Hajar is a 55-years-old Bahktiari woman from Iran who is betrayed by her family and forced to abandon her nomadic lifestyle. Climate change, urbanization and social issues have drastically diminished the traditional migratory activities of the Bakhtiari tribe from Southwestern Iran.
Just a few decades ago, Acapulco was one of the most famous tourist destinations in the world. Today it is one of the cities with the most murders per capita. Bringing together stories about five emblematic Acapulco objects and characters, Biombo de Acapulco is an experimental documentary that records the contrasting complexity of this once-global port. Combining a non-linear and polyphonic narrative with a discordant montage composed of diverse audiovisual materials about the place, the film is inspired by the oriental screens that arrived in America through the port of Acapulco in the 16th century.
Michael Mosley transformed the lives of millions of people. In this programme, we look back at an extraordinary broadcasting career which spanned almost 40 years. Fronting series such as Trust Me I’m a Doctor and the hit podcast Just One Thing, Michael used his warm, often funny approach to deliver important, life-changing health messages. He started behind the scenes as an award-winning science journalist and producer, before becoming a much-loved presenter. His programmes have made a lasting impact on the nation’s health habits, from intermittent fasting to the benefits of a cold shower. Michael also shared his own struggles with audiences worldwide. As a chronic insomniac, he made programmes about sleep and, ever curious, he would also go to extremes in the pursuit of science, even infecting himself with a tapeworm. Celebrating Michael’s career, this programme marks the enormous impact he made, touching the lives of so many.
In this found-footage remake of James Benning’s found-footage film of the same name, editor Jane Evelyn comments on the evolving digital landscape through a collage of historical records, home movies, ASMR videos, song covers, animations, and film clips.
A heartrending portrait of a couple who face the ultimate test: the consequences they face when Simon, a writer, discovers he has an incurable form of cancer. Lucidly approaching the processes in place to deal with the end of a life – what it means for those faced with their own mortality and for those left behind.
While state authorities chase down supplies of increasingly rare Covid vaccinations, the queues of those waiting for them stretch endlessly along streets. Those queuing comprise a microcosm of the populace – a tapestry of personalities that range from stern gatekeepers to elderly women deliberating over vaccine preferences. As it moves from the bustling queues to the hushed interiors of vaccination centres, Pavilion 6 shifts from patients to the nurses and other members of staff.
Filmed over six years, Mother City follows the David versus Goliath battle as activists and domestic workers take on property power and politics in Cape Town – a city still disfigured by spatial apartheid 30 years into democracy. The story begins when the government sells a school, meant for affordable housing, to a private developer. Set against the backdrop of one of the most beautiful cities in the world, this intimate and at times funny narrative documentary charts Nkosikhona (Face) Swartbooi leading a defiant war against government and property developers – on the streets, in the supreme court and in parliament.
Once greatly troubled himself – haunted by a friend’s death and his own brushes with violence – Nuka has turned his life around. He journeys through the remote indigenous settlements of Greenland, speaking about mental health and suicide prevention. Surrounded by vast glaciers and ice sheets, a land at the very edge of the world, Nuka works with a troubled teen, a phlegmatic hunter and a single mother; each has demons they are trying to come to terms with, and a desire to break with cycles of intergenerational trauma.
HAIYU interweaves Mariem Hassan’s music and her personal quest for her country’s independence with larger historical events dating back to the region’s Spanish colonisation, and subsequent occupation by Morocco.
Filmmaker José Cardoso’s deeply personal Flowers is an exercise in sense-making, led by both his conscious and unconscious mind. Navigating the barrage of online news images produced each day, he transforms these into an unexpected web of connections that link an Amazonian community threatened with the destruction of their land to an extreme right-wing Brazilian President who justifies the exploitation of the Amazon by the rising price of resources precipitated by the war in Ukraine. Meanwhile, Buddhist monk Thích Nhất Hạnh teaches us to make our enemy the object of our compassion, and the filmmaker’s three-year-old son marvels at the frogs and flowers growing in the garden.
Embodies the ancestral resonances of his Wayuu lineage. It presents a narrative that brings together the threads of his grandfather's long journey – a tapestry of longing and memory, tracing José Agustín's forced separation from his immediate family in La Guajira and being plunged into the strict confines of a Catholic education.
Combining testimonials from characters who make the São Paulo funk scene happen with observational excerpts, director Kenya Zanatta addresses the multiplicities and contradictions of the movement. By tackling issues such as prejudice and the female presence, the film seeks to identify the social roots of a genre that was born and still finds its greatest creative power on the outskirts of large cities.
In May 1973, 10,000 artists, activists, hippies, radical students, gurus and visionaries descended on a small dairy town for 10 days of social and cultural exploration that changed a generation.