GAZA brings us into a unique place beyond the reach of television news reports to reveal a world rich with eloquent and resilient characters, offering us a cinematic and enriching portrait of a people attempting to lead meaningful lives against the rubble of perennial conflict. Throughout its entire history the Gaza Strip has been witness to conflict and upheaval. From ancient times this tiny coastal territory, located at a crossroads between continents, has been a pawn whose fate rested in the hands of powerful neighbours.
The first film in Miklós Jancsó's documentary series Message of Stones.
What started as a drama about a Russian police plot to steal a billion dollars from a US financier and to murder his faithful tax lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, has become a real life investigation of contradicting versions of the crime.
In the summer of 1989 tens of thousands of tourists from communist East Germany came to Hungary. They were deeply disillusioned because they felt they had no future in East Germany. There was no freedom, no choice in the shops, salaries were low and they could not travel except to Eastern Europe. They wanted to go to a prosperous and free West Germany but they could not get passports, so they hoped that by travelling through Hungary, the least suppressed country of the Soviet Block, they could cross the Iron Curtain into Austria and then travel on into West Germany. For them the Hungary of twenty years ago was the new east-west passage. Written by Czes
'History is always made in the middle of the night. And when it happens, you are so damned tired, that you couldn't care less,' says Robert Cooper, an EU peace negotiator whose job it is to get Serbia and Kosovo to reach an agreement about peaceful coexistence. National pride and compromise are on everyone's lips, and much is at stake: Kosovo wants to come closer to independence, the Serbs have been promised EU membership if they can reach an agreement, and the EU tries to strengthen its credibility. But how far is each party willing to go? It is the unique characters that make this fascinating film about a delicate political game so vivid and loveable. The stoic, Serbian negotiator has a great passion for rock music, his colleague from Kosovo does not want to miss out on his daily visit to the hairdresser, and Cooper himself has a closet full of ties - one for every conceivable occasion.
Twenty-five films from twenty-five European countries by twenty-five European directors.
A young gay Romani couple from a remote village in Hungary has a dream so absurd that it seems impossible: making a musical film based on their lives.
The Angelmakers is a 2005 documentary that provides insight into the epidemic of arsenic murders by women, known as The Angel Makers of Nagyrév, in 1929. The film is shot on location in the rural Hungarian village of Nagyrév, alternating between portraits of the surrounding landscape and first-hand narrations by the elderly inhabitants.
Ahead of the U.S. Presidential Elections, Angela Scanlon travels across America to meet some of Donald Trump's most unlikely supporters - including a second-generation Mexican American who wants Trump to build that wall.
Four rejected asylum seekers relive the hearing on their reasons for fleeing their home countries, shedding light on the core of the asylum procedure. Will the interviewees be able to describe their traumatic experiences in a way that satisfies the official criteria?
“I want to be a tiger. I am an atheist from Iraq and I am seeking asylum. About my hallucinations… It’s difficult. Horrible monsters. I hope I can help those who need help.” An episode of the animation series Mental images by Antonia Ringbom. The aim of these animated documentary short films is to reduce the stigma toward mental health problems and psychological disorders.
Increase of chronic diseases, loss of biodiversity, extinction of bees... for a few years, the consequences of pesticides mass use are compelling public opinion. How to explain their effects on human health and biodiversity, whereas EU regulations forbid the spread of every harmful product ?
A film about borders and border checkpoints, poetically following the people that come into contact with them - one way or another. Borders is about men and women dreaming of a better life in Europe and the high price they often have to pay for it - if they succeed at all. Without taking an immediate moral stance, the film follows the route that many immigrants take from the heart of Africa to the centre of Europe, stopping at each border: Nigeria, Niger, Burkina Faso, Mali, Senegal , Mauritania, Morocco, Spain, France, Belgium, and finally, the Netherlands.
Mali - Algeria - Libya - Italy. Issa’s escape from West Africa to the European mainland lasted ten years. Everything was supposed to be better here. But when he arrived in Rome, the only thing waiting for the young man was a life of homelessness and unemployment – which meant no money to send home. Drissa and Sekou share a similar fate, waiting in Italian asylum centres for a residence permit. Then there’s Bubu, who, forced to move from job to job, is unable to settle down. And lastly comes Alassane, who lives without identity papers in a state of constant uncertainty in a refugee camp near Rome. They all have one thing in common: after a gruelling odyssey, none of them has found the Italy they were hoping for when they arrived. Disillusioned, they find themselves in a vacuum of waiting, reflecting on the time they live in and the time that lies ahead.
Following the death of her brother, filmmaker Robie Flores returns to her hometown Eagle Pass on the Texas/Mexico border, wanting to turn back time. She collides with unruly experiences of adolescence – quinceañeras, Rio Grande river excursions, teen makeovers and beyond – that invite her to soak up the details of the home her brother adored and she ignored. What emerges is a playful dance between a personal and collective coming-of-age portrait of kids on the border and Robie herself as she rediscovers the possibilities of joy in the aftermath of grief.
Reconstructions of unrealized Hungarian films in cooperation with the greatest Hungarian film directors.
24 October 2015, a nice day in autumn in a nice landscape. A crowd of refugees and migrants accompanied by soldiers and police officers make their way from the Schengen border between Slovenia and Croatia towards the refugee camp in Brežice. Suddenly, the landscape starts to appear less nice than it was.