A sociologically focused documentary about life in the Na slatinách shantytown on the borders of Prague’s Michle, Záběhlice and Strašnice districts, built during the First Republic on meadows and marshes, which still exists today without running water or sewerage and is largely ignored by the authorities. The narrative is based on the testimonies of long-time residents, some of whom would prefer to move to more civilised surroundings, while others are content with the rural character of this remote location. The film is a second-year documentary project.

For three years, the director has been capturing the ever-changing face of Bogotá from the windows of her 19th-floor flat. The time-lapse footage alternates between day and night, depicting everything from minor street scenes to major events – fireworks, a fire, demonstrations and riots. Their political context is occasionally complemented by the sound of television news reports. Gradually, however, the filmmaker’s private life also becomes interwoven with her observations of the city: we hear conversations with her partner and read their messages to one another, ranging from everyday questions about what’s for dinner to tense moments in their relationship. Following the death of her life and film partner, the footage – originally a record of everyday life – takes on new meaning. While the image remains turned outwards, towards the city beyond the windows, the sound opens up the intimate space of a family whose members we never see directly. The bird’s-eye view maintains a distance from the events taking place far below the windows; at the same time, however, personal experience permeates the captured images. From fragments of the city, sounds, news reports and private conversations emerges a cinematic reflection on memory, mourning and the significance that ordinary moments acquire the instant they become memories.“It is a first-person account of a family looking outward while the story unfolding within gradually pulls them apart.” — Patricia Ayala RuizSource of the quote: Interview with the director. ALZATE VARGAS, César. Entrevista a Patricia Ayala Ruiz: Un diálogo que no termina. Canaguaro: Revista de cine colombiano.

If you want to see the war live, all you have to do is pay five shekels to look across the Israeli border at the devastated Gaza Strip. In Sderot, Jewish and Israeli society come together around a tourist telescope trained on the front line. An observational sociological study on the monetisation of war and the loss of compassion asks who these people are and how they feel.“Compassion, even when it feels almost impossible, may be the only place from which healing can begin.” This film was created independently through the voluntary collaboration of all creators. This is a fully independent film. No member of the creative or production team, and no member of the crew, received any payment for their work on the film. 

The fractured walls of unfinished houses in the filmmaker’s hometown become screens for images of family life crushed by punishing labour. The digitally resurrected voice of a “white glove” – an intermediary between Chinese authorities, banks and investors – recounts a life that came to a tragic end with the collapse of the property market. “My uncle was the ‘maverick’ of our family and at times a source of crises. His life was a wild obsession with land; his ambitions and solitude reflect a microcosm of China’s history, from land reform and urban demolition to the real estate debt crisis.” — Jingyuan Liang

“Mum’s back from the protests and she’s alive!” A young son greets his mother, who has become an activist in Afghanistan under the ruthless, reactionary rule of the Taliban. The shops, cafés and playgrounds she used to visit are closed. Universities are not operating, and social life for women is non-existent. Despite the ever-present risk and threat of death, Zainab joins other women in street protests to help topple the fundamentalist regime. 771 days under the Taliban rule begins and ends with a perilous escape with the most precious things the director and mother possesses – her son, a laptop, and a hard drive containing footage from this strictly guarded country. “The Taliban have spilled out onto the streets of our cities – Kabul, Herat, Mazar-i-Sharif, Farah. They have flooded our cities. They have flooded our streets, our homes, our dreams. The Taliban.”

Ahmed moved back to Egypt from Saudi Arabia in 2017. That was the last time he saw his classmate and best friend. This evocative account of loss uses videos and an inner monologue to look back in time and, through six symbolic gifts, explores why some friendships fall apart and where the line between care and dependence lies.“I don't claim to have told the complete truth… but I hope that everything I’ve said here is true.”

Adelina, a young Georgian trans woman, spent eleven years locked away in her family home, where her parents hid her for fear of the hatred of a conservative society. It was only her escape to Vienna that brought her the freedom she longed for and the chance to devote herself to her love of dance. However, the ties to the past are hard to sever. As she gets used to her new life in exile on the outskirts of a foreign city, her mother back in Georgia faces harassment. Through compelling imagery and sound design, director Rati Tsiteladze brings to life the protagonist’s relationship with her family and her own body. In doing so, he delves beneath the surface of the trauma she has endured and shows just how difficult it can be to find a true home. “Ever since I was a child, I’ve wanted to be a dancer.” 

This lyrical introspective work, which straddles the line between fiction and documentary, tells the story of a train travelling through time and across the landscape, from the present to the past, from the reality of a hospital ward to a merciful timelessness bathed in the raw colours of autumn. It is also the story of a woman who, in a silence underscored by a sense of impending tragedy, is fleeing somewhere from something, inwards and outwards, back and forth. “Although my films deal with serious subjects, I also want them to have light.” — Ema Hůlková, mujRozhlas

This portrait of Antonín Martin Brousil, one of the founders of FAMU and long-serving rector of AMU, was made to mark his fiftieth birthday. The film has a celebratory tone, emphasised by lofty commentary: it presents Brousil as a “journalist, scholar, teacher and mentor”, whose native South Bohemian region “filled the boy’s soul with a longing for beauty, which he constantly sought to share with others” and “from there he set out into the world to fight for Czech art”. His contributions to national cinema and its international representation are highlighted (with particular mention of the Venice and Karlovy Vary film festivals and his personal relationships with world-renowned filmmakers), as is his role in the development of FAMU. The film combines new footage with archive material. Of particular value is the opening sequence from Brousil’s birthplace in Dolní Ostrovec near Písek, where he arrives with his wife to visit his parents, and footage from FAMU, which captures AMB’s seminar discussions with students and the celebrations marking the school’s tenth anniversary.

Miroslav Dohnal comments on his attempt to interview writer Bohumil Hrabal at his flat at 24 Na hrázi Street in Libeň. He states that the filmmakers wanted to find out about his favourite foods, women and writing. Instead, Hrabal talks about his neutered tomcat and his friends from the 1950s, when V. Boudník, E. Bondy, M. Medek and the graphic artist Jaroslav Dočekal used to gather at his place. Hrabal steers the conversation towards Egon Bondy, shows his samizdat publication Půlnoc (Midnight) and reads Bondy’s poem 23 October 1850, which reflects on the executions of victims of communist show trials. He also shows his unpublished poems, his outhouse in the courtyard and a collection of signs, commenting on the finds as he goes along. Finally, he returns to the story of how he acquired the tomcat in exchange for 15kg of pears. Dohnal once again points out the shortage of film stock; the camera pans across the rooftops and, as Bondy said: “Everything has its end, even the solar system.” The documentary was made at the height of Hrabal’s literary and cinematic fame and boldly treads the line of what is possible. As Dohnal says at the end: “We didn’t find out what we wanted to know, but, but…” The film is a television exercise by second-year students of the Department of Film Directing.

Vegetation and minerals send the gaze branching into structures where the forest meets its digital and cinematic reflections. A plunge into detail explores both nature and the possibilities of its representation: each closer view opens up another space. An ardent declaration of love for matter that transcends its depictions and returns knowledge to wonder. “‘If something interesting is happening, I possibly decide to shoot in the opposite direction’ [say Seppo Renvall], and often he finds something more subtle, more telling than the spectacle ahead. His sympathy goes to the little things in life, or maybe I should say: empathy.” — Klaus W. Eisenlohr Source: Directors Lounge: Seppo Renvall — Times, Songs and Material.

Five actors search for a playwright in an ironic, essayistic exploration of the influence of the wealthy West on the African continent. The film introduces us to a situation in which the five actors gather in the garden of a colonial villa to rehearse a play set in an alternative reality, in which all international organisations and non-profit initiatives have abandoned East Africa. However, the play’s director has not turned up. The actors’ wanderings, interspersed with shots of deserted exteriors, are accompanied by a narrative voice-over which introduces us to a series of absurd twists and turns concerning the theatre project, but above all the current situation in Africa itself. “A young man named Mahoro, which means ‘peace’. He is only a fiction, an invention of the director, and should not possess will nor power of his own. But this man of peace has driven the director to the brink of madness.“