1. Memory of the Camps
In 1945, Allied troops invaded Germany and liberated Nazi death camps. They found unspeakable horrors which still haunt the world’s conscience. A film was made by British and American film crews who were with the troops liberating the camps. It was directed in part by Alfred Hitchcock and was broadcast for the first time in its entirety on PBS FRONTLINE in 1985.
2. Spirits and Rocks: An Azorean Myth (Espíritos e Rochas: um Mito Açoriano)
From the ocean, a volcanic island rises into steamy mist. The black rock of the earth stands in sharp contrast to the billowing vapor that hovers and drifts above the surface. A narrator describes how the island’s first inhabitants sought to explain the violent eruption by attributing the devastation to the wrath of angry gods. With breathtaking black-and-white cinematography, this poetic exploration considers the human relationship to this volatile land, where residents live alongside the looming threat of eruption with reverence, fear, and awe. A collection of scenes where dark and light miraculously coexist illuminates both the physical and spiritual landscapes of this extraordinary place, where life endures the perils of the natural world.
3. Healing Me (Let viny)
Director Tereza Tara fell ill at the age of twenty-five. She captured her ten-year-long journey to recovery, which took her deep into the past and to the edge of the abyss, in the form of a personal and poetic video diary. With her weakened kidneys, she visited doctors, psychosomatic experts, and an alternative healer who urged her to surrender herself into the hands of God. Gradually, she began to see the condition of her dual organs as a reflection of her unbalanced relationship with her mother, her partner, and her own body. She finally understood that if she wanted to find a cure for her diseased kidneys and start living a better life, she needed to understand herself better first.
4. Old Lesbians
For the last quarter century, Houston native Arden Eversmeyer journeyed across the country to record hundreds of oral "herstories" with a mostly invisible population that is rapidly disappearing. Old Lesbians honors Arden's legacy by animating the resilient, joyful voices she preserved in the Old Lesbian Oral Herstory Project, from first crush to first love, from the closet to coming out, and finally from loss to connection.
5. Shots for Monday Morning
Filmed collaboratively during lockdown, this short film is an exploration of the hidden moments in life that typically go unnoticed, and the acceptance of our given situations through appreciation for the mundanity of existence.
6. Dolores guapa! (¡Dolores guapa!)
Religious-based images and traditions permeate the lives of all the people who inhabit Seville. Historically, the city's mariquitas have also assimilated them in their childhood and, through them, have been creating their own encounter spaces and their own codes. Nowadays, new dissident identities continue to respond to them: they participate or distance themselves, they continue what exists or transform it. This film looks at these traditions from a perspective always relegated to the margins.
It has an average vote of 4.7 on TMDB.
7. It Takes a Circus
Eighteen-year-old Aaliyah flies on aerial silks. Her 16-year-old cousin Bre twirls on hoops. They dream of escaping the violence that marred their young lives. Their possible ticket out is the after-school program Trenton Circus Squad. Now that Covid-19 has changed everything, will the circus and the girls’ dreams survive?
8. Tangled Roots
An intimate look into Demers family's experience raising children while dealing with the societal stigmas around disabilities and the consequences of Alberta's forgotten experiment in eugenics.
9. Litanie (Litanie)
Elen Řádová and Tomáš Mašín’s student work draws on the genre of action films, which are characterized by emotionally intense and violent scenes. Excerpts from period blockbusters are supplemented with visual effects and edited in a way that drives the particularities of the action film genre to the point of absurdity. The resulting visual whirlwind thus deliberately escalates—and thereby diminishes—the dramatic impact of the original footage.
10. King of Clubs
A group of remote control car racers compete over the course of summer 2021, on different tracks in the South of England, all aiming to be crowned the King.
11. The Metal Detector
Georg is an Austrian retiree whose mother witnessed the crash of an Allied B-17 near their home during World War II. When he takes up metal detecting to find the wreckage, a growing fascination leads him to embark on a heartfelt mission, not only to research the backgrounds of the American crewmembers who parachuted off the plane into enemy territory, but to locate their descendants, to bring them to his Austrian town on the 75th anniversary of the crash, to introduce them to the townspeople who helped their fathers, and to unite his town in remembrance. It’s a story of empathy, resilience, and the enduring power of human connection.
12. Delbert’s Metamorphosis
In 1997, filmmaker Nic McLean shot his first documentary with Outer Banks icon Delbert Melton who was in the middle of a domestic dispute with the Town of Kill Devil Hills over persistent requests to clean up his yard.
It has an average vote of 8 on TMDB.
13. Moravian Hellas (Moravská Hellas)
Karel Vachek’s graduate film offers us a documentary essay which is both a light-hearted and aggressive little piece and also a parody of investigative film journalism. The Strážnice folk festival, backed by the cultural Party apparatus of the time, for years had little to commend itself to authentic folklore. In the film the event assumes the form of a bizarre stage spectacle with almost surrealistic elements that Vachek reinforces with unconventional approaches . The result is a stirring film collage depicting various characters, from crowd-pleasers, Easter egg decorators, kitsch artists and peddlers, to museologists and local residents, all of whom come up against the eccentric "identical” twin reporters Karel and Jan Saudek and a bored actress who appears as an extra. Using their special blend of irony and wit, they present us with the sad truth.
It has an average vote of 5.5 on TMDB.
14. Taurophilia (Asterión)
Through rhythmic re-composition of fragmented images, semi-surreal situations are explored in a documentary style of observation of a man's obsession with a powerful animal, the black horned bull, and the Spanish process of taxidermy through which he attempts to embody its beauty and strength, turning into a Minotaur. The subdued basement space in which the man meticulously studies the motionless flesh of the animal is preceded by a sunlit, empty arena in Spain, the stage in which the bull is presented in its full glory before facing man.
It has an average vote of 4.5 on TMDB.
15. SHITFACE (TVÁŘ Z HOVEN)
The film portrait of a face made of shit thematizes the individual's ideas about his own freedom. Antonín dolák, philosopher and YouTuber, feels free when he gets rid of all social conventions. He loses his face, takes off his mask and talks openly about the socially taboo topics that line his life. However, a conflict arises between him and the staff, when Dolak loses control over the depiction of himself.
16. Victorian Queens
Victorian Queens takes a deep dive into the weird, wonderful and utterly unique landscape of Melbourne's drag community.
It has an average vote of 5.5 on TMDB.
17. Beautiful Solution
The film poem about pesticides reflects on the return to the natural food chain, in which insect pest serve as food for the higher order. The harmonic cycle of life and death, the temple that is the wildflower field resounding with the inebriating sound of crickets chirping and wheat spikes rustling in the wind, is invaded by the human, the ultimate consumer with no natural predator.
18. This Is Roundnet
This is a documentary that follows a group of friends as they see what it takes to play at the first ever Roundnet World Championships. Showcasing Roundnet as a sport on the rise as well as the incredible community behind the weird and wonderful game.
It has an average vote of 10 on TMDB.
19. CATANAS POINT - A Surf Documentary
"CATANAS POINT - A Surf Documentary" portrays the reality of the sport of surfing in Angola and compares it with what surfing was like in Brazil from the 1980s to the present day.
It has an average vote of 10 on TMDB.
20. An Act of Affection
While making a portrait of a single gay man in Lisbon, a Vietnamese filmmaker offers his character a little gift from the bottom of his heart. This is a film about the act of filming.
