Desert Lights

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.

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.

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.

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.

In order to avoid being tagged, the shadow must run away. Only the body to which the shadow belongs can escape to protect the shadow from the catcher’s evil kick. When the feet detach from the ground, the connection between the three-dimensional and two-dimensional figures breaks. Ultimately, all the children’s shadows get caught while the pigeons fly away in the sky.

The game is filmed from above in a single take, emphasizing the inexorable process of subtraction. Six children place five chairs in a row, facing in alternate directions. When the music starts, the players skip one behind the other around the chairs. When the music stops, everyone scrambles to occupy the nearest chair and one person is left standing. The loser carries a chair away, stomping out of shot to the left. The music starts again, and so it goes on until the winner claims the last chair. Then there is only an empty space.

"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.

The game “Mosquito of Pachacútec” refers to the historical metaphor of how the Inca Empire was challenged in its territorial conquests by a tiny adversary: ​​the mosquito. These seemingly insignificant insects hindered the expansion of the Inca Pachacútec empire in the mid-15th century, particularly in coastal areas, where malaria-carrying mosquitoes formed a natural barrier for the Inca armies. The players form a circle. One player throws an imaginary mosquito into the air, shouting, “The Pachacútec mosquito is going this way!” The following players try to kill the mosquito by clapping their hands in the air. After a couple of rounds, another imaginary mosquito is released, then a third, until the chain breaks and the round collapses in a fit of laughter.

Che Ling means “pull bell sound”. This ancient Chinese juggling is a form of yoyo, once popular in Europe as “diabolo”. Two youngsters take turns exhibiting their skills, with the joyous involvement of their whole body. Almost unnoticed, the dominant hand controls the acceleration – counterclockwise – and directs the trick; the other maintains a responsive balance; it’s as if the magic was drummed into existence.