Strange Cities Are Familiar

Using their bare hands, married couple Htwe Tin and Thein Shwe draw oil from a pit they drilled themselves on the land next to their house. There are lots of these “artisanal” oilfields dotted around Myanmar, where people have swapped crop cultivation for selling the oil they pump from the ground by hand.

When NATO troops withdrew from Afghanistan, the Afghan National Army (ANA) took over control of Helmand Province, an extremely dangerous region where attacks by Taliban fighters are the order of the day. Security, much less peace, would seem to be unattainable; it is even difficult to find a common language in a country where everyone mistrusts each other. The directors of this film accompanied an ANA company during a year of frontline duty in Helmand. The soldiers are paid irregularly, there are not enough supplies and their equipment is substandard. They cannot fight a war with the equipment left behind by the ISAF.

When Jane marries and moves into her new home, she will discover her husband is keeping more than a few skeletons in his closet. From her food, she pulls clusters of hair. Silence haunts the lonely corridors of the home. While Jane is abused by her husband, she untangles the harrowing history of the house.

The Runner is a film about endurance. It is the story of a champion long-distance runner whose journey transformed him from an athlete into the symbol of a national liberation movement. Salah Hmatou Ameidan is willing to risk his life, his career, his family and his nationality to run for a country that doesn't exist. He is from Western Sahara, officially Africa's last colony and under Moroccan occupation since 1975.

When the Israeli army withdrew from the Sinai Peninsula in 1982, it built a wall along Gaza’s southern border with Egypt. This split the city of Rafah in half. Today virtually nothing crosses the border. Yet through an underground network of tunnels, people smuggle everything from weapons, food supplies to medicines. The film is produced for Al-Jazeera International.

There Will Be Some Who Will Not Fear Even That Void is an ecological film for the 21st century - a film about the future of our planet that turns the traditional environmental documentary on its head. Rather than looking at our influence on the environment, ...Even That Void examines the environment's influence on us - emotionally, psychologically and ethically. The film suggests that the limits to exploring and dominating nature are no longer technological, but moral. We now have the technology to 'conquer' virtually any part of the planet if we want to - the question is no longer 'can we' but 'should we'?

An Aboriginal man is invited to London for the Colonial Exhibition of 1886.