A Marble Travelogue

Mined in Greece, prized blocks of marble are sent to China, where they are carved into replicas of historic statues, and back to Europe, which yearns for ancient beauty (on the cheap). Their surprising journey tells the story of a historical-economic pendulum now swinging from West to East.

A Night of Knowing Nothing

L’s letters to her lover, who left her, expose the deep faultlines in Indian society—faultlines students try to skip over on their way to a free and liberated future. A mixture of texts and authentic and staged footage gives this story a dreamlike, surreal, and spellbinding feel.

Atlantide

On the edges of the Venice Lagoon, adrenaline runs high as boat engines roar. Daniele is an outsider, but like his peers, he is determined to break speed records. This visually stunning film often crosses the boundary between imagination and reality—both over and under the water.

Beba

Beba is the filmmaker, Rebeca Huntt, a young Afro-Latina from an immigrant family, who grew up in New York, continuously facing issues of race and class, as well as the pain of generational trauma. The four chapters of her film paint a powerful, profound, and unflinchingly sober self-portrait.

Bukolika

A mother and her daughter live in almost complete seclusion in a rundown house in rural Poland. The seasons dictate the rhythm of their lives, and their deep connection to nature is fertile soil for dreams and visions. Despite the hardships, the two find much satisfaction and happiness in their way of life.

Da Vinci

When the high-end surgical robot is filmed in action, inside a patient’s abdominal cavity, the human body becomes a mysterious, intriguing, pulsating space.

Everyman and I

Can one ever truly know an actor who erases his whole being for every part he plays? In the thick of a rocky, heady relationship that runs hot and cold, the filmmaker tries to understand the man before her. Her attempts become a spellbinding personal journal, filmed in lyrical black and white.

Figure-Ground

A compilation of YouTube material brings together two parallel worlds—the beach of Tel Aviv and the hills of the West Bank—in a raw, associatively edited, unorthodox portrayal of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Geographies of Solitude

For over 40 years Zoe Lucas has been living alone on Sable Island, surrounded by herds of wild horses and many seals, birds, and insects. Filmmaker Jacquelyn Mills gets to know the little island through Lucas’ eyes and paints a visually stunning portrait of both the island and its only human inhabitant.

Gods of Mexico

On salt flats and in ore mines, on steep cliffs and in desert pits, Mexican laborers work with their hands, with simple tools, painstakingly and slowly—far slower than the pace of modern life. With the labor itself providing the soundtrack, this film offers an almost religious aesthetic and sensory experience.

How to Save a Dead Friend

They both came from wrecked homes, but once they found each other, they were happy, at least for a while. A decade of love between the filmmaker and her partner is captured with rhythmic, gritty cinematography and backdropped by the harsh reality of life in a crumbling Russia.

Letter from Eusapia

The pandemic has just begun, and the filmmaker, who studies the underground city of Eusapia in Brussels, talks to his father, a physician in Ecuador.

Mariner of the Mountains

On his journey to the small village in the Atlas Mountains, in Algeria, the homeland of his foreign, distant father, filmmaker Karim Aïnouz carries with him the love stories of his mother, who raised him alone in Brazil. In his encounters with the people and the land, he reexamines his identity.

Mutzenbacher

120 years after it was published, men of all ages audition—together and separately—by reading from an infamous erotic text that had been banned for years. What has changed since it was written? What fantasies, memories, and feelings of awkwardness does it evoke today?

O, Collecting Eggs Despite the Times

German ornithologist Max Schönwetter collected, categorized, and drew nearly twenty thousand bird eggs with unwavering dedication. In the chaos of war, he and his colleagues held on to this passion as a way to escape a ruined, lost, carpet-bombed Europe into a place where everything made sense like before.

Rewind and Play

An unconventional look behind the scenes of Thelonious Monk’s 1968 interview for a French television show reveals how the media stuffs its interviewees into a cookie-cutter template, forcing them to fit a readymade narrative, even if one of them is a phenomenal pianist.

San Siro

In preparation for the game, the enormous stadium comes to life, its perfectly-coordinated human and mechanical parts moving with a near-mystical efficiency.

San Vittore

The children who come to visit their parents in San Vittore prison quickly realize that it only looks like a magical fairytale castle.

Terra Femme

Early 20th century female travelers had no desire to conquer, just to learn. Seen through their eyes—and through the amateur films they made—the world looks different. This collection of rare travelogues and documentary footage invites the viewers on a historical and emotional journey through these women’s worlds.

The Computer Accent

In a daring experiment, American dance pop trio YACHT let an artificial intelligence compose their new album after feeding it their discography (hundreds of hours of music). Will the software turn out to be more talented, more original, or even more creative than the human musicians?

The Night

Acclaimed filmmaker Tsai Ming-Liang turns his gaze to Hong Kong, which remains in motion all through the night, even when the streets are empty.

Trenches

Even when, on paper, the ceasefire was still in effect, Donbas in Ukraine was anything but quiet. The camera gets to know the soldiers, young men and one woman, up close and personal. In the trenches, between bursts of shelling, their conversations are intimate and open, and the tension is almost palpable.

Ultraviolette and the Blood-Spitters Gang

The passionate secret love affair the director’s grandmother, Emma, had in her youth was discovered only after her death, when letters from her lover, Marcelle, were found among her things. Wild, rebellious, and provocative, Marcelle’s persona is recreated using archive footage, scenes from films, and some very sensuous music.

We Met in Virtual Reality

The pandemic forced them into lockdown, but in the virtual world, they could keep meeting and even fall in love. Filmed entirely in an animated virtual universe, this vérité documentary follows couples who discovered that make-believe avatars could help them find a rare kind of intimacy.