Europe, Europe

dir. Flóra Anna Buda

10′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?

dir. Manuel Muñoz Rivas

27′dok2023

On board a ferry, a series of passengers cross a river from one riverbank to the other. Some of the travelers wrap themselves observe the unfamiliar fellow travelers. Some others chat, perhaps to liven up the voyage and speed up time.

dir. Alexandru Solomon

95′dok2023

The photo shows a handsome young monk with a mesmerising gaze. Even the portrait alone catches one’s eye, and the legend of his death as a martyr makes Arsenie Boca difficult to forget. Over time, the monk, persecuted by communist authorities, has become a symbol of struggle against the cruel regime and the chief Romanian miracle-worker.

dir. Katarína Gramatová

20′dok2023

A poetic story about growing up. Adam is a 12-year-old boy who lives in a Slovak village. He is a local lumberjack and additionally takes up different odd jobs. In general, he likes to do everything. Although his life is not easy, he is able to notice beauty everywhere.

dir. Tomasz Wolski

85′dok2024

Martial law, which was imposed in Poland on 13 December 1981, targeted the Solidarity movement, but it had other faces, too. On the basis of exclusively archival footage, the film explores the backstage of the past events. It undermines the mythicised image of Polish society as a victim of the system.

dir. Markus Stein

90′dok2024

In the 1980s, West Berlin was the European LGBT+ capital. Jürgen Baldiga, a photographer, poet and activist, became its co-founder and chronicler. The archival materials he left behind were used to tell a neurotic story about himself and the community living in the shadow of AIDS. Age rated: 18+

dir. Corina Schwingruber Ilić

10′dok2023

Weekend trips, city breaks, a detour into nature or once around the world. Barely a few days off, you're already gone. Never before has the desire to travel been so widespread and visited places so overloaded. What do we get out of it, other than the picture proof that we have been there?

dir. Ragnhild Nøst Bergem

72′dok2023

Ola is a 30-year-old man who lives in a small village in Norway with a very diverse group of people. They try to live life at a slower pace in harmony with nature, and their community is founded on values such as empathy, respect, and mutual interdependence. "Being Ola" is a moving, heartwarming film that celebrates the significance of equality and belonging as a basis for daring to embrace the one you really are. It's a close and honest portrait that helps bridge the gap between 'us' and 'them'.

dir. Gianfranco Cabiddu, Michele Mellara, Alessandro Rossi

93′dok2023

Time in Jazz festival is inherently linked to the place where it has been organized since 1988, i.e. the town of Berchidda in Sardinia. In beautiful natural surroundings one may absorb a variety of music traditions and the film is a portrayal of this atmospheric event and the people who create it.

dir. Emanuel Pârvu

15′fab2023

Sixteen-year-old Adi is taken for a physical examination. He has obvious traces of beating, his face is lacerated and it is evident that he has been whipped. He does not say much. The police find out very soon that the motive behind the assault was his sexual orientation. In a small community, this is a reason to be ostracised, and for the family, especially his religious father, it is dishonour.

dir. Diana Nicolae

97′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.

dir. Jānis Ābele, Toms Šķēle

8′dok2024

In the world where printing machines keep spouting millions of pages of new books, there is a reality preceding this process. A contemporary author is struggling with writer’s block over a blank piece of paper.

dir. Greta Stocklassa

29′fab2023

What if Hrabal and Forman could sit at the same table to discuss a space mission? Czech humour accompanies the biggest challenge for earthlings represented by a group of scientists and a female citizen, who was entered in the competition by her children. Everything may happen during this discussion. We are aliens after all.

dir. Estibaliz Urresola Solaguren

30′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.

dir. Georges Salameh

14′anim2023

The story of an immersion into the experience of being uprooted. Fragments and words. The unspoken, the indescribable. Memory shaken. Eyes closed. The city is under siege. Drift towards the unknown. The dilemma: resistance or migration? Mediterranean voyages of no return.

dir. Christian Avilés

24′fab2022

Driven by their desire for light and warmth, British teenagers take a trip to the Balearic Islands. They must absorb the sun and store it in their bodies to take it back to their cloud-covered kingdom.

dir. Anna Korom

30′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?

dir. Matej Bobrik

84′dok2023

The story of a Nepalese family living in Poland who believe that a better future awaits them here. However, a change in living conditions puts their relationship to a severe test

dir. Emil Ahlhelm, Konradin Schuchter

29′dok2023

If you are a man, you have only two options during a war – stay and fight or leave to save your life. Not everyone wants to lay down their life for their homeland and this should be respected. A story of people who refused to participate in the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine on account of their beliefs.

dir. Jorge Cadena

16′fab2022

dir. Adelina Borets

70′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.

dir. Giovanni Merlini, Francesco Bovara

20′dok2023

Sambenedettese, a football club from a small town, is celebrating its centenary. In the 1970s, its team was a step away from promotion to Serie A. The story of the team is enlaced with a political narrative recounting the bloodiest and most brutal years from Italy’s history from a unique perspective.

dir. Susanna Flock, Robin Klengel, Leonhard Müllner, Michael Stumpf

21′dok2022

"Hardly Working" sheds a limelight on the very characters that normally remain in the background of video games: NPCs.

dir. Andrei Dăscălescu

85′dok2020

A child coming to the world provokes future parents to confront their own relatives. For neither of them is it easy as they come from broken homes. Paula has several cautious conversations online, but her partner Andrei, the director of the documentary, decides to set out on a journey to the monastery at the foot of Mount Athos. His father, who is a devout monk now, chose to live there many years ago.

dir. Meghan O'Shaughnessy

20′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.

dir. Justyna Gawełko, Tomer Slutzky

70′dok2024

A group of inhabitants of a small Czech town are rebuilding a destroyed synagogue, at the same time trying to give it a new lease of life. A contemporary story of the Jewish identity in one of the least religious countries of the world.

dir. Günter Atteln

88′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.

dir. Carla Melo Gampert

14′anim2023

Being a daughter, being a mother, becoming a woman.

dir. Michelle Keserwany, Noel Keserwany

30′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?

dir. Apolena Rychlíková

98′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.

dir. Peter Ghesquiere

12′fab2023

Divorce is not as complicated as adults claim. You just need to split everything in two equal parts and make sure that ex-partners live far away from each other. Then after six years of tearing your hair out, shedding tears and immersion in despair, you will be able to have a civil conversation.

dir. Jessica Poon

6′anim2024

The characters of this animation are little creatures looking like people without faces, clothes or emotions. On the one hand, they seem to be roaming without an aim, while on the other, they try to move ‘mountains’ with all their might. This surreal story is a metaphor of the lifestyle of modern nomads constantly chasing novelty and, at the same time, entangled in old habits.

dir. Mariia Ponomarova

92′dok2024

A team of aging Ukrainian cheerleaders hold on to their friendship as each navigates the trauma of war in her own way.

dir. Agathe Sénéchal, Alicia Massez, Elise Debruyne, Flavie Carin, Théo Duhautois

8′anim2023

Seven days were needed to create the world, but one day was enough to destroy everything. The authors of this animated film invite the viewers to a beautiful land, woven of colourful yarn, full of animals and plants. Imperceptibly, darkness and gloom creep into this ideal world, gradually engulfing the fauna and flora.

dir. Gintarė Valevičiūtė Brazauskienė, Antanas Skučas

13′anim2023

Winter, 1942. Beyond the Arctic Circle, on the uninhabited island of Trofimovsk in the Laptev Sea, deported peoples struggle to survive. In this harsh, alien landscape, man is a mere speck.

dir. Eirini Vianelli

11′anim2023

When distinguished representatives of the country look at you from paintings on the walls, you had better behave decently. Meanwhile, employees of the Greek parliament kill time with meaningless activities and behave like little children. Where are those who made great Greek history?

dir. Macha Ovtchinnikova

14′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?

dir. Gleb Osatinski

30′fab2023

17-year-old Yasha is rebelling against authority, but in 1990's Soviet Ukraine some of the opposing forces are more dangerous than others. When Yasha hits his breaking point, raw impulses propel him to the precipice of irreparable harm.

dir. Agnieszka Zwiefka

84′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.

dir. Johanna Bernhardson

84′dok2024

A renowned Swedish director, Roy Andersson, had three brothers, but their lives parted dramatically at a certain time. A daughter of one of them, standing behind the camera, in both an intimate and uncompromising way, x-rays the family story marked by addictions and conflicts.

dir. Jadwiga Kowalska

11′anim2023

Poland, 1981. A group of young people have a dream: to have a car, be free and go on a trip to the seaside. They are not really into politics, even though shelves in shops are empty and it is impossible to get a passport. An animated road movie, in a comic book style, documenting Poland during the communist era.

dir. Catalina Tesar, Dana Bunescu

84′dok2022

A Roma group in Transylvania has a tradition that resemble aristocratic families', of passing on a chalice. The unobtrusive artefact may end up only in the hands of the male offspring of the clan. Problems with getting pregnant or giving birth only to daughters may lead to family conflicts or even pose a threat of ending the relationship. In order to avoid the tragedy, young women decide to undergo a sex-selective abortion.

dir. Caroline von der Tann

73′dok2024

Ciretta lives in the streets of old Naples, primarily from theft and prostitution. He is also a street singer and a faithful adherent of the local Virgin Mary cult. In his company, we visit places where plebeian religiousness merges with cheerfulness and human solidarity.

dir. Álex Lora

20′fab2024

Leo and Diana, a rich couple, bring a broken TV to a recycle point. They meet Salif and his son, two scrap dealers. Diana asks them to come to their house to get more objects. Once there, Leo looks at them collecting objects with mistrust, until they see the scrap dealers have something they want.

dir. Emilia Ondriasova

19′fab2023

Martin has it all: his own art gallery, an intelligent wife, a nice apartment and an organised and settled life. This may be the core of the problem - his everyday life is overwhelmed by all-encompassing boredom or, simply, the mid-life crisis. He decides to face it in the most mature way: by running away.

dir. Zarja Menart

8′anim2024

A girl visits a bird-woman to ask her how to deal with the problems bothering her. The strange older lady sends her on a journey inside herself, in which she is accompanied by three birds. Walking through a dark forest and murky reeds, entering a mysterious lake, the character experiences pain, fright and fear.

dir. Botond Püsök

85′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.

dir. Nina Gantz

14′anim2023

Mary, Billybud and Fumbleton are three miniature, human actors who perform in an eighties kids TV series called “Wander to Wonder”. After the creator of the series has died, they are left alone in the studio. With their slowly decaying costumes and growing hunger, they continue to make increasingly strange episodes for their fans.

dir. Oleksiy Radynski

25′dok2024

In 2022, during Russia’s on-going invasion of Ukraine, unknown film footage was discovered in Kiev. It is a testimony to the erased history of numerous imperialistic wars waged by Russia against its later colonies.

dir. Enrique Buleo

15′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.