Catalogue

With a suitcase full of donated stainless-steel bone implants, Syrian-American surgeon Hisham Bismar arrives at a Turkish hospital on the Syrian border, ready for anything.

White skin, blonde hair, Barbie has travelled the world making her the most popular doll ever. In fact, she’s so popular that many children of colour prefer her appearance to their own using her as a measuring stick for their own self-image.

A Doll Like Me looks at the world of children who do not look like Barbie and yet Barbie features are what the world around them celebrates.

Australian photographer Robyn Beeche, renowned in London for her iconic 80s images, was celebrated for her ground-breaking photographs of painted bodies, and collaborations with counter-culture personalities Zandra Rhodes, Vivienne Westwood, Leigh Bowery and Divine.

The world of John Fante, his writing, his characters and his most famous novel, Ask the Dust.

Through the eyes and ears of  Nahel, Ferhad, Ahmed and Issa the war in Aleppo and its complexities unfold.

The Ben Youssef family of Morocco migrates every year from the desert-like landscape of Nkob to the green pastures of Igourdane. Each summer with their 800 goats, donkeys, mules, camels and dogs, they embark on a formidable journey on foot.

Nahid, single and unhappy with dating sites finally meets the man of her dreams. He’s handsome, fun loving, affectionate, perfect. But something isn’t right and Nahid turns sleuth.

“One can lie with words, but not with music.” Alena Cherny is a concert pianist through and through. Her playing reveals everything from sorrow and rage to enthusiasm and love.

Deep in the Himalaya, Mikma and her family travel every winter by foot from their Nepal village, Chyamtang,to sell locally collected medicinal plants in the urban markets. It is a journey that is a takes roughly two months.

A respected woman from Mali uses the song tradition of the griots to educate the population of a mining community on HIV/AIDS.

When a small village in rural Laos, reachable only by boat, becomes a backpacker destination the influx of tourists profoundly alters the village. The emerging market challenges the population and divides two childhood friends who compete for business.

A short drama about a man and a woman's unspoken relationship.

Zimbabwean journalist Gibson wants to know what the younger, Born Free, generation are hoping as their country’s first free election after the removal of Robert Mugabe takes place. Zimbabwe has suffered decades of high unemployment, political oppression, and a crippling cash crisis. For everyone the stakes are high.

 

Carving the Divine delves into the world of Busshi—a community of Japanese sculptors who create intricate wooden replicas of Buddhas and bodhisattvas.Theirs is a practice of sculpture that has been handed down master to student for almost 1,400 years.

17-year-old Stanzin is about to graduate from high school. She lives in Ladakh. Her school is in Leh which is 475 kilometers from her home village Zangla. When it snows, the road from her village to her school is completely closed off. During that time the only route between her village and school is along the frozen Chaddr river on foot.

Cinema Komunisto takes us on a journey through the rise and fall of a nation as told through the decaying remains of its film industry.

Filmed over several years, Daughters of the Curved Moon follows Nisha Budha who takes us on a journey to her mountain village in Jumla, a remote area of Western Nepal. A place where women’s lives and voices are still bound by ancient customs.

An intimate portrait of the nuns of Kala Rongo, a rare and exceptional Buddhist Monastery exclusively for women in remote northeastern Tibet.

Set high on the plateau of eastern Tibet, Drokpa portrays the lives and struggles of one tribe of Tibetan nomads whose life is on the cusp of irreversible change.

Elephant Path follows a group of reclusive forest elephants living in the rain forest of the Central African Republic. Protected by ecoguard Zephirin Mbele and under constant surveillance by biolgist Andrea Turkalo and Bayaka elder and tracker Sessely Bernard the impending civil war tests all of them.

Narmila is on the Iranian Women's national football team, they’re dedicated, they train, they love football, but they have one problem, they are not allowed to compete.

From the maker of the award-winning Prostitution Behind the Veil, Nahid Persson’s latest film is an intimate, often humorous, portrait of four wives, Farang, Goli, Shahpar and Ziba, their husband, an astoundingly free-spoken mother-in-law and their numerous children.

Rural Poland comes alive as very poor farmers struggle to adopt a new form of government welfare ­ a goat.

Heroines of the Pipes take us into the little known world of the tobacco pipe, those who make them and those who collect them. Seen as a gentleman’s hobby, the world’s leading pipe makers are two Danish women.

Sámi artist Britta Marakatt-Labba  has become one of Sweden’s most internationally recognized artists. Her medium is fabric her instruments are a needle and thread. Through these tools the the history, struggles and culture of the Sami people come to life. Today their struggle is their greatest yet.

Into the Shaolin is an immersive journey inside China’s legendary Shaolin Temple. Situated deep in the Songshan mountain range, the iconic temple is considered to be the birthplace of Shaolin Kungfu. Today the Temple is a UNESCO World Heritage site but it is more widely known for its martial arts tradition and Shaolin culture which has traveled the world in the famous Kung Fu movies and the touring performances made by the monks.

Perhaps one of the most underrated writers of her time, Jean Rhys, her character, her life and her work, unfold in this compassionate account of her career.

A trek with one of the many child porters of Nepal.

Lifeboat witnesses refugees so desperate they risk their lives in rubber boats to travel from Libyia to Italy in the middle of the night, despite the high probability of drowning

The ubiquitous Little Black Dress; its story is also a story of the evolution of the modern woman. From clothing the femme fatale of the 40s to the soft vulnerable coquette of Audrey Hepburn’s Holly Golightly this dress has morphed in step with the times.

Enter the extraordinary world of seven-year-old Marina. She is an imaginative, smart, beautiful child and her story leads us into the never-before-seen Muqqattam garbage-recycling village in Cairo.

In Morocco, Mahjouba Edbouche, 62, heads the home Oum Al Banin Association for unwed mothers.  The girls that flee to the  home are frightened, confused and often almost ready to deliver.

Having sex outside of marriage is an offence in Morocco that can lead to imprisonment. Mahjouba  is there to support them. She takes the girls and women under her wing, providing shelter, education, and legal assistance. The young women who arrive at the home, have fled their families out of shame and fear of rejection and their families often have no idea about the entire situation.

Set in the highlands of Peru, Mothers of the Land follows indigenous farmers whose ancient traditions of organic farming is in peril from climate and seasonal changes brought by global warming.

Award winning photo journalist, Kadir van Lohuizen wants to affect the news media by bringing attention to forgotten conflicts and the effects of humanitarian and environmental disasters.

Filmmaker Nahid Sarvestani was a young left-wing student when the Iranian revolution broke out in 1979. The winners are well-known and are in power to this day. The left-wing political movement that she was part of was among the losers. Many of her fellow students and comrades vanished into jail and never came out again, among them was her brother Rostam. Nahid managed to flee to Sweden.

In 1842 the 11 year-old heir to the Persian throne received a camera from Queen Victoria of England. In the following decades he documented his life, revealing to the public eye what it was never supposed to see.

Since the 1979 revolution, women in Iran have been banned from singing solo. So what happens when filmmaker Ayat Najafi’s sister decides to stage an all-female concert?

Reindeer herder Alexander has lived in the heart of the arctic taiga in Yakutia for many years. Hundreds of kilometers of forest, mountains and tundra are what he considers to be his house.

Sunny Bergman goes to American to find out why it is that at 34 she already feels over the Hill.

Former Swedish cover girl Agneta Eckemyr’s days of living the high-life are over. At one time, her life seemed like a dream come true for many young women. She was a sexy and beautiful model with a promising movie career, then turned clothes designer with a celebrity clientele, today at 62, she is alone and broke.

Mexico City’s Plaza Garibaldi is the epicenter of mariachi music. Though Mariachi is an essential part of Mexican culture, it is considered a man’s domain. Que Caramba es la Vida follows the women of mariachi, an underrepresented but bold presence on the Plaza Garibaldi

In the remote highlands of Albania, an 18-year-old girl is shot dead in a bitter family feud. While the Kanun—an age-old tribal code that was partly revived in this region after the fall of Communism—permits violent retribution, it also offers an alternative route. The bishop and the chair of the NGO Committee of Nationwide Reconciliation both urge the grieving father to take the second option.

Diana, Aivaras, their eight-year-old son Romanas and dog make up a family living in poverty on Lithuania’s  Klaipėda island. Their home is situated inside a squatted derelict building.  They sweep through the streets raiding dumpsters in search of discarded metal and scraps that they sell or use in their meager two room accommodations.

Devastated by drought, the pastoral Oulad Boukais of the Atlas Mountains set up a tiny school to prepare their children for a new future.

In the mountainous villages of the Black Sea lives Eve, a 75 year old corn cultivator. She and the neighboring women eek out an existence in this harsh and sun whipped land of dust, wind and snow.

Beyond the Arctic Circle in a valley of the Verkhoyansk Mountains, autumn is in full display.  Here far away from civilization, two people have been living for 30 years. He is Even, she is Russian.

 60 years after the sexual revolution Slut Phobia asks, are women really sexually free or are they still judged by the double standard?

Nasim Khaksar was a celebrated writer when, in 1983, he was forced to flee Iran. Today, for his new book, he decides to retrace the arduous route he took when he escaped.

Speed of Happiness let’s us discover the meaning of true happiness through 봇카  ‘botcah’  the traditional carriers who  bring luggage to the lodges in ‘Oze’, a vast marshland of Japan where nature’s untouched beauty lives and breathes.

Pashmina, the finest cashmere wool. Paradoxically, the finest of wools comes from the harshest of places. The Himalayan plateau of Ladakh’s cold, gritty, rocky conditions produces the fine warm undergrowth in Pashmina goats creating the luxurious wool Pashmina.

In Lakka, a small beach village in Sierra Leone whose international story has been dominated by a rebel war, a colorful mix of villagers tell their own stories of war, love, god, tradition and foreigners. Together they tell us the story about a worn torn community in a peaceful Sierra Leone.

Stuff Everywhere is a lively quest to find what connects people and stuff. Featuring Benjamin Barber, Giles Slade, Tim Jackson and Damaris Matthijsen.

Philosopher/Filmmaker Sunny Bergman travels to Uganda, China, India and Cuba to compare attitudes about sex, love, femininity and body image.

Since Tibet is not recognized as a sovereign state by the International Olympic committee, there can be no official Tibetan Olympic team. In an act of defiance and solidarity, a group of young Tibetan refugees decided to hold their own Olympic games held in the foothills of the Himalayas in India.

In almost every biography of painter Edvard Munch, it is his father's side of the family that gets the most prominence. And indeed, the Munch side of the family boasts a colourful gallery of priests, deans, painters and writers, distinguished and obscure.

 The 24 Hour Art Practice traces the journey of Dr. Oei (OHD), a whimsical Indonesian art collector who amassed one of the most significant collections of modern Indonesian art.

Firouzeh is one of the last remaining traditional herders of Mazandaran in the North of Iran. While living and foraging with her cows in a colorful mountainous landscape, Firouszeh’s life story unfolds.

2019 marks 25 years since the Rwandan genocide. Though images of death have dominated the news media, many Rwandans remember their loved ones through images of life: a passport or I.D. card, an unguarded snap taken in the garden or at wedding or baptism or other family gatherings.

The Guardians interweaves the lives of the iconic monarch butterfly with an insightful indigenous community in Mexico. Both depend on the same ancient forest for their survival and now face an uncertain future.

A treasury of anecdotes about the Hermitage from the people who have seen it through the storms of 20th century Russia.

On 3 October 2013, a boat carrying more than 500 migrants from Libya to Italy sank off the Italian island of Lampedusa. Most of the people on board were men, women and children from Eritrea, Somalia and Ghana. Adal Neguse living in Sweden who himself had made this trip across the Mediterranean fears his brother may be on that boat.

Thirty-two years ago, Nahid Persson Sarvestani took part in the revolution which brought down Iran’s monarchy driving the Shah and his queen, Farah Diba, into exile. Betrayed by the revolution, Nahid was also forced into exile.

Legendary Kurdish musician Ciwan Haco lives a double-life. An exile, eking out an existence in the small Swedish village of Gävle, he lives with his wife and children. In Gävle he is just another asylum seeker in the cold, snowy landscape. Not many people know that he is a superstar and folk hero among Kurds all over the world.

Filmed over three years during the most pivotal time in Nepal’s modern history, The Sari Soldiers tells the extraordinary story of six very different women’s bold efforts to shape Nepal’s future. Caught in the midst of an escalating civil war and the King’s crackdown on civil liberties each of these women struggle for a new Nepal.

At the outermost edge of Europe, 150 kilometers away from the nearest road lies the picturesque Sami village of Krasnoschchelye. It is the ancestral home of Alexandra Artieva and her family, traditional tundra reindeer herders. But they have a problem, their life sustaining tundra is also rich in minerals and other resources.

In 1965, Bruce Nakashima met a man who understood him better than anyone else on earth. Bruce was a Japanese American from California, and LV Hendking was an African American from Alabama,  they clicked immediately when they met in the army through their deployment to Vietnam where their friendship was put to the ultimate test.

Close to the India - Myanmar border is
 the village of Phek in Nagaland. A land that has been in a conflict with India over its independence for roughly 80 years. Around 5000 people live here, almost all of whom cultivate rice for their own consumption. 
As they work in cooperative groups —preparing the terraced fields, planting
 saplings, or harvesting the grain and carrying it up impossibly steep slopes —
the rice cultivators of Phek sing.