2019 Edition

by JEAN ROUCH, 1967 (in Niger)

Filmed in one long take, Tourou and Bitti captures a possession dance taking place in the concession of Zima Dauda Sido in Niger. During this festival, participants request the genie of the bush protect the crops against grasshoppers; the archaic drums of Tourou and Bitti will beat. The orchestra comprises a fiddle player, three turkey calabash drummers and a biti-diaphragm drum player.

by JEAN ROUCH, 1971 (in France and Niger)

In charge of Ayorou (Niger) with Lam and Illo, Damouré eventually decides to construct a “big building” in his village. He goes to Paris to see how one can live in multi-storey houses. In the capital, he discovers the oddities of Parisian life and describes these comical exchanges in letters until the recipients, believing Damouré has gone mad, send Lam to join him on site.

by ROGER HORN, 2018 (in South Africa)

Research / Souvenir (Dialogues) utilizes found Super 8mm footage from Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) and audio from ethnographic research gathered among Zimbabwean migrant women in Cape Town, South Africa.

by ARTHUR GILLET, 2018 (in Belgium)

As a child, Arthur is fascinated by the idyllic love story of his grandparents: a beautiful Congolese married to a Belgian settler. But shortly after the death of his grandmother, the young director discovers family archives that jostle his childhood memories.

by FEYROUZ SERHAL, 2017 (in Lebanon)

The World Cup is about to begin and Beirutians are eagerly awaiting the first match until, on this otherwise normal day, the signal is disturbed by strange audio waves. Frustration starts to build giving way to an even bigger event.

by KATHERINE NEQUADO, 2018 (in Canada)

Wamin means apple in atikamekw; red on the outside, white on the inside. The term is used an insult toward people who leave their community to live in the city. A young Atikamekw shows that living outside of her reserve does not betray her true nature.

by RACHEL, BEATRICE ET GISELE MARK, 2018 (in Canada)

A group of women from Unamen Shipu embark on the task of forming a choir but not everything goes to plan.

by KEVIN TIKIVIK, 2018 (in Canada)

Inspired by his own story, Quilliqtu’s (Shining Object) narrative reminds viewers of past and present Indigenous realities while celebrating the relationship to the land.

by SIMON PLOUFFE, 2018 (in Canada)

Supported by archives and in-depth exploration, the film allows us to better understand the musicality of indigenous languages and reveals the cultural and human importance of these millennial traditions by nurturing a collective reflection on the consequences of their disappearance.

Languages: abenaki / atikamekw / innu / mohawk / naskapi / inuktitut / french / english.

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by SARAH BARIL GAUDET, 2019 (in Canada)

On the eve of an inevitable exile towards the urban centers, the youth of Temiscamingue is torn between the desire of a better future and the attachment to its territory.

by SIMON COULIBALY GILLARD, 2017 (in Burkina Faso)

At night, the young boy Ama and his companions travel through the bush of Boli Bana. A herd of huge and at the same time benevolent cattle accompanies them. By day, the young girl Aissita is the centre of attention of Boli Bana village. A witch has arrived for a ritual: For Assista this is the beginning of adulthood. It is a nomadic and mystic world that comes into being through the eyes of these children. A Fulani childhood in Burkina Faso.

by JONATHON PHANHSAY-CHAMSON, 2017 (in France)

Am I French or Chinese ? I wander in my identity questions. I face words from media people with words from children of the “second generation,” trying to see more clearly. I recall France, my France.

by KENZA AFSAHI, 2017 (in France)

34 Meters in Height, is an ethnographic and poetic essay on a Northern village in France – adjacent to Hénin-Beaumont – directed by a Moroccan filmmaker. For more than three years, Kenza Afsahi shared the locals’ daily life, went to the pub, joined hunting parties and the village festivals and traditional celebrations as the Our Lady of Grace procession. Among the issues that punctuate the film belonging or not to a community takes on a special significance.

by MARIE-LAURENTINE BAYALA, 2018 (in Burkina Faso)

Claire is of mixed descent; her mother is Burkinabé while her father, who left when she was six years old, is French. Thirty-five years later she is struggling to find him, a quest for identity which grows into an obsession and sends her back to a painful past…

by CAROLINE PARIETTI & CYPRIEN PONSON, 2017 (in Malaysia)

In Sarawak, one of two Malaysian states on the island of Borneo, those “upstream of the rivers” are the first affected by deforestation. The Penan, once a nomadic people, are today in the center of the whirlwind: how to live when everything is crumbling around you, when the landscape disappears taking with it language, practices and spirits?

by MICHEL BRAULT, 1969 (in Canada)

Presented in the form of conversations between a young teacher and her students at a French school in Moncton, New Brunswick, the film depicts the difficulties francophones have in safeguarding their language in a society where English has prevailed for centuries.

by TANYA BALLANTYNE, 1967 (in Canada)

Filmed over the course of three weeks, The Things I Cannot Change offers a glimpse into the daily life of the Bailey family. Run-ins with the police, begging for stale bread and the birth of another child are just some of the issues they face. Although set in Montréal, the film offers an anatomy of poverty as it occurs throughout North America.

by LUC BOURDON, 2017 (in Canada)

The Devil’s Share offers a singular and new look at the Quiet Revolution in the 1970s. In an act of rare poetry and with the assistance of his accomplice, the editor MICHEL GIROUX, Luc Bourdon (The Memories of Angels) looks back on our history, piecing together a large number of excerpts taken from nearly 200 films from the National Film Board collection, during a decade of profound transformation in Québec.

by MATHIEU GERMAIN, 2018 (in Canada)

On the frozen St. Lawrence River, the undeterred brave the cold to practice their favourite winter activity, smelt fishing. Through this icy ritual humans interact with and embrace their natural environment.

by NICOLAS MINGASSON & VINCENT GAULLIER, 2018 (in Russia)

The Taimyr Peninsula is located in the far north of Siberia, beyond the Arctic Circle. This is where the Dolganes live. The young ethnologist Yann Borjon Privé went to study them. Pavel, reindeer breeder, Alexsandra, retired veterinarian, Mickail, a fisherman, Zoïa, nurse…all in all, eight Dolganes tell him about their current and past lives. A serial of portraits where archival photographs summon the word. Changes with cultural, environmental, social and economic changes in this most northerly nomad population of the globe.

par SIMONE MESTRONI, 2018 (in India)

In Indian Kashmir, between calls to prayer, daily life mixes with separatist politics, Islam and routine violence. From traumatic memories of a guerilla’s funeral to the current anti-Indian riots on the streets, to the story of a mutilated mujahideen, the fate of the people seems to be shaped by hope and anger, love and sorrow, poetry and brutality.

by HELIN CELIK & MARTIN KLINGENBÖCK,  2017 (in Turkey)

What The Wind Took Away is a deeply poetic approach to the very personal stories of these Yazidi women and a lyrical journey through their everyday lives in a refugee camp.

by DORIAN DEGOUTTE, 2018 (in Senegal)

In Cape Skirring, like elsewhere throughout Africa, bricks are made directly on site with a mixture of cement, water and even sand from the beach. With the scene set and a camera over the shoulder, the filmmakers question the symbolism of the brick wall and the ecological as well as urban impact of development on the shared spaces that are, still, the beaches.

by MARCO ZUIN, 2017 (in Vietnam)

This documentary follows the daily life of Hoa, a Dao ethnic minority healer living in a rural village in North Vietnam. Hoa collects medicinal plants in the forest, safeguarding its biodiversity, and she heals the community with the help of her daughter Chiem and her family. While the forests are under threat of deforestation due to rapid development, Hoa continues transmitting the ancient female tradition of herbal medicine practices.

by JOANIE LAFRÈNIÈRE, 2018 (in the United States of America)

With tenderness and humour, this sociological documentary goes to the heart of the daily lives of Canadians living out their golden years in Florida during the winter season by painting a human portrait of this social phenomenon. Welcome to the French District of Florida, Snowbird’s paradise.

by CAHYO PRAYOGO, 2017 (in Indonesia)

Looking at the world through a racing pigeon’s body, framing a suburban landscape of Surabaya (East Java, Indonesia) based on a massive properties expansion, staggering like a fighter jet that loses control onto runway.

by JACQUELINE MAGEN, 2018 (in Israel)

A personal Journey documenting the cold avant-garde scene in Jerusalem that reveals decadence and thirst for new values.

by ALEXANDRINE BOUDREAULT-FOURNIER & ELEONORA DIAMANTI, 2018 (in Cuba)

When the night falls in Guantánamo and invades the streets, other forms of life emerge. Guardians of the Night sheds light on the people, activities, sites and ideas that occur on an everyday basis at nighttime in Eastern Cuba.

by THIERRY LOA, 2018 (in Canada and the United States of America)

20-22 OMEGA is a feature film that explores the emergence of a new humanity in the Anthropocene, an unprecedented era dominated by the human presence and activities (known as The Human Enterprise), and defined by accelerated changes, unimaginable possibilities and complex uncertainties.

by ERAN SAGI, 2017 (in Japan)

An emotional and cinematic journey in two registers: the first is inspired by the analytic and contemplative work of Chris Marker; the other is the personal and emotional one, in which questions arise about the relationship with my partner, meditation about our future family and deliberation about bringing a child into the world, in light of my intricate relationship with my father who died a decade ago.

by AARÓN ÁLVAREZ, 2017 (in Mexico)

Ricardo and Carlos have been a couple for eight years. They run a duet The Durango;  Bárbara and Cordelia, they have reached a good place in the Drag Queen scene of Mexico City. Las Durango talks about ideas such as conventional femininity, misogyny and machismo to inspire those who have suffered gender violence.

by ROGER HORN, 2017 (in South Africa)

Filmed by Feebee Lee Von Diamond, a transgender employee in the winelands of Stellenbosch, South Africa, The Sisterhood: Visits With My Friends, functions as a critique and continuation of director Roger Horn’s 2010 film, The Sisterhood in which Feebee briefly appeared.

“The Sisterhood was the truth, but everyone was on their best behaviour most of the time in front of the camera and that is not always how we are.”

by LO THIVOLLE, 2017 (in France)

“We met on the benches of the faculty, each in our solitude. A few years later, we found ourselves on the bench of a public place. You sat there like a king! How foreigners live in the city, like people of yesteryear live on the streets of a kingdom. You introduced me to your father, king of a village in Niger and the main character of an [ethnographic] film by Eliane De Latour. “

by MARIANNE BELIVEAU, 2018 (in Canada)

By diving into the lively atmosphere of this popular enclave, this film opens our ears to the regular customers of the bar « Le Dauphin » and submerges us inside its walls, on the other side of stereotypes, where each one, in their own way, looks to soak up their own moment of freedom.

by ALEXANDRA KANDY LONGUET, 2018 (in the United States of America)

Ultimate refuge for the leftovers of the American dream, the motels in the United States house a population of drifting humans who, from crisis to crisis – economic and personal – have been dispossessed of everything. Some of them lost it all. Some of them left it all. Some still have dreams. Some of them don’t remember well, sucked by daily survival.

by ROSINE MBAKAM, 2018 (in Belgium)

In this 8m x 2m salon, Sabine and the other hairdressers organize themselves and help each other to face the clandestinity. They work 13 to 14 hours a day under the threat of the patrol police and the eyes of tourists of all ages who look at them and photograph them as objects in the window.

by RODION ISMAILOV, 2017 (in Russia)

A documentary film which recounts the lives of passengers travelling on the longest railway route in the world. The director tells the stories and fortunes of ordinary Russians met by chance on the Moscow-Vladivostok train. The endless journey is a metaphor of the country in perpetual motion, while the passengers’ stories form a social portrait of contemporary Russian society.

by AGNES MENG, 2018 (in Portugal)

This film is a collection of stories about wolves in  the northern Portugal mountains. At one peak among rocky ranges, there is a village called Pitões das Junias. At nightfall, shepherds gather and tell stories. Myth, death, killings…things that may or may not have happened but were inspired by internal fighting between humans and wolves, between us and the wild.

par AMINATOU ECHARD, 2018 (in Kyrgyzstan)

The film sets off in Kyrgyzstan in search of the main character of Tchinghiz Aitmatov’s novel, Djamilia, written in 1958. The film takes us across the country to meet several generations of women who tell us about Djamilia, a young woman who breaks the rules of Kyrgyz society. Doing so, these women release an intimate word, reveal themselves, and tell us about their dreams, love, desires, and freedom.

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by JAN WAZ, 2018 (in India)

Moksha in Sanskrit means “salvation.” On the banks of the holy river Ganges lies one of the oldest city in the world inhabited by the Banaras. Hindus come here to die and burn their bodies to free themselves from the cycle of reincarnation. This film is a record of the last journey before breaking the cycle of life.

by SERGIO SANTOS, 2018 (in Brazil)

The ancestral memories of rural artists recounted through the beat of four groups of Brazilian coco [rhythm and dance from the North-East region of Brazil].

by SURUCHI SHARMA, 2017 (in India)

A film that explores the lifestyle and stories of different folk artists from Rajasthan, India while talking about memories and anecdotes associated with John Singh (John Da), the man who helped these artists explore the world of music on various national and international platforms and to go beyond the boundaries of their regional performing space.