Alma Anciana (2023)

The story of Cuban refugees who risked their lives in homemade rafts to reach the United States, and what life is like for those who succeed.

When Ulrik is 33 years old, his mother suddenly passes away after a failed knee surgery and his world collapses. His father starts spending money he does not have, seeks out hookers and ends up hugely in debt and therefore loses Ulrik's childhood home. Ulrik desperately crosses the lines of decency and politeness as he tries to prevent his father from going on date sites and sending money to fictional women in need. How much can a son stand before he ends up as his own dad's dad? And - what is it Ulrik is so afraid of?

Prior to Fidel Castro's reign, Cuba was open to immigration. However, once Castro proclaimed himself dictator of Cuba, one of the largest exodus recorded began, one that continues today, 47 years after the Cuban Revolution. Six central characters of the film discuss in detail their personal experiences through Operation Pedro Pan, the Freedom Flights, El Mariel, the Rafter Crisis, and the Cuban Visa Lottery.

When Werner Herzog was still a child, his father was beaten to death before his eyes. His mother was overwhelmed with his upbringing and thereupon shipped him off to one of the toughest youth welfare institutions in Freistatt. This was followed by a career as a bouncer in the city's most notorious music club and an attempt to start a family. Today, the 77-year-old from Bielefeld lives with his dog Lucky in a lonely house in the country. Despite adverse living conditions, he has survived in his own unique and inimitable way.

A young director tries to understand his estranged relationship with his father

Herbert Fingarette once argued that there was no reason to fear death. At 97, his own mortality began to haunt him, and he had to rethink everything.

This is a detailed personal account of one of the worst incidents to take place during Israel's 2009 invasion of Gaza. Ten-year old Amal Samouni lost her father, brother and 48 members of her extended family. She spent three days trapped under the rubble and still suffers from fifteen pieces of shrapnel imbedded in her head. Her shocking story is brought vividly to the screen by director Anne Tsoulis who examines the events and the cost to those affected.

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.

The fate of thousands of people is unified under the tarpaulins of the refugee camps in Kobanê and in Shingal. Kurdish filmmaker Bahman Ghobadi has given eight children the opportunity to use a camera to tell their own stories. Each film gives us a glimpse into the plight of the children, as seen through their own eyes. Their stories tell of young people with their whole lives ahead of them, though they’ve already lost almost everything. At a certain point, the film crew leaves the camp and follows the 13-year-old Mahmod and his sister in the search for his parent‘s house in Kobanê. The town has been ravaged by the war and all the children find is rubble. The eight films reveal the courage and openness of the young filmmakers, who share their stories with great intensity, realism and poetry, despite their harsh fate.

In northern Morocco lies the Spanish enclave of Melilla: Europe on African Land. On the mountain above live over a thousand hopeful African migrants, watching the land border, a fence system separating Morocco and Spain. Abou from Mali is one of them – the protagonist in front of the camera, as well as the person behind it. For over a year, he has ceaselessly persisted in attempting to jump the fence.

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.

In the heart of the Boreal forest lives a family renowned as much for their gourmet forest pickings as for their life of self-sufficiency.

This short documentary is a tribute to the unknown father. Emerging filmmaker Danic Champoux poses the question "How many men still have to uproot themselves and leave their families to get work?" as he sets out to search for his own father. He wonders about these men who are labourers, itinerants, and mostly nameless, but who are all exemplary providers. But at what cost? This film was produced as part of the Libres Courts collection of first-time documentary shorts.

In this documentary shot at Canadian Forces Base Petawawa during a troop deployment to Afghanistan, children and teens talk about the particular circumstances of having soldiers as parents. Directed by Claire Corriveau, Children of Soldiers lifts the veil on a reality shared by thousands of young Canadians, and on the difficulty of finding a balance between loyalty to the troops and staying true to themselves.

«Grozny Blues» follows a few people around Grozny, the capital of war-torn Chechnya where daily life is defined by political repression, constricting customs, forced Islamification and the failure to come to terms with recent history. The film revolves around four women who have been fighting for human rights under worsening conditions for many years but get more and more disillusioned with the situation in Putin’s Russia. The building where they work is also home to a Blues Club that is frequented by a group of young people. Having only vague memories of the Chechen wars in the 90s, they try to make sense of the strange things that are happening in their country. In linking the personal and intimate to the political, Nicola Bellucci shows in a dramatic and yet very poetic way what it means to live in a divided society that navigates a no-man’s land between war and peace, repression and freedom, archaic traditions and modern life.

Hidden camera footage augments this perilous high-stakes journey as we embed with families attempting to escape oppression, ultimately revealing a world most of us have never seen.

A choir of tired nurses sing to Anna-Mari Kähärä’s hypnotic tunes about the truths of everyday nursing work in a musical documentary directed by Susanna Helke and co-scripted by Helke and Markku Heikkinen. DocPoint’s opening film is new in its format, and jolting in its message. It is a cinematic-musical work of activism, calling for more humane work, life and old age.

When filmmaker Mari Soppela took her children and husband to live for a year on a sacred mountain in her native Finland, she was fulfilling a lifelong dream to share the arctic wilderness of her childhood with her family. But when years later her children turn the camera onto her, she is forced to confront her motivation for filming their lives in this searching and searingly honest cinematic exploration of identity, belonging and motherhood. Filmed over the course of 27 years, Mother Land challenges us all to examine the landscapes we carry within us and the narratives we create to make sense of our lives.

Documentary on the Portugese Carnation Revolution and the following processes of self-organisation in military, factories, argicultural cooperatives and municipalities.