Praise of the Distance

Province of Lugo, Galicia, Spain. A year in the life of A Fonsagrada, a rural region whose inhabitants live both near and far from urban civilization; a praise of the distance that crosses the four seasons of the year, whose inevitable passage transforms both the natural environment and the existence of people, a simple, dignified and peaceful existence.

2008-10-11 | gl

SPERMWORLD

Three men enter the new wild west of baby making, online forums where sperm donors connect with hopeful parents, but find themselves exchanging more than just genetic material.

2024-02-29 | en

La ruta de don Quijote

A poetic journey through the paths and places of old Castile that were traveled and visited by the melancholic knight Don Quixote of La Mancha and his judicious squire Sancho Panza, the immortal characters of Miguel de Cervantes, which offers a candid depiction of rural life in Spain in the early 1930s and illustrates the first sentence of the first article of the Spanish Constitution of 1931, which proclaims that Spain is a democratic republic of workers of all kind.

1934-01-01 | es

La Maison Neuve

2005-05-06 | fr

The Unpredictable Factor

In today's climate debate, there is only one factor that cannot be calculated in climate models - humans. How can we nevertheless understand our role in the climate system and manage the crisis? Climate change is a complex global problem. Increasingly extreme weather events, rising sea levels, and more difficult living conditions - including for us humans - are already the order of the day. Global society has never faced such a complex challenge. For young people in particular, the frightening climate scenarios will be a reality in the future. For the global south, it is already today. To overcome this crisis, different perspectives are needed. "THE UNPREDICTABLE FACTOR" goes back to the origins of the German environmental movement, accompanies today's activists in the Rhineland in their fight against the coal industry and gives a voice to scientists from climate research, ethnology and psychology.

2022-11-03 | de

Freediver

After geopolitics forced him into exile, Alexey Molchanov spent 2023 on a journey to reclaim his athletic glory and honor his iconic mother’s towering legacy by attempting the most dominant season in the history of the deadly sport of freediving.

2024-12-06 | en

Miyama, Kyōto Prefecture

The follow-up film to “Barstow, California” takes us to the mountains of Miyama, a remote forest and tourist area north of Kyoto. Uwe Walter, a shakuhachi player from Germany, lives there with his wife Mitsuyo for 30 years. Together with the villagers he prepares the annual Gion Festival. On the eve of the festival, the village representatives tell him that his self-built studio is to be demolished. This brings back memories for him of earlier times and his first steps as a Nō actor. In the manner of a fresco, the film interweaves rural depictions of everyday life with the story of its German protagonist. In the village community with its togetherness of generations, Uwe shares life with his neighbours, with farmers, hunters, woodsmen, poultry farmers and anglers, tills his kitchen garden, and like other tradition-conscious villagers, he also grows his rice. The film shows them in a harsh mountain landscape between the rainy season and the first snow.

2023-05-11 | de

Constable: A Country Rebel

The Haywain by John Constable is such a comfortingly familiar image of rural Britain that it is difficult to believe it was ever regarded as a revolutionary painting, but in this film, made in conjunction with a landmark exhibition at the V&A, Alastair Sooke discovers that Constable was painting in a way that was completely new and groundbreaking at the time. Through experimentation and innovation, he managed to make a sublime art from humble things and, though he struggled in his own country during his lifetime, his genius was surprisingly widely admired in France.

2014-09-07 | en

Life in Hunza

Rural life in the mountainous valley near Gilgit - now in the Northern areas of Pakistan.

1937-09-01 | en

A Kingdom of Tea & Strangers

At L'Abri, a short-term "hospitality community" in the English countryside, five strangers spend a summer together exploring their big questions about faith, being human, and finding belonging back home.

2024-08-29 | en

The Gleaners and I

Varda focuses her eye on gleaners: those who scour already-reaped fields for the odd potato or turnip. Her investigation leads from forgotten corners of the French countryside to off-hours at the green markets of Paris, following those who insist on finding a use for that which society has cast off, whether out of necessity or activism.

2000-07-07 | fr

Procession at Gangtok

Traditional games, dancing and music among the people of Sikkim - in vivid colour.

1940-04-02 | en

Afric Hotel

In the furnace of Algiers, the camera follows and accompanies Ibrahim, Adam, and Ismael, originally from sub-Saharan Africa, in an irregular situation who live in this hotel with the predestined name. They live from odd jobs. One is an elevator operator in a building, the second is a shoemaker and the third works in the construction sector. The other side of immigration from sub-Saharan Africa. Behind the statistics hide people, bodies waiting to be able to start another life elsewhere. A hotel thus becomes a transit point in which stories and hopes mingle, a place which seems suspended in time and space. A static journey waiting for another to begin.

2011-01-12 | fr

Rioja: The Land of a Thousand Wines

By telling the human stories behind the entire value chain that gives life to the Spanish wine with the greatest international projection, ‘Rioja, Land of the Thousand Wines’ portrays a currently blooming wine region underpinned by the talent and the work of the new generations of winemakers that operate side by side with the region’s historic wineries. The film puts the focus on the match between territory and product, wisdom and tradition, and lays a bridge between the origins and the future of Rioja. An immersion into a fascinating world that, through captivating cinematography and careful editing, attempts to find the keys to understanding what Rioja wine is and what makes it so special.

2023-11-10 | es

Arcadia

A provocative and poetic exploration of how the British people have seen their own land through more than a century of cinema. A hallucinated journey of immense beauty and brutality. A kaleidoscopic essay on how magic and madness have linked human beings to nature since the beginning of time.

2017-10-08 | en

Cyrille

Cyrille, a young gay farmer from Auvergne, has only one friend, a homosexual like him. One day, he goes on vacation to a beach in Charente Maritime. He cannot swim and sees the sea for the first time. It was there that he met the director Rodolphe Marconi who decided to devote this sensitive and gentle portrait to him, plunging us into an agricultural world in crisis and into a life often lonely and made up of hard work rarely pays off.

2020-02-26 | fr

Here We Come A-Wassailing

A documentary on the surviving syncretic pagan midwinter customs of the British Isles, focusing on nine ritual celebrations ranging from the Moray Firth in the north, the Somerset Levels in the south, Humberside in the east, and County Kerry in the west. Featuring music by the Albion Band and narration by John Tams.

1977-12-22 | en

Nomad Meets the City

Currently Mongolia’s capital has 1.5 million inhabitants - half the population of the country. 50-year Tumurbaatar is only one of many coming to the city to fulfil their dreams of a better life.

2020-03-07 | en

Through the Garden Gate

After a career filming across five continents, EMMY and BAFTA winning wildlife cameraman Stephen de Vere returns to the English countryside, to explore the hidden world beyond the garden gate. From playful fox cubs to the barn owl tending to her chicks, explore the extraordinary world waiting beyond the garden gate. The film is a personal view, giving an insight into what it’s like being a wildlife cameraman and reminding us that you don’t have to travel to all corners of the world to get close to nature.

2010-05-01 | en

A Life on the Farm

A strange story from Somerset, England about a filmmaking farmer and the inspiring legacy of his long-lost home movies.

2023-05-25 | en