Human Factors

Albert grew up on an isolated mountain farm in the middle of nowhere in the Alps. Although he’s already in his 30s, his omnipresent mother Marianne still pulls the strings in his life. Not intentionally and only because of his mother’s pressure, Albert went to live in the nearby valley to make his living in a marble quarry. Marianne wants to protect him from the poor and lonesome life on the mountain and is even willing to denounce their bonds to the tradition of the farm, that has existed over centuries. Like an abandoned animal that keeps coming back to its territory, the introverted farmers son keeps sneaking back to the mountain as often as possible. When his father dies accidently whilst repairing the roof, Marianne fears, that Albert will take over the role of his father and return to the farm. Instead, she decides to hide the death from Albert and the outside world—and buries his corpse on the mountain.

Three teenagers spend a summer together in the mountains. Tensions grow between them as well as violence which emerges at some point. The seriousness of the situations they experience and their consequences will be unsuspected.

It is summer and it is hot. Ice cream drips from its cone, a father photographs his child. Then a man suddenly arrests his focus. Inspired by a picture from photographer Juan Medina, taken on the beach of Gran Tarajal in Spain in 2006, director Ronny Trocker animates a situation that happened today as it did yesterday, with the difference that today, no one moves. Time is frozen. A black man lies exhausted on the shore. It seems that no one has noticed his arrival.

A group of armed men are wandering in the jungle, tracking themselves one another. Some move in pairs, some alone, some wear military uniforms and some don't. Like in any sort of game, rivalries and internal conflicts will not take long to emerge, drawing a line between the strong and the weak.

December 2011, in a town in northern Italy, a young man returns home as he does every evening. He parks his car and discovers his 16-year-old sister in tears in front of their house. She tells him that two young Romany guys have brutally raped her. The young man immediately goes in search of the attackers but cannot find them. The neighborhood organizes a solidarity march in view of the event. The tension begins to rise.

- 1879. One thousand five hundred men walk in the desert under the orders of General Roca. They are going to build the space of the Argentine nation. They move forward undoubtedly to the big South, there where there is nothing, by carrying with them the civilization. A century later, in 1980, in the city now named General Roca, the military junta in power organizes a national congress of history to celebrate the centenarian of the conquest of this desert.