Film program

No journalists are allowed to enter Western Sahara. The only images that find their way out are the ones Equipe Media manages to film in secret.

To make up after an argument, Carlos prepares a surprise for his wife. Yet the previous disappointment seems to have left its mark.

69 minutes capture the troubled journey of a refugee family making it’s way from Greece to Sweden. From the perspektive of the three year old girl Lean the viewer really get to understand that the only thing that matters to the little girl is to get to her grandfather in Sweden.

When a teacher invites to a class conference due to a mobbing, the parents are mostly concerned with protecting their own children.

Roma teenager Pio grows up between mountains of rubbish and a refugee camp in Calabria.

On a quest for renewed strategies of rebellion, filmmaker Mary Jirmanus Saba explores two protest movements in Lebanon of the 70s.

Since the financial crisis of 2008, Greek citizens increasingly live in poverty. Edvokia and her brother manage a gas station and live a life marked by a devastating crisis.

The experimental short film A Study Of A Woman is a deconstructed portrait of a woman.

The spectacular rise of Arvind Kejriwal from political activist to party leader is the subject of this revolutionary documentary.

The current media coverage of humanitarian catastrophes shape public opinion. At Europe’s external borders, filmmaker Orban Wallace reverses the camera onto journalists themselves.

Talking brings people together. In the library of the Centre Pompidou in Paris, every week people of all sorts get together to improve their French skills. Bernhard Braunstein puts his camera in this mini agora.

In 2016 thousands came together for one of the biggest protests initiated by Native Americans since 1973 in order to protest against the Dakota Access Pipeline and for clean water.

Two brothers are protected by their mother during the war. Even after the war, they are not supposed to leave the house. But they discover an instrument...

Big data meets big brother. Black Code examines the impact that the internet can have on our privacy.

Boys for Sale documents the lives and working conditions of young male sex workers in Tokyo by interspersing interviews with animated scenes.

The doctors of a surgical department of one of the biggest hospitals in Paris have burned-out but still have to rescue lives. The Belgian film director Jérôme le Maire followed the shaft in the overcrowded operation rooms for two years.

In a global playground without limits, a cat's body is devoured, exploited and controlled. A cinematic critique of pop culture.

This imaginative animated film is evocative of an encounter between Hieronymus Bosch and Hokusai.

Argentina’s indigenous population has long struggled for their rights, against racism and state brutality. In personal interviews, the film highlights the importance of revisiting and remembering history.

Sehnaz and Elmas suffer similar fates, though they could not come from more opposing worlds. This contrasts the lives of both women while portraying the turmoil of contemporary Turkish society.

After Temo, the man who connects young Jiyan and her grandmother Berfe, is taken from them by the Turkish military, they must embark on an odyssey together. Come to My Voice is not only about their story, but also about the collective Kurdish experience.

Convictions accompanies four young men as they encounter army recruitment commissions in Russia.

After a cancer diagnosis, Nele Jermoin follows her father, an evangelic priest, with her camera throughout his journey and the different stages of acceptance.

"Craigslist" is a popular online platform, used by many as a dating service. Artist and filmmaker Selena Elagoz documents her often sexual encounters with the men she meets through the site.

An investigative documentary questioning a World Bank and an EU-sponsored agricultural development programme in Ethiopia.

An agency in Chongquing organises inauguration shows for real estate projects aiming to sell expensive apartments. Quickly, it turns out that everything is a fake and the real problems behind this facade start to appear.

A Norwegian village is shrouded in complete darkness. The film is a portrait of the inhabitants of a Norwegian village, shrouded in complete darkness and shows how they deal with it.

Istanbul’s high-rise luxury apartments, shrinking green space and urban sprawl all point to foreign investment, driven by a government led ‘urban renewal’ policy and lax legal controls.

Using old video recordings, photos and animated sequences, Arshad Khan narrates the story of his family, which emigrates from Pakistan to Canada in 1991. A special focus is put on the difficulties that his homosexuality causes in the relationship to his religious father.

African American teenager Daje lives with her mother in a neighbourhood of St. Louis, Missouri, prone to crime and drugs. A coming-of-age documentary carefully depicting the raw microcosm of a Black teenager in today's America.

On this day will be the screenings of the competition winners.

On this day will be the screenings of the competion winners

On this day will be the screenings of the competition winners.

On this day will be the screenings of the competition winners.

On this day will be the screenings of the competition winners.

A film about the inhabitants of a Muslim village in the south of Kosovo and their everyday life on the hills, depicted respectfully in superb visual images by Serbian director and cameraman Stefan Malešević.

195 countries have come together at the world climate conference COP21 2015 in Paris to develop, for the first time in history, a global agreement against climate change.

Egypt during the Arab Spring: Filmmaker Ayman El Amir loves his country and his girlfriend Nada Riyadh, also a filmmaker. But he sees no future there and wants to emigrate while Nada wants to stay.

Thor and Christian are inseparable. Together they try to make the best of their youth in a remote Islandic fishing village. When Christian develops feelings for Thor, their world turns upside down.

Some mysterious black and white pictures of fuzzy silhouettes in the snow - this is where the filmmaker Levin Peter starts his stirring research about his grandfather´s wartime past in Eastern Ukraine.

The title of the film is derived from a famous 1965 speech by Martin Luther King, in which he laid out that justice was close. In a unique way, the film asks questions about the cul- tural present, about living together, and about future prospects.

In this intimate and moving portrait of an elderly woman preparing for assisted suicide, the camera becomes our portal into the emotional relationship between the protagonist and her therapist, whom she asks to help her die.

April works the streets of Tbilisi. During an idle night, she approaches a new client, Dije, who is caught in a hostile Georgia, with no hope for a future. An atypical bond emerges between the two.

To make up after an argument, Carlos prepares a surprise for his wife. Yet the previous disappointment seems to have left its mark.

The systematic mass killing of Armenians is seen by many as the 20th centurys's first genocide. At the heart of Joe Berlinger's documentary is his cinematic quest for truth, exploring the problematic attitude of the Turkish state towards their historical legacy.

A group of six friends meet up at an idyllic summer house by a lake. The differences between them slowly let the observer suspect that friendship can turn into hostility. How far will group pressure and nationalist slogans take them?

Short Film Programme in cooperation with the DokuFest Vienna.

How do you make a film about a concentration camp and the horrors that took place inside its walls? By applying a radically new cinematic language, Argentinian filmmaker Pablo Baur creates an experimental visual essay, blending heinous facts of history with slow panoramic scenes of a building haunted by past atrocities.

This short film combines Google Street View images with interviews. It is a collage of stories and places that tell the experiences of people from around the globe who have either migrated or been deported.

French filmmaker Hendrik Dusollier chronicles life in a place that will soon cease to exist: Shibati, the last old district in the vast city of Chongqing. Its inhabitants are uprooted and resettled into high-rises in the outskirts of the town.

Dagny Carlosson is 105 years old and pretty well known in the press as a passionate blogger. She bought her first computer at the age of 99, and only a short year later was already writing her own blog, on which she has been writing every day since.

A modern Greek tragedy in seven acts: A call to the psychological emergency hotline “Life Line” brings together the grim tales of seven protagonists.

Luka is 9 years old and dreams of dancing on stage. The energetic fourth-grader lives in a school for the deaf, where he mucks about and messes with the older children. His teacher hears his wish and allows him to take dance lessons at school.

Pepe has been released from a psychiatric hospital. Antonio fights for the right to access his own body and for the sexuality of people with functional diversity. Their friendship questions the way we see life and invites us to recognize ourselves as an anomaly.

Since 2010 the artist Paolo Woods has been living in Haiti. His photography shows the country from a perspective previously unknown to the West. Filmmaker Hermane Desorme documents Wood’s critical work, the underlying stereotypes and European viewpoints it exposes, offering his own cinematic response.

This film revolves around four Syrians and their intention to build a better life in their neighbouring country Lebanon. Through focusing on the individual, Lost in Lebanon draws an alternative concept to the pictures in mainstream media.

A group of young refugees discovered short movies as an artisic outlet for themselves and have used it for an art project led by Eyup Kuş.

This film is a portrait of the confident and self-mocking Martin Mabacher. In an inspiring way he shows that barriers can be overcome, not only for people with reduced mobility, but also in one’s own surroundings.

A boy comes out to his mother when introducing his boyfriend to her for the first time. She tries to give him good advice but starts losing herself in her own uncertainty.

No matter your age, whether you are a child, a teenager or an adult, trust is a pretty tricky thing. Trust cannot be acquired or even learned. Rather, trust needs to be constantly fostered, as the films in this programme show.

Night after night, Kye, Tobie, Paul, Kim and Tattoo wander through the streets and alleys of Montreal. They support each other, and they are all drug users.

A Chinese nude model describes her working experience in Canada: “In China they told me I was too big, but here I’m considered sculptural and beautiful”, says the voice-over.

Filmmaker Torsten Grude gave soldiers a camera to capture their everyday reality in Somalia.

"The monument is imperative, but not everything", explains the quick narrative voice in this short film. It examines a range of topics from monumentalism, futurism and systematic violence to historiography.

My body is political follows four trans artists through their daily lives in suburban Sao Paolo.

A feminist affirmation of bodies and desires that challenges dominant cultural representations of female sexuality. With her film, Emilie Jouvet allows those bodies to take up space whose representations have been denied, tabooed and silenced.

A portrait of a young man with autism, who can only communicate through a translator. This way, he creates beautiful and impressive pieces of writing to express his feelings.

"The Sun" is a British tabloid. This experimental 16mm film presents the unfolding of an apocalyptic narrative through the eyes of both the newspaper and the actual sun.

An experimental film reminiscent of Plato's cave allegory. Are we seeing an image of a choreography or is the screen not a stage at all?

Sixteen years after his abduction, the former child soldier Opono returns to his home country, Uganda.

“Not One of Us” is an ominous warning about the perils of building walls in the name of greed, hegemony, and xenophobia.

Raised in New York, Darius, diagnosed with Asperger, spends most of his time in the subway system. He was in prison half of his life, because he travelled on trains dressed up as train staff. The moving film shows the injustice of the American legal system.

This slow and poetic film depicts young women in Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso, who are training to become car mechanics.

65-year-old Eddie from Sudan ends up on a remote Swedish island. With his broken camera he films barren landscapes and his occasional visits at a hermit’s cottage in the forest.

A montage of archive recordings, interviews and re-enacted court hearings show the artist Pyotr Pavlensky, who devotes his life to the struggle against the repressive Russian state power.

Romania’s oldest coalmine is due to be closed and demolished. A former worker and topographer wants to prevent this from happening and to turn the mine into a museum. With visually strong images this film accompanies activists.

A poetic portrayal of the life of Shirin Parsi, a rice farmer, but not an ordinary one. In addition to rice farming, she spends time as a social activist and environmentalist and volunteers with several local NGOs.

Porn is as accessible and popular as never before. Yet the adult industry is dying. Ovidie investigates the hidden economics of porn in the digital age to reveal how a mysterious multinational company controls the porn industry worldwide, with dramatic consequences for porn production and distribution.

From the Black Sea to Serbia, this poetic visual journey traces the identity of the Roma, finding its core in music and language.

Procession of Ghosts is a black and white lm essay on memory. Ephemeral impressions and moments shape our memory, and only retain fractions of what we experience.

Anarchism and Acid House Techno - two alternative movements. The revolutionary potential of a Roland TB-303 synthesiser is more than just an abstract idea. From the roots of techno music and the working class environment to the idea of anarchism.

On the outskirts of Vienna there is a campsite which is sometimes more and sometimes less liked by its residents and visitors. Families, tourists from Austria, and all over the world come to spend some qualitiy time in their campers here.

Recollection is part of the "Kosovan Shorts" in collaboration with the Dokufest Vienna.

Over the span of six years, Laura Poitras created a fascinating, albeit controversial, portrait of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

A lively documentary about friendship, coming of age and the power of music.

In Rwanda, the female orgasm is a concept surrounded by many mysteries and legends, some of which turn out to be surprisingly uninhibited.

This coming-of-age drama sheds light on an ignored chapter in Swedish history, that of the racist exclusion of the Sami, Scandinavia’s northernmost indigenous people.

Iraqi and Syrian refugees living in Austria speak about the horrors and bloodshed they witnessed in
their home countries.

Sans le Kosovo is part of the "Kosovan Shorts" in collaboration with the Dokufest Vienna.

Shapeshifters is the personal portrait of a young filmmaker who was born in Croatia and lives in Sweden.

An experimental film, which is mostly filmed through a cell phone and is trying with a formal approach to understand the hard-to-imagine developments that lead policemen to shoot civilians, who pose no threat.

With poetic visual language, Frank Amann’s film immerses into the world of three blind artists, who, due to their wide perception spectrum, shed new light on the medium of photography.

Bringing together the most unlikely compatriots, Gezi Park symbolised the last stronghold against gentrification, runaway capitalism, environmental degradation and an increasingly oppressive government.

Station is part of the "Kosovan Shorts" in collaboration with the Dokufest Vienna.

Newly arrived asylum seekers learn in a classroom, in three convincingly experimental set-ups, some facts and truths about Europe.

This imaginative animated film tells the story of a man who suffers a stroke. In impressive pictures, it visualises how it must feel to suddenly lose control of one's body.

Tailor is the story of the cartoonist of the same name, who captures on his website narratives of transsexuals in Brazil.

While in their own country houses are bombed, Syrian construction workers, living in exile in Lebanon, build new skyscapers on the ruins of the civil war.

The Bridge over the River is an animated film of hand-drawn figures. A heartbroken man attempts to jump off a bridge when passers-by on the other side see and try to stop him.

Swiss filmmaker Milo Rau organises a fictitious tribunal in Eastern Congo. Accused are the UN, a mining conglomerate as well as local government officials.

Transhumanists, futurologists and academics are dealing with the question of what our future will look like. What will happen with the big part of work overtaken by robots and what will happen to our aging population?

Running for mayor, postman Ivan comes up with an unconventional and generous plan to revive his small village in Bulgaria: Why not offer the people who pass by the village daily in an attempt to flee to Western Europe a new home and a fresh start?

Rong moves from Vietnam to the Czech Republic with her parents. After a difficult start in their new surroundings, her family wants to move back while Rong prefers to stay.

Corrado is a senior official at the Italian government, tasked with preventing illegal immigration at Europe’s outer borders. He is supposed to stop human trafficking on boats from Libya to Italy, but then he meets Swada, a Somalian woman in danger of deportation.

Ayse Polat’s subtle and brilliant film follows Armenian Ali as he talks to the Kurdish inhabitants of the historically Armenian province of Van, in the East of Turkey, about the Armenian genocide.

The Remigrant is part of the "Kosovan Shorts" in collaboration with the Dokufest Vienna.

A portrait of a woman telling her identity crisis through the use of a metaphor: the cutting in half of earthworms. An unusual self portrait in the form of a film.

Casa Xochiquetzal is a refuge for elderly sex workers. Marginalised and forgotten by society, these remarkable women find a family behind the walls of this unusual house in Mexico City.

In 2010, Rokhsar and her family fled from Afghanistan to Denmark. There, she goes to public school, speaks Danish and plays football, like all her friends.

From the euphoric beginnings of the Arab Spring, the Syrian regime’s brutal reaction to the radicalisation of protest movements: A young radio host from Damascus documented her and her friends’ everyday lives on film testifying to the power of a camera during war.

Bad working conditions as well as low wages are the reality for many migrant workers coming from Africa, Asia and the Arab countries to help build the facilities needed for the 2022 World Cup in Quatar.

During Egypt's Arab Spring, a heart surgeon creates a comedy show modelled after US comedy host Jon Stewart. Steeped in political satire and government criticism, the show soon faces a hostile totalitarian regime.

Five people narrate how they have drifted into a state of self-alienation due to the dreary working conditions imposed upon them. It is in their love for lyricism that they find themselves again.

Mette Carla Albrechtsen and Lea Glob initially set out to make an erotic film that rested on the experiences of real women.

Puffing, moaning, wheezing, groaning, panting – the breathing of the character dominates the soundtrack. She presses her hips towards the ceiling to please the man in her house, while she has lost herself already amid domestic violence and prostitution.

“They never fail.” The Glock pistol has been fetishised in films and the arts, and is a regular topseller in the international arms market. For the first time, the filmmaking duo Fritz Ofner and Eva Hausberger tells the story of the rise of the Glock.

"We, the Yazidis, became doves. Doves without wings", says Hedil. Stranded with her family in a Yazidi refugee camp in Eastern Turkey, she reminisces about her former life in Northern Iraq and recounts the horrors of her escape.

This documentary film accompanies Shahin Najafi, an Iranian musician critical of Islam and the regime, against whom a Fatwa was issued.

Unarmed Black teenager Mike Brown was killed by a police officer in St Louis County, USA. After a brutal crackdown by the national garde during a vigil in Brown's name, a new resistance movement is born.