society

Romanian senior Constantin Reliu has no documents, personal or pension rights. He worked in Turkey for 25 years. He was then deported from the country. On his return to his homeland, he finds that he was presumed dead. The system refuses to formally recognise that he is still alive but he still has the strength to fight the bureaucratic apparatus. With dry humour, documentary filmmaker Ilinca Calugareanu chronicles his lonely and harrowing quest to reclaim his lost identity. The story, reminiscent of the absurd starting point of Romanian New Wave films, is darker and more convoluted than it first appears, and the author becomes more and more involved in it. “A 63-year-old man declared dead in 2016 is invisible to the state.”

Life is like a pub, a grotesque microcosm in front of which a pram and a coffin are parked. The parade of human destinies in the expressive detail of eyes, faces and bodies, intimate hugs, fleeting kisses, toothless mouths and wrinkled faces shows that we are all on a journey.

Singer Eva Pilarová, lyricist Jan Schneider and composer Bohuslav Ondráček search for the right melody, word and tone in the magical space between silence and sound. The intimacy of their creative process is reminiscent of alchemy, where notes, lyrics and recording equipment give birth to a bitterly swinging love song, It Happens.

I'll throw you in a pit, cover you up with sand and you'll be gone, sighs the driver of a Tatra truck who has to drive eighteen times in one shift from the sandpit to the embankment in Veltrusy and back. Driving, dumping, loading and driving again; dust, heat and wind-battered, suntanned cheeks are the attributes of inadvertent heroism.

High in the mountains of the Pamirs lies Lake Bulunkul and the village of the same name, one of the coldest inhabited places in the former Soviet Union. Mountains, a plain, a herd of yaks. Time has seemingly stood still here. Survival in this inhospitable landscape indeed depends on sensitivity to weather fluctuations and changes in nature.

The static view of the sea bay and the urban skyline is the same every day during the coronavirus pandemic. Radio broadcasts, film clips and the sounds of washing dishes can be heard in the background. Meanwhile, the author's voice shares his intimate feelings and philosophical reflections on the changes that emerge in this apparent constancy. “This isn’t a weather diary. It is a climate diary. The changes are very subtle. You can barely feel them.”

A tribute to grandparents and an apartment on the top floor of a Bratislava apartment block overlooking the Danube and Austria takes the form of an intimate dialogue. Between generations, past and present, East and West. In the same space, through family experiences and traumas, the author's identity was also formed. “Pessimists look towards Petržalka, optimists towards Austria.”

I’d still paint even if I were blind, declares Czech painter Jan Zrzavý in a film dialogue with himself about aging and infinity. For him, time is magically internalized. Stopped in the middle of nowhere, it transforms into blurred structures and landscapes, hidden from the outside world.

The director returns to his native Lisbon to find that the city has changed almost beyond recognition in his absence. He tries to capture this process of change on camera and at least document the last remnants of the metropolis as he remembered it on film. The effects of the coronavirus pandemic, the development of the real estate market and mass tourism are taking their toll on the buildings in the historic centre, where everything old and nostalgic must make way for the new and shiny. This time-lapse film follows the construction of one such building over the course of a year, taking a critical look at the labour issues of wage labour in Portugal. “Working on the form of a film is an organic process to me, which is always born from the confrontation between an idea and the material I have in front of the camera.” — João Rosas Source: DocLisboa.org

Halina is one of the last singers of mourning songs from Podlasie in eastern Poland. Her son Andrzej works as a gravedigger. For many years, they have accompanied others on their final journey. Death, before which modern society closes its eyes, is for them a natural part of life in which they find security and peace. “When you’ve dealt with funerals for over ten years, then well, everything happens.”

Who were the unknown heroines who helped to promote women's rights in Europe at the beginning of the 20th century? The documentary by producer and director Silvia Venegas highlights the importance of past and present activism that continues to fill the streets of Spain today with people demonstrating and paying tribute to those whose rebellion advanced the status of women in society and opened up opportunities they could only dream of before. But their journey is far from over… “Who were those mothers who occupied the streets of Europe to fight for our rights (the most important one being the right to vote, which finally recognized us as true citizens)?” — Silvia Venegas

The enduring Czech people have survived many historic dates ending in eight, from the Přemyslids to the Soviets. In a filmed opinion poll, Miloš Kopecký has a Schweik-like conversation with a tailor's dummy and, with a head carved out of stone, he debates the significance of Alexander Dubček and the Prague Spring.

Can someone become a mother without giving birth to a child? Twenty-nine-year-old filmmaker Santwana, who is not yet ready to become a mother, and forty-five-year-old doula Kata, who, though childless herself, helps many couples bring their children into the world, are searching for the answer to this question together. This highly intimate documentary empathetically introduces us to the most beautiful and vulnerable moments of life surrounding childbirth.“You know Khalil Gibran? Do you remember what he says about children? Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself. They come through you but not from you, and though they are with you yet they belong not to you.” — Kata

This associative collage of images reflects on our inherent need to think of ourselves as autonomous individuals and to define ourselves in relation to external reality. Fragments from the educational films of the Łódź Film Studio are accompanied by an interview with British psychologist and therapist Halina Pytlasinska, who works with the concept of the collective unconscious. “The attitude of man is twofold, in accordance with the twofold nature of the primary words which he speaks.” — Martin Buber

Perpetrators of sexual assault tend to be portrayed as monsters. Signe Rosenlund-Hauglid, on the other hand, approaches them with empathy and an attempt to understand what led them to commit the crime. In her documentary, we follow a trio of men aged 20 to 27 who committed rape after a party. They face charges, trial, sentencing and eventual release. In the process, Morten, Benjamin and Kasper talk openly about their identity crisis, social stigma and suicidal thoughts. Faced with the director, herself a victim of an assault, they also realise how devastating an attack on someone's physical integrity can be. “Identifying yourself with the term 'rapist‘ is really quite impossible.” (from Not That Kind of Guy)

The protagonist of Virginia Woolf's Orlando was born a man. But, after thirty years of life, he wakes up as a woman and his previous perspective changes radically. Similarly, this personal film essay changes the perspective from which a middle-class story is usually presented. When you are neither rich nor poor, you struggle with the problem of identity all your life. All the more so if you are also a woman struggling for your rights, education and financial independence. Inspired by Daniela Dröscher's text, the film is not only about growing up in West Germany, but more generally about the difficulties of social mobility for those who are not heterosexual men. “It took a long time for me to realise that I'm from a lower-middle class family, from the petit bourgeois. For some time, I didn't know what to call my social position.”

Inspired by the stories of three protagonists involved in the misogynistic incel subculture, this short hybrid film presents the manifestations and sources of patriarchal extremism, which is increasingly escaping from virtual space into the real world. “The term [incel] has become so detached from the original meaning that it´s become useless.”

Google's data centres are renowned for their size and efficiency, but are also fraught with many questions. Adam Diller tried to penetrate the security fence and answer some of them. In his multimedia project, which in addition to this film includes a book and exhibition, he focused on a data centre in The Dalles, Oregon, built in 2006. Using both his own and archival footage, he uncovers the various layers of power, media and ecology to understand the history of the site and the material and discursive practices we come into contact with daily in our use of the internet. “The internet that this data center helps produce is changing our relationship with ourselves and everything around us.”

On 8 May 2019, the Yellow Vests rehabilitate Gustave Courbet’s tomb in Ornans. Not far away, Christian Corouge, a former member of the Medvedkine group, a militant film collective, makes the painter's work his own. But “we're not going to discuss painting, everyone takes what they want, I don't care!”

The parallels between the human body and architecture are highlighted in a film based on the personal experience of Louise Lemoine. As a child, she spent years in and out of hospitals caring for her severely disabled father. She confronts her traumatic memories with a cinematic exploration of the REHAB facility in Basel – a unique medical space adapted for special purposes. The artist duo arrives at the nature of its holistic character by way of a decomposition into sub-elements, including the body of the building, which is sensitively adapted to the mental state of the patients, as hospitals are not just factories designed to manage people. “So all the ways we occupy space and the way we adapt and subvert it are crucial to us, yet we are under the impression that we, as a society, think about it too little.” Source: ArchDaily

A Frankenstein-esque portrait of a scientist who develops materials for the construction of robots with sensitive and flexible parts while losing control of her own consciousness. As a result of stress overload, she is unable, at least temporarily, to do what her products can already do – rely on her memory. “I started directing films when I was in my 2nd year of college. I came into it spontaneously and I’ve learned to love the art so much that sometimes I even direct my dreams.” — Inshallah Montero Source: GMA News

How has the coronavirus epidemic transformed everyday life in Shanghai? The world seems to have gone black and white. New routines are replaced by often harrowing and bleak intertwining stories, public announcements or cries for help. The director observes these from the shelter of her home, but even this, as a result of isolation, no longer evokes a sense of safe haven. “Over the past two months, my camera witnessed my everyday routines locked in this place. This place seems exactly like my home, but something feels strange here.” — Clarissa Zhang

David Vostrovský is a professional reaper. With his sharpened scythe and years of experience, he participates in international grass cutting tournaments and teaches his craft to others. The film is a probe into this unusual hobby and an alternative lifestyle in the bosom of nature, which the reaper shares with his two adult children. “The relationship between humankind and nature is fading; it's becoming a cliché.” Source: Český rozhlas

An elderly Vietnamese couple has been running a fresh orange juice stand for many years. They live and work at the Sapa market in Prague. This observational documentary about work and homesickness offers a unique sketch of everyday life in a place that is often described as the heart of the Vietnamese community in the Czech Republic. “Sometimes you suddenly die because of irony.”

The documentary mosaic consists of four stories from Slovak Roma settlements. The protagonists do not fit into either the majority society or their own community. This is because of their sexual orientation, religious beliefs or physical disabilities. However, a factual observation of their struggle for a dignified life shows that they are not bitter. On the contrary, they find strength and hope within themselves day after day to overcome common obstacles and step outside the boxes in which they have been situated by other people and by their background. In doing so, they ask no more of others than what they themselves have no problem with – the ability to understand and accept their fellow human beings in their otherness. “The film is dedicated to all those who are not indifferent to anyone's fate, who are looking for a path to connection, not division, who think more about others than themselves, who give more than they take, who do not judge, but try to understand each other.” – Juraj Baláž Source: The Film New Europe (FNE) Association

Baby clothes on the line, a fictional mother and cots for sixty-five boys and girls stuck in time paint a sensitive portrait of the residents of a children’s home. The probe into a fragile world of those who are waiting accompanies Táborský's socially-themed feature films Escape in the Wind and Miraculous Puzzle.

We were the closest, now we will be strangers – Věra and Vladimír say goodbye to the lost years of their marriage, which culminated in a divorce. Women's shoes, a man's briefcase, photographs of their young son and details of personal fetishes are transformed into alienation by fragments of human faces, bodies and memories in the abyss of the courtroom.

Wenceslas Square is the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic in a nutshell, explains Karel Höger in his annotated mosaic of local phenomena, which includes “meetings by the horse”, teeming crowds of tourists from Czechoslovakia and abroad, shopping frenzy, and patriotic affection for Czech beer and glass.

The epidemic has divided many families in Romania. Despite various restrictions, one such family tries to stay in touch with both traditions and relatives abroad, even during a burial. In addition to modern technology, black humour helps its members to do this.