On a normal day when millions are travelling underground; when punctuality and speed are everything; when there is noise, machines and artificial light, there is also time, idleness, silence and the human. An exploration of a nowadays rarely visible part of a machine: the people who run it.
Matthew, a reclusive lighthouse keeper, decides to spend one more night at the facility where he worked and lived for most of his life.
Overnight, a mysterious fog moves inland from the sea. The next day, he discovers that all islanders around him have slipped into a state of coma.
Pensioners from across the planet compete in the over-80s World Table Tennis Championships in Inner Mongolia. The film weaves a competition narrative with candid portraits of life back home that explore the hope, regret and immediacy of growing old.
8 players with 703 years between them guide us through the extraordinary world of Veteran sports. 81-year old Englishman Terry, recovering from life-threatening cancer, battles to retain his gold medal title. At 99, Australian legend Dorothy de Low creates a sensation as the oldest competitor at the Championships. German newcomer Inge, aged 89, has fought her way out of a dementia ward using the power of ping pong. This film is as much about the tenacity of the human spirit as it is a meditation on mortality.
Right now 1 in 6 people on the planet are over the age of 60. By 2030 that figure will be 1 in every 4. From the outset the film challenges perceptions of what it is to grow old. With humour and sensitivity it engages with the issues we all face in an ageing global population.
Shirin has dinner alone with her father in their small north London home. With her mother absent, little is said between them – until Shirin reveals she is going out for the evening.
A sympathetic but searching portrait of Frank Ryan (1902-1944) IRA activist in Ireland, International Brigade Volunteer in Spain and Nazi collaborator in Berlin. Ryan enters a Faustian pact with a Nazi regime he believes will assist in forging a united Ireland. His collaboration is justified by the republican motto: "My enemy's enemy is my friend". But the former radical and internationalist pays a heavy price for this pact. The film raises important questions about collaboration between the IRA and the Nazis in World War II. It opens up a long suppressed debate about Irish neutrality in that war. Drawing upon Ryan’s correspondence and using a rich mix of period archive combined with live action - with a striking portrayal of Frank Ryan by Dara Devaney - the film makers tell a story of tragic proportions and probe the enigma that was Frank Ryan.
Inspired by my two year old niece who having seen a goat herder in Spain kept chanting 'lots and lots and lots of goats!'.The story follows a day in the life of a goat herder and his flock of goats as they travel up and down the mountains of Spain
Theo is on a quest. He finds among his mother’s belongings a Super-8 film, in which his dad looks really happy, and a little in love. Maybe a lot. But not with Theo’s mother. Theo never really knew his dad and now that his mum is also gone, he’s intrigued to find out who else there was in his father’s life. His quest leads him into the past, and to Switzerland, high up into a remote Alpine valley. There he finds George who has been living as a recluse for a decade. For George, Theo’s dad was the love of his life. As the two men meet and get to know each other, slowly their lives start to make sense...
A comic story of loss, acceptance and a surreal vision of the afterlife, based on a Will Self story. Grown man, W, struggles to come to terms with the death of his domineering mother, only to discover that she's spending her dead existence very happily in a suburb of London.
11 year old Khalid is forced to run out into the middle of the night to save his 11 year old Christian friend, Obi, from a religious war neither of them understands.
"The moving finger writes, and having writ..."
Michael Smiley plays an unnamed reader who takes solace in books. When he finds random passages underlined in a library book his irritation with life builds to rage. Discovering the identity of the defacer he embarks on a twisted mission of revenge.
