Projects in categories: Documentary

Synopsis

Three characters search for meaning in an urban weed. The Narrator pursues perdikaki to find the woman first seen picking it, yet as observations accumulate a shadow researcher emerges. Is Kyria’s knowledge being sought, or the Collector’s? And, other than the symbolic plant, do the other figures exist at all?

Synopsis

The tragic story of an American music virtuoso who found in 1970s Iran the love and acceptance he never received back home, and who was punished by his country upon his return after the Iranian revolution.
Over images of a young boy playing the accordion in a home movie from 1940’s America, a radio host comments on the trial that was to ruin Lloyd Miller´s life decades later in the Eighties – for charges he was innocent of.
The images of the young boy are quickly replaced with images of an Iranian TV show from the 1970’s, where a sharply dressed man named Kurosh Ali Khan is being interviewed in Farsi about his musical creation, Oriental Jazz. Music kicks in, and now we see the man presented in a video, much younger, playing the santur, a Persian instrument, accompanied by jazz. A voice begins to narrate, in the third person, the story of Kurosh, an American man who is forced by political circumstances to leave the country he’s considered his only real home for seven years. He is on his way back to America, leaving his life as a famous TV host behind him.

Synopsis

An intimate portrait of Hobbit and Jake, who have decided to raise their one-year-old child Anoush gender open. The family lives on a houseboat in the UK and in order to prevent people from making gender-related assumptions, they are keeping the biological sex of their baby a secret.
Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2019 - Debate Strand

Synopsis

You might think America is a democracy, where freedom of speech and basic rights are guaranteed. But at its heart, there is a great injustice. Against all the odds several extraordinary citizens are banding together and fighting back for their basic right to clean water. Armed only with facts and their illnesses, they risk arrest to take on the might of industry and government. From Flint to the Navajo Nation, via Standing Rock, this is their story.

Synopsis

Anthony Godby Johnson was an early 1990s New York City miracle: a boy who escaped years of horrific abuse only to discover that he was dying of AIDS. A boy who authored his own autobiography. A boy who earned friends and fans worldwide—and who did not exist.

DOK Leipzig • International Competition • World Premiere
London Short Film Festival • Official Selection
Flatpack Film Festival • Official Selection
Manchester Film Festival • Official Selection

Synopsis

Artist, activist and performer Jess Thom, who has Tourette's syndrome, conducts a revealing investigation into one of Beckett’s most intense monologues, ‘Not I’, in which she asks the audience to reconsider issues of disability, representation and social exclusion.
This film is radical in its asking of exciting and novel questions about the portrayal of disability in the arts and the exclusion of disabled people as cultural and creative producers. Jess moves past the reverence that surrounds Beckett’s work and makes it accessible to everyone, while raising questions about cultural curation, who has access to theatre and who can perform it.

Synopsis

What price do the farmers of Punjab pay for the rice on our plate?
The north Indian state of Punjab was said to have produced enough food to feed the entire country during the Green Revolution. However, the overuse of chemicals introduced to enhance production poisoned the water with carcinogens and created an infertile soil addicted to chemicals. Just as the land is dependent, so are more and more farmers becoming addicted to drugs, which help them to work longer hours in the fields. The expense of the chemicals and drugs forces farmers to take loans from 'Arthis', the rich middlemen who increase their interest rates without warning. Over 50,000 farmers have committed suicide in the last ten years, by drinking the toxic chemicals that are murdering Punjabi soil.

Synopsis

An inside look at the emergence of the ‘pickup’ industry - a business where self-styled seduction coaches travel the world, charging a small fortune to teach men skills they claim will guarantee them success with women.
It can be a highly lucrative occupation, with many companies earning millions of dollars each year. But, it is also an industry rife with controversy and scandal; several teachers have been deported from countries for their contentious methodologies, and pickup businesses are often the subject of fierce public criticism.
Despite this, men the world over collectively spend hundreds of millions of dollars to attend seminars, download online courses and have one-on-one coaching sessions with instructors they feel can give them the dating life of their dreams. In the minds of students, many of these instructors become more than just teachers - they become idols.
From the glossy exterior, where courses are packaged as self-improvement, to the dark underbelly of sexual assault, pyramid scheme marketing and secret collusion, this documentary pulls back the curtain to reveal a world that is fascinating and horrific in equal measure.
Official Selection Hot Docs 2019 - Making Believe - World premiere

Synopsis

In 2002 in Bojayá, Colombia 79 people died when The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) launched a homemade mortar onto a church where many were hiding from crossfire between the left-wing FARC and right-wing paramilitaries. Leyner Palacios survived, but 28 of his family members did not. The Bojayá massacre was one of the worst atrocities in Colombia’s 50 year-long conflict.
When peace between the government and the FARC was signed in 2016, after decades of conflict, Leyner made it his mission to ensure the peace deal was implemented to his people’s benefit, receiving a Nobel Peace Prize in the process. Capturing one victim’s incredible struggle for justice, this film follows the process of identifying the dead of Bojayá during the faltering implementation of the controversial peace accords.
Official Selection Hot Docs 2019 - World Showcase - World premiere

Synopsis

A feature documentary telling the astonishing story of 26-year old female Syrian filmmaker, Waad al-Kateab, who filmed her life in rebel-held Aleppo through five years of the Syrian uprising.
She fell in love, got married and had a daughter all while filming the violence raging around her and in particular documenting the challenges the conflict imposed on women and children. Along with a close group of friends, she stayed in the city to fight for her dream of a free Syria, a struggle that ended in their defeat and exile.
The film weaves together her intimate, emotive footage with her struggle to come to terms with the trauma she has witnessed. It’s an outstanding story, by turns beautiful, shocking, surprising and uplifting.
Waad is a symbol for our times, the epitome of a bold, brave woman prepared to risk her life for what she believes, in a year when women are finally becoming the heroes of their own stories. Hers is an epic tale of the survival of love and courage amid the cruelty of war.
Official Selection SXSW 2019 - Documentary Feature Competition - World premiere
Official Selection Hot Docs 2019 - International Spectrum
Official Selection Cannes Film Festival 2019 - Special Screening
Academy Awards 2020 - Nomination - Best Documentary Feature

Synopsis

A commercial diver is stranded on the seabed with only five minutes of oxygen supply, but with no chance of rescue for more than 30 minutes. With access to amazing archive, this is the true story of one man’s impossible fight for survival.
It is GRAVITY meets TOUCHING THE VOID – 100 metres underwater.
Official Selection Hot Docs 2019 - World Showcase - International premiere

Synopsis

Tommaso Buscetta was the first high-ranking Italian Mafia boss ever to turn against Cosa Nostra. Buscetta not only broke the code of silence for the first time - he testified against the Mob, both in the USA and in Italy. “He was the key witness who broke the back of the Mob”, said Louis Freeh (future FBI Director) at the time.
Buscetta helped convict more than 400 Mafiosi. He became the Mob’s most wanted man in the world – and 11 close relatives, including two sons, were killed.
A story told for the first time with exclusive access to Buscetta's family, who remain in America and are only now breaking their silence after more than 30 years in hiding.
Official Selection Hot Docs 2019 - Special Presentation - World premiere