Memory Books - Damit du mich nie vergisst...

In Uganda, AIDS-infected mothers have begun writing what they call Memory Books for their children. Aware of the illness, it is a way for the family to come to terms with the inevitable death that it faces. Hopelessness and desperation are confronted through the collaborative effort of remembering and recording, a process that inspires unexpected strength and even solace in the face of death.

Raíces

Twenty-one-year-old Julia had to leave her daughters under the care of a children's shelter house. Five years later, Julia keeps fighting to rebuild her life and get reunited with her daughters.

AN 27

Geographies of Kinship

In this powerful tale about the rise of Korea’s global adoption program, four adult adoptees return to their country of birth and reconnect with their roots, mapping the geographies of kinship that bind them to a homeland they never knew.

The Last Days

Five Jewish Hungarians, now US citizens, tell their stories: before March 1944, when Nazis began to exterminate Hungarian Jews, months in concentration camps, and visiting childhood homes more than 50 years later. An historian, a Sonderkommando, a doctor who experimented on Auschwitz prisoners, and US soldiers who were part of the liberation in April 1945.

Missä tiet kohtaavat

What happens when a group of Finns travel to a tiny village in Benin to participate in a vaccination study? By participating, they can aid in the development of a diarrhea vaccine for children in developing countries – and, at the same time, have a different kind of vacation in West Africa. The complicated side of helping people and the clashes between two cultures rise to the forefront of Mia Halme’s delicious documentary film.

Анкета

A friendsbook was like Facebook during the Soviet times. Many had one. Russian kids called it a Form. Classmates were asked to write in it and say what they thought love is, what they wanted to be when they grow up, what their favourite food was. It was mostly girls who had friendsbooks, of course. Twenty-five years later, Alyona Surzhikova browses her 6th grade friendsbook and decides to go and find her then classmates to ask whether their dreams have come true. She travels to Russia and Germany and even Cambodia and puts together a thought-provoking aggregate portrait of the Russian generation that grew up during the restoration of Estonia’s independence. Many of them have left Estonia by now, with half of Surzhikova’s classmates living abroad. Why did they do that? What do they think about Estonia? And what would they write into the Form now?

Inn Pannon Mein

This short documentary sifts through the pages of a woman's diary who has recently begun to write her memoir. As she looks back at her life and some of her memories, the film explores the ordinary act of writing and the value and meaning it may hold in mundane everyday life.

Taiteilijaelämää

Milestone No. 2

A documentary showcasing a family as they pack up their home of twelve years and begin looking towards the future.

Waiting for the Sun

In China more people are on death row than the rest of the world combined. The children of the convicts are often left alone, stigmatized and living in the streets. Grandma Zhang, as the kids call her, is a former prison guard who has founded an orphanage in Nanzhao.

Sherwood Park

Reclaiming what was once stolen from him, a man journeys back to the place of his childhood nearly 80 years after his world came crashing down.

Every Day After

Growing up in Masbate Province in the Philippines, Jary is neglected and shunned since the moment of his birth for one reason-- his appearance. His older sister, Jessa protects Jary through his early years, then takes him in as a young teen, to raise him alongside her own two children in a fragile house on a hill. Jessa seeks out the medical care Jary has been denied since birth. And more, the support to begin his physical and emotional recovery. Every Day After is a 35-minute documentary film that provides a more nuanced look at the complexities of the healing process we don’t often see. And honors the invisible labor of a sister whose love and action make it possible for Jary to experience the everyday joys and struggles of growing up.

Forest Hymn for Little Girls

An eulogy to growing up in freedom with its ups and downs. The director, Sara Bonaventura gives us an insight in radical pedagogy and Emilia Reggio's experience based education, which she is a strong advocate for.

Mémoires vives

Living Memories is a documentary film that traces the history of the director’s neighborhood and native country, Haiti, through a personal and engaged perspective. Brick by brick, through encounters and wanderings throughout Port-au-Prince’s neighborhoods, archival photos, graffiti, and animations, the filmmaker introduces us to architect Léon Mathon and the residential architecture of the early 20th century. Over the ruins of her family home, Dominique, the director's mother, an architect like her father and grandfather before her, searches through her memories and significant places for traces of the past and the history of her country. Many of her landmarks are no longer there. From this tragedy arises a quest — a need to reconnect memory and history to understand the present better. The filmmaker follows her mother during her journey, capturing her reflections and conversations and documenting them to bring memories back to life.

Made With Love

A short film depicting the universality of life, growth, and how beautiful life is to simply exist. The film shows how beautiful it can be when we show tenderness & love for one another, through the narration & home movies of four sisters & their mother from when they were born up to the present. The film was made over 18 years on The Australian Coast.

À hauteur d'enfant

James May: My Sisters' Top Toys

James May celebrates the toys that made his childhood hell as he opens the lid on his sisters' toy box. Sandwiched between elder sister Jane and younger one Sarah, many of their favourites he couldn't understand - or stand the sight of - or see the point of.

Bright Horizon Children's Home - Nepal

Citizen Film and the Bright Horizons Children’s Home created a short film about the innovative school that gives Nepali orphans, semi-orphans and destitute children a roof over their head, three meals a day, full medical care, and a K-10 education that leads them out of poverty and into self-sufficiency.

Coffee Banana Cigarette

A short documentary about the life and love of New York surf culture following transplanted San Diego surfer, Shawlin Tucker, who forced found a way to bring his passion with him when a college acceptance from New York University summons him to the big apple.