France

This film tells the story of my relationship with my parents, especially my mother, while we are living under one roof in Dhaka, Bangladesh. For a long time, my mother was a passionate artist. She passed on to me her love of poetry, theater, and film, which became my profession. But ever since she made the Hajj, the great Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca, in 2002, she has changed profoundly. She now lives cloistered in our apartment, following the precepts of Sharia law, rejecting the richness of her previous life. She keeps urging me to get married and to stop making films, since Islam forbids any human representation. When she suggests that we undertake the Hajj together, I accept her invitation: it will be an opportunity for us to resolve our differences, but it will also be the time for me to announce to her that I am in a relationship with a Hindu man. But the COVID-19 pandemic makes our trip impossible. Forced to live behind closed doors with my parents as their health deteriorates, I try to come to terms with what my mother and I still have in common.

Nazmia, as lively as she is tempestuous, dreams of becoming a teacher and of returning to Grande Comores to get married.

Nasri, a little rascal with a big heart, left to himself, struggles to declare his love for Mouniati.

Omar, poetic and puny, wants to become a man under the benevolent gaze of his brother, while waiting to see his father again.

All three of them, students of Moudjibou’s CM2 class, are preparing an end-of-year show about the abolition of slavery: Césaire’s funeral.

How does one grow up in Mayotte, the last of the French departments, when one is 10 years old, has no papers, and few prospects? WANATSA recounts their daily life in the meanders of Kaweni, the largest slum in France.

Ophir tells the story of an extraordinary indigenous revolution for life, land and culture, opening up the path for the creation of the world’s newest nation in Bougainville, Papua New Guinea. A poetic yet dramatic ode to the indelible thirst for freedom, culture and sovereignty; the film sheds light on the biggest conflict of the Pacific since WWII, revealing the visible and invisible chains of colonisation and its enduring cycles of physical and psychological warfare.

This is not just one more film about the monuments of Angkor, their history or their architecture. This film is about the people who live there. An inside view, in the shadow of the temples and the great kapok trees, an inhabited shadow that the world’s tourists pass through unawares, wrapped up in contemplating the treasures of Khmer art. In the cold light of the early morning, monks meditate and pray on the stones of the temple, which though dismantled is still inhabited by the gods.

In the village of Vourbira, in the Lobi country, Burkina Faso, people celebrate the second funerals of Bindute Da. Outstanding cultural and historical event, the ceremony is, beside the unchanging rituals, the scene of a collective improvisation, final meeting between past and present. In order to welcome the deceased, each of his nineteen wives prepares sorghobeer in large jars because Bindute Da will be present, along with all his deceased folks. A soothsayer tells us Bindute Da’s last will and we are going to attend to his life, mimen by his own children. Evocation of a great farmer, gallant elephant hunter, strict but considerate father, recollection of a young man’s departure, enlisted in the French army, recollection of a great chief…