Soft and Hard

This movie takes us in the daily battle of 12 cartoonists around the world : France, Mexico, Israël, China, Russia, Ivory Coast...

In 1947, two years after the end of the Second World War, Film Journal No. 1 was released in Sarajevo. Fifty years later, after the collapse of the Communist bloc, this newsreel was lost in the confusion of the fighting in Yugoslavia. In Journal No. 1 Hito Steyerl attempts to find out how the footage got lost and what was on this document from the Sutjeska studio. In the simultaneous projection of Journal No. 1 the ‘unattainability of an historical zero hour of the national identity’ takes concrete form: The lost newsreel reports on a literacy campaign as well as Muslim women confidently removing their headscarves. We listen however to eyewitnesses trying to recapture the lost content and we see the artist Arman Kulasic making a number of drawings that resemble the story-boards for the lost film. What appears to be moments of great change remain limited by subjective and uncertain memory. The film was premiered at documenta 12.

Helen Hill remembers her grandfather just before his death (in part) by a metaphor involving him as a rapidly diminishing mouse.

Madame Winger wants you to make a film about something you love. She shows you her favorite low budget filmmaking techniques, from cameraless animation to processing your own film in a bathtub. Filmed in 16 mm.

Denim' is a poetic short film by writer, poet and performer Siana Bangura, exploring gentrification and social cleansing in South East London. Through a personal trip down memory lane, visiting the places that moulded her, we learn what happens when the city changes and leaves those who built it behind. Travelling through Bermondsey, Rotherhithe, Elephant & Castle, Walworth Road, Peckham, Brixton and of course Shoreditch, 'Denim' is both a personal tale and a wider social commentary.

A pioneering film from Tunisia, Fatma 75 is the first non-fiction film by a Tunisian woman, a feminist essay film, and the first in a series of powerful films about strong female figures in the country. The film was made in the UN International Women's Year 1975, and has long been recognised as one of the most important films from North Africa, but has never officially been seen before due to censorship.

Materia oscura tells the story of a war zone in peacetime. The film location is the Salto di Quirra test range (Sardinia, Italy) where, for over fifty years, governments around the world have tested 'new weapons' and where the Italian government has carried out controlled explosions of old weapon stocks, inexorably endangering the territory.

A man visits the world's smallest fair, where he learns a valuable lesson about life and poison cotton candy.

An experimental documentary about the intertwining of bodies and lives in a cattle ranch in Les Avins, Belgium, with cattle of the breed Blanc Bleu Belge, known for its fascinating musculature.

A woman mysteriously wakes up in a hotel handcuffed to a firefighter to find messages they left themselves the night before revealing that their lives are in danger.

A gifted singer, struggling with addiction on the streets of Skid Row, sets out on a journey to transform his life.

A poison attack on the Oktoberfest? The Munich police listen in disbelief to the account given by the Parisian lawyer Da Costa: An unknown person has informed him by phone that there will be several hundred deaths at the festival. The only one who takes Da Costa’s warnings seriously is the young detective Robert Stern. Eventually, a blackmail letter arrives: five million euros, or the guests at the Munich Oktoberfest will die from poisoned beer.

Twenty-five films from twenty-five European countries by twenty-five European directors.

Chlodwig Pullmann is a tax inspector and is involved in a thousand little deals and tricks - with the knowledge of Mayor Karsten Leimer, who has a lot more dirt on him. Pullmann's wife Jenny, on the other hand, fights against corruption in a citizens' initiative and is of course not allowed to know anything about her husband's deviations. When Pullmann gets a new superior who keeps a close eye on him, things get tight - and in order not to jeopardize his marriage, he decides to go straight. The only question is whether he will succeed.

Feature-length documentary about the greatest diver of all time. Four-time Olympic champion Greg Louganis has faced more than his share of challenges. In 2011, he is far from the public eye and struggling to pay his mortgage. Now, the openly gay, HIV+ world-class athlete returns to diving to mentor the USA Olympic hopefuls. This may be his best chance to regain the notoriety -- and financial stability -- he enjoyed at the height of his career.

The space of the junkyard allows various ‘crash’ narratives to unfold, with the stories of actual crashes and the remnants and afterlife of these machines becoming metaphors for economic decline. This is an investigation of planes as they are parked during the economic downturn, stored and recycled, revealing unexpected connections between economy, violence and spectacle, finding perfect example in the form of the Boeing 4X-JYI, an aircraft first acquired by film director Howard Hughes for TWA, which was subsequently flown by the Israeli Airforce before finding its way to the Californian desert to be blown up for the Hollywood blockbuster Speed. Through intertwined narratives of people, planes and places Steyerl reveals cycles of capitalism incorporating and adapting to the changing status of the commodity, but also points at a horizon beyond this endless repetition.

A documentary of insect life in meadows and ponds, using incredible close-ups, slow motion, and time-lapse photography. It includes bees collecting nectar, ladybugs eating mites, snails mating, spiders wrapping their catch, a scarab beetle relentlessly pushing its ball of dung uphill, endless lines of caterpillars, an underwater spider creating an air bubble to live in, and a mosquito hatching.

Carpenter Maria Abeler is supposed to take over her father's carpentry business and start a family with her longtime boyfriend Steffen, at least if Volker and Steffen have their way. When journeyman Cem turns up at the carpentry workshop, Maria decides to join Cem on a three-year journey against the wishes of her father and her boyfriend

Crazy cat lady or world-class musician? You decide. Dorian Rence smashes our notions of what matters and who counts in "Feral Love." Dorian was the seventh woman to join the New York Philharmonic. In her 40-year career she has performed with all the greats: Leonard Bernstein, Pierre Boulez, Zubin Mehta, Yo Yo Ma to name a few. And she cares for a feral cat colony in the tunnels of New York City.

Rachel Dolezal became infamous when she was unmasked as a white woman passing for black so thoroughly that she had become the head of her local N.A.A.C.P. chapter. This portrait cuts through the very public controversy to reveal Dolezal’s motivations.