1. 12:30 PAVLOS ZANNAS

    First Milk

    13:00 FRIDA LIAPPA

    My Stolen Planet

    13:30 TONIA MARKETAKI

    Time to Gather

    14:00 STAVROS TORNES

    Dreamers

    14:00 OLYMPION

    The Andersson Brothers

    14:30 JOHN CASSAVETES

    Stray Bodies

    14:30 MAKEDONIKON

    On Venom and Eternity

    15:30 FRIDA LIAPPA

    The Making of a Japanese

    16:30 TONIA MARKETAKI

    Touché

    17:00 OLYMPION

    Among the Wolves

    17:00 STAVROS TORNES

    Intercepted

    17:30 JOHN CASSAVETES

    exergue – on documenta 14

    17:30 PAVLOS ZANNAS

    The Zola Experience

    18:30 FRIDA LIAPPA

    And So it Begins

    19:30 TONIA MARKETAKI

    Ibelin

    20:00 OLYMPION

    Hollywoodgate

    20:00 STAVROS TORNES

    Eternal You

    20:30 PAVLOS ZANNAS

    Avant-Drag!

    20:30 MAKEDONIKON

    Nelly & Nadine

    21:30 JOHN CASSAVETES

    142 Years

    21:30 FRIDA LIAPPA

    Tish

    22:30 STAVROS TORNES

    The Mountains

    22:45 OLYMPION

    Dalton’s Dream

    23:00 PAVLOS ZANNAS

    Songs of Earth

    23:00 MAKEDONIKON

    Queer Japan

  2. 12:00 TONIA MARKETAKI

    Intercepted

    12:30 PAVLOS ZANNAS

    Nomad Solitude

    13:00 JOHN CASSAVETES

    Avant-Drag!

    14:00 OLYMPION

    The Dmitriev Affair

    14:00 STAVROS TORNES

    Tish

    14:30 TONIA MARKETAKI

    Eternal You

    15:00 PAVLOS ZANNAS

    Migrations We Are

    15:00 PAVLOS ZANNAS

    Longing for Light

    15:00 MAKEDONIKON

    Flee

    15:00 PAVLOS ZANNAS

    Time Takes a Cigarette

    16:00 FRIDA LIAPPA

    Mediha

    16:00 JOHN CASSAVETES

    That Day

    16:30 OLYMPION

    Nocturnes

    17:00 STAVROS TORNES

    Tell Them About Us

    17:30 TONIA MARKETAKI

    As the Tide Comes In

    18:00 JOHN CASSAVETES

    In the Image of Human

    18:00 PAVLOS ZANNAS

    Armani the Vlachs

    19:30 OLYMPION

    Tilos Weddings

    20:00 STAVROS TORNES

    A Stranger Quest

    20:00 MAKEDONIKON

    of girls

    20:00 MAKEDONIKON

    Kaliarda

    20:15 TONIA MARKETAKI

    I Had a Life

    20:45 PAVLOS ZANNAS

    Only Godard

    21:00 JOHN CASSAVETES

    Panellinion

    22:00 FRIDA LIAPPA

    The Gospel according to Ciretta

    22:30 TONIA MARKETAKI

    10 Years Athens Pride

    22:30 STAVROS TORNES

    Hollywoodgate

    22:30 TONIA MARKETAKI

    On This Wondrous Sea

    22:30 TONIA MARKETAKI

    Dykes, Camera, Action!

    22:30 OLYMPION

    In the Rearview

    23:30 JOHN CASSAVETES

    Every Little Thing

  3. 12:00 STAVROS TORNES

    I Had a Life

    12:00 TONIA MARKETAKI

    The Mountains

    12:00 PAVLOS ZANNAS

    Only Godard

    13:00 JOHN CASSAVETES

    Panellinion

    13:00 MAKEDONIKON

    Democracy

    13:00 FRIDA LIAPPA

    The Gospel according to Ciretta

    14:00 STAVROS TORNES

    Broken View

    14:00 OLYMPION

    Mediha

    14:15 TONIA MARKETAKI

    As the Tide Comes In

    15:00 PAVLOS ZANNAS

    Todd & Super-Stella

    15:00 FRIDA LIAPPA

    Nocturnes

    15:30 MAKEDONIKON

    The Rehearsal

    16:30 STAVROS TORNES

    Zinzindurrunkarratz

    17:00 TONIA MARKETAKI

    A Stranger Quest

    18:00 JOHN CASSAVETES

    Dourgouti Town

    18:00 MAKEDONIKON

    Among the Wolves

    18:00 PAVLOS ZANNAS

    Nomad Solitude

    19:45 FRIDA LIAPPA

    Dildo Riot

    19:45 FRIDA LIAPPA

    Rebel Dykes

    20:00 TONIA MARKETAKI

    Tell Them About Us

    20:00 OLYMPION

    Occupied City

    20:00 STAVROS TORNES

    Immortals

    20:30 MAKEDONIKON

    The Killing of a Journalist

    21:00 PAVLOS ZANNAS

    Irving Park

    21:00 JOHN CASSAVETES

    In Search of an Audience

    22:15 FRIDA LIAPPA

    Finding the Money

    22:30 STAVROS TORNES

    Conventions of Contracts

    22:30 STAVROS TORNES

    Pelikan Blue

    22:45 TONIA MARKETAKI

    Teaches of Peaches

    23:00 MAKEDONIKON

    Realm of Satan

  4. 12:00 PAVLOS ZANNAS

    Todd & Super-Stella

    13:00 OLYMPION

    Finding the Money

    14:00 STAVROS TORNES

    In the Rearview

    14:30 PAVLOS ZANNAS

    Broken View

    14:30 TONIA MARKETAKI

    Killing Patient Zero

    15:00 JOHN CASSAVETES

    Tehachapi

    15:30 OLYMPION

    Ryuichi Sakamoto | Opus

    16:00 FRIDA LIAPPA

    Gendernauts

    17:00 STAVROS TORNES

    The Gullspång Miracle

    17:00 PAVLOS ZANNAS

    Immortals

    17:30 TONIA MARKETAKI

    Pelikan Blue

    20:00 STAVROS TORNES

    Your Fat Friend

    20:00 MAKEDONIKON

    Teaches of Peaches

    20:00 TONIA MARKETAKI

    Every Little Thing

    21:00 PAVLOS ZANNAS

    Realm of Satan

    21:00 JOHN CASSAVETES

    Youth (Spring)

    21:00 FRIDA LIAPPA

    Homecoming

    22:30 STAVROS TORNES

    Pictures of Ghosts

  5. i 20:00 JOHN CASSAVETES

    The discreet charm of the bourgeoisie

10 Years Athens Pride

10 Χρόνια Athens Pride Maria Katsikadakou (aka Maria Cyber) 2014, Greece
“In 2014, on the tenth anniversary of Athens Pride, I grabbed a camera and asked the thoughts of different people in the community: was there any change? Opinion was divided, but the opinion that came last was that of Zak Kostopoulos – who was right!”: these are the words of the influential figure Maria Cyber, as she looks back at her first attempt in filmmaking. “I think things are changing, getting better. They’re also getting worse at the same time, strangely enough. There’s an increase in people who are very anti [-LGBTQI+] and those who are pro… Let’s see who’ll win in the end – we will!” Zak charmingly said to the camera held by Maria, with whom he had a friendly relationship, four years before his brutal murder.

142 Years

142 Χρόνια Stelios Kouloglou 2024, Greece
In Greek prisons, thousands of refugees and migrants are convicted as traffickers. The internationally acclaimed rescuer Jason Apostolopoulos tries to save three innocent refugees. The first has been sentenced to 142 years in prison and the other two to 50. In a Courtroom drama that lasts over a year, will Jason and his comrades manage to free them?

A Stranger Quest

A Stranger Quest Andrea Gatopoulos 2023, Italy, USA, Canada
At a time when even the ends of the earth have been captured either on paper or terabytes, are there any unchartered territories left? When there is nearly nothing left to discover on the planet’s surface, how will humans find an outlet for their innate need to explore? Profound existential questions such as these emerge from Andrea Gatopoulos’ film, which at first glance seems like the portrait of David Rumsey, a near-obsessive map collector. Rumsey, apart from his tangible, paper collection, has also amassed another one; one that is digital, existing on the online platform Second Life, a space transcending its function as an archive, as he himself calls it a poem. Similarly, the film serves not only as a documentary about Rumsey, but also as a pretext for mapping out a fervent passion, an enticing fixation, a query on the anxiety surrounding notions such as heritage, legacy, as well as the meaning of life itself.

Among the Wolves

L'affût aux loups Tanguy Dumortier, Olivier Larrey 2023, France, Belgium
A vast, snow-covered forest, untouched by human presence. Two men cross it, bags on their backs, cross a frozen river and finally arrive at the peatland, a vast white expanse. For years, Yves the painter and Olivier the photographer, have traveled the world, meeting wildlife from one pole to the other, privileged and concerned witnesses to the fragile beauty of the planet. But the two men share a common dream: to see a wolf pack live, grow, and spread out. One day, their search leads them to a hideout in no-man's-land between Iceland and Russia, a place conducive to a different temporality. The wait begins. Over the seasons, they will stand there in these eight square meters of wood, silent amid an unchanging scenery, until they gradually become part of the “picture” and immerse themselves in the life of the wolves. A motionless adventure...

And So it Begins

And So it Begins Ramona S. Diaz 2024, USA, Philippines
A gripping political thriller along with a reflection on the notion of democracy, power dynamics, political institutions, and the electoral process itself, And So it Begins guarantees you will be watching it on the edge of your seat quite literally. The film is set during the last months of Rodrigo Duterte’s presidency of the Philippines, a regime accused of illiberal tendencies, violence, and corruption. Amid the election campaign, Maria Ressa and Ferdinand Marcos Jr, the two primary opponents could not be any more different. The first comes from a grassroots movement and speaks directly to the everyday people, promising justice and freedom while the latter, as the former dictator’s son, preaches the glory of a past that was less than stellar for some, structuring his campaign around a name that carries weight (in more than one way). Ramona Diaz follows the path to the ballot box step by step, drawing us into its feverish pace and delivering an urgent, significant film that showcases the importance of voting, as well as the invaluable presence of people still capable of inspiring hope.

Armani the Vlachs

Αρμάνοι oι Βλάχοι Michael Kamakas 2023, Greece
A documentary by Michael Kamakas, highlighting the contribution of the Vlach-speaking Greeks during important moments in Greek history, whilst calling attention to the question: How can the word “Vlachos” be used with the derogatory connotation "vlachos" and be intertwined with the uncouth, the peasant, the uncivilized...

As the Tide Comes In

Før Stormen Juan Palacios, Sofie Husum Johannesen 2023, Denmark
On an island of eight square kilometers on the open seas of the Danish Wadden Sea, within a tidal zone of the North Sea, its remaining 27 residents are completely in tune with nature’s vibrations. However, they still find themselves constantly fearing the destruction looming (quite literally) on the horizon. Even though everyday life in Mandø has always been dependent on the appetites of the savage weather, the island used to be the ultimate tourist destination for numerous naturalists from all over the world, as it was home to a rare bird species. Nowadays, as sea levels rise and extreme weather phenomena accompany climate change, the human species seems to have flown away – but then the soul of the place and its people still thrives in its particular way. The Scandinavian natural landscape and its human counterpart have been captured only but a handful of times in recent cinema history in such an evocative and intricate manner, whereas the snapshots of the everyday life of the generation that lives on the island is already part of world film anthology.

Avant-Drag!

Avant-Drag! Fil Ieropoulos 2024, Greece
Avant-Drag! offers an exhilarating look at ten drag performers in Athens who deconstruct gender, nationalism, belonging, identity, while facing police brutality, transphobia and racism.

Broken View

Broken View Hannes Verhoustraete 2023, Belgium
The colonial wound inflicted on the Congo by Leopold’s Belgian rule and the missionary activity of the Catholic Church is transformed into an evocative filmic essay, hauntingly endowed with the almost metaphysical power borne by early still and moving image devices. The stereoscope, the magical lantern, the slide, all sorts of phantasmagoric devices of cinematic prehistory that became propaganda tools for the violent civilizing of the native population according to the European model, and through which Church and State promoted to the Belgians their “noble” mission in the Congo, restore here something of the reciprocally distorted big picture. A surgically precise meditation on the most shadowy point of contact between historical event and narrative, a pertinent reminder of the power and the often unseen violence of the image and, by extension, of the ethical dimension of filmmaking.

Catching Fire: The Story of Anita Pallenberg

Catching Fire: The Story Of Anita Pallenberg Alexis Bloom, Svetlana Zill 2023, USA
Anita Pallenberg was a model, an actor (including appearances in Nicolas Roeg’s Performance and Roger Vadim's legendary cult guilty pleasure Barbarella), and a fashion icon of the sixties and seventies. Originally the partner of Rolling Stones bassist Brian Jones, she then had a tumultuous relationship of many years with Keith Richards, whom she married and had children with; but first and foremost, she was a tempestuous woman, a person full of energy and passion, who lived her life to the max. Scarlett Johansson lents her voice to Annita in this fascinating documentary, which takes us back to the sixties and seventies, the period when Pallenberg was a sort of informal member of the Stones, thus serving as a side portrait of Keith Richards. A passionate biography, groovy as a rock and roll anthem, bittersweet, melancholy, and tense, which captures an entire era through the eyes of this fiery figure who passed away in 2017 but continues to inspire as a symbol of empowerment, dynamism, and a larger-than-life temperament.

Conventions of Contracts

Simvasis Ergon Stefanos Mondelos 2023, Greece
Some found photos of public works construction sites unfold a scandal that pertains to the mangling of construction companies, public works, and the filmmaking practice, resulting in the hero humorously admitting: “All the world’s a stage.” This fictional short story is inspired by real events.

Dalton’s Dream

Dalton's Dream Kim Longinotto, Franky Murray Brown 2023, UK, USA
In December 2018, Dalton Harris became the first foreigner and black man to win the UK X-Factor and a recording deal that promised to change his life forever. Filmed over three years, this documentary follows 24-year-old Dalton as he journeys from Jamaica to London to capitalise on this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity whilst battling trauma from his childhood and rumours about homosexuality. Charting an extraordinary rise, the film follows Dalton starting a lavish life in London, launching his first single on UK television to 1.7 million viewers and, in secret, falling in love with his new boyfriend. But then a photo emerges of Dalton on the lap of another man. He starts receiving homophobic death threats from people back in Jamaica - a nation with one of the highest rates of anti-LGBTQ violence in the world. As his social media fills with hate, Dalton’s single flops and he suffers a mental health breakdown. Haunted by the trauma of his past and the prejudice in his present, Dalton is left on the verge of suicide. Α coming-of-age film about a young man searching for love and acceptance with extraordinary spirit and belief despite facing astounding prejudice. It’s an inspirational story and a celebration of musical excellence, from the gospel and reggae of rural Jamaica to the urban pop of multicultural London.

Daphne was a torso ending in leaves

Daphne was a torso ending in leaves Catriona Gallagher 2024, Italy, Greece, UK
Daphne was a torso ending in leaves is a playful and witty ode to a star of classical mythology: Daphne. Here, the beautiful nymph, who was metamorphosed into a tree to escape a stalking God, is celebrated as a heroine and master of her destiny. But this cinematic gem, shot on 16mm, is above all a rich filmic experience, in which images and sound are meticulously intertwined to immerse the spectator in a universe of myth and legend. A spritely and tactile essayistic ode to a heroine of Greek myth, and a profound reflection on the legacy of an ancient arboreal transformation.

Democracy

Democracy - Im Rausch der Daten David Bernet 2015, Germany, France
A captivating and highly charged story about a group of politicians, trying to protect society from the dangers of Big Data and mass surveillance in a digital world. The Member of Parliament Jan Philipp Albrecht and Commissioner Viviane Reding attempt the impossible and decide to confront a tough political power structure, where intrigue, success and failure are so close together. David Bernet spent two and a half years accompanying the legislation process and condensed it into an astonishing documentary that depicts the state of today’s democracy with suspense and sensuality.

Dildo Riot

Dildo Riot Maria Katsikadakou (aka Maria Cyber), Nikos Chantzis 2021, Greece
A Marky Ramone concert, a murder, a riot. and a big dildo. (How did Maria Cyber get the biggest dildo in her collection?). In the words of researcher and journalist Thodoris Antonopoulos: “Dildo Riot (2021) was an ‘offshoot’ of the riots that broke out in December 2008 in Athens and across Greece following the murder of 15-year-old Alexandros Grigoropoulos by a police officer in Exarcheia. During the mass protests and riots across the city center, a sex shop at the beginning of Syngrou Avenue, near Maria’s office, was broken into. Among the wares thrown into the street were many vibrators, several of which were used as weapons against the riot police by protesters who had sought refuge in the Syngrou-Fix metro station. Next morning, Maria and two of her friends collected an oversized plastic dildo abandoned on the battlefield; this was the inspiration for this enjoyable short film, shot during lockdown at the height of the pandemic.”

Dourgouti Town

Dourgouti Town Dimitris Bavellas 2024, Greece
A real estate agent who is interested in investing wanders around the area of Neos Kosmos in Athens, formerly known as Dourgouti. Through his eyes unfolds the past, present, and uncertain future of this once degraded district. A district resembling a deserted island, right next to Acropolis, following the fate of similar areas around the globe.

Dreamers

Dreamers Stéphanie Barbey, Luc Peter 2023, Switzerland, Germany
Across the Atlantic, in the “Land of the Brave,” undocumented migrants are deemed Dreamers. One of them is 39-year-old Carlos, a Mexican who has been living in Chicago for the past three decades. Having witnessed his brother’s deportation over trivial matters, he fights tooth and nail to stay on the right side of the law. However, he feels like an American, paying his taxes, and having his entire family residing there, stuck in the state of Illinois – aside from the relatives born in a home country where their parents are still unwelcome. The mature, composed, and measured pater familias, in spite of his bitterness, seems resigned to his purgatory, even though he doesn’t quit trying to build a life on precarious foundations. An excitingly filmed, evocative portrait of the crushed dream of belonging and the constant rejection to fitting in, an elegy subtly embellished with the sounds of an electric guitar and the notes of hope for an undefined future.

Dykes, Camera, Action!

Dykes, Camera, Action! Caroline Berler 2018, USA
Lesbians didn’t always get to see themselves on screen. But between Stonewall, the feminist movement, and the experimental cinema of the 1970s, they built visibility, and transformed the social imagination about queerness. Filmmakers Barbara Hammer, Su Friedrich, Rose Troche, Cheryl Dunye, Yoruba Richen, Desiree Akhavan, Vicky Du, film critic Ruby Rich, Jenni Olson, and others share moving and often hilarious stories from their lives and discuss how they've expressed queer identity through film. Activism, born from the AIDS crisis and the life-affirming need for visibility, is another vital piece of the puzzle. The film explores the beginnings of the dyke march, the first of which many of the filmmakers attended or organized. Like this film, it spoke to the need for spaces dedicated solely to queer women and dykes, lest they risk fading into the background up against the glorious glow of gay men. An essential view of a bygone era that should never be forgotten.

El Shatt – A Blueprint for Utopia

El Shatt - nacrt za utopiju Ivan Ramljak 2023, Croatia, Serbia
El Shatt in Egypt, in the middle of the desert, was both a haven and a projection. This is where in 1944, based on a deal between the Yugoslavian partisans led by Tito and the British allies, not only a refugee camp for the families of anti-fascist fighters from Dalmatia was built. This is where a model was created for the future Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia – a state that was to build its founding narrative on the people’s liberation fight against fascism and declare collectively organized self-administration its social ideal. Director Ivan Ramljak offers us multifaceted insights into this long-forgotten piece of primordial communist history spelled out in reality. After painstaking research, he combines hundreds of historical photographs and some (few) film recordings of interviews with contemporary witnesses and the lively voices of those who were children back then and are over 80 today. Off-screen narrations of the struggle for survival, solidarity, and lived ideology, full of genuine love and subtle irony, revive a society that tried to build a tower on (moving) sand.

Eternal You

Eternal You Hans Block, Moritz Riesewieck 2024, Germany, USA
“Which of you deserves eternal life?”, asked Michel Houellebecq in his futuristic novel The Possibility of an Island. Perhaps we are living in the age when this question will cease to be merely philosophical. In this exceptional documentary, we see how the insights of the greatest science fiction are beginning to take shape, as people around the world use the most advanced AI technologies to connect with dead loved ones. Has technology managed to achieve what religion has promised for centuries: the immortality of the soul? Eternal You vividly captures the pulse of a potentially pivotal moment in human history, which confronts us with the dream of an eternity, if only a digital one. It also reflects on the psychological, moral, and existential consequences of this possibility of continuing beyond life. Are we really ready to consider a version of ourselves and our loved ones that does not end?

Every Little Thing

Every Little Thing Sally Aitken 2024, Australia
Of all the little creatures in the world, the hummingbird has the greatest ability to cheat death: with a heart that beats faster than any living thing, with an indomitable grace to fly in every direction (even backwards), it falls hibernating to reduce its need for food – thus reminding humanity of its limits. Terry Masear, a natural scientist who lives in Los Angeles, wants to save every injured hummingbird in the City of Angels, but the path to survival is fraught with uncertainty and drama. This intimate and profound story of rescuing the fastest things on wings leans in deep to reveal the hummingbird as it’s never been seen before, both visually but also in terms of its personality. Through the eyes of America’s busiest bird rehabilitator, each bird becomes memorable, mighty, and heroic.  Focusing on these marvels of natural engineering (the messengers from the other side), the film challenges us to ask: when we choose to save another, can we find a blueprint to save ourselves? Visually stunning with enormous take-home wisdom, this feature documentary canvasses themes of the human experience and the magic of the natural world right in the heart of one of the most diverse, urbanized cities on earth.

exergue – on documenta 14

exergue - on documenta 14 Dimitris Athiridis 2024, Greece
exergue – on documenta 14 follows artistic director Adam Szymczyk and his curatorial team over two years as they develop “Learning from Athens,” a historic edition of what is considered the world’s most prominent art exhibition, held for the first time in 2017 in Kassel, Germany, and Athens, Greece, the epicenter of Europe's financial crisis at the time. The artistic proposal of expansion to two locations was Szymczyk’s bold attempt to explore the institution’s boundaries, challenging the Eurocentric model of art production. The endeavor faced more than mere logistical obstacles, which could not help avert a financial deficit. The media scandal that erupted before the closing day obscured the artistic merits of the mega exhibition and further discussions about the content. Documenta 14 sparked critical controversy and reactions due to its radical curatorial approach and critical reflection on history, frequently perceived as didactic or instrumentalizing politically urgent issues such as the refugee crisis, neo-liberalization, and the rise of far-right politics globally. At the same time, it was embattled as it raised uncomfortable questions about the art institution’s dependencies on local politics and the funding mechanisms of the art world. Through the passion of its protagonists, the beauty and power of art, and the unprecedented access to inner processes, this cinematic opus, told in fourteen chapters, invites audiences into a behind-the-scenes observation of the dramatic course of documenta 14, and captures a reflection of the institutional art world and the function of Contemporary Art in a shifting global landscape.

Farewell: And suddenly memory began to remember

Αποχαιρετισμός: Ξαφνικά η μνήμη άρχισε να θυμάται Ada Pitsou 2024, Greece
The distinguished psychotherapist Toula Vlachoutsikou, nowadays bedridden and suffering from dementia, started writing a book with stories about memory when she actually started to lose it. Twenty years later, her daughter who takes care of her is in the making of a film based on these stories, as well as on interviews with people who knew her in person. A film about dementia, care, trauma, and the loving relationship between a mother and a daughter.

Finding the Money

Finding the Money Maren Poitras 2023, USA
Can a new economic theory revolutionize our ability to tackle the climate crisis? An underdog group of economists is on a mission to instigate a paradigm shift by flipping our understanding of the national debt – and the nature of money – upside down. Finding the Money follows former chief economist to Senator Bernie Sanders, Stephanie Kelton, on a journey through Modern Money Theory (MMT) to unveil a deeper story about money, injecting new hope and empowering democracies around the world to tackle the biggest challenges of the 21st century: from climate change to inequality. “An alternative story of money will revolutionize our conception of what we as a society believe we can afford and can achieve,” says the maker of this visionary documentary – a true cinematic investment.

First Milk

Πρωτόγαλα Panagiotis Papafragkos 2024, Greece
Focusing on the rearing of newborn sheep at Mount Pateras  (father) in Attica, Greece, First Milk weaves a sensory narrative on the human-animal connection, exploring the concepts of motherhood, breastfeeding, and orphanhood. Seasons pass, animals are born and die, the film captures the cycle of life: birth, death, rebirth.

Flee

Flugt Jonas Poher Rasmussen 2021, Denmark, France, Sweden, Norway
Amin Nawabi (a pseudonym), a 36-year-old high-achieving academic, grapples with a painful secret he has kept hidden for 20 years, one that threatens to derail the life he has built for himself and his soon to be husband. Recounted mostly through animation to director Jonas Poher Rasmussen – his close friend and high-school classmate, he tells for the first time the story of his extraordinary journey as a child refugee from Afghanistan. Through heartfelt interviews between Jonas and Amin, Flee tells an unforgettable story of self-discovery. Showing how only by confronting the past is it possible to carve out a future, and the universal truth that only when you stop fleeing from who you are can you find the true meaning of home.

Gendernauts

Gendernauts - Eine Reise durch die Geschlechter Monika Treut 1999, Germany, USA
Gendernauts explores the phenomena of transgenderism at the end of the second millennium in California – a film about gender benders and sexual cyborgs, people who alter their bodies and minds with new technologies and chemistry and thus question male and female identities. Asked if they are a man or a woman, the gendernauts answer “yes.” Like cosmonauts in space and cybernauts in the internet, the gendernauts travel through the diverse worlds of sexuality. New German Cinema alumnus Monika Treut journeys through late 1990s San Francisco, meeting trans and intersex artists who live, love, and work at the cutting edge of gender and digital technologies. Counting more than two decades from its original release, this screening offers an opportunity to experience its vision of gender fluidity and self-determination. With a sharp and curious eye, honed by a long career observing and participating in sexual subcultures in Berlin, Treut explores the Bay Area, where new gender formations met more utopian ideas of technology, before the tech giants became omnipresent. Featuring legendary trans thinkers and activists Susan Stryker and Sandy Stone, along with trans and intersex artists and their partners, Gendernauts is living history on film.

Hidden Master: The Legacy of George Platt Lynes

Hidden Master: The Legacy of George Platt Lynes Sam Shahid 2023, USA
George Platt Lynes is best remembered for his portraits of celebrities and extravagant fashion work, but his heart, his passion, and his greatest talent lay elsewhere – in his work with the male nude. These photographs, sensuous and radically explicit in their time, have only recently been fully appreciated for the revolution they represent: a man capturing his fantasies as a gift; a window to a future his camera saw coming before anyone else. From visionary art director Sam Shahid, Hidden Master: The Legacy of George Platt Lynes features a stunning collection of photography from the 1930s through the ’50s, uncovering a lesser-known side of Lynes’s life and work – his gifted eye for the male form, his long-term friendships with Gertrude Stein and Alfred Kinsey, and his lasting influence as one of the first openly gay American artists.

Hollywoodgate

Hollywoodgate Ibrahim Nash’at 2023, Germany, USA
The day after the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Taliban immediately move to occupy the Hollywood Gate complex, claimed to be a former CIA base in Kabul. The Taliban find what the most technologically advanced military in history left behind: aircrafts, weapons, and valuable military equipment. Baffled by the technology, Malawi Mansour, the newly assigned Air Force commander, orders his soldiers to inventory and repair everything they can. Mukhtar, motivated to one day conquer the world, arrives at Hollywood Gate aiming to build a high-ranking military career. While Malawi Mansour and Mukhtar are focused on maximizing their own personal objectives, their comrades continue to repair the weapons left behind at Hollywood Gate. AK-47s that were once used by the US and NATO are now in the hands of the Taliban; helicopters and fighter jets that were thought to be destroyed now lethally bomb the opposition, creating untold collateral damage in the process; and the use of international documentarians for the purposes of propaganda is now underway. Over the course of one year, the film exposes the transformation of a fundamentalist militia into a military regime.

Homecoming

Máhccan Suvi West, Anssi Kömi 2023, Finland, Norway
As museums worldwide are increasingly pressured to return cultural property, co-directors Suvi West and Anssi Komi carry us through the remarkably intricate and emotional depths of the repatriation of Indigenous cultural and spiritual property to their homelands. The camera follows West as she visits Sámi artifacts housed in a Helsinki museum as they are prepared for their long-awaited return to Sápmi, the Sámi nation in northern Scandinavia and northwestern Russia. Sámi (and countless other Indigenous nations) relics are scattered worldwide in different institutions, seized or claimed over the centuries as curios for trade or as part of the aggressive Christianization that demonized Sámi culture Enhanced by the beautiful cinematography of co-director Kömi, Homecoming richly shares how personal identity, cultural value, and restorative justice can be intrinsically woven together and raises the important question of who has the right to a nation’s spiritual heritage.

I Had a Life

Yo tenía una vida Octavio Guerra 2023, Spain
People who live on the street might be destined to live on the sidelines, in common view yet not seen by the crowd, but this documentary looks straight in the eyes of a man that is tested in a new environment. Jesús arrives at a housing and employment reincorporation center, after living on the streets for a decade. Now Jesús’ life is full of rules. His struggle doesn’t make sense if he is not free to make his own decisions. After years of depending on social services he leaves the program with all of the risks this decision entails. Elena, the coordinator of the supervised accommodation, is writing her thesis on the reincorporation of homeless people. When Jesús leaves, her research takes a turn and she focuses her thesis on Jesús’ life story. Elena becomes his only emotional support. A brave documentary that seeks to provide a humanist view, an anthropological, non-paternalistic approach to human bodies that at some point are detached from the social body, and a profound interrogation of social normalcy, prejudice, and stigmatization that renders people invisible.

Ibelin

Ibelin Benjamin Ree 2024, Norway
Where is the truth of our existence, and where exactly does one exist as their true self? The film by Benjamin Ree (The Painter and the Thief) inspires us to question exactly that through the story of a Norwegian gamer who passed away at the age of 25, after having suffered from a degenerative disease from a very young age. His family believed him to be a solitary being, leading an existence “imprisoned” in front of his PC, until they found out posthumously that his presence in the digital sphere was fascinating. Somewhere out there, in the online game War of Warcraft, Ibelin – as was his avatar name – was not only extremely popular but he had also touched the lives of many users – people that today generously return his love to his parents offline. Startlingly and naturally emotional, ingenious in its format, as well as exquisite in each of its aspects, Ibelin is a heartbreaking film, touching even hearts of stone and serving as a reminder that love, a community’s ties, and the emotional range do not necessarily require a physical world in order to blossom

Immortals

Immortals Maja Tschumi 2024, Switzerland, Iraq
Milo, a strong-willed feminist, discovers the long-sought power to wander around freely in Baghdad by dressing in her brother’s clothes. Khalili, a young and ambitious filmmaker, realizes that his camera would be the strongest of all weapons. In the aftermath of the 2019 revolution, Milo and Khalili are the faces, the eyes, and the voices of an Iraqi youth who is relentlessly fighting for a better future. An insight into the hopes and broken dreams of a new generation that has known nothing but war since the U.S.-led occupation.

In Search of an Audience

In Search of an Audience Nicolas Pottakis 2024, Greece
Lambros Fisfis was planning to become the first Greek comedian to perform in a big stadium. Then hit the pandemic and he now has to perform in front of literally no audience. This is a story of persistence, overcoming the obstacles, struggle into the unknown and hope of maintaining the best in life, some company and a few good laughs.

In the Image of Human

Κατ’ εικόνα του ανθρώπου Nicole Alexandropoulos 2023, Greece
What does spirit mean? And how interested are scientists in building an artificial consciousness? We present the reflection of the Orthodox religion on the world of AI, the debate and controversies it raises, and the attempt to answer the most basic questions triggered by this technological development of AI.

In the Rearview

Skąd dokąd Maciek Hamela 2023, Poland, France, Ukraine
An authentic, intimate observation of war as it unfolds, following multiple generations of Ukrainian civilians as they abruptly abandon their homes and rely on the help of director Maciek Hamela’s volunteer aid van to escape the life-threatening conflict. As he steers through minefields to leave Ukraine and tries to get through numerous military checkpoints, Hamela offers us a seat in his car, guiding the documentary from behind the wheel and behind the camera, crisscrossing the roads of Ukraine to transport uprooted refugees safely to Poland. The van traverses tens of thousands of kilometers and serves as a waiting room, hospital, shelter, and zone for confidences and confessions among compatriots thrown together by chance. In the Rearview is a collective portrait composed of an array of experiences of Ukrainians who share a single goal: finding a safe haven in the throes of conflict. With temporary asylum granted to all passengers, their differences in gender, age, skin tone, physical condition, origin, identity, worldviews, and faith become irrelevant. While the war itself remains in the backdrop, its reflection and impact are evident and raw.

Intercepted

Intercepted Oksana Karpovych 2024, Canada, France, Ukraine
A juxtaposition of two realities; one about the conditions of the Ukrainians (revealed mainly through images of their wrecked or abandoned homes) who fight any way they can against the war violence, and the other one about the atrocities committed by the Russian army. The latter is unveiled utilizing voice-off – telephone conversations of ordinary Russian soldiers in Ukraine with their friends and family in Russia – over mutely heart-wrenching images of the cities that were affected the most by the invasion. These conversations have been intercepted and were made public on the internet by the Ukrainian Secret Service. This disturbing film could provide the material for a serious sociological/psychological study in regard to how ideology evokes moral and emotional rigidity to otherwise common people. A visually remarkable documentary that purely conveys the brutality of war, and how a human being can turn into a monster within its constraints, without the goodness bleeding through even a little; not even from the tiniest of scratches.

Irving Park

Irving Park Panayotis Evangelidis 2019, Greece
Irving Park is the story of four gay men in their 60s who live together in Chicago, exploring an unconventional lifestyle of master/slave relationships. A family based on free choice and the consent to lose one’s personal freedom in favor of the desire of the other.

Kaliarda

Καλιαρντά Paola Revenioti 2015, Greece
A pioneer Greek queer activist and her filmmaking team Paola Team Documentaries present their first feature documentary about “Kaliarda,” the secret language of the gay community in Greece, from the 40s until the country’s regime change in the early 70s. Paola became acquainted with Kaliarda towards the end of its use, in the 80s. The team started out aiming to record the history of Kaliarda, but realized they were recording the history of the queer community’s life in Greece during the 20th century. Themes start emerging, such as love, sexuality, hang-outs, the problems faced by gays at the time and how conditions gradually changed until today. In the documentary, we encounter academics and people from the street, who had a first-hand experience of our subject.

Killing Patient Zero

Killing Patient Zero Laurie Lynd 2019, Canada
In the aftermath of Stonewall and the rise of the gay liberation movement, gay men celebrated a newfound sexual freedom – but, in 1981, the dawning awareness of AIDS changed everything. Right-wing bigots exploited AIDS to demonize gay men, and no one was more villainized than Gaétan Dugas, the Canadian flight attendant dubbed “Patient Zero.” Seeking the origins of the mysterious epidemic, the Centers for Disease Control interviewed men with the disease, finding patterns that suggested sexual transmission. In this groundbreaking documentary, director Laurie Lynd explodes the myth of “The Monster Who Brought AIDS to North America” using beautifully framed interviews with Dugas’s friends along with the scientists unlocking the earliest AIDS cases. The Gaétan we meet here is a playful, complicated soul who wore eyeshadow to work, cruised in short-shorts, and went out of his way to help CDC researchers crack the mystery of “gay cancer.” Lynd also looks at San Francisco journalist Randy Shilts, who doggedly kept the politics of AIDS in the headlines. Shilts’ landmark book, And the Band Played On, perpetuated the Patient Zero myth—a complicated reality that Lynd takes great care to unpack. Killing Patient Zero is an important work of queer archaeology that shines an empathetic light on a generation traumatized not just by a virus but by society’s blame and vitriol.

Longing for Light

Anhel de llum Alba Cros Pellisé 2023, Spain
In this analog cinematic declaration of love to a city and its people, the sun becomes a brush and Barcelona becomes a frame. Alba Cros Pellisé paints a portrait of the city and its human environment; besides, Barcelona is where she met other lesbian women for the first time, where she found lovers, and where the members of her chosen family live. She films them at their homes and on the streets, where sunlight illuminates the cobblestones and walls, as well as people’s faces. Her journal-style voice-over is put into motion through title cards, jazzy music, and the familiar, nostalgic sound of film running through the camera. A journey from the intimacy of the closed rooms to the streets of the Raval and the sunset on the mountain of Montjuïc. From the city to urban nature, the lights and shadows, its people, and their ability to be and exist. A reminder that light, the essential power of cinema, is what allows us to feel alive and present as we truly are.

Mediha

Mediha Hasan Oswald 2023, USA
This compelling doc looks through the lens of Mediha Ibrahim Alhamad, a young Yazidi refugee who has had to grow up well beyond her years. Having survived kidnapping and enslavement by ISIS, Mediha and her younger brothers, Ghazwan and Adnan, must now attempt to rebuild their lives with the whereabouts of their father, mother, and baby brother unknown. Faced by local and international complexities, which continue to affect rescue and accountability efforts eight years after the genocide, the siblings must turn to a network of Yazidi rescuers in the search for their missing family members. The story takes place over three years, across Iraq, Turkey, and Syria, highlighting the ongoing and long-lasting impact of ISIS atrocities. Mediha takes us on her quest for justice, confronting her trauma and pain through personal video-diaries, and reclaiming her voice by initiating investigations into her perpetrator. The click of the camera that one can hear as the screen fades to black is the most powerful weapon at Mediha’s disposal, documenting her life in exile provides an intimate account of her grief and trauma. The portrait that emerges leaves us in awe of the budding activist, who has already lived many lives before living this one to the max – with dignity and immense courage.

Menus-Plaisirs – Les Troisgros

Menus-Plaisirs - Les Troisgros Frederick Wiseman 2023, USA
Founded in 1930 in central France, the Troisgros family restaurant has been holding three Michelin stars for 55 years over four generations. Michel Troisgros, the 3rd generation to head the restaurant, has turned over the responsibility for the cuisine to his son César, the fourth generation of Troisgros chefs. From the market to pick fresh vegetables, to a cheese processing plant, a vineyard, an organic cattle ranch to the backyard garden supplying the restaurant, the master of filmed observation embarks us on a mouthwatering and sense-pleasing journey into the family’s three restaurant kitchens. An immersive experience, showing the great artistry, ingenuity, imagination, and hard work of the restaurant staff in creating, preparing, and presenting meals of the highest quality.

Migrations We Are

Migrations We Are Laura Bari 2024, Canada, France
Migrations We Are is one of the chapters in a series of twelve poetic essays titled Si, Dodecalogue, which is dedicated to timeless heroes. If the stories of the cities become those of everyone inhabiting them, the only way to build one’s identity remains the Imaginary. Therefore, revealing in filigree her socio-cultural fabric, an Argentinian-Montrealer artist reacts to the brilliance of her time through what she paints, films, and writes in different languages. This chapter is dedicated to Pierre Allard, visual artist, and Marcelin François, beneficiary attendant.

My Stolen Planet

Sayyareye dozdide shodeye man Farahnaz Sharifi 2024, Germany, Iran
An intimate tale about emigrating “inwards,” along with an attempt at an autobiographical hymn to freedom, this handcrafted documentary has Farah’s memories stitched onto fragile film; the memories of a woman who captures the beauty of her daily life in Iran during the Islamic Revolution, collecting strangers’ super 8mm film fragments, while discovering what it means to love from a distance, and to dream within four walls. Her developing connection with Leyla, an Iranian professor who left Iran during this tumultuous period, as well as her mother’s battle with Alzheimer's will shed light once and for all to the dark spots of her memory. An invaluable collective and personal archive that removes every single doubt about what the “female gaze” truly is, whilst adding new dimensions to the “Women, Life, Freedom” uprising of 2022, its representatives, and its voices.

Nelly & Nadine

Nelly & Nadine Magnus Gertten 2022, Sweden, Belgium, Norway
The unlikely story between two women falling in love in the Ravensbrück concentration camp. For many years Nelly and Nadine’s lifelong relationship was kept a secret, even to some of their closest family members. Now Nelly’s grandchild has decided to open their unseen personal archives. Magnus Gertten expands the research he started in his unique project Every Face Has a Name (FIPRESCI Award – 17th Thessaloniki Documentary Festival) and uncovers their remarkable love story.

Nocturnes

Nocturnes Anirban Dutta, Anupama Srinivasan 2024, India, USA
An immersive viewing experience of sound and imagery, the film weaves together an intricate and poetic tapestry of our world. Ecologist Mansi sets out on a quest to study moths in one of the most vibrant places on earth, in the hinterland of India. She teams up with Bicki, a young man from the indigenous Bugun community, to seek clues about what the future has in store for the moths. Together, Mansi and Bicki traverse the landscape, meticulously working night after night to put up light screens that transform into a dynamic canvas with moths of varying sizes, designs and textures, creating a painterly effect with their form, movement and color. Meanwhile, the human beings wait, watch, and listen with patient anticipation and wonder. By focusing on a small, ephemeral, nocturnal creature like the moth, Nocturnes seeks to question a human-centric view of the world. The lush forest, throbbing with a vast diversity of life, emerges as a breath-taking character as the film responds to the symphony of sounds and the inherent rhythms of the trees, the wind and the rain. The result is a rare and transformative experience that invites us all to look with more attention and care at the hidden interconnections in nature.

Nomad Solitude

Nomad Solitude Sébastien Wielemans 2023, France, Belgium
Laurie, Kristy, and Linda each live alone on the vast Americana, sleeping in their vehicles. They are just three among thousands of modern American nomads who can no longer afford to pay for conventional housing. Each fleeing a part of their past, these three reckless women criss-cross the roads in the hope of rebuilding their lives. But how can they redefine themselves when they are invisible to society? Faced with a country that has left them no place, Laurie, Linda, and Kristy fight every day to continue to exist. Alluding to the award-winning feature Nomadland, where subtle melancholy tries to grow its roots in the landscape, Nomad Solitude follows each woman while creating a visual feast of the breathtaking wide open spaces of the USA. Many nomads have their own YouTube channel, as there is such an appetite to know more about this lifestyle, perhaps based on some romantic idea of the nomad life. We see the freedom of their lives, but also the intense solitude, with all its beauty and its desolation. There is a deep emotional core to the film as the women are each determined to stay positive about their path. But as the miles pass and the seasons turn, despite their courage and resilience, their quest for a better future is challenged by unexpected events that hit a country in crisis. Will they nevertheless manage, at the end of the road, to find the serenity they are looking for, to become someone again?

Occupied City

Occupied City Steve McQueen 2023, The Netherlands, UK, USA
The past collides with our precarious present in this daring documentary, crafted by an Academy-Award winner who has delivered masterpieces on the nature of power (Hunger, 12 Years a Slave). McQueen creates two interlocking portraits: a door-to-door excavation of the Nazi occupation that still haunts his adopted city, and a vivid journey through the last years of pandemic and protest. What emerges is both devastating and life-affirming, an expansive meditation on memory, time, and where we’re headed.

of girls

kanajo tachi no Wendelien van Oldenborgh 2023, Japan, The Netherlands
Filmed in Tokyo and Yokohama, of girls brings a variety of contemporary voices in resonance with two distinct female voices from Japan’s literary and political past. Both popular authors of their time – the period from the late 1920s on – Fumiko Hayashi and Yuriko Miyamoto both died young, in 1951. They each had a strong feminist and class consciousness as well as an impressive literary voice, but came from very different backgrounds and expressed their ideals through different paths. The power and contradictions in both these women’s worlds reverberate in dialogues and images of an intergenerational cast moving through the various spaces of knowledge, memory, and culture, and reflect today’s struggles around gender, politics, and love.

On This Wondrous Sea

Σε αυτή την εξαίσια θάλασσα Kalliopi Legaki 2022, Greece
How can a woman who experiences pain have the strength to provoke and fight for her place in society? Maria Cyber, a member of the LGBTQI+ community, succeeds in that, through her everyday fight for the right to diversity.

On Venom and Eternity

Traité de bave et d'éternité Isidore Isou 1951, France
On Venom and Eternity was the first Lettrist film manifesto. Isou brought it uninvited to the Cannes Film Festival (1951) where it won the audience prize for the avant-garde. Jean Cocteau’s poster promoted the 1952 release on the Champs-Elysées. The film is Isou’s “revolt against cinema”: the sound and the picture are purposefully unrelated, and the images are destroyed by bleach and scratched. The film is a landmark work that prefigured the letterist and situationist cinema to come and influenced many experimental filmmakers.

Only Godard

Seul Godard Arnaud Lambert, Vincent Sorrel 2023, France
How do you craft the portrait of Jean-Luc Godard, or better yet a portrait of his methodology, his universe, his way of constructing or deconstructing cinema, that is equal to his own cinematic audacity and genius? How could it be anything other than by taking risks, and trying out equally radical methods, never straying from to his example. The two filmmakers immerse us into the storage warehouse where, in 2010, all the archives kept by Godard in Switzerland were transferred, and they create a doppelganger (or a duplicate) of the director, who takes up the role of our guide into his world. Excerpts from his writings, his images, his perspective in cinema give us a glimpse into his mythology, his techniques, his singular gaze, and therefore also in his worldview. His questions, his relentless experimentation in cinema, and the nature of creation are showcased here as being both truly prolific, as well as still relevant, while they are intricately intertwined into a film essay that we are certain even Godard himself would have enjoyed.

Orlando, My Political Biography

Orlando, ma biographie politique Paul B. Preciado 2023, France
In 1928, Virginia Woolf wrote Orlando, the first novel in which the main character changes sex in the middle of the story. A century later, trans writer and activist Paul B. Preciado decides to send a film letter to Virginia Woolf: her Orlando has come out of her fiction and is living a life she could have never imagined. Preciado organizes a casting and gathers 26 contemporary trans and non-binary people, from 8 to 70 years old, who embody Orlando.

Panellinion

Πανελλήνιον Spyros Mantzavinos, Kostas Antarachas 2023, Greece
A ghost story of obsession, solitude, and madness, taking place in a chess coffeehouse out of place and time, in the center of Athens: This is the story of Panellinion, a refuge for people who suffocate in everyday life, who despise and fail to adapt to the conditions of modern life.

Pelikan Blue

Kék Pelikan László Csáki 2023, Hungary
In 1990s Hungary, travel was finally possible but unaffordable. By forging international train tickets, three young men provide the opportunity for a whole generation to experience the outside world. With the fall of the Iron Curtain, Hungary’s borders suddenly opened up. Everyone wants to travel to Western Europe – young people in particular – but the price of a train ticket is prohibitive. What good is freedom if you can't afford it? Ákos, Pety, and Laci discover a simple method of using household detergents to dissolve Pelikan's Blue carbon ink, allowing them to forge train tickets to any destination. Over time, they become professional and infamous forgery artists. For a long time, everything goes along smoothly, but when the police start an investigation, the friends discover that freedom comes at a price.

Pictures of Ghosts

Retratos Fantasmas Kleber Mendonça Filho 2023, Brazil
Cities are living organisms, in constant evolution and motion, transformation and change; that said, cities are also simultaneously records – frozen in time – of what once was and no longer is, of what has passed, of what stopped being somewhere along the way. At each moment in the present, cities carry their past with them, harboring “ghosts” of their own in every nook and cranny. In this thrilling documentary, the city of Recife in Brazil – a tangible and intangible construct unfurling its myriad manifestations – enters into dialogue with its own memories through the filmmaker’s lens and poetic gaze. An account of the ongoing metamorphosis of a place and its inhabitants: phantoms – both visible and invisible – in a ceaseless search for identity.

Queer Japan

Queer Japan Graham Kolbeins 2019, USA, Japan
Trailblazing artists, activists, and everyday people from across the spectrum of gender and sexuality defy social norms and dare to shine in this kaleidoscopic view of LGBTQI+ culture in contemporary Japan. From glossy pride parades to playfully perverse underground parties, the camera pictures people living brazenly unconventional lives in the sunlight, the shadows, and everywhere in-between. Culled from 100+ interviews conducted over three years in locations across Japan, Queer Japan features dozens of individuals sharing their experiences in their own words. Get to know a vibrant and inspiring group of human beings in a country with a unique history of queer expression – and a culture daringly oscillating between primordial traditions and the cult of the future.

Realm of Satan

Realm of Satan Scott Cummings 2024, USA
A singular portrait depicting Satanists in both the everyday and the extraordinary, Realm of Satan is a ritualistic documentary that casts a spell on viewers, luring them into a mystical world of magic, mystery, and misanthropy. After exploring the edges of nonfiction-adjacent storytelling with his acclaimed short film Buffalo Juggalo, director Scott Cummings (editor of indie gems such as Never Rarely Sometimes Always, Monsters and Men, Menashe, and Wendy) decides to challenge the boundaries of observation and the notion of community; he, therefore, works in collaboration with members of the Church of Satan, to stage discrete moments capturing the labors and pleasures of modern Satanists. His technique foregrounds the esoteric as much as the ordinary, presenting an illuminating, wryly comic, and at times deadly serious portrait of a religion that is often veiled in secrecy or distorted by misunderstanding.

Rebel Dykes

Rebel Dykes Harri Shanahan, Siân A. Williams 2021, UK
“There is no Queer liberation without Kink!” Rebel Dykes is the kick-ass story of refusal and angst that we have all been waiting for. Before riot grrls in the USA, there were the rebel dykes in the UK. This documentary follows a group of combat-boot-wearing punk queer women from their initial meeting at Greenham Common Peace Camp and through their friendships in 1980s London, ground zero of punk rock. These working-class women created safe spaces for trans-inclusive, kink-aware, multiracial feminism as they cruised the underground S/M scene by night and took up AIDS activism and the fight against anti-LGBTQΙ+ legislation by day. A heady mash-up of animation, archive footage, and personal interviews tells the story of a radical scene: squatters, BDSM nightclubs, anti-Thatcher rallies, protests demanding action around AIDS, and the fierce ties of chosen families. This is an extraordinarily privileged glimpse into a bygone world by those who not only lived out their politics with heartfelt conviction but lived to tell the tale. Out to disrupt the mainstream and expansively define feminism, the film follows the lives of London’s sex-positive rad-femme lesbian crowd and the influential impact art can make as a tool for demanding social change. Rebel Dykes is here, in all its ass-kicking, leather-wearing glory.

Ryuichi Sakamoto | Opus

Ryuichi Sakamoto | Opus Neo Sora 2023, Japan
On March 28th, 2023, legendary composer Ryuichi Sakamoto passed away after his struggle against cancer. In the years leading up to his death, Sakamoto could no longer perform live. Single concerts, not to mention sprawling global tours, were too taxing. Despite this, in late 2022, Sakamoto mustered all of his energy to leave the world with one final performance: a concert film, featuring just him and his piano. Curated by Sakamoto himself and presented in his chosen order, the twenty pieces performed in the film wordlessly narrate his life through his music. The selection spans his entire career, from his popstar Yellow Magic Orchestra period to his magnificent Bertolucci film scores, to music from his meditative final album 12. Intimately filmed in a space he knew well, surrounded by his most trusted collaborators, Sakamoto bares his soul through his music, knowing this may be the last time that he can present his art. A celebration of an artist’s life in the purest sense, this immersive film experience is the definitive swan song of the beloved maestro.

Songs of Earth

Songs of Earth Margreth Olin 2023, Norway
Α majestic symphony for the big screen, an audio-visual composition of the earth’s primordial forces with our camera taking you from inside nature’s smallest components to outside the wild panoramas. The filmmaker's father (85) is our guide. Bringing us through Norway’s most scenic valley, he grew up in and where generations have been living alongside nature to survive. The sounds of the earth harmonize together to make music in this breathtaking journey.

Stray Bodies

Αδέσποτα κορμιά Elina Psykou 2024, Greece, Switzerland, Italy, Bulgaria
Robin is pregnant, but does not wish to become a mother. Katerina is not able to have a child, even though she wants to. Kiki's sole desire is to end her life with dignity. Unfortunately, abortion, in vitro fertilization and euthanasia are not legal in their respective countries. Stray Bodies explores the notion of body autonomy within Europe, a place where you are allowed to travel, work and consume freely, but not necessarily to live or die according to your wishes.

Teaches of Peaches

Teaches of Peaches Philipp Fussenegger, Judy Landkammer 2024, Germany
Filmed during “The Teaches of Peaches Anniversary Tour,” this documentary seamlessly weaves together exclusive archival gems with dynamic tour footage capturing the transformative journey of Canadian Merrill Nisker into the internationally acclaimed cultural powerhouse Peaches. From the inception of the stage show to the rigorous rehearsals and riveting performances, the film provides an intimate look at the inner workings of a tour led by this beloved and globally celebrated icon. As a feminist musician, producer, director, and performance artist, Peaches has spent over two decades challenging gender stereotypes, solidifying her status alongside pop and music industry icons. Her fearless originality has challenged social norms, dismantled stereotypes, and confronted patriarchal power structures. Through biting wit, she advocates for LGBTQIA+ rights and tackles issues of gender and sexual identity, leaving an indelible mark on popular culture.

Tehachapi

Tehachapi JR 2023, France
In the heart of Tehachapi, California, amidst an eerie landscape in the middle of nowhere, the most unexpected and unforeseen space that could lend itself to the creation of an artwork emerges; one of the most impregnable high-security prisons in the USA. Photographer, street artist, and documentary filmmaker JR (who has blessed us alongside the unforgettable Agnès Varda with the delightful Visages Villages), having secured unprecedented access to the correctional facility, sets out on an art project that at first glance seems positively outrageous. Giving for the first time, both a voice and a platform to the inmates who have spent their most prolific years in a state of confinement, becoming addicted to a world of violence and brutality, JR bestows upon them the invaluable gift of self-respect through art’s therapeutic properties. Visible only from the sky and by its nature temporary, a photo collage in the courtyard transforms into an allegory of a primarily internal liberation. At the same time, stories of former and current prisoners and testimonies of their relatives intermingle with the process of creating the artwork, thus enabling a discussion on the philosophical and existential shades of concepts such as mistake, guilt, sin and forgiveness.

Tell Them About Us

Tell Them About Us Rand Beiruty 2024, Germany, Jordan
One of the most intangible yet defining procedures in life is none other than the passage from puberty to adulthood, an experience depicted in countless films and documentaries, though rarely with the emotional intelligence and unpretentious authenticity encompassed in this film. Except from imminent adulthood, the girls from Tell Them About Us also have to deal with another complicated condition; despite their Arab, Kurdish and Roma origins, they are growing up in a provincial town in Germany. Through this film (or, rather, actually through their very existence, their intoxicating energy, their bravery, their smiles, as well as their dreams), they are not just laying claim to their position in life but to a better future, speaking out about the way they live and the future they want to build with a genuinely hopeful outlook. Simple in its conception although an intricate result, Rand Beiruty’s documentary is as close to the definition of “slice of life” as it can get; a slice that is rather delicious, flavorful, and juicy.

That Day

Εκείνη τη Μέρα Stratis Vogiatzis, Dimitris Kourtis 2023, Greece
The documentary That Day showcases how the 2021 catastrophic wildfires in Northern Evia interweave with the rejuvenation of the land, and its collective memory with the creation of a music theatre performance that resulted from the Greek National Opera’s artistic workshops with members of the local community. Α filmic essay on the relationship between the human and non-human world.

The Andersson Brothers

Bröderna Andersson Johanna Bernhardson 2024, Sweden, Finland
The Andersson brothers grew up in a working- class home in Gothenburg. Roy became an internationally acclaimed filmmaker while Ronny ended up a homeless man. Kjell became a documentary filmmaker, and Leif lives as a disability pensioner. Johanna Bernhardson makes her feature film debut with a story about how life can turn out so differently despite seemingly similar circumstances. Through the portrayal of her father Leif and her uncles – with alcohol as a common thread – she also tells a tale of inheritance that stretches generations backward (and forward) in time. At the same time, she tries to get the brothers to stop sulking and reunite – before it’s too late. A tender portrayal of four stubborn brothers becomes a touching contemporary Swedish family chronicle about dreams, class, heritage, and how difficult it can be to connect with each other.

The Chronicle of an Extermination

Το χρονικό μιας καταστροφής Chryssa Tzelepi, Akis Kersanidis 2013, Greece
Hortiatis is one of the numerous Greek villages whose inhabitants were massacred during the German occupation during World War II. The documentary attempts a “reenactment” of the Hortiatis holocaust through the first-hand testimony of eye-witnesses, while underscoring the significance of the preservation of historical memory. The unfolding of events is shaped by official sources and through individual perspectives and personal experiences of common people, shedding new light on these historic events.

The discreet charm of the bourgeoisie

Le charme discret de la bourgeoisie 1972, France, Italy, Spain

The Dmitriev Affair

The Dmitriev Affair Jessica Gorter 2023, The Netherlands
Every human being has the right to know where they came from and where their family lies buried. This unshakable conviction is what drives Yuri Dmitriev (1956), who never knew his own biological parents. Deep inside the Russian forests, against the wishes of the authorities, 60-year-old Yuri Dmitriev searches for mass graves from the era of Stalin’s terror against his own people – until one day he is arrested and sentenced to 15 years in a penal colony. Following Yuri closely, the film paints a shocking picture of the way the Russian state rewrites history and treats its citizens. Thanks to Yuri, their next of kin finally find out what happened to their lost relatives, who were secretly executed here in the 1930s and left behind in pits. Amid the trees where these executions took place, a place of remembrance comes into being where, after decades of swallowing their profound grief, the surviving relatives can finally give free rein to it. Then one day, following an anonymous complaint, he is charged with taking pornographic pictures of his foster daughter. And arrested. While we follow Yuri’s life, archive footage brings the Stalin era and the 1990s to life – not as past history, but as an unresolved trauma deeply influencing contemporary Russia. Unexpectedly intimately, the filmmaker tells us a story we mainly know from afar: how a state rewrites history and what this means for its citizens.

The Gospel according to Ciretta

Il Vangelo secondo Ciretta Caroline von der Tann 2024, Italy, Germany
In the palimpsest of a city like Naples, which holds countless stories in its heart, we stumble upon that of Ciretta, the 27-year-old son of a prostitute and an unknown father, who occasionally sells his body too, but also worships the Madonna and has an almost heavenly voice. The outcast child of a society that often has no room for those who do not fit into molds, Ciretta will find refuge and companionship among the people who gather around an old theater in Naples, now closed due to the pandemic. There he will dream of the possibility of a better life, until the theater is sold to become a hotel. Ciretta will be forced to find a new haven for both himself and his beloved statue of the Madonna, in this tender, melancholy tale of battered people who seem born to be movie heroes, and a city that changes almost before your eyes.

The Gullspång Miracle

The Gullspång Miracle Maria Fredriksson 2023, Sweden, Norway, Denmark
In this prime recording sample of a reality transcending even the wildest of imaginations, a seemingly metaphysical intervention (or a power from above) leads two religious sisters of a senior age to buy an apartment in a small town in Sweden's inland. On the day of the contract signing, they encounter the proprietress. To their surprise, she looks identical (and even shares the same nickname) to their older sister who committed suicide 30 years earlier... Through a complex narration that begins with a feelgood vibe only to evolve into a character study, one surprise conceals another in its entrails – similarly to a Russian doll – until finally the intricate (and acclaimed) editing unveils the mysterious, tragic, and comedic element hiding behind each family story.

The Killing of a Journalist

The Killing of a Journalist Matt Sarnecki 2022, Denmark
A young investigative journalist and his fiancée are brutally murdered in their home in Slovakia. Their deaths inspire the biggest protests in Slovakia since the fall of communism. The story takes an unexpected turn when a source leaks the secret murder case file to the murdered journalist’s colleagues. It includes the computers and encrypted communications of the assassination’s alleged mastermind, a businessman closely connected to the country’s ruling party. Trawling these encrypted messages, journalists discover that their country has been captured by corrupt oligarchs, judges and law enforcement officials. A reckoning awaits.

The Making of a Japanese

The Making of a Japanese Ema Ryan Yamazaki 2023, Japan, USA, Finland, France
Which are the distinct attributes sculpting the Japanese identity? What makes you Japanese? In order to figure out the answers, the British Japanese filmmaker closely follows 1st and 6th graders for one year at a public elementary school in Tokyo, as well as their teachers, unveiling how teachers and students interact and shape one another. The outbreak of the pandemic and its restrictions constitute just another controlling measure. The kids in Japan are after all forged by their homeland’s culture through a strictly defined education process which is in pursuit, with unwavering focus, of the appropriate equilibrium between individual progress and harmony of the society as a whole. Offering a unique hybrid perspective, the filmmaker critically examines a culture that is equally familiar to her as it is foreign, while she peruses the school environment in terms of an industrial production plant, in which the raw materials for processing are the students.

The Mountains

Bjergene Christian Einshøj 2023, Denmark
Two decades after the tragic death of his brother, the director Christian Einshøj’s family is falling apart. But when his overworked CEO dad is unexpectedly let off and decides to sell the family home, Christian goes back home in a final desperate attempt to assemble the family and recover what is lost. Armed with 30 years of home video, 75.000 family photos, and three tightly fit superhero costumes, he ventures into landscapes of long-lost time, in an attempt to confront a 25-year-old tragedy, and the hidden wounds left in its wake. It’s a story of fathers and sons, of vast collections of stamps and amateur videography, of long-distance business-class flights and all the other ways in which we flee, instead of talking about that which hurts – and of the redemption that can follow when the silence is eventually breached. With a mindful and sensitive touch, present-day conversations about life and cinema enter a dialogue with archival home video footage in a profoundly moving and candidly original film.

The Owl's Legacy: Democracy, or City of Dreams

L'Héritage de la chouette: Démocratie ou La cité des songes Chris Marker 1990, France
What exactly does the word mean “democracy” mean? Does it designates the ancient city-state or our contemporary political systems? What are the analogies or, on the contrary, the radical differences between realities separated by more than twenty centuries? Are certain functions suitable for all civilizations? Τhe third episode of Chris Marker’s legendary documentary series – which first aired on British state television in 1991 but remained in the dark for decades – returns to classical antiquity to make a bold parallel, familiarizing 21st-century audiences with a concept of the commons that seems primordial yet innovative, reinventing itself in every single manifestation.

The portrait: Yorgos Rorris paints Evaggelos Averoff

Το Πορτρέτο: Ο Γιώργος Ρόρρης ζωγραφίζει τον Ευάγγελο Αβέρωφ Antonis Simeonidis, Kalliopi Alexiadou 2023, Greece
In the documentary The portrait: Yorgos Rorris paints Evaggelos Averoff, a parallel narrative unfolds, centered around the lives of its two main protagonists. The film intricately documents the creation of a portrait of the politician and benefactor Evangelos Averoff by the painter Yorgos Rorris. Rorris guides us through the meticulous process he is about to embark on. His working method is unique, as the subject of the portrait has passed away (Evangelos Averoff: 1910 – 1990). The studio, serving as the documentary's primary setting, is creatively enhanced with sounds, descriptions, memories, and images from the life and acquaintances of Evangelos Averoff. Archival material (photographs and videos) is woven into the footage, creating a comprehensive sensory and aesthetic experience. The film captures the artist's anxiety, his unique artistic temperament, the colors, combinations, and ultimately his effort to approach Evangelos Averoff and narrate his legacy through the portrait creation process.

The Rehearsal

The Rehearsal Jules Dassin 1974, UK, Greece
As the resistance against the junta was gathering momentum, Jules Dassin and Melina Mercouri, exiled from Greece for a number of years, continued their anti-dictatorial campaign in Europe and America. Made in 1974, this impossible-to-categorize film essay on popular uprisings by Dassin depicts the rehearsals and the shooting of a film about the Athens Polytechnic uprising in 1973 and the torture of people who opposed the regime. Dassin combined documentary, re-enactment, Brechtian structure, prose, music, and his own thoughts and experiences in a film bursting with energy, pain, and hope. Theodorakis and Markopoulos performed their songs live, and Melina Mercouri read The Star Lantern from Odysseas Elytis’s poem To Axion Esti, while other artists read poetry, prisoners’ letters, and other documents, interspersed with newsreels and testimonials. The Rehearsal was completed just as the junta collapsed and never found theatrical release, forever remaining an artistic and political riddle.

The Zola Experience

L'experience Zola Gianluca Matarrese 2023, Italy, France
An unpredictable, free and inexhaustibly thought-provoking game of reflections transports us along the elusive boundary separating fantasy from reality, but intertwining art with life. A young actress and theater director is busy preparing for a theatrical adaptation of Emile Zola’s chef-d'oeuvre L’Assommoir – one of the first naturalistic portrayals of the proletariat’s harsh reality. However, during rehearsals, she senses that the role of Gervaise Macquart, of a woman moving from Provence to Paris and struggling to survive a trying marriage (and world), gives voice to her own untold trauma. As one of the most significant emerging stars in contemporary documentary filmmaking delves into alcoholism, domestic violence and working in a male-dominated environment in a unique fashion, a simple yet sobering question arises: In our own lives, which role are we ultimately called upon to perform?

Tilos Weddings

Tilos Weddings Panayotis Evangelidis 2022, Greece
In the year 2008, the mayor of the island of Tilos in the Aegean Sea agreed to perform the first gay and lesbian civil marriages ever held in Greece. The film follows the story of these two civil marriages through visual material that was shot ad hoc, but also through footage from the Gay Pride of the same year, Press conferences and other demonstrations regarding the same topic.

Time Takes a Cigarette

Time Takes a Cigarette Aya Koretzky 2023, Portugal
In the late 70s and early 80s in the city of Porto, concerts by Rock and Punk bands began to appear. April 25, 1974, which put an end to the longest dictatorship in Europe, brought political and creative freedom. Through a series of tableaux vivants based on photos from an era covered with a nostalgic aura, but employing contemporary mannequins, the film revives some loud narrations of those crazy times, which failed to reach our ears.

Time to Gather

Em Ano de Safra Sofia Bairrão 2023, Portugal
Cork oaks perspire, birds whistle and ants make their way. A cycle of cork extraction in a village in central Portugal. A father and a daughter in a technological clash. A friend, a vegetable garden. A family of cork extractors and gatherers with their axer, cloth rings and hopes. The portrait of a changing community. A meditation on the landscape that produces the most cork. Βridges between the past and the future, challenging the crisis of tradition of a system entirely dependent on human activity. A cycle of cork extraction reveals the pressures and changes both the territory and community face.

Tish

Tish Paul Sng 2023, UK
Tish Murtha was amongst the most significant and gifted British photographers of the second half of the 20th century, with a body of work spanning from the 1970s until her passing in 2013, due to a brain aneurysm. Her social awareness, the profound political commentary of her realistic photographs portraying the British working-class communities, along with her tumultuous life unfold through a series of inspired interviews and narratives, as her only daughter chooses to forge her own artistic and personal trajectory, intertwined with events that left their mark both on England and the whole of Europe. An original and deeply sensitive biographical documentary, providing the audience with the opportunity to gain a complete picture of this remarkable artist and, at the same time, wander through all those small and significant moments in history that shaped personalities, characters, and ideologies.

Todd & Super-Stella

Todd & Super-Stella Mari Monrad Vistven 2024, Norway
Todd talks to his sister Stella about his worries and the fear of leaving kindergarten to start school. But Stella is too little to understand his complicated words. In Todd’s eyes she seems carefree, but she soon misses him when he is not in kindergarten anymore. She wants to understand what he is talking about.

Touché

Touché Martina Moor 2023, Italy, Belgium, Canada
A fencer, molded from childhood to chase after success, and devoted to the dream of reaching the top of the world. A father who serves as both her mentor, and her harshest critic. A legendary trainer, in a cutthroat competition. A rollercoaster ride, filled with thrilling ups and downs that even a screenwriter would hesitate to come up with. Touché is the larger-than-life story of fencing world champion Nathalie Moellhausen, a ten-year course featuring the participation in three Olympiads as a representative of two different countries, generous doses of drama on and off the field, and above all else a bright personality transcending the noble sport’s finite popularity by far. Starting from the vast amount of material Moellhausen herself has captured in the style of a diary, the debuting Martina Moor, who is also the athlete’s friend, showcases remarkable directorial instincts, following from a privileged position the steps of a woman, who as a living embodiment of the phrase “falling down is allowed, picking yourself back up is mandatory,” dynamically climbs up the podium as a contemporary cinematic heroine.

Two Strangers Trying Not To Kill Each Other

Two Strangers Trying Not To Kill Each Other Jacob Perlmutter, Manon Ouimet 2024, UK, Denmark
Life, death, and making meaning are the heart of a beautiful and often very funny film about an aging couple who, after an accident, face the inevitability of impermanence and seek deep peace in their relationship while they still can. Thirty years after a chance encounter, Maggie and Joel, aged 75 and 84, are still very much in love. But their relationship is not without complications. Born in the hard-boiled Bronx, Joel Meyerowitz is a world-renowned photographer with major exhibitions and 40 books to his name. British-born Maggie Barrett is a talented but less recognized artist and writer. There is a knot of unease in their relationship, which is further strained when Maggie falls and breaks her leg and Joel must take on her caregiving. In the shadow of mortality, each with a long and dramatic life behind them, the hard truths of life together provoke in Maggie and Joel an attempt to find a shared inner peace while there is still time.

Yani Spanos: A Life Behind the Marquee

Γιάννης Σπανός: Πίσω απ' τη μαρκίζα Aris Dorizas 2023, Greece
A discovery of the incredible musical journey of Yani Spanos, setting off from small-town Kiato to major collaborations in Paris, and ultimately his huge success in Greece. With rare documents and interviews and through the eyes of a devoted fan, we explore why Spanos chose to stay behind the scenes, letting his music steal the spotlight.

Your Fat Friend

Your Fat Friend Jeanie Finlay UK, USA
American Aubrey Gordon went from being an anonymous blogger with the moniker Your Fat Friend, to being an immensely popular podcast creator, and The New York Times’ best-selling author. As for her mission? She aspires to upend the manner in which we deal with fatness and fat people, deconstructing the pseudoscientific stereotypes hiding behind social exclusion; and abolish the deep-seated racism that she herself has faced since childhood, even within her own home. Setting off from the provocative prompting to set aside ‘well-rounded’ euphemisms (curvy, fluffy, etc.), and stop fearing being referred to as fat, Jeanie Finlay’s captivating documentary follows the fight of a self-deprecating and genuinely radical fat activist, who overcomes all kinds of obstacles, armed with a seemingly endless supply of energy and strength, and fights back the multiple shades of toxicity. Her ultimate aim is a genuinely inclusive future, one that will fit each and every body and individual.

Youth (Spring)

Qing chun (chun) Wang Bing 2023, France, Luxembourg, The Netherlands
One of the greatest filmmakers of the era, the sharp Chinese documentary filmmaker, Wang Bing, astutely depicts the everyday tasks of young textile workers in a city on the mainland of Shanghai, capturing the terrifying unseen realities of the unusual local economy of their vast country. Filmed during a period of five years (before the pandemic), the film condenses 2.600 hours of observational footage into an immersive three-and-a-half-hour experience. Abolishing the distance between the audience and the protagonists, the camera aligns us with the rhythm of a cruel and relentless production line, transporting us to the beating heart of the globalized market. The outcome is a living mosaic of a society comprised of internal migrants – boys and girls learning to share everything as they work 15 hours a day, hastily stitching together a preconceived vision of their future.

Zinzindurrunkarratz

Zinzindurrunkarratz Oskar Alegria Suescun 2023, Spain
In the country of fog, all places have their music. Zinzin is a valley of light wind, durrundurrun a bottomless chasm and kurruzkarratz the lightning peak. Shepherds always baptized their world with their ears, and today there is only one left holding out alone in these old mountains, inhabiting his own silence. This film recovers a forgotten path to visit him and a lost way of walking, with his family’s old super-8 camera that no longer records sound, and a young donkey named Paolo as the filmmaker’s accomplices to reach a destination beyond time – even if he cannot find anyone still alive to tell him the exact route. The forgotten path and the mute camera will become, along with a donkey called Paolo, the protagonists of a journey full of memories, question marks and silence. A piece of poetic, handcrafted ethnography, unfolding like a whisper, a prayer, a Don-Quixotean reverie. The rest is silence.

Apocalypse Now: Redux

Apocalypse Now Francis Ford Coppola 1979 / 2001, USA
As the US Army sinks deeper into the Vietnam War, attempting to dig out the Vietcong from an impenetrable jungle, one officer, Captain Willard, is sent on a mission by the Special Forces to locate and liquidate Colonel Kurtz, an ex-Green Beret who cruelly rules over a primitive “mountain people”, entrenched at the Cambodian border.

Encanto

Encanto 2021, USA

Epic Tails

Pattie et la colère de Poséidon 2022, France

Peter Rabbit 2: The Runaway

Peter Rabbit 2: The Runaway 2021, USA, Australia

Robin Hood

Robin Hood 1973, USA

Rome, Open City

Roma città aperta 1945, Italy

The Rocky Horror Picture Show

The Rocky horror picture show 1975, UK, USA

Two Buddies and a Badger: The Great Big Beast

Knutsen & Ludvigsen 2 - Det store dyret 2020, Norway