Schedule ’25
Thursday, October 16, 2025
Dating in the Dark
The remote village in the hills has no electricity. It is early evening but already pitch black as a group of young men in their early twenties make their way along winding mountain paths to the houses of the young women they hope to woo. In an age of mobile phones and dating apps, one wonders what…
Dialogue Among Tribes
2017 TIEFF
In 1987, as Taiwan had just lifted martial law, society and the economy were undergoing rapid transformation, and Indigenous peoples faced a wave of urban migration and labor relocation. An Amis man Du-Ya Pan Ming-fu, his childhood friend Duwake, a Kavalan artist, and Lai-Sa-Gai-Nu Tian Acheng in Xiangbi Village, have different but intertwined lives. Though…
Friday, October 17, 2025
Back to Topa
The director unexpectedly overheard stories about his mother’s family and decided to pick up a camera to explore a century-old history: Topa, a Tayal tribe that once lived in Sanxia but was displaced to Taoyuan’s Fuxing District due to Japanese rule. The main subjects of this documentary are descendants who are striving in their own ways to…
Ggesek(Matchstick)
2025 RAI FF
What can we learn from spaces of futures past? Derived from the Kelate word “Ggésék” for matchstick, this film is a portrait of human-machine relationships in the twilight of Malaysia’s last match factory. A space that was once bustling with over 1000 workers, is now manned by 26 with a single match dipping machine;…
Abaznoda (Basket)
2023 FNC
2024 Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen
Charlotte is a young Abenaki artist who makes black ash baskets. She carries on her shoulders the legacy of all the generations that came before, which pushes her to learn as much as possible about her passion: basketry.…
Helio Melo
2025 Festival Curta Cinema
2024 Olhar do Norte
Through an unprecedented juxtaposition of the visual and literary works of Hélio Melo with current portraits of Acre, we embark on the artist’s struggle to tell the story of rubber tappers and indigenous peoples of the Amazon who defend the forest against threats of erasure…
“The Homeless Coast” The 1877 Cepo’ War
In 1999 Lekal Makor, the head of an Indigenous Amis community in Taiwan, recorded their oral history. He recounted an 1877 ambush by Qing soldiers at a banquet in the Amis village of Cepo’. The events of the massacre in modern day Hualien have been buried for more than a century. The Cepo’ War is a deliberate gap in…
The Bee: A Reflection on Women, Land, and Occupation
2024 LANAFF
2024 NYIWF
This documentary follows a feminist group of women beekeepers living on the island of Vieques, Puerto Rico. Twenty years have passed since the US Navy stopped using Vieques as a bombing range. Still, the locals continue to live through the legacy of a military that savagely displaced the population…
Our Roots Remain
2025 Shorts México
2025 CFF
In the mountains of Michoacán, Mexico, the Indigenous town of Cherán did what no one thought possible: it kicked out the cartels, shut down illegal logging, and took back control of its future. Our Roots Remain (Enraizados<span style=”font-weight:…
I Am the River, the River Is Me
2024 Movies That Matter
2024 Doc Edge
A canoe trip down the Whanganui River in New Zealand, led by a Māori elder, joined by a Māori river guardian Ned Tapa, his friends and family, an international film crew, becomes a call to action to draw closer to nature and fight climate…
Saturday, October 18, 2025
Finding Home at Tides End
2024 TIDFF
In the Amis language, a moment signifies peace and a sense of ‘home’ when the ocean calms. This metaphorically relates to the journey of a group of Amis people who left their coastal homes in the 1970s for city work. In Taipei, they established the “Xizhou Tribe” near a riverbank, contributing to urban development…
Flickering Lights
2023 IDFA
2023 Busan IFF
In a remote village on the Indo-Myanmar border, seventy years after Indian independence, news floats in that electricity might arrive. People are skeptical as they have been let down too often in the past. A woman dreams of a better future. A century-old man dreams of sovereignty for his…
Wind Has No Tail
2025 ZagrebDox
2025 ARKIPEL
Nika is one of the youngest daughters in the Yamal nomad’s family. The administration of the nearest village should take her to a boarding school very soon, separating her from family and home for a long time. A nomadic teacher must prepare Nika for departure. However, given Nika’s young…
Sunday, October 19, 2025
North Cormorant Island
2024 Docs Ireland
North Cormorant Island was filmed over ten years in the remote fishing village of Kitaushima (which means North Cormorant Island), on Sado Island, Japan. Until the 1960’s the village was only accessible by road, but it was prosperous, and a couple of hundred people lived there, rice-farming, fishing and raising cattle. But…
Highway Nomads
2023 FICM
2023 FECCH
Luz de Luna (Moonlight) became a truck driver after she escaped from a violent marriage. Along the way, she faces a world of labor exploitation and other forms of violence that, at times, make her consider quitting the job. On the edges of Mexican highways,…
The Last Run
2020 Collected Voices FF Collected Voices
2020 CIDSFF
A glorious past withering away in a fast-changing world – The film is about a Postal Runner, a person who runs or walks from one place to another carrying mail bags. The runner used to be held in high regard…
Abode of Dawn
2025 CPH:DOX
2025 Visions du Réel
Where do you go when the world feels overwhelming and just plain wrong? Can you escape and start anew? This documentary follows its protagonists for nearly a decade, as they try to build a utopian society in the Siberian…