Coma

Four young Americans who've each suffered a Traumatic Brain Injury emerge from their comas at a New Jersey medical facility. Their eyes may be open, but now the real challenge for each of the patients, their families, their doctors and their therapists begins. Brain healing isn't predictable, we're told, and certainly is not guaranteed. So with each 'major' step forward that is observed (opening one's eyes, bending a thumb upon command, vocalizing a word, answering a question correctly) comes a sense of jubilant relief and hope from the families of these patients, but as we soon see, the more a patient progresses, the more difficult things can be for all involved. Moments of faith & hope contrast with disappointments & frustrations, moments of confidence with moments of doubt. It's difficult to watch, and unimaginable to have to ever live through.

Der lange Weg ans Licht

État limite

Things are busy at the Paris hospital where young psychiatrist Jamal and his colleagues work. The place is run down, the staff are exhausted, budgets are constantly being slashed. You know the story, but you’ve rarely seen it conveyed as engagingly as in ‘On the Edge’, which employs a handheld camera and meaningful, artistic interventions to observe the daily routine at the psychiatric ward. The deeply sympathetic Jamal is an everyday hero with an exemplary, humanistic disposition, for whom the most important prerequisites for mental health – and for a healthy society in general – are good relationships with other people. He puts his philosophy into practice by listening patiently, giving good advice and organising theatre exercises based on Molière. Realism and idealism, however, are in balance for the young doctor, at least as long as the institutional framework holds up.

One Got Fat

This bicycle-safety film shows children what can happen when bicycles are driven carelessly and recklessly.

Lebensläufe - Die Geschichte der Kinder von Golzow in einzelnen Portraits

A sequence of nine individual biographical sketches with a prologue and epilogue on Golzow and the long-term observation. Deepening of the preceding chronicle. The Golzow people in the present, from which retrospective views of the previous life and the life conflicts of the individual are given.

Donauspital

The daily workins of Austria's Danube Hospital.

もう一つの教育〜伊那小学校春組の記録〜

An elementary school in Japan begins an experimental program that frames the students' curriculum around one single project: the raising of a calf from adolescence to adulthood. Through their work with the calf, the students learn about math, biology, nutrition and numerous other subjects. But after multiple years of investing energy and emotion into their beloved pet, the students begin to realize that the final days of their project may provide them with the hardest and most important lesson of all.

Le monde selon Tippi

Tippi is no ordinary child. She believes that she has the gift of talking to animals and that they are like brothers to her. 'I speak to them with my mind, or through my eyes, my heart or my soul, and I see that they understand and answer me.' Tippi is the daughter of French filmmakers and wildlife photographers, Alain Degre and Sylvie Robert, who have captured her on film with some of Africa's most beautiful and dangerous animals. Tippi shares her thoughts and wisdom on Africa, its people and the animals she has come to know and love. Often her wisdom is beyond her years, and her innocence and obvious rapport with the animals is both fascinating and charming.

Sing!

Sing! is a 2001 American short documentary film about the Los Angeles Children's Chorus, directed by Freida Lee Mock. How do squeaky-voiced 8 year olds become amazing singers? Sing! tells the story of how a community group, amid severe cutbacks in the arts, is able to develop a children's chorus that is one of the best in the country. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short.

Sicko

A documentary about the corrupt health care system in The United States who's main goal is to make profit even if it means losing people’s lives. "The more people you deny health insurance the more money we make" is the business model for health care providers in America.

Klassenleben

Preemie

Born 3 months premature and weighing only 1 pound 12 ounces, Mollie was given a 1 percent chance of survival. Through months of struggle, which included nearly one year in the neonatal unit of Grand Rapids, Michigan's Helen Devos Children's Hospital, Mollie proves that miracles happen. "Preemie" highlights the struggles, the pain of having a preemie, and the stories of how strong the smallest of babies are.

La Permanence

At the consulting service for immigrants at the Avicenne Hospital in suburban Paris, we observe the sorrow and powerlessness of the immigrants who come here.

The Family

Anne Hamilton-Byrne was beautiful, charismatic and delusional. She was also incredibly dangerous. Convinced she was the reincarnation of Jesus Christ, Hamilton-Byrne headed an apocalyptic sect called The Family, which was prominent in Melbourne from the 1960s through to the 1990s. With her husband Bill, she acquired numerous children – some through adoption scams, some born to cult members – and raised them as her own. Isolated from the outside world, the children were dressed in matching outfits, had identical dyed blonde hair, and were allegedly beaten, starved and injected with LSD. Taught that Hamilton-Byrne was both their mother and the messiah, the children were eventually rescued during a police raid in 1987, but their trauma had only just begun.

追臆のダンス

Kazuo Nishii, renowned editor and photography critic, died in 2001 of stomach cancer. Two months earlier he contacted Naomi Kawase, whose works he admired, to document the remaining weeks of his life. Kawase visits him in the hospital and films the progression of his sickness and the conversations between the two.

If We Knew

If We Knew is a documentary about paediatricians in an intensive-care unit for newborns. A film about the compassion needed to heal the sick and occasionally needed to hasten the death of a child.

Et dehors la vie continue

The small regional hospitals of Vevey, Montreux, Aigle and Monthey are closing in favor of the new, larger, more adapted and more modern hospital in Rennaz. As the construction of the new hospital progresses, emergency physicians Eric and Frédérique tell us about their daily life in the face of illness and death.

ילדים

The painful personal stories of five Palestinian kids, ages 7-17, open a window into the world of Palestinian minors under Israeli occupation - trapped within the violence, humiliation, and daily confrontations with soldiers and settlers - while remaining children in every way. Each child finds his or her own way to cope and to construct emotional and political worlds in an impossible situation.

Don't Get Angry

This short film offers a children's guide to anger management.

Albert Fish: In Sin He Found Salvation

Albert Fish, the horrific true story of elderly cannibal, sadomasochist, and serial killer, who lured children to their deaths in Depression-era New York City. Distorting biblical tales, Albert Fish takes the themes of pain, torture, atonement and suffering literally as he preys on victims to torture and sacrifice.