Even as bombs fall on Damascus, Mutaz refuses to flee to the uncertain life of a refugee. His wife, Hala, and daughter, Zeina, must make the choice whether to stay or leave.
Official Selection Venice International Film Festival 2022 - World premiere
A film about the handful of streets around the Cowgate, Edinburgh, which have long housed a proud Irish diaspora. A film about folk music and its power to connect people.
Musician Aidan O’Rourke, from the celebrated folk trio Lau, lives in the heart of Edinburgh’s Old Town. During lockdown, Aidan got to know three of his octogenarian neighbours, all called Margaret, and listened to their stories. Aidan brings together a group of sensational Irish and Scottish folk musicians and explores through music and storytelling what home and belonging mean.
Featuring a stunning original soundtrack by O’Rourke and live performances by Liam Ó Maonlai, Brìghde Chaimbeul, Comac Begley, Róisín Chambers and Aoife Ní Bhriain.
Aidan O’Rourke is a fiddler and composer. Raised in Argyll, his roots are Scottish and Irish but his music roams the edges of those traditions.
Becky Manson is a filmmaker from Orkney. Interested in routine, repetition, and ritual, she tells small stories that speak to universal themes.
Mark Cousins has directed twenty feature films. His themes are cinema, cities, recovery, walking and looking. Among many he has won the Prix Italia, the Stanley Kubrick award, the EFA's Innovation award, a Peabody.
In this ghost story from acclaimed filmmaker Joanna Hogg, a middle-aged daughter and her elderly mother must confront long-buried secrets when they return to their former family home, a once-grand manor that has become a nearly vacant hotel brimming with mystery.
Official Selection Venice International Film Festival 2022 - World premiere
A group of islanders gather evidence of corporate manslaughter for the disaster they fear is inevitable. History repeats itself in this hybrid documentary; to imagine the future disaster potentially set to befall the Essex island - again.
The residents of a quintessential but neglected British seaside town grapple with research suggesting that their home could disappear within 30 years due to the climate crisis.
Official Selection SXSW Film Festival 2023 - World premiere
Shortlisted for a SIMA award.
Cat and Hannah, two British women in their twenties, take on the gruelling 3000km drive along Central Asia's Pamir Highway - the second highest international road on Earth. It runs from southern Uzbek deserts, through Tajikistan's Pamir mountain range, climbing over 4600m, into Kyrgyzstan and all the way to its vibrant capital, Bishkek.
Their route brings them to the doorsteps of women from all walks of life, revealing a women's movement that's had as many ups and downs as the drive itself. A 78 year-old gynaecologist recalls the turbulent transition from Soviet rule to independence, and testimonies of domestic abuse, 'bride kidnapping' and religious extremism expose the region's complex attitude to women's rights.
But despite the evident patriarchal oppression in these countries, it's certainly not the whole picture. Stories of female empowerment against all odds emerge, from a group training Tajikistan's first ever female trekking guides to a feminist collective running workshops on sexual pleasure.
Cat and Hannah gain unprecedented access to over 50 women. Their testimonies shed light on a women’s movement largely ignored by Western media.
This is a story of female emancipation and solidarity across different cultures that have a lot more in common than they might have thought.
This film revisits the Chinese wallpaper from the 18th century at Harewood House. Such an exotic artefact was used by the landed gentry as a token of other to imagine the wider world. As the wallpaper was made in China, this film also explores self-representation through the artist’s personal photos.
Three strangers - all of whom work for the same corporation - take part in a management training day. Their volatile role-play task is to fire an imagined co-worker, exploring the worst possible reactions they might receive to eliminating another person’s livelihood.
Go ‘Behind the Counter’ and into the lives of the Dhaliwal family who run a small corner shop in the West Midlands.
This film is a celebration of the 35 years of running a shop but also captures the family legacy.
A short and personal female centred documentary about addiction, and long-term recovery from it. This film weaves together observational and lyrical elements to take us into the challenging, deeply personal, and relatively unknown world of recovery – along with the processes of care that follow in the years after a period of active addiction. This is one couple’s journey together as they negotiate the world of recovery and how to plan for a future with so much uncertainty in it.
Overly curious Mary visits her boyfriend's flat for the first time, just to discover it’s been stripped bare of all personal belongings. After being denied an explanation, she climbs into his head.
DUTHCHAS is a poignant, touching and emotive exploration of what it means to people, especially women, to have to leave the island of their birth - Berneray in the Outer Hebrides - to get an education, work, and live and examines the effect this had on the Gaelic language and culture of the island.
The documentary features previously unseen Kodachrome 8mm archive film of everyday life on the Isle of Berneray in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland through the 60s and 70s, intercut with interviews with people from the island including many featured in the archive film which reveals repeated iconic scenes of leaving the island, friends and relatives on the pier waving as they recede into the distance.
A specially composed soundtrack by Donald Shaw draws on the richness of traditional Gaelic songs from Berneray and their compelling melodies as inspiration.
