In a rural village in southern Ukraine, the tragicomic sheriff duo Viktor and Volodya has to solve crimes such as the theft of two ducks. The other main problems are neighbor disputes, drunkenness, physical abuse and car breakdowns, and many of them have their roots in the prevalent unemployment, poverty and illiteracy. When the mayor […]
Petr Pavlensky is a Russian performance artist and activist. In his works he has sewn his mouth shut in support of Pussy Riot, nailed himself by the testicles to the Red Square in Moscow, and cut off his earlobe like Vincent van Gogh. His works criticize the Russian government. Body and bodily presence are the […]
Miia, the ambitious coach of Finland’s worst competitive cheerleading team, is sick of losing and stuck in Rovaniemi, on the Arctic Circle. So she takes a trip to the motherland, Texas, where she’s inspired by the American mindset and focus of the world’s best cheerleaders. Returning to Finland a tougher coach, she pushes her girls to the […]
There’s a village in China that you have never heard of, even though you probably know their main produce. At the village, an army of artists make copies of classic European paintings. Film makers Haibo Yu and Kiki Tianqi Yu take us on a trip to see how this well-greased art factory works. China’s Van […]
Korean ‘Grandma Gil’ was 13 years old. Filipino ‘Grandma Adela’ was 14. Chinese ‘Grandma Cao’, now in her 90’s, was also still young, when Japanese soldiers came to the girls’ homes and snatched them to serve as ‘comfort women’ for their troops. The sexual slavery imposed by the Japanese army during World War II was […]
The Lithuanian scientist Aušra Revutaite has spent 30 years in the Tian Shan mountain range in Central Asia, straddling the borders between Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and the autonomous Chinese region of Xinjiang. Some 3,500 meters above sea level with only her faithful dog and gray cat for company, she studies climate change on the Tuyuksu Glacier […]
A goddess, a Romany queen, a diva, a woman in the know. These are some of the words that friends, colleagues and press use to describe the strong-featured Antonia Santiago Amador, a flamenco virtuoso whose mind-blowing charisma director Lucia Stojevic has captured in her documentary bearing the artist’s stage name, La Chana. A born dancer, […]
All Governments Lie was released in September 2016. It preceded Donald Trump‘s election victory, but predicted it with surprising preciseness. The film is an insightful study of the depressingly short-sighted and visionless state of the American media. In its current state, media is not the fourth estate it should be. It is just a capitalistic […]
How well do you understand the crisis in Ukraine? Or war in general? If you have never thought about the events in Crimea, you certainly will after watching this disturbingly honest documentary by Alisa Kovalenko and Liubov Durakova. Alisa in Warland is named after Alisa Kovalenko, one of the two directors of the film. She […]
“I can live with physical discomfort, but I hate crime and injustice.” Ye Haiyan knows what she is talking about. For years, she has defended women’s rights in China, and consequently been pressured and harassed by the officials. Previously Haiyan campaigned for the rights of the sex workers, but recently she has turned her attention […]