Heroic women
28 films
27
dir. Flóra Anna Buda
anim2023
Alice is 27 years old today. Even though she is suffocating a bit, she still lives with her parents and tends to live in her dreams to escape her dreary everyday life. After a psychedelic party on a factory roof, she has a serious drunken bike accident. Will this give her the courage to become an adult?
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Alice On & Off
dir. Isabela Tent
dok2024
For 10 years, the film author observed the life of the film character who as a teenager gave birth to a child from her relationship with a much older man. The film is a story of subsequent disappearances of Alice – a sensitive girl and an artist looking desperately for her own way and fleeing from her demons.
Read moreBetween Silence and Sin (Între Tăcere și Păcat)
dir. Diana Nicolae
dok2024
Can poetry pose a threat to a dictatorship? The poems written by Ana Blandiana outraged Nicolae Ceaușescu and his entourage, but they enchanted and touched her readers and literature afficionados, also from outside of communist Romania. The poetry of the legendary author crossed national boundaries, volumes of her poems were published in the West – yet despite many opportunities, she decided to stay in her country.
Read moreChords (Cuerdas)
dir. Estibaliz Urresola Solaguren
fab2022
Rita has an important meeting with her fellow singers: the women’s choir to which she belongs is in danger of disbanding because they have lost the municipal subsidy with which they used to rent their rehearsal space.
Read moreCodex
dir. Betina Bożek
anim2024
A woman who lives inside the glass Rubik’s Cube makes sure that everything is organised, clean and symmetrical there. One day, inadvertently, she hurts her foot and chaos starts to force its way into her orderly life. The struggle between what can be under control and what is untamed begins.
Read moreDiamond Beauty
dir. Anna Korom
fab2023
Maria is addicted to plastic surgeries. Successive augmentations do not satisfy her and she wants new ones. Her nose, lips or facial fillers are never perfect. Now, she is looking forward to the opportunity of a date with her former love. But where to find money if she is drowning in debt?
Read moreAwards:Silver Dragon
Do You Hear Me? (Słyszysz mnie?)
dir. Magdalena Sienicka
dok2024
Danusia lives alone. For years, each of her days has consisted of the same activities: cooking, looking at old photos and calling her grandson, who stays in a foster care facility.
Read moreEverything Needs to Live [PL audio description] (Wszystko ma żyć)
dir. Tetiana Dorodnitsyna, Andrii Lytvynenko
dok2024
Whoever saves one life, saves the entire world – that’s the motto of Anna, the strongest woman in the world, who loves animals. After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Anna joined by a group of volunteers are doing everything possible to save as many wounded and abandoned animals as they can in these difficult days.
Read moreFlowers of Ukraine (Kwiaty Ukrainy)
dir. Adelina Borets
dok2024
On a flowery plot of land, in the middle of a block of flates in Kiev lives 67-year-old Natalia, who has been fighting for years against investors who would like to build another property in place of her house. And just when it seems that fighting the developers is the worst thing that happens to her, Russia's attack on Ukraine begins.
Read moreFlying Hands
dir. Marta Gómez, Paula Iglesias
dok2023
In the Baltistan region, Aniqa Bano gives birth to a deaf girl, Narjis. She was, until then, unaware children with such disabilities were rejected by their families and not given an identity or a name.
Read moreGeographies of Solitude
dir. Jacquelyn Mills
dok2022
A portrayal of Zoe Lucas is devoted to the naturalist who spent over 40 years studying Canada’s Sable Island in the Atlantic. Analysing of the island’s population of wild horses, she created a chronicle of the cyclical interlacing of the animate with the inanimate. In this film overcoming the barrier of sight and hearing, the voice is given to nature.
Read moreHow to Skin a Cheetah (How To Skin A Cheetah)
dir. Meghan O'Shaughnessy
fab2023
A macabre, coming-of-age story and a thriller in one. Meghan O'Shaughnessy invites the viewers to a maze full of traps, where fantasies of revenge intertwine with illness, lies, solitude, hopelessness, violence and dreams of a journey-escape to Tanzania.
Read moreJoana Mallwitz - Momentum
dir. Günter Atteln
dok2024
The eponymous character, who conducts the best European orchestras, says that the most important thing is to have a good team – both in the family and at work. Joana Mallwitz is filmed over the breakthrough period of two years when her son is born and her career considerably speeds up.
Read moreLa Perra
Les Chenilles
dir. Michelle Keserwany, Noel Keserwany
fab2023
Asma and Sarah, two women originally from the Levant, find themselves working in the same restaurant in the city of Lyon in France. Both bear the weight of a home they were forced to leave behind. In the midst of forced migrations, can we move past our animosity to find solace in each other?
Read moreLimits of Europe (Hranice Evropy)
dir. Apolena Rychlíková
dok2024
A prominent Czech journalist leaves her family and joins “cheap labour force” in Western Europe. She experiences first-hand the struggles of Eastern European low-wage workers whose sacrifice and hard work allow for the Western society’s comfort.
Read moreMonogamia
dir. Ohad Milstein
dok2023
The director observes his senior parents whose relationship burned out a long time ago, for which his mother tries to compensate with shopaholism. The son initiates a psychodrama featuring his parents and at the same time tests his own marriage, which is falling into a routine. Is monogamy still the best form of a relationship?
Read moreNice Ladies
dir. Mariia Ponomarova
dok2024
A team of aging Ukrainian cheerleaders hold on to their friendship as each navigates the trauma of war in her own way.
Read moreRed Emma (Emma la rouge)
dir. Macha Ovtchinnikova
fab2023
This miniature, set in two time realities, presents a biography and philosophy of an activist Emma Goldman (1869-1940). ‘The right to vote, or equal civil rights, may be good demands’ says the protagonist, ‘but true emancipation begins in a woman's soul.’ Has this idea become outdated or perhaps it resonates nowadays stronger than ever?
Read moreSilent Trees (Drzewa milczą)
dir. Agnieszka Zwiefka
dok2024
Runa, a 16-year-old Kurdish girl, had escaped from Iraq to avoid the attacks of ISIS and, together with her family, became stuck on the Polish-Belorussian border. Eventually, she managed to reach Poland, where she needed to grow up at an accelerated speed. Thanks to her animated drawings, the audience can discover more about her.
Read moreAwards:Golden Hobby-Horse / Wyróżnienia
Submarine (Łódź podwodna)
dir. Oliwia Zakrzewska
dok2024
Oliwia is experiencing a maternity crisis. She is a young single mother who raises her two-year-old son. Struggling with depression, she tries to seek help in many different ways - at counselling centres, church or Tinder.
Read moreTeaches of Peaches
dir. Philipp Fussenegger, Judy Landkammer
dok2024
Peaches, who is a performer, provoker and a sassy lady, does not slow down in the sixth decade of her life. To the contrary, her tour celebrating the 20th anniversary of her album ‘Teaches of Peaches’ was an explosion of creativity. For the filmmakers, it was an opportunity to find out more about this rebellious artist, an icon of feminism and queer culture. Age rated: 18+
Read moreAwards:Golden Heynal
The Illustrated Woman (La mujer ilustrada)
dir. Isabel Herguera
anim2023
Ramia, Saadiya, Shubhashree and Samira are women with different experiences and dreams who meet at a henna tattoo workshop run by Isabel. Their stories in combination with the technique of collage and live henna tattoo design make a documentary animation which screams loud and clear for freedom and equality.
Read moreThe Mandala (Mandala)
dir. Mikołaj Janik
fab2023
In Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism, a mandala is a mystical symbol of the universe. A wheel joins harmoniously with a square. In the same way, the present and the past, reality and a dream, are enlaced in the world of Łucja, a single mother. Harmony is becoming replaced by everyday mundane rehabilitation and a nightmare as if from another dimension.
Read moreThe Shadow of Dawn (Eha Vari)
dir. Olga Stalev
anim2024
A young girl rejects the advances of a lumberjack she met in the forest. Soon, she encounters Beast with a crow’s head and Shadow sets off to fight for her life. This magic story about love, rejection and hurt feelings is a puppet animation with impressive stage design and costume details.
Read moreToo Close (Apropierea)
dir. Botond Püsök
dok2023
He did not drink, came from a respectable family and attended Mass every Sunday. Only Andrea and her daughter knew that he was a man with a friendly face which concealed dangerous tendencies. When he ended up in prison, the residents of a Transylvanian village, instead of taking the side of the pregnant woman and her child, refused to believe in his guilt.
Read moreWhen Harmattan Blows
dir. Edyta Wróblewska
dok2024
As an 8-year-old girl, Barbara shared the fate of thousands of Ghanaian children who were forced into slave labour by their own parents. After many years she comes back to her family home to ask questions that have bothered her for her entire life.
Read moreWomen Visiting a City (Las visitantes)
dir. Enrique Buleo
fab2022
Three retired women travel on a bus on their way to Europe. They have just become widows and it’s time to start living. All their lives, they have heard people talk about the wonders of tourism, and they are dying to experience it firsthand.
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