Every Tear

Alain Badiou, born in 1937 in Morocco, demonstrated his exceptional skills in many fields of science, but became famous as a philosopher. The directorial duo the Kaylan brothers made their first feature film about Badiou, in which the philosopher himself talks about his work and personal life and presents his thoughts.

Cinecittà, the “city of film” on the Tiber River, produced over 300 films for Mussolini and gave the people a galaxy of film stars. This documentary combines historical facts with fictional testimony by acting icons to conjure up an image of the Italian factory of dreams as a product of propaganda and capital, as well as reveals the relationship between fascism and Hollywood.

The faster pace of life in modern society has among other things led to an increase in the prevalence of panic attacks and anxiety disorders. A composition of details torn from context, accompanied by commentary from victims of panic attacks demonstrates the various ways in which they are manifested and draws unsettling conclusions.

The film Almost Nothing presents a behind-the-scenes look at CERN, the Center for Nuclear Research. Through interviews with theoretical physicists, technicians and other employees, the everyday operations of the organization and its cafeteria are revealed while discussing the most important questions about the universe that science is currently engaged in. 

In fictional sequences inserted into this documentary about economic, social and political perspectives on possible upcoming developments, the filmmakers portray a utopian future as a foreign territory. Six public figures from various cultural and social circles reflect on the future as a matter of time, people and the world.

Today, thousands of children are born thanks to the involvement of third parties in laboratories. This documentary analysis tracks the motivation of clients who use reproduction clinics, the ambitions of doctors, and the unsaturated market for assisted conception methods. One question remains hanging over the open topics: Where does the reproductive freedom of an individual end?

During Young’s interference experiment, electrons behave differently when they are being observed. Working with this axiom of quantum physics, the filmmaker set out to explore aspects of the human consciousness that cannot be described by science. Along the way, the question arose: Does water communicate when people don’t see it?

A mixture of documentary and live action film, The Bit Player is a multilayered portrait of Claude Shannon, the man who invented the word “bit” to describe a unit of information and whose scientific work laid the foundations for IT and artificial intelligence. Through interviews with members of the scientific community, archival footage, and reenactments, the film presents the life and professional story of this forgotten genius who, in addition to his groundbreaking discoveries, also produced numerous strange and useless inventions and enjoyed juggling and cheating at games of chance. The film shows Shannon’s theories and technical ideas using animations easily understood by everyone. "Claude Shannon should be a model for everyone in any creative field. He never lost his child-like curiosity. Sometimes it revolutionized the world; sometimes it made a flaming trumpet." M. Levinson

Every day, Vandana Verma travels across the face of Mars, taking pictures of its surface – all the while never leaving a NASA laboratory in Pasadena, California, from where she controls the Curiosity rover. This engrossing essayistic documentary joins her and other experts in space research in meditating over images of a planet located tens of millions of kilometers from Earth. Mars thus becomes the ideal place for studying our paradoxical relationship to photographs and for contemplating whether images from space (or also from various places on our planet) present us with reality or whether they actually create an alternate reality that we should approach far more cautiously. “Martian imagery reveal as much about our relationship to images as they tell us about Mars itself. This film aims to make the spectral quality of. an image materialize in front of us.” M. Långström

Dominique Batraville, a Haitian poet, journalist and actor, sits in his modest abode and reads. After a minute, he lies and continues in reading. This slowly narrated but impressive documentary presented his person to us by static, often detailed shots, combined with his own monologues and quotes from others.

Samuel L. Jackson narrates this audiovisual presentation of a never-finished manuscript by the eminent American writer and activist James Baldwin. This stirring history of the struggle of African-Americans against white supremacy is presented from the perspective of disbelieving amazement that such a thing could have ever happened and is actually still ongoing.

Camorra is an Italian criminal organization operating in Naples and all throughout Campania. Its rapid expansion from initial smuggling to powerful organized crime mobs that trade drugs, weapons, and people has also influenced how the entire city and region evolved. The film edit uses contemporary film footage, news television reports, police photographs and newspaper headlines to depict the lives of the people there, the practices of criminal mob bosses and the overall atmosphere of the city. In this way, it delivers an exceptional comprehensive film report on one of the most powerful mafia organizations.  “Camorra is set in a specific historical moment, late 60s – early 90s, to convey not only emotions and information in a non-didactic manner, but to use the past as a mirror of the present as well.” F. Patierno