1989
The theme of Romeo and Juliet is the starting point from which the film spins a web of several stories. A love story between a boy and a girl whose families are Algerian: they are young, beautiful and they are trying to build a family and a social life in France. They love each other, and yet conflicts, family pressure and contradicting desires alternately tear them apart and unite them. The story of Romeo and Juliet, minus death.
2022
Five young Ukrainians discuss life following the Maidan Revolution of 2014. Not all fought in the Russian-Ukrainian war, but it, regardless, shattered their life plans. Representing 'Generation Maidan', they face the question of how to cope with experiences of violence, how to go on. A local theatre director produces Hamlet, wherein they can use Shakespeare’s tragic character as a mirror and face their traumas onstage. For them, 'to be or not to be' is not simply text but an existential dilemma with no clear answer.
1971
Interviews with a dozen California centenarians against a montage of present day media reportage.
2024
A single female voice sings of waiting in her garden for her ‘dark-eyed sailor’ to return from war, bearing the other half of their token, a gimmel ring. Three veterans pass on the road as she waits, and she asks them: “When you were fighting in distant lands, did you think of the home you left?” In reply the veterans relate their recollections. The garden images in the accompanying film represent ‘home’, but also stand for a more general possibility of redemption, of the potential of the past to return at any time, disguised and changed, to renew the present: “Each moment of time is a garden gate,” the song goes, “Through it my love may walk.”
2017
Firas, Jallow and Batoul just arrived in Berlin. They meet one another in a theatre group. They are searching for the good life in Germany - yet things don’t turn out the way they hoped. Through video letters, they reveal their deepest emotions to their families and friends back in their war-torn or poverty-stricken home countries.
2023
An in-depth oral history of the production and development history of Robert Altman's "O.C. and Stiggs," featuring commentaries from the film's cast and crew.
2018
The little-known story of Ukrainian children torn from their homes in the crush between the Nazi and Soviet fronts in World War II. Spending their childhood as refugees in Europe, these inspiring individuals later immigrated to the United States, creating new homes and communities through their grit, faith and deep belief in the importance of preserving culture.
Oral history project exploring the history of London's holiday campers. From the 1930s to the 1980s London’s workers increasingly visited holiday camps such as Pontins and Butlins, or run by trade unions and other social groups. It became a tradition for generations of families - a highlight of the year for all ages.
2015
The film follows the band Slowdive as they come up in the flourishing Thames Valley shoegaze scene and chronicles the making of their classic album Souvlaki. It features interviews with all of the band members as well as Creation Records' Alan McGee, producer Chris Hufford, and engineer Ed Buller.
The story of Nisar Ahmed Khan, told through his children and the people he served, a spiritual guide whose followers still visit his tomb on his birth and death anniversaries. And alongside how his family spends a few days at the village keeping his traditions alive.
2021
Artistic director of the National Theater Eric de Vroedt writes and directs a performance about his own mother Winnie, who passed away in 2020. This piece, titled The Century of My Mother, is a family story about the migration from the Dutch East Indies to the Netherlands. It is De Vroedt's way of examining the relationship with his mother and not having to say goodbye to her yet: 'I can let her live on stage, but when the curtain falls, when the play is completely finished, then she is really dead'.
1980
The protagonists of this docudrama are old farmers who migrated to Banat after the First World War, in 1922. The film is focused on a couple of important events in their impressive lives, which are woven into lively scenes and stories full of wise instances. Their statements become spontaneous recounts of the lives of people in this region.