packed romantic comedy that tells a story of love, struggle, and justice. Ajaya and his wife Prabha move to Kathmandu, where Ajaya starts working as a teacher. Later, his sister Gita joins them and enrolls in the same college. There, she meets a kind and charming student, but trouble arises when Madhav, a troublesome student, also starts liking her. One day, a fight breaks out in the college, and when Gita tries to stop it, an inspector arrives and brings the situation under control. Angered by this, Madhav and his group cause harm to Prabha and Gita. They also try to escape punishment through legal means. With no strong evidence, Ajaya takes a stand and challenges the court. In the end, he decides to take justice into his own hands, leading to a tragic ending where the inspector, fulfilling his duty, stops Ajaya. Chunauti is a story of love, courage, and sacrifice in the face of injustice.

Pushover(en)

A man's life is upended by increasingly threatening phone calls demanding he leave a review for a paperweight purchased online.

Grand Canal(zh)

A Greek tragedy told in Chinese pop music. The tragic events of a boat captain trying to collect a debt to save his fleet of boats, as remembered by his ten year old son.

1 Contra Todos: O Filme 2(pt)

Two years after leaving prison, Cadu sets out to fight corruption and pursue a political career, but dangerous ties to the past haunt him.

The Giant(ja)

Japanese adaptation of LES MISERABLES. The last film of director Itami took inspiration from Les Miserables. Transpiring during the Southwestern War of 1877 in Japan, which was the last civil war in the country, a criminal escapes prison only to be found by a monk. The criminal decides to turn a new leaf based on their conversation and goes on to become a town's mayor. He hears news of a mistaken arrest and identity. The revelation of truth is the start of a series of miseries.

Hard Guy Sniper(zh)

Everybody’s Woman(en)

A beautiful woman of affairs falls in love with a handsome young man of great promise. Fearing for his future, the man's father begs her to leave his son so that her reputation will not hold him back.

Without Conscience(it)

Reclusive middle-aged male nurse Mauro may be in over his head when -- to save his hospital job -- he agrees to accompany 10-year-old illegal immigrant Eddi to meet his adoptive parents at the Swiss border. Along for the ride is a laconic small-time mobster named Rollo, and problems soon ensue in the form of car trouble, a Bulgarian hooker and her pimps.

Heavy Metal Kingdom: The New Wave of British Heavy Metal(fr)

Amid the social strife of 1970s Britain emerged NWOBHM, the New Wave of British Heavy Metal. New bands from ordinary British towns and suburbs like Iron Maiden, Def Leppard; Saxon, and Girlschool changed the face of amplified music and created a musical and cultural revolution. This is the story of Heavy Metal Kingdom.

Bestseller(en)

Chicago literary agent, Anne Harper, vacations to a remote cabin in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. While there, a disgruntled writer is waiting in the shadows to seek his revenge.

POWER(en)

In a groundbreaking project developed by MISCELLANEOUS Productions, a group of multi-barriered youth collaborated with a team of professional artists on POWER, an evening of solo performance pieces, ensemble drumming and dance numbers, all of which take a raw, honest look at the things that matter to youth in the community: power, racism, immigration, poverty, violence, sexism, addiction and love, presented at Vancouver’s Rhizome Café. This documentary focuses on four young artists -- Roberto, Natasha, Dakota, and Michael -- showing their struggles and their transformation through performance.

Hercules and Admetus(ru)

Admetus, king of Feres, makes an agreement with the Fates to postpone the date of his death, in exchange for someone else taking his place, without knowing that the chosen one will be his beloved wife Alcestis. Desperate, Admetus asks Hercules for help in rescuing Alcestis from death... An animated short film based on the Greek myth of Admetus and Alcestis.

Shadows of the Evening(it)

Intertwining stories of inmates and ex-inmates through the complex labyrinths of freedom. Wretched, desolate and doomed men, who try to expiate their sins and piece together the lives they used to lead.

The Pavilion on the water(it)

The Pavilion on the Water is a cinematic journey into the world of Venetian architect Carlo Scarpa and his passion for Japanese culture. Japan, to him, was an inspirational universe but also the place where he eventually died in 1978, at the height of his career, while retracing the steps of wandering poet Matsuo Bashō. Through the words of his son, some of his collaborators and a Japanese philosopher, the documentary unfolds and quests after the sense of beauty. A nostalgic feeling permeates the whole film for that rare event which is the birth of an artist. Although he passed away, he left behind a work that, still to this day, delights and amuses.

Destroy Yourself Only in Yourself(tr)

The existence pains of a young woman who has to spend her time at home during the epidemic… An indefinite silence… An eternal time devoted to thinking… A black and white requiem...

Bad Choice Road(en)

After a conflict with his boss, a newspaper editor dives deep into the festering streets of Manhattan to find a way out of this toxic newspaper game.

Dolls for Sale(fr)

Al Pereira arrives at the "House of Vice" and receives orders to spy on a crime ring called the Quadriumvirate, who deal in prostitution and drugs.

Medea(nl)

Greek tragedy by Euripide moved to Dutch politics. Medea, the daughter of the chairman of the senate, falls madly in love with ambitious politician Jason. Together they plan a campaign to make Jason prime minister.

Bigfoot: Man or Beast?(en)

People go and search for the legendary Bigfoot creature.

The Imperial Lullaby(it)

The armies of Fascist Italy conquered Addis Ababa, capital of Abyssinia, in May 1936, thus culminating the African colonial adventure of the ruthless dictator Benito Mussolini, by then lord of Libya, Eritrea and Somalia; a bloody and tragic story told through the naive drawings of Pietro Dall'Igna, an Italian schoolboy born in 1925.

Dokkoi! Songs from the Bottom(ja)

After the waning of the protests in Sanrizuka, Ogawa Pro started questioning the future of the collective and looking for other subjects to film. Following the method developed in the previous films, the filmmakers moved to the slum of Kotobuchi in the port city of Yokohama, where more than 6000 people were struggling to get by without any means of survival, exposed to industrial accidents and diseases. The result is one of the most moving films produced by the collective, a series of beautifully filmed portraits, voicing the silenced stories and songs of a group of people living in this community. Credit: ICA London

Gangstresses(en)

Gangstresses, a documentary by Harry Davis, tells the story of violence, poverty, and survival in the streets from a female perspective. Over a two-year period, Davis interviews female hustlers, drug dealers, rappers, porn stars, prostitutes, mothers, and daughters. Among them are Champagne, a well-known African American porn star who has a small child; Mama Mayhem, a street hustler; Uneek, a rapper from the Bronx; and Vanessa Del Rio, a famous porn actress. Musicians Lil' Kim, Mary J. Blige, Ice T, and Tupac Shakur also share personal stories of survival. The documentary conducts follow-up research on the women's complicated lives, offering glimpses of both tragic reality and hopeful recovery.

Melting Snow(en)

Two tons of snow—flown from New Hampshire to Puerto Rico in 1952 in order to “gift” Puerto Ricans a “white Christmas”—become a metaphor for the colonialist paternalism of America’s relationship to Puerto Rico.

Boggy Creek Monster(en)

In 1973 a horror movie titled The Legend of Boggy Creek was released. Focusing on a series of bizarre events that took place around the town of Fouke, Arkansas, the film was an instant success. But what was the reality behind the "Fouke Monster"? Boggy Creek Monster takes you where no film has gone: in search of the truth behind the legend...

Slums: Cities of Tomorrow(en)

One billion people on our planet—one in six—live in shantytowns, slums or squats. Slums: Cities of Tomorrow challenges conventional thinking to propose that slums are in fact the solution, not the problem, to urban overcrowding caused by the massive migration of people to cities. (Lynne Fernie, HotDocs)

Los posibles(es)

Santiago Mitre co-directs his first movement following The Student together with choreographer Onofri Barbato. Although it would have been more accurate to say “his first film-story-adventure-movie-great movie following The Student”, the word movement fits perfectly in Los posibles, the most overwhelmingly kinetic work Argentine cinema has delivered in many, many years. The film deals with the adaptation of a dance show directed by Onofri together with a group of teenagers who came to Casa La Salle, a center of social integration located in González Catán, trying to find some refuge from hardship. Already entitled Los posibles, the piece opened in the La Plata Tacec and was later staged in the AB Hall of the San Martín Cultural Center. Now, it dazzles audiences out of a film screen, with extraordinary muscles and a huge heart: Los posibles is a rhapsody of roughen bodies and torn emotions. Precise and exciting, it’s our own delayed, necessary, and incandescent West Side Story.

In Spanien wird man brauner(de)

Bettina and Frank are from Saxony, without a job and are on vacation for the first time. They go to the sunny beach, where the unemployed Bulgarians Tenscho and Radka open a boutique to earn money with the Germans.

Meth Storm(en)

As police and DEA agents battle sophisticated cartels, rural, economically-disadvantaged users and dealers–whose addiction to ICE and lack of job opportunities have landed them in an endless cycle of poverty and incarceration–are caught in the middle.

The Journey(sv)

Peter Watkins' global look at the impact of military use of nuclear technology and people's perception of it, as well as a meditation on the inherent bias of the media, and documentaries themselves.

Fish Story(cn)

J and Jacky are good friends who attend the same school. J is from a single-parent family, and will be taken care by Jacky’s family whenever his mother has to return to Mainland to renew her visa; such kind of story is not an isolated case. These families have been uprooted for a “better future” in Hong Kong, but is this “future” that the children really long to have? A Chinese saying: “How does one understand the joy of fish, if one is not a fish?” Will the adults really understand what the children want?

I am Agha(en)

Lahore, Pakistan. During a whole day, we follow Agha, a little boy who, to survive, collects waste in the street without caring about the world which surrounds him. He makes us share his moods and his vision of the life.

The Gig Is Up(en)

A very human tech doc, uncovers the real costs of the platform economy through the lives of workers from around the world for companies including Uber, Amazon and Deliveroo. From delivering food and driving ride shares to tagging images for AI, millions of people around the world are finding work task by task online. The gig economy is worth over 5 trillion USD globally, and growing. And yet the stories of the workers behind this tech revolution have gone largely neglected. Who are the people in this shadow workforce? It brings their stories into the light. Lured by the promise of flexible work hours, independence, and control over time and money, workers from around the world have found a very different reality. Work conditions are often dangerous, pay often changes without notice, and workers can effectively be fired through deactivation or a bad rating. Through an engaging global cast of characters, it reveals how the magic of technology we are being sold might not be magic at all.

Morte e Vida Severina(pt)

The story of Severino, a man who tries to escape the misery and the drought prevailing in the rural backcountry of the Northeast of Brazil. He heads for Recife, passing through desert and forest regions, expecting to find a better life.

Homeland(en)

Following four Lakota families over three years, Homeland explores what it takes for the Lakota community to build a better future in the face of tribal and government corruption, scarce housing, unemployment, and alcoholism. Intimate interviews with a spiritual leader, a grandmother, an artist, and a community activist from South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Indian Reservation reveal how each survives through family ties, cultural tradition, humor, and a palpable yearning for self-reliance and personal freedom.

The First 54 Years: An Abbreviated Manual for Military Occupation(he)

An exhaustive explanation of how the military occupation of an invaded territory occurs and its consequences, using as a paradigmatic example the recent history of Israel and the Palestinian territories, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, from 1967, when the Six-Day War took place, to the present day; an account by filmmaker Avi Mograbi enriched by the testimonies of Israeli army veterans.

Beyond the Frontlines: Resistance and Resilience in Palestine(fr)

Forests(fr)

In a dark, ambiguous environment, minuscule particles drift slowly before the lens. The image focuses to reveal spruce trees and tall pines, while Innu voices tell us the story of this territory, this flooded forest. Muffled percussive sounds gradually become louder, suggesting the presence of a hydroelectric dam. The submerged trees gradually transform into firebrands as whispers bring back the stories of this forest.

Las Hurdes, país de leyenda(es)

An account of the journey that King Alfonso XIII of Spain made to the impoverished shire of Las Hurdes, in the province of Cáceres, in the region of Extremadura, in 1922.