Program series: documentary

Over the course of five years, Afghan teenage girl Soraya documents her repeated attempts to escape Iran. Her deepest wish is to reunite with her mother in Austria. Using her mobile phone, she films dangerous border crossings, life in exile, and a violent marriage. Through her deep passion for visual art, she tries to find a language for pain, hope, and resistance.

This unconventional documentary about Marianne Faithfull is framed by a fictional device: Faithfull is summoned to the “Ministry of Not Forgetting,” led by Tilda Swinton, where she is asked to reflect on six decades of music, fame, and resistance. Through conversations, archival footage, and musical highlights, the film traces her breakthrough as a young star in the 1960s, her downfall and struggles with addiction, and the powerful comeback that defined her later career. Reality and fantasy merge in what would become a fitting finale to Faithfull’s artistic life.

Siw Malmkvist is one of Sweden’s most beloved entertainers. In this documentary – an enormous box office success in Sweden – we meet her as she prepares to move, packing an entire life into cardboard boxes while memories from a rich career resurface.

Alongside footage of a lively and sharp Siw Malmkvist today, the film draws on archival material from Swedish television and Malmkvist’s own private home movies, allowing us to see the world through her eyes. The result is an unusually intimate portrait of both the artist and the person Siw, capturing not only her life but also the changing world around her.

Experience the premiere of the film about Mariann Sæther – one of the world’s top whitewater kayakers. With two world championship titles to her name, she travels the globe in pursuit of extreme sports, navigating raging rapids and towering waterfalls. When she becomes a mother, she is determined to continue pushing the limits of the sport.

In 2009, Indigenous leader Javier Chocobar was murdered while defending the Chuschagasta people’s right to their land in Argentina. Using this tragic event as its starting point, this documentary paints a broader picture of the struggle over land, power, and identity. With a calm and precise gaze, director Lucrecia Martel follows both the court case against the accused and the long-standing conflict over the territory.

Filmmaker Arjun Talwar moved from India to Poland ten years ago and still struggles to fully belong. In an effort to accelerate his integration and connect with the community on the street where he lives, he picks up his camera and begins documenting everyday life on Ulica Wilcza (Wolf Street) and its many charming residents. The result is a beautiful and nuanced portrait not only of a single street, but of contemporary Polish society.

Memory is a deeply personal documentary in which director Vladlena Sandu returns to her lost childhood in the shadow of war in the 1990s. After her parents’ divorce, six-year-old Vladlena moves from Crimea to Grozny – soon to be engulfed by the war between Russia and Chechnya. Fear and violence become part of everyday life.

Sandu combines multiple artistic approaches to access her memories. She recreates her childhood through an imaginative toy theatre, staging the horrors of war with plastic dolls, accompanied by her calm, almost detached voice-over. The poetic images are rich in color and surreal tableaux, recalling filmmakers such as Andrei Tarkovsky and Sergei Parajanov, interspersed with surprising bursts of Europop and pop-cultural references.

Maryam left Iran after the 1979 revolution and built a new life in the United States. Her elderly parents remain in Tehran. Through surveillance cameras, Maryam follows their daily routines – and their safety. Life on the screen becomes both a source of comfort and a painful reminder that she and her parents live on opposite sides of the globe.

No father-son relationships are alike – and this one is particularly distinctive. Over the course of 20 years, director and father Gunnar Hall Jensen documents his son’s life, from infancy until a brutal and tragic event changes everything.

How does one become a good father? Is there a formula? Gunnar himself grew up without a father and instead looked to polar explorer Roald Amundsen as a masculine role model. He navigates fatherhood as best he can, makes clumsy mistakes, and gradually allows his son to take more responsibility for his own life. But the son’s ambitions and thirst for adventure lead him into a dangerous world far beyond his father’s control.

Sepideh Farsi attempts to enter Gaza to make a documentary, but is denied access due to the Israeli blockade. Instead, the film takes shape through video calls with young Palestinian photojournalist Fatima Hassouna. From Gaza, Fatima describes her brutal everyday reality, while Farsi listens helplessly from afar. Despite inhumane living conditions and constant fear, Fatima clings to an unbreakable optimism.

The conflict in Abkhazia during the 1990s triggered a wave of refugees to Georgia. Some were housed in an abandoned sanatorium on the outskirts of Tbilisi. Originally intended as a temporary solution, the building has now housed refugees for over 30 years – and has slowly fallen into decay.

When VHS revolutionized the film industry in the late 1970s, video rental stores popped up in towns and cities everywhere. But how have video stores been portrayed in film? Director Alex Ross Perry uses only clips from movies, TV shows, commercials, and informational videos to show how video stores shaped popular cinema, our society, and us as people. People met, exchanged tips, and cultivated a film culture – before the stores gradually disappeared as the market was swept up by streaming services.