1. Weg vom Fenster - Leben nach dem Burnout (Weg vom Fenster - Leben nach dem Burnout)
(Weg vom Fenster - Leben nach dem Burnout)
2. Luminous Shores (Hacer orillas luminosas)
(Hacer orillas luminosas)
3. My Body (Il mio corpo)
Oscar, not quite a child anymore, scavenges for scrap metal for his father. He spends his life in improvised landfills among what remains of leftovers. Worlds apart, yet close-by, there is Stanley. He tidies the church in exchange for a monetised hospitality, picks fruits, herds sheep: anything that keep his foreign body busy. Oscar, the young Sicilian, and Stanley the Nigerian don’t seem to have much in common. Except for the feeling of being thrown into the world, to suffer the same refusal, the same overwhelming wave of choices imposed on them by others.
It has an average vote of 6 on TMDB.
4. On the Other Side (De l'autre côté)
The oldest Quebecois Benedictine convent open its gates to a documentary filmmaker for the first time. Observed up close, life behind its walls is busier than one would expect. About twenty cloistered nuns, most of them over 70, share their daily life with diligence and humor. A contemplative portrait of a community of sisterhood and solidarity emerges, punctuated by prayer, work and games evenings.
5. The End of the Endless (O Fim do Sem Fim)
"Fim do Sem Fim" is a feature-length documentary that has as its backdrop the imminent disappearance of certain trades and professions in Brazil. Shot in 10 Brazilian states, the film is a dive into the inventiveness and resistance of men in the face of technological and cultural changes.
It has an average vote of 6 on TMDB.
6. Font Men
You've never heard of Jonathan Hoefler or Tobias Frere-Jones but you've seen their work. They run the most successful and respected type design studio in the world, making fonts used by the Wall Street Journal to the President of the United States.
It has an average vote of 5.7 on TMDB.
7. Musician
Common sense says you can't make a living in America playing avant-garde improvisational jazz. But Ken Vandermark does it anyway. Among musicians, Vandermark's work ethic is almost mythic. The Chicago reed player has released over 100 albums with nearly 40 ensembles, spends over eight months per year on the road, and lives every other waking moment composing, arranging, performing—and trying to discipline his two hyperactive canines. Though Vandermark was the recipient of a 1999 MacArthur genius grant, he still spends most of his life in smoky clubs and low-budget recording studios, hoping people will plunk down hard-earned cash to hear his wholly non-commercial music. Following the artful cinéma vérité style of the internationally acclaimed Sheriff , Musician forgoes all interviews and voice-overs. It is a fly-on-the-wall time capsule that expertly captures every subtle sound and texture of this most American of art forms.
8. Jobs for All! (Arbete åt alla!)
A highly choreographed review of the Industrial Age as we know it today – an intense and playful roller coaster ride that demands the viewer confronts how “work works.” Culled entirely from archival footage, the film unfolds in the filmmakers’ trademark, and humorously critical, cinematic voices.
9. Baby Annette, à l'impossible ils sont tenus (Baby Annette, à l'impossible ils sont tenus)
In 2019, the director Leos Carax proposes to Estelle Charlier and Romuald Collinet to design, make and animate "Annette", the puppet of his new film. This one will be the child of the couple Marion Cotillard and Adam Driver. Propelled into the world of cinema, begins for this charismatic duo a unique and singular adventure in their career as puppeteers. Faced with the demands of the filmmaker, the impossible, they are held.
It has an average vote of 8 on TMDB.
10. Afganistanbul (Afganistanbul)
(Afganistanbul)
It has an average vote of 1 on TMDB.
11. Keep Up the Good Work (Frohes Schaffen)
It is a fetish, a mantra, a secret religion to modern man: work. In times of the financial crisis and massive job reductions, this documentary movie questions work as our 'hallow' sense in life in a way that both humors and pains us.
It has an average vote of 8.5 on TMDB.
12. Island Shunters
Short documentary on the shunters in the Darling Island, Sydney, Australia railyard. Filmed in 1977.
13. La Meilleure Façon de tracer (La Meilleure Façon de tracer)
(La Meilleure Façon de tracer)
14. Haus und Hof (Haus und Hof)
Agricultural scientist and mother Isolde struggles with the dicrepancies between her personal convictions and the political realities in East Germany.
15. Takumi: A 60,000 Hour Story on the Survival of Human Craft
There is a popular theory that it takes at least 10,000 hours of focused practice for a human to become expert in any field. In Japan, there are craftspeople who go far beyond this to reach a special kind of mastery. These people are called Takumi and they devote 60,000 hours to their craft. That's 8 hours a day, 240 days a year, for over 30 years. It's an almost superhuman level of dedication to a life of repetition and no shortcuts. This film asks the question: Will human craft disappear as artificial intelligence reaches beyond our limits?
It has an average vote of 9 on TMDB.
16. Open files (Dosare Deschise)
A more experimental aproach to labor protection films. In the line of Săucan's style, the soundtrack is as important as the image, the threatening music, full of shrillness, composed by Ion Dumitrescu potentiating the visual construction that mixes - in a montage reminiscent of the Soviet avant-garde school of the 1920s - all kinds of shooting techniques and frame combinations.
17. The Kitchen (Die Küche)
This documentary follows a group of women on a typical workday as they prepare meals for a dockyard in Rostock. The viewer never learns their names - there are no interviews. The women are presented simply as workers: cooking, cleaning, hauling, and serving dishes amid clanking pots and hot steam.
18. Working Women (Kobiety pracujące)
Stylized with dramatic interiors and a distorted frame rate, this early documentary miniature from Szulkin depicts six sequences of solitary, repetitious labor.
It has an average vote of 5.2 on TMDB.
19. Exergo (Exergo)
A young woman who has just started a job at an art museum writes an email to a friend she lived with until recently. The other woman, also young, works as an artist and has just moved to a new city. A narrator reads this email, but we don't know which of the two women the voice belongs to, whether to the sender or to the receiver of the message. Neither are we aware of the details of this relationship; but what we do know is that, in addition to their interest in art, they share a concern for the difficulties of carrying out their personal and professional lives in the present. By focusing on the peripheral or hidden details of some paintings in the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum, this narrator relates several stories linked to the social, economic and psychological conditions of the artists, both past and present.
20. Leben nach Microsoft
Der Film portraitiert eine Gruppe von Microsoft-Aussteigern: im Ruhestand mit 32, Multimillionäre und ohne die geringste Idee, was sie mit dem Rest ihres Leben anstellen sollen. Ihre Jahre im Unternehmen, der Hype des Goldrausches und das Adrenalin des Erfolges hat sie ausgebrannt und doch sind sie entschlossen mehr aus ihrem Leben zu machen - vor allem Sinn und Bedeutung in der wirklichen Welt zu finden.
It has an average vote of 5.5 on TMDB.