Tania learns that her grandmother spent the last years of her life in the loving company of an alien. Together with two friends, she travels through rural Argentina to bring the creature back to its place of origin.
Two young Portuguese women try to put down roots in Brazil. Teresa is newly arrived; Francisca has been there a while. This sure-footed, loving portrait of two counterparts, attracting and repelling, is also an ode to Belo Horizonte: a city with no tourist attractions, but bags of atmosphere and lust for life.
The young Jimena searches for her identity. The film follows the life of the young woman with her mother and grandmother, white middle-class women, and the exchange of letters with her father, a foreign and black man, whom the young woman resembles. Seeking to free herself from the feeling of inadequacy, Jimena rewrites her family relationships and creates other ways of experiencing love, friendship and work ties. Through her eyes, the film considers questions about class, family, tradition, race and gender.
“While we are here” mixes fiction, travelogue, film diary and documentary to tell the story Lamis, a Lebanese woman who just moved to New York and Wilson, a Brazilian man living illegally for 10 years in the same city. The film narrates the story of their relationship in a personal way by articulating macro-political issues with intimate ones.
Breath is a creative documentary about human existence and the mysteries of life and death, seen in the everyday life of a small village in the middle of nowhere, in the countryside of Brazil, where families have lived for years, almost completely isolated from contact with the outside world. Wind, dust, mountains, silence and time… Man and nature live together there in both harmony and conflict, amidst what is and what could be, in the vastness of a landscape grander than vision can grasp.
Like any industrious coastal town or city, Rio de Janeiro's port region has always been a hub for the confluence of cultures, nationalities and identities. Since 2013, it has also formed the basis of a research project for filmmaker Julia De Simone. Her third feature-length film – which was supported by IFFR’s Hubert Bals Fund in 2014 – shifts away from straightforward documentary and towards a more fictionalised form as it presents the story of Muanza, a woman born in the Kingdom of Kongo in the early nineteenth century and trafficked to Brazil, who awakens to find herself in the present, roaming the streets of Rio’s rapidly changing port region, known as ‘Pequena Africa’, or Little Africa.
Suçuarana is the name of a mythical place, a lush landscape that appears in the weathered photo of her mother that Dora carries with her always. Dora has been on the road for a long time, hitching rides through Brazil’s mining region in search of her family’s homeland. But no one seems to know this place, seemingly lost to time. And the open road can be troubling for a woman traveling alone, as the generosity of strangers is suddenly eclipsed by danger. After an accident, Dora seeks refuge in an abandoned factory; there, a group of workers have formed a village and a community bond that feels akin to the home Dora searches for, if just for a moment.
Mesmerized by the image of an active volcano on the other side of the world, a woman sets out to meet her fury. On the way, without being able to return, she finds herself in an extraordinary pregnancy, starting the account of the journey that gives shape to this play-film, a journey between theater and cinema inspired by the narratives of fantastic realism.
Documentary about dreams and desires of ordinary people, about fuels that move us daily: happiness, recognition, financial stability, marriage, health, fun, a few pounds less, enjoyment, overcoming or even a simple and humble kite.
It is the first time that Joana, a Brazilian, has visited her friend Kevin in her country, Uganda. They met 20 years ago when they studied together in Germany and have not seen each other for a long time. Now they are close to turning 40 and life is more complex than in youth. This is a film about a friendship between women.
A man caught in the verge of freedom. He penetrates a city where the boundaries between reality and dream disappear. He crosses the landscape without belonging to it anymore. A farewell before departing.
André is a broken man, who lives isolated in a forest. The forces of nature embrace his body as he drowns in his effervescent inner world. Between the insomnia and the dreams, André is haunted by his past. He wishes to deconstruct himself, heal his sorrow and take the responsibility from his acts. He puts himself before the abyss where he must embrace his ghosts and change his skin in order to survive.
Everywhere, at dusk, lights and advertising posters become the only living beings among the inert streets. Beings that never meet, strangers almost exactly the same.
Audiovisual letter.
Solon inhabits a dry, barren space. She begins her mission to nourish the Earth. The landscape and the character herself are changed. The world is born. The woman is born.
