Curupira, creature of the woods

The children of a mountain village near Mosul re-enact a century of Iraqi history, from the secret Sykes-Picot agreement in 1916 to the realm of terror imposed by the Islamic State in 2016. The children revisit their past to understand their present.

In the dazzling incandescence of an unknown desert, three donkeys discover an abandoned astronomical observatory and the universe. A sensorial, cinematic exploration of what a story can be.

Ramin flees from persecution in Iran and ends up living in the limbo of exile, far from everything he knows, in the tropical port town of Veracruz, Mexico. There his nostalgia and melancholy are confronted with new friendships, while he starts to rediscover his own desires.

Over the past fifty years, the Mange-Garri chemical plant has drained more than 30 million tons of toxic sludge into the Mediterranean Sea while producing aluminum oxide. The surrounding area has quickly become a major dump, now covered in dark red ooze. The film draws attention to the unstoppable process of human self-destruction through a series of carefully selected shots of the industrial environment and the eyewitness reports of local residents.

One of Francis Alÿs’ series of performative videos that politicize absurd or seemingly futile gestures, Paradox of Praxis 5 documents the artist’s nocturnal perambulations through Juárez as he kicks a ball of fire along the city’s desolate streets. Transcending metaphor, the eerie mobile conflagration traces out an imaginary map of a devastated city.

Tommaso and Arturo are on the run in a remote forest. They hunt for food, trying to survive and find their way through the lush nature. It’s quiet, almost peaceful, until the sound of gunshots… Many years later, this forest has a wolf problem. It’s here where Ariane discovers a strange hole in the ground. Could she be the woman referred to in the valley’s legends?

"When the shamans stop dancing and life in the rainforest loses its balance, the sky will collapse and come to crush everything." This wisdom is passed down from generation to generation by the Yanomami of Brazil. But gold miners are polluting the rivers, shamans are dying, the rainforest is disappearing and the earth is getting hotter. Davi Kopenawa, a tribal leader and spokesman for the Yanomami, has been fighting relentlessly against the colonization of his land for 40 years. He warns Westerners that when the sky collapses, they too will be crushed. Why don't they listen? Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

Remmy and her parents, refugees from Earth, have found peace on the Martian outskirts until strangers appear in the hills beyond their farm. Told as a triptych, the film follows Remmy as she struggles to survive in an uneasy landscape.

Action documented on video in which the artist explores and traces an alternative route, the shortest between the two buildings of the Biblioteca Nacional de México and the Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo, with a straight line through the semi-wild zone of vegetation and lava that divides them. To build this line, the artist marks the territory over which he advances using instruments typical of topography.

The film reveals the diversity, sound and melody of Romansh, one of Switzerland's four official national languages. In the age of globalization, Romansh, which is only spoken by a small minority, seems to be threatened with extinction. For the protagonists of this poem of images and sounds, however, the language is a symbol of their belonging, their identity and their resistance.

In different Brussels living rooms and bathrooms, parents cut their children’s hair. This mundane yet intimate act reveals a world of emotion and connection. While the children resist or, on the contrary, completely surrender to the moment, parents conscientiously try to accomplish their task. Between scissors and clippers, silence and conversation, tender rituals unfold that reveal the bond between parent and child.

The filmmaker Théo Angelopoulos died on January 24th, 2012, knocked down by a motorbike on the set of his final film. In his unfinished film, he was telling the destinies of the victims of the Greek crisis. The list of victims of the crisis has only grown longer, this destitution echoing another that Théo had sensed was coming: that of the massive arrival of refugees who find themselves trapped in Greece by the closure of the borders. Yet citizen resistance is being organized and fights every day to bring those in danger of obliteration out of the shadows. Ironically, the ambulance supposed to come to his rescue broke down because budgetary restrictions had made it impossible to maintain the vehicle. The crisis itself killed Théo. This is a letter addressed to him in the form of a film.

"Beyond the Ararat" is the story of a woman of Turkish origin who embarks on a journey to better understand what makes up her identity. A road movie which brings her from her childhood neighborhood in Brussels to Turkey and Armenia. A quest where each woman she encounters could be the reflection of herself. Entering the land of her ancestors, Anatolia, she questions her cultural heritage. Stopping in her grandmother's village, she discovers the "Agit"; an antique oral tradition where women sing for their dead. The songs open a potential space for mourning, where Turkish, Kurdish but also Armenian women missing from that land, can sing "together". The confrontation with the "missing" from her memory, brings her farther eastward in Anatolia to the foot of the Ararat Mountain, and beyond.

Each person’s action affects everybody. This fine principle of teamwork applies even when individuals are pulling in different directions. Trying both to reach the chocolate box in one’s nearest corner and to stop the others reaching theirs, resistance becomes momentum and then desperate resistance again. Progress is most effective backwards. The square of rope comes alive, morphing into a diamond, a triangle, a trapeze, as the advantage shifts with every second. It’s when you’re nearly there that you’re most vulnerable, losing impetus, to grab the prize or be dragged back. The balance of forces is always broken in the end.

Grandma’s Footsteps in Britain, Red light, green light in North America, Thunder, weather, lightning in Austria, One, two, three, ciggy forty-three in Argentina, Frozen in Mexico, Statues in Greece – all refer to a game of stealth and balance popular around the world. While some versions rely on turning around at unpredictable intervals, these London kids play it with the regularly timed cry of “One, two, three, freeze!”. The caller takes her time assessing everyone’s immobility, which ensures further wobbles. But she can only expel the most unstable, and the forwards progress won’t be stopped.

A piñata is a papier-mâché figure stuffed with sweets. Common at birthdays in urban patios, here we find it in a field, where a garish Superman dangles between tall poles on a rope jerked by an adult, to make hitting harder. Each player is blindfolded and spun around several times before attempting to hit the piñata with a long stick. The kids’ wild swinging is directed by the shouts of friends, while the allotted time of each turn is counted down in a singsong about finding and losing one’s way. Fierce blows are dealt with varying accuracy until the piñata is fully smashed open and its sweets shower to the ground, leaped on by all the kids at once. The hollow, punctured figure is triumphantly dismembered.