Testimonies

“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.”

Over four decades, Franco’s regime in Spain left tens of thousands dead or disappeared. A sinister topography of terror lies in hundreds of mass graves, where the bodies of the disappeared ended up, stripped of their identities and individual fates. A colossal reminder of this troubled era is an ominous monument built from the remains of thousands of anonymous people, yet bearing only two names: Francisco Franco and José Antonio Primo de Rivera. Accompanied by archaeologists, the filmmakers visit the controversial Valley of the Fallen (Valle de los Caídos) memorial and use new forensic methods to try to recover at least a fraction of the stories and identities hidden in forests, fields and caves.“Enforced disappearance unfolds in three stages. First, the abduction. Then, the murder. But what truly defines the crime is the violence against evidence: all traces are erased, the bodies concealed, and witnesses silenced.”

Barbara Hammer (1939–2019), an icon of the lesbian art community in the US and the maker of nearly a hundred films, left an indelible mark on the lives of countless feminists and female artists. This empathetic and entertaining documentary exploration, which energetically blends personal archives with excerpts from the filmmaker’s own works, portrays the trials and maturation of this uncompromising filmmaker. As a woman, a feminist and an artist, she underwent a threefold emancipation from her role as a middle-class wife with a clearly mapped-out career and destiny in the 1970s. The director explores Barbara Hammer’s life alongside her life partner, Florrie R. Burke, drawing on Hammer’s distinctive commentary and artistic style. “Lesbian film is not going to follow a traditional story. It is going to mix up life, opening space to queerness, to see there is being, that is not following the rules.” 

The 1980s. The end of the Soviet era. In addition to Mikhail Gorbachev, the crumbling socialist monolith has another legend. His name is Anatoly Kashpirovsky. This surreal exploration of the life of a hypnotist, healer, magician and conjurer paints a portrait of a half-forgotten star of Eastern Bloc television. Operating on women without anaesthetics and persuading the Chechen leader Shamil Basayev to release 1,500 prisoners – these are just some of the stunts that captivated millions of citizens hungry for miracles amidst the wasteland of the impending collapse of perestroika and glasnost. In the new era of the internet, Kashpirovsky attempts an unexpected comeback. “Television medicine, this experiment was probably the first in the world. The Soviet audience was huge, 300 million people. And he became a meme, an icon, a god, a priest, because he promised people what they really needed: hope.” — Bohdan Shumylovych, historian

A knife. A deadly weapon. The victim and his assassin. 27 seconds. One situation, many perspectives. An ornate yet intimate account of the most serious attempt on the life of the provocative writer Salman Rushdie leads viewers into a seemingly tranquil debate in 2022. Through flashbacks, memories, traces and the victim’s artistic meditations on the attempted murder (on which Rushdie published a memoir in 2024), we explore the motivation, context and consequences of this horrific act. Rushdie’s wife, poet Rachel Eliza Griffiths, acts as guide and author, chronicling the weeks of convalescence and the painful return to the scene of the crime. She demonstrates that the only answer to hatred is boundless love.   “My body was dying, and it was taking me with it. Who or what did I think the ‘me’ was? The ‘self’ which was in the body, but was not the body. The ghost in the machine.” — Salman Rushdie, quote from the movie

The notion of protected natural areas as an untouchable open-air museum is increasingly clashing with the reality of climate change. According to experts, one of the paradoxical tools for landscape regeneration may be controlled burning and the temporary destruction associated with it. However, in Markéta Ekrt Válková’s documentary, scientific arguments and positive examples from abroad come up against the scepticism of domestic firefighters and politicians, as well as the deep-rooted fear and ignorance of the local population. This visually captivating film explores this controversial topic through the passionate expert commentary of ecologist Ondřej Sedláček and poetic wanderings through the Czech countryside accompanied by botanist Jiří Sádlo. “The aim of protecting forests in national parks is not simply to have a pretty forest.”

Chinese society, which is being driven toward ever-greater individualism and atomization, is an ideal testing ground for digital simulacra. This unsettling portrait of four women who entrust their lives to a virtual partner is a reflection of an exploding civilization of emptiness. AI companions never contradict; they are understanding, always know what to say, behave respectfully, and pay compliments. Human imperfection is the missing quality here – one that is not fulfilled even in endless conversations with chatbots or in a sterile date with a cosplay character symbolizing one’s (virtual) dream partner. The paradox of loneliness thus lies in escaping to one’s own family or attending a therapy group, which provides the missing human contact. “My home is full of all sorts of gadgets. I like technology. People ask how I can have a relationship with a game. Who gets to decide whether an intimate relationship has to be between two human beings? He is real to me. I enjoy his presence.” 

The Elbe. One of Europe’s greatest rivers, engineered and tamed by weirs, dams and embankments. A river serving as a source of water, a transport channel and a natural boundary between countries and regions. This hypnotic audiovisual essay immerses us in the history of river engineering and weir construction. Through wordless images, it presents an industrial symphony of hydraulic works and structures from the industrial age, alongside water as an untamed elemental force. The journey from the river’s source in the Krkonoše Mountains to its estuary on the North Sea traces a natural path through the water cycle while exploring the fascinating depths of human coexistence with a river that is absolutely crucial for life.“The River is a cinematic exploration that delves deep beneath the surface of visible reality and reveals traces of human activity. With The River, documentary filmmaker Timo Großpietsch brings his trilogy City, Landscape, River to a close.”Source of the quote.

Forests and fungi communicate just as people do. In this reflective documentary built around unfolding situations, the slopes above Val di Fiemme in the Italian Dolomites become the epicentre of a visionary experiment mapping communication between trees and other forest beings. Organic signals from trees, shrubs, animals and fungi offer the ecologists, foresters and scientists working there an opportunity both to study the behaviour of biological ecosystems and to save a damaged forest. After several years of devastation caused by nature (Storm Vaia) and human activity (bark beetle infestations resulting from drought), the film’s participants propose a systemic solution: we can save the trees and their unique ecosystem by understanding their language.“Nine years a meadow, nine years a forest, then comes the promised time, when what once was shall be again.”

French composer and musician Rone has gained considerable popularity with his ambient compositions and sets. His abrasive soundscapes and collages have also caught the attention of fishermen and travellers, who began noticing ecstatic responses from whales and dolphins. The vibrations and resonances of whale language became an immediate source of fascination and inspiration. Rone sets out to sea to capture the communicative codes of humpback whales first-hand and enter into a dialogue with them through his music. To emulate their language, he uses not only synthesisers, loopers and other electronic instruments, but also the angelic voices of Radio France’s girls’ choir. Can human music truly serve as a means of communicating with whales? “When whales are observing you from the sea, they understand that you’re the being, not the boat. I’ve always been fascinated by their methods of communication, the way they form families, communities.” — Valentin Paoli, Documentary Weekly

An intimate portrait of an eighteen-year-old girl with a concealed identity who has endured sexual violence and seeks a way forward with the help of therapists. Traumatised by rape, she finds support in sessions with experienced therapists. Gradually, she reclaims her life, gains confidence and prepares to confront reality. That confrontation takes the form of a trial, in which she must once again revisit the paralysing assault in depth. Both symbolically and literally, she regains her lost voice – one that may transform how she comes to terms with the past and change the lives of thousands of young girls who have endured similar experiences. “We both know what happened. But I want you to know what happened to me afterwards.”

Copenhagen’s Tingbjerg neighbourhood began as an ambitious social experiment. Urban planner and visionary Steen Eiler Rasmussen sought to realise a dream of bringing different social groups together in a welcoming setting of small apartment blocks surrounded by greenery. By the end of the twentieth century, the experiment had turned into a nightmare marked by outbreaks of ethnic violence, police repression and political demagoguery. In 2018, Copenhagen’s mayor launched a new experiment: moving selected families into new flats within the public housing estate, with the option to buy them at a favourable price. Four years later, the initial idealism has faded, and the young families take stock of what participating in the experiment has given them – and what it has cost them. Can a ghetto of privilege within another ghetto resolve such entrenched problems? “When you ask me, if Tingbjerg turned out how I envisioned it, I am compelled to answer yes. By and large, it looks like my vision on the surface. – But is there something under the surface that didn’t turn out that way? – Yes, very much so. The residents aren’t thriving as I had imagined.” — Steen Eiler Rasmussen

The Bunong people, who inhabit the Mondulkiri highlands in eastern Cambodia, belong to an animist culture rooted in a close relationship with nature. Sacrificial rituals honouring the rice gods have always protected them from crop failure and catastrophe. With the arrival of capitalism, climate change and multinational corporations, a communal understanding of the forest and its gifts is disappearing. Growing and gathering rice, mangoes, cassava, coffee and honey are giving way to the sale of timber and rubber. Financial pressures draw farmers into a spiral of debt, where rituals and crafts yield to the extractive logic of money. Stereoscopic images of traditional rituals, colonised landscapes and identities reveal the depths of the abyss facing the Bunong – a people with little hope of a future of their own. “We, the Bunong people, believe in dreams. They can be good or bad. The Bunong consider a good dream to be one in which they see themselves working in the fields, where they see clear water, or see themselves climbing rocks or flying. But when we see a naked person in a dream, trouble follows.”

“We must survive” is a recurring imperative of our time, amplified by post-information overload and ecological grief. Alongside preppers, ordinary people across our globalised world have begun preparing for harder times, overlapping crises and threats. A panoramic odyssey through different paths of adaptation, survival and mitigation across the planet takes us to remote corners of the world and into intimate, internally driven changes in behaviour and activity. This observational film offers a fascinating exploration of today’s challenges, showing that it is possible to live underground, build resilient homes on the coast, plant trees on a massive scale, actively combat smog and noise, or find innovative ways to catch fish. “Our film was six years in the making, and we shot it in many corners of the planet, across several continents. It explores not the science of climate change, but what climate change means for our everyday lives.” — Tomáš KrupaSource of the quote: IFF Artfilm Košice

Pigs have been humanity’s companions for millennia. The domestic pig has become livestock, food, a commodity for consumption. How has our relationship changed with creatures so close to us in evolutionary terms? This philosophical and anthropological exploration examines a new field of genetic engineering in practice: pigs have become growers of hearts for humans. How do we perceive a creature whose beating heart is destined for transplantation into a human body? Are the species drawing symbolically closer? The film opens up the prospect of ethical pig farming as the beginning of a new era of humanistic genetics. “Is your heart a defining part of who you are? Does it hold memories of first kisses, shattered dreams, summer days, and a life lived? Or is it just a muscle that pumps blood around your body?” Source of the quote.