Projects with status: Complete

Synopsis

A new assignment forces a top spy to team up with his football hooligan brother.
A new comedy from the creators of 'Borat'.

Synopsis

Berlin 1940. The city is paralyzed by fear. Otto and Anna Quangel are a working class couple living in a shabby apartment block trying, like everyone else, to stay out of trouble under Nazi rule. But when their only child is killed fighting at the front, their loss drives them to an extraordinary act of resistance. They start to drop anonymous postcards all over the city attacking Hitler and his regime. If caught, it means certain execution. Soon their campaign comes to the attention of the Gestapo inspector Escherich and a murderous game of cat-and-mouse begins. But the game serves only to strengthen Otto and Anna’s sense of purpose and a renewed love for each other. Slowly their drab lives and marriage are transformed as they unite in their quiet but profound rebellion...
Over 60 years after its initial publication, Hans Fallada’s novel, written directly after the Second World War, became a worldwide bestseller. Based on a true story, the powerful and redemptive novel was described by Primo Levi as “the greatest book ever written about German resistance to the Nazis.”
Berlinale 2016 - World premiere

Synopsis

'Hannibal in Rafah: A Reconstruction of One Bloody Day in the 2014 Gaza War from User Generated Videos'
A detailed reconstruction of the events on one day in Rafah, Gaza during the 'Hannibal Directive', drawing on material produced by the Forensic Architecture project.
The project stemmed from an examination of the Israeli army’s response to the capture of Lieutenant Hadar Goldin and its implementation of the Hannibal Directive – a controversial command designed to deal with captures of soldiers by unleashing massive firepower on persons, vehicles and buildings in the vicinity of the attack, despite the risk to civilians and the captured soldier(s).
"Because our investigation team was denied access to Gaza, Forensic Architecture developed a number of techniques aiming to reconstruct the events from hundreds of images and videos recorded by professional and citizen-journalists. The images were thereafter located in a 3D model of Rafah. This resulted to the Image Complex, a device that allowed us to explore the spatial and temporal connections between the various sources and reconstruct the unfolding of events. Forensic Architecture... also located witness testimonies, delivered after the war, within this 3D model, and corroborated the reported events with other audio-visual material." The resulting report was presented as a Human Rights case by Amnesty International.
'Hannibal in Rafah: A Reconstruction of One Bloody Day in the 2014 Gaza War from User Generated Video' is a selection of clips taken from the project, composed and brought together in a text presentation.
Official Selection Berlinale 2016 - Forum Expanded - Visionary Archives

Synopsis

A narrative resistance group makes underground deposits of elaborate porcelain suggested to belong to an entirely fictional civilisation. Their aim is to influence history and support future claims to their vanishing lands.
This film resides in the cross-section between science-fiction, archaeology and Middle Eastern politics. Combining live action, computer generated imagery and historical photographs the film explores the role of myth in history, fact and national identity.
Official Selection Berlinale 2016 - Forum Expanded - World premiere

Synopsis

A signal from the other side of the universe is received by a hive-like society. Two scientists, Cane and Eva, are chosen to leave their Home planet and journey many light years to find and colonize the distant world that sent this transmission. As their telepathic connection to Home weakens, they begin to question the morality of the mission and the very meaning of their own existence in the isolation of deep space.
Boston Science Fiction Festival 2016 - World premiere

Synopsis

A chronicle of Max Perkins' time as book editor at Scribner. A renowned and highly respected literary editor, Perkins oversaw seminal works by Thomas Wolfe, Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald. 'Genius' centres on Perkins' relationship with literary giant Thomas Wolfe, a blazing talent with a larger-than-life personality. They formed a complex, transformative and irrepressible friendship that changed the lives of these brilliant but very different men forever.
Berlinale 2016 - World premiere

Synopsis

"The four essay films which comprise ‘The Seasons in Quincy’ each take different aspects of British writer and thinker John Berger’s life in the Haute-Savoie, and combine ideas and motifs from Berger’s own work with the atmosphere of his mountain home. Each film was created as an individual work of art but they combine to make a feature film... showing how film can move beyond text, and beyond fine art, to offer a multifaceted and multi-layered portrait. These are more than documentary films – they are exercises in thinking in film." Derek Jarman Lab
'Ways of Listening', (Colin MacCabe), deals with fathers and friendship. 'Spring', (Christopher Roth), considers Berger's writing on our relationship with animals. 'A Song for Politics', (Colin MacCabe and Bartek Dziadosz), reflects on politics through archive footage, song and a discussion between Berger and several young left-wing thinkers. 'Harvest', (Tilda Swinton), revisits Quincy to meditate on belonging and continuity with Berger and his son Yves.
Berlinale 2016 - World premiere

Synopsis

Artist Jumana Manna sets out in search of the musical diversity of historical Palestine. Drawing on her research into the German-Jewish ethnomusicologist Robert Lachmann (1892-1939) and his work in Palestine, the film follows Manna’s exchanges with musicians as she encounters them in their homes and places of work and worship.
Berlinale 2016 - World premiere

Synopsis

The story of American poet Emily Dickinson from her early days as a young schoolgirl to her later years as a reclusive, unrecognized artist.
Dickinson wrote a poem a day, but only a fraction of her output was published throughout her lifetime. She was extremely shy, but with a wry, lively sense of humour and loved to laugh or to be made to laugh. Her friendships were intense but it was within the family that she found her greatest happiness. Her life is one of quiet dignity, and the poetry magnificent. All the terror and beauty of the world distilled down to the quintessence of meaning and expression.
Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2016 - Official Competition

Synopsis

A man doles out fifteen years worth of advice to a young woman with thoroughly unexpected results.
Official Selection Berlinale 2016 - Generation 14 Plus - World premiere

Synopsis

Downtown Cairo, 2009. Khalid, a 35-year-old filmmaker is struggling to make a film that captures the soul of his city while facing loss in his own life. With the help of his friends, who send him footage from their lives in Beirut, Baghdad and Berlin, he finds the strength to keep going through the difficulty and beauty of living In the last days of the city.
Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2016 - Debate Strand

Synopsis

Set to the verses of W.H. Auden's 1939 poem 'Refugee Blues', the film charts a day in 'the jungle', the refugee camp outside Calais. More intimate and unlike much of what has been seen in the mass media, this documentary poem counterpoints the camp’s harsh reality of frequent clashes with the French riot police with its inhabitants’ longing for a better future.
Official Selection Berlinale 2016 - Generation 14plus - World premiere