Conflicts - catndocs.com

5 BROKEN CAMERAS

Palestinian farm laborer Emad has five video cameras, and each of them tells a different part of the story of his village's resistance to Israeli oppression. Emad lives in Bil'in, just west of the city of Ramallah in the West Bank. Using the first camera, he recorded how the bulldozers came to rip the olive trees out of the ground in 2005. Here, a wall was built directly through his fellow villagers' land to separate the advancing Jewish settlements from the Palestinians.

A MOTHER BRINGS HER SON TO BE SHOT

by Sinead O'Shea
Blinder Films Limited, Spring Films
| 86’ | Ireland | 2017 | HD |
Filmed over five years, this unflinching documentary examines violence committed by groups opposed to the peace process in Northern Ireland, long after the Troubles came to an end. The title is no exaggeration.

A SYRIAN LOVE STORY

by Sean McAllister
| 80’ | UK | 2015 | |

Filmed over 5 years, A Syrian Love Story charts an incredible odyssey to political freedom in the West. For Raghda and Amer, it is a journey of hope, dreams and despair: for the revolution, their homeland and each other.

All-in

by Volkan Üce
Cassette for timescapes, Halal (NL), Little Big Story, Onomatopee Films (BE), Magellan Films (BE),
| 80’&52’ | Belgium, The Netherlands, France | 2020 | 4K |
Two innocent boys, a Turk and a Kurd, start working in a gigantic all-inclusive hotel at the Turkish Riviera. They observe the colourful bikini’s, the un-emptied plates, the different ways of addressing other people, and gradually discover new opportunities to move ahead in life.
ALL-IN explores the coming of age within the European dream, but that comes at a cost. Initial kindness turns into indifference and dishonesty... In ALL-IN, the hotel functions as a microcosm for a more universal story about the loss of innocence, when newcomers try to adapt to our capitalistic first world societies.

Aurora’s Sunrise

by Inna Sahakyan
Bars Media Documentary Film Studio, Gebrueder Beetz Filmproduktion, Artbox Laisvalaikio Klubas
| 96’ | Armenia, Germany, Lithuania | 2022 | |
Aurora was only fourteen years old when the Ottoman government forced her, her family, and over a million other Armenians onto forced death marches toward the Syrian desert. She saw her family murdered before her eyes, before being kidnapped and sold into sexual slavery.
But she did not give up. The brave teenager, using all the courage and cleverness she could muster escaped her captors, and embarked upon an odyssey that took her through the frontlines of WWI and revolutionary Russia until she reached the shores of America.
There, Aurora agreed to relive her nightmare, in front of an audience millions strong - starring in a Hollywood adaption of her own survival story, in order to raise funds that would go on to save the lives of tens of thousands of orphaned victims of the Armenian Genocide.
Utilizing a dynamic blend of different mediums, including archival interviews with Aurora herself, as well the restored surviving footage of Aurora’s silent-era blockbuster Aurora’s Sunrise brings Aurora’s incredible story to life for a new generation — the story of how one girl relived her life’s greatest pain to save her people.

Citizenfour

ACADEMY AWARD® WINNER - DOCUMENTARY FEATURE

by Laura Poitras
Praxis Films, Participant Media
| 114’ | USA/Germany | 2014 | HD |
CITIZENFOUR is a real life thriller of Laura Poitras and Glenn Greenwald’s encounters with Edward Snowden as he hands over classified documents providing evidence of mass indiscriminate and illegal invasions of privacy by the National Security Agency (NSA).

Hawar, Our Banished Children

by Pascale Bourgaux
IOTA Production, Louise Productions
| 73’ - 58’ | Belgium, Switzerland | 2023 | |
In 2014, the Islamic State took control of Northern Iraq. On the way to Mosul, the jihadist troops crossed the Sinjar, home to the Yazidi community. They separated families, killing the men and kidnapping the women and girls, with the intention of “offering” them to jihad fighters on the slave market.

HOUSTON WE HAVE A PROBLEM!

by Žiga Virc
Studio Virc - Nukleus Film - Sutor Kolonko | 88’ | Slovenia - Croatia - Germany | 2016 | HD
Cold War-era international intrigue, declassified top-secret documents, and a clandestine deal between John F. Kennedy and Yugoslavia’s president Josip Tito are just the tip of the iceberg in this absorbing docu-fiction.

Immortals

by Maja Tschumi
Filmgerberei GmbH, Rola Productions
| 94’ | Switzerland, Iraq | 2024 | 2K |
IMMORTALS is an insight into the hopes and broken dreams of a new generation that has known nothing but war since the US-led occupation.

IN BED WITH THE ARAB SPRING

by Paul Moreira
Premières Lignes
| 54’ | France | 2012 | HD
The Arab revolutions swept away the old regimes and were led by young modern people, invested with a global culture, internet, huge frustration, and a need for freedom and emancipation. Women played a major role in the revolutions. Some even became icons.

In God’s Hand (In der Hand Gottes)

by Peter Woditsch
Sophimages, Artisan Filme, Germany, Hamburg
| 67’ - 56’ | Belgium | 2014 | HD |
One day they followed their vocation. As priests, they preached love relentlessly, sacrificing body and soul. But slowly, doubts started to grow. In order to keep their faith alive, they decided to leave the church, without looking back. The story of three former priests, a Belgian, an Austrian and a German; Three intimate confessions confronted with the personal view of the film director.

My Stolen Planet

by Farahnaz Sharifi
JYOTI Film GmbH, Pak Film, Farzad Pak
| 82’ | Iran, Germany | 2024 | |
Farah, an Iranian woman is forced to migrate to her private planet to be free. She buys other people's memories in form of super 8mm films and records and archives her own, to create an alternative history of Iran.

Nice Ladies

by Marija Ponomarova
Labyrint Film, Tabor Production
| 90’&52’ | The Netherlands, Ukraine | 2024 | 2K |
A team of aging Ukrainian cheerleaders hold on to their friendship as each navigates the trauma of war in her own way.

Nowhere to Call Home: A Tibetan in Beijing

by Jocelyn Ford
Stories that Matter LTD
| 52’&76’ | China / USA | 2014 | HD & HDV |
A Tibetan farmer is torn between her traditional way of life and her desire for her son to have a better future in the city. Shot in the slums of Beijing and a remote village near the epicenter of Tibetan self-immolations, this epic family story puts a human face on the political strife that fractures China and Tibet.

- IDFA 2014 - VPRO Award for Best Feature-Length Documentary
- 2014 European Film Awards - Nominated in the European Documentary category

Of Men and War

by Laurent Bécue-Renard
Alice Films, Louise Productions
| 140' - 82' | France - Switzerland | 2014 | HD |
Years after coming home, a dozen veterans continue to wrestle demons from the war. Will their therapist help them find meaning in their trauma and leave the war behind?

Raise the Bar

by Gudjon Ragnarsson
Sagafilm, Pystymetsä
| 70’ | Iceland, Finland | 2020 | 2K |
High anxiety and a low self-esteem is a known and growing problem for young girls today. We get an insight into the mind of the girls and their path towards their teenage years. This is a story about growing up, were we explore the ideas the girls have about themselves and what is changing in their lives as they train basketball in a way we have hardly seen before. We look at them both as individuals, as girls in sports and as team players. The basketball is the red thread through the story, but adding the layers of the individual girls into the film to understand how they are taking the tools they are handed and using that in their everyday life. It therefore also deals with child participation in matters that are important to them.

- ONE WORLD 2016 - AUDIENCE AWARD
- SUNDANCE WORLD CINEMA DOCUMENTARY GRAND JURY PRIZE
- SUNDANCE WORLD CINEMA DOCUMENTARY AUDIENCE AWARD
- IDFA AUDIENCE AWARD
- IDFA 2015 DOC U AWARD FOR THE YOUTH JURY'S FAVOURITE FILM

Sonita

by Rokhsareh Ghaem Maghami
TAG/TRAUM Filmproduktion, Intermezzo Films Switzerland + Rokhsareh Ghaem Maghami Iran
| 91’ - 52’ | Germany, Switzerland, Iran | 2015 | HD |
Sonita's family moved to Iran when she was eight, fleeing the war in Afghanistan. Whithout a legal ID, Sonita couldn't go to school, an NGO taught her how to read and write. Listening to hip hop even though she didn't understand his lyrics, Sonita realized she could tell her own story— and started writing songs of her own. In Iran, it is illegal for a woman to sing without special permission from the government. But with the help of a few rebellious producers, she started recording.

The Empire of Silence

by Thierry Michel
Les Films de la Passerelle
| 110’ | Belgium | 2021 | |
For the past twenty-five years, the Democratic Republic of Congo has been torn apart by a war that has been largely ignored by the media and the international community. The number of victims is in the hundreds of thousands, if not millions. The perpetrators of these crimes are countless – more than numerous rebel movements, there were armies from Congo and neighbouring countries. All seem to be caught up in a dizzying array of massacres, for the sake of power and money by monopolizing Congo’s wealth with impunity and complete indifference.

The New Gospel

by Milo Rau
Fruitmarket Arts & Media GmbH, Langfilm / Bernard Lang AG
| 107' | Germany / Switzerland | 2020 | 4K |

An authentically political, theatrical and cinematic New Gospel for the 21st century. What would Jesus preach in the 21st century? Who would his disciples be?

The Oath

by Laura Poitras
Praxis Films
| 96’44” | USA | 2010 | HD 16:9 |
An extraordinary inside view of militant Islamism. A quietly disturbing, often complex portrait of an Al Qaeda insider and a Guantanamo Bay detainee, The Oath offers a chilling preview of emerging Middle East battleground Yemen and poignantly questions American policies over the past decade in the Middle East. The Oath tells the story of Abu Jandal, Osama bin Laden’s former bodyguard, and Salim Hamdan, a prisoner at Guantanamo Bay Prison and the first man to face the controversial military tribunals.

The Unforgiven

by Lars Feldballe-Petersen
Kinocompany Ltd., Film & TV Compagniet
| 75' | Finland, Denmark | 2017 | |

WAITING FOR GIRAFFES

by Marco de Stefanis
Volya Films - Cassette for timescapes | 84’ - 55’ | Netherlands - Belgium | 2016 | HD
Who is more restrained in Qalqilya, its citizens or the zoo animals? The village is for the most part surrounded by Israel’s wall. A lot of the zoo animals were killed during the intifadas, and most recently a giraffe couple.

WHEN THE WAR COMES

by Jan Gebert
PINK, HulaHop
| 78’ | Czech Republic | 2018 | |
Hundreds of teenagers join the Slovak Recruits paramilitary group to get ready for the final clash of civilizations and to fight whoever invades their country.