Eat Bitter

A local construction worker and a Chinese engineer are assigned to build a bank in Bangui, the capital of the Central African Republic, one of the poorest countries in the world. But time is short and resources are scarce, and there are rumours in the countryside that a new civil war is brewing. And as if all this wasn’t bad enough, their relationships to their wives are falling apart. ‘Eat Bitter’ mirrors the existential and mundane problems of the two men, while an unlikely friendship and mutual trust blossoms between them. However, the chaotic microcosm of the construction site also mirrors China’s contradictory role in 21st century Africa, with the bank itself as the ultimate symbol of money, power and illusion. Director duo Pascale Appora-Gnekindy and Ningyi Sun themselves represent each of the two cultures, and their film has a unique eye for the human fallibility and irony of it all, but also for how we can reach each other despite all our many differences.

Mission Asset Fund - 2014 Community Leadership Awards

"Mission Asset Fund's work cuts to the core of the financial pain points families everywhere face." - Sam Ruiz

The Attendant

Frankie is a car park attendant at the spectacular Giant’s Causeway in Co. Antrim. His friend Cathy and her husband Paul are in trouble. Nevertheless as Frankie always says, "Something will turn up!"

Making Love in St. Pierre

A couple trying to rekindle their relationship travel to St. Pierre, a French island off the Newfoundland coast, and become entangled with another couple.

Little Wing

For 13-year-old Kaitlyn, her world threatens to collapse when she learns that her parents want to get a divorce, especially because it threatens the loss of the house they shared in Portland, which had always been Kaitlyn's home. The teenage girl has dark thoughts and lost interest in life. The breeding pigeons given to her by her mother's police colleague don't make things any better. What should she do with the birds? Then her best friend Adam gives her an idea: they could steal the very valuable racing pigeon named Granger from the local breeder Jaan Vari, sell it and use the proceeds to pay off the mortgage on her family's home. The plan initially works, but then everything seems to go wrong and Kaitlyn loses her footing even more. But surprisingly, the old man who was robbed takes care of the girl and a bond develops between the two, which ultimately leads her to a new outlook on life.

父母心

An opera troupe has to dissolve in view of the poor economy. Comedian star Sang Kwai-lei loses his job and he has no alternative but to play the lion character in the opera troupe of his former junior apprentice Chan Hau and pawn his stage costume. He aims at earning enough money to support the final year's secondary school studies of his elder son Chi-kuen. Kuen however refuses to continue his studies, seeing that his father has to put aside his dignity to earn money and his mother is worried. Lei is enraged and uses the money to support his younger son Chi-wai's studies. Again, Lei loses his job and he resorts to giving street performances, his wife takes up sowing work in her spare time and she dies after a long illness. Kuen works to support himself through school, but Wai is less fortunate, he is forced to enrol in an opera troupe as an apprentice. Years later, the dying father joyfully embraces Chi-kuen's return from his studies.

Remote Control

The two-channel piece Remote Control is an exercise in manipulation and control between artist and subject, male and female. On separate channels, the viewer sees Acconci and Kathy Dillon sitting alone in wooden boxes in different rooms, each facing a static camera. Although they can only see and hear each other on separate monitors, they attempt to interact and respond to one another directly, as if their communication were unmediated. Through language and gesture, Acconci tries to manipulate Dillon's actions from his box, as though by remote control.

West Virginia, Still Home

McDowell County, situated in the coalfields of West Virginia, has experienced a great boom-and-bust since 1950. But despite the economic decline and population loss, many still call it home and feel a great sense of purpose among the mountains. Residents speak about their connection to this place and the meaning of "home."

Aufsätze

A cheerful take on the lives of school children in a Swiss rural environment. Young pupils recite short essays they have written on subjects such as the long walk to school, the distribution of milk during breaks, and a brawl in the courtyard.

Tarrafal

One day almost everything turned into a pile of rubble and bush. There remained ghosts wandering through the fields, the ruins and the fog. Some of these ghosts are alive. They are those who stayed, those who came back, those who roam the difficult memories of the most cursed neighborhood of the city. Only that this Tarrafal, the name of the field of slow death of Salazar's dictatorship, is not in Cape Verde but in Portugal.

公园外出的漂亮今野杏南

Pride in Battle

A documentary which follows two lion brothers as they become rulers of a pride in Botswana after a battle for dominance.

کایه دو فیلم

Documentary about Film magazine. Film (Persian: فیلم) is an Iranian film review magazine published for more than 40 years (founded in 1982).

The Ghosts of the Great Salt Lake

Hop on a high-speed endurance adventure through one of the harshest environments on Earth. Glyn Maude follows a family of brown hyenas in Botswana's desolate saltpans of the Makgadikgadi.

Seb au Kirghizistan

A first-person documentary on an expedition to glaciers in Kyrgyzstan.

En tavs historie

A film director seeks out his childhood friend who molested him when they were both children. He hesitantly agrees to meet and together they return to the repressed past in a brave and deeply unusual tale that breaks a terrible taboo.

Baghdad on Fire

After a lifetime of conflict in Iraq, 20-year-old Tiba joins the October 2019 protests. She is amazed to see so many young men and women gathering from across the nation. Regardless of class and religion, the youth stand side by side in a fight to reclaim their country. Tiba forms new friendships, ideas and dreams. When the peaceful protests are met with violence, she becomes a medic tending to the wounded. But she could never have imagined the heartache one fatality brings.

Charging Back: A Rhino Story

This film uncovers the intriguing mystery of the return of the African rhino. In the 1800s there were more than 500,000 white and black rhinos in Africa. But by the 1990s, ivory poaching had left less than 7,000 animals alive. Remarkably, today their numbers have risen to 11,000. But there is now a new, deadly threat. Charging Back starts at the Pilansberg Game Reserve, where mysterious, unseen assailants were killing rhinos. Poachers could not be blamed, as the horns remained intact. Unexpectedly, the perpetrators prove to be relocated adolescent elephants, orphaned in culls. Lack of family structure has turned them into aggressive delinquents - a problem which conservation authorities now address by importing the steadying influence of older bulls. In astonishing scenes, the attackers are captured red-handed. Without the least provocation, elephants launch vicious assaults on unsuspecting rhinos.

Feast of Predators

Life is a challenge for a young seal in the untamed waters off the southern tip of Africa. Every day is a struggle for survival, whether he's avoiding aggressive seal bulls or escaping a great white shark. This is the story of a courageous little seal who braves the ocean and its perils, and leaves his colony, to follow one of the greatest migrations on Earth - the Sardine Run.

Greatest Shoal on Earth

The Sardine Run - One of the most spectacular marine wildlife events in the world. Millions of sardines swim along the South coast of Africa pursued by thousands of dolphins, countless sharks and gannets, all competing for nature's bounty. Meanwhile, every fisherman on the south coast of Africa also races to exploit the generosity of this vast ocean.