The War Game presents a fictional scenario concerning the consequences of an explosion in Kent following the escalation of an East-West conflict. The BBC withdrew its support, stating that “the effect of the film is considered too horrific for television broadcast”. The film had a significant impact on the growing campaign for nuclear disarmament.
Between 2020 and 2021, the Icelandic filmmaker Hlynur Pálmason filmed his three children building a tree house in their backyard. Using a fixed frame, his lockdown project yielded a fascinating study of the seasons grounded in the leisurely rhythms of kids at play.
In 1976, the announcement of the imminent eruption of La Soufrière, Guadeloupe’s main volcano, left Basse-Terre completely depopulated. Werner Herzog travels there with his team and two cameramen as the danger reaches its peak.
Letters from a Palestinian woman living in war-torn Lebanon to her daughter, whom she has not seen for years, and a series of photographs convey the effects of war and exile on their personal and cultural life, with a nuanced look at family relationships.
During her vacation in Cuba in 1963, four years after Fidel Castro came to power, Agnès Varda made a photo report about Cuban society and culture after the revolution. This delightful black-and-white composition makes the edit resemble a choreography and intermingles the photos with catchy Cuban rhythms.
A cat is half-sleeping, half-listening to Federico Mompou’s “Pájaro triste”. This first tape in Chris Marker’s Bestiaire trilogy, a series of short films devoted exclusively to animals, features his beloved cat, Guillaume-en-Egypte.
A poetic documentary in the form of a letter from a son to his mother, but read by her to him. What begins as an attempt to tell her story, slowly transforms into something else.
Filmed in Shatila, a refugee camp built in Lebanon when thousands of Palestinians fled their country in 1948. At an undetermined moment in the future, the refugees’ dream of returning to Palestine becomes a reality.
In this saturated film, Varda captures 1950s tourism on the Côte d'Azur: clear skies, burning sun, and cheeky parasols. A touristic tour on the French Riviera’s exoticism, full of captivating imagery, bathed in an atmosphere of nostalgia.
Filmmakers Paul Shemisi and Nizar Saleh embark on a journey from the Democratic Republic of Congo to Germany to screen their latest film. However, during a layover in Angola, their trip takes a harrowing turn when airport authorities question the authenticity of their documents.
Old Child depicts the fragmented story of Hazem, who had to flee Gaza. Throughout this stream-of-consciousness montage of dreams and reminiscences, he searches for order but also for the beauty he left behind.
In what one could call Jonas Mekas’ first video blog, the Lithuanian avant-garde filmmaker reflects on his life and the art of cinema and representation.
By means of visual material gathered from online sources, filmmakers Olivia Rochette and Gerard-Jan Claes create a unique poetic realm in which thoughts, fears, desires, and worries are shared via webcam, and merge together.
An artificial summer rules the greenhouse. Workers tend to carnations. In a multitude of splendid colours, they grow towards the sun until they’re ready to fulfill their cut-flower destiny. Carnations is an audiovisual meditation on movements within a carnation nursery close to filmmaker Martijn van de Wiele’s home.
This avant-garde work exposes how we hide behind a façade in times of crisis, as if nothing is wrong. Arthur Lipsett’s first collage film mixes dozens of black-and-white photographs with audio fragments. The film’s subtle criticism of the 1960s zeitgeist in the United States earned it an Oscar nomination.
In So Can I, Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami combines live-action and animation. While two schoolboys watch animated animals (such as jumping kangaroos and swimming fish) on TV, one boy says, “I can do that too,” and then imitates the actions.
In Magic, a portrait of Joris, images sourced from different periods in time are glued together. Worn-out VHS footage filmed by the artist’s father is placed beside 8mm images she filmed herself. Both have the same subject: one boy, both a son and a brother. Connecting images of then and now, a new narrative of remembering opens up.
This is a cinematic letter to the title character, who left Tunisia and now lives in Belgium. Shot in the first year after the Tunisian revolution, this is a poetic journey through a troubled landscape. Between order and chaos, the film reveals a land of disillusionment but also of humour and hope.
Oman’s vast plains look so much like Mars that they are used as a training ground for astronauts. Two local girls gaze at the starry sky like curious scientists while the astronauts philosophise about living on the Red Planet.
In The Seasons, Artavazd Pelechian captures a reclusive farming community in its incessant struggle against the elements of nature. The film shows humanity trapped in a cruel but stunningly beautiful existence.
Dedicated to nutrition and the human attitude towards “production animals”, this YouTube-found footage collage provides disturbing insights into the behaviour of a Western affluent society towards animal products.
This satirical ethnographic film shows eating Belgians in diverse contexts.Dinner scenes at weddings, funerals, Christmas, and New Year’s Eve portray a country: loneliness and community alternate, just as wealth and poverty.
In 20th-century Colombia, resistance fighter Yarokamena, a member of the indigenous Uitoto tribe, called for rebellion against violent exploitation of the rubber mining industry in the Amazone and invoked the spiritual powers of war.
Eight thousand five hundred kilometres lie between the Amazon and the Ardennes. In his home country of Brazil, filmmaker Diego looks at the inaccessible forest from the outside. Its Belgian counterpiece, however, is easier to explore.
Punk author Kathy Acker’s work is the starting point for a conversation about gender identity and body transformation and is linked to the punk movement of the 1970s and 1980s.
An introspective essay about the search for a place between reality and imagination: a placeless place made up out of dreams and a longing for fluidity. Slowly, the grains of the compressed image become the sands of the atopic beach, revealing an imaginary place.
In this urgent diary film about longing for freedom and community, the filmmaker reflects on the individual yet collective experience of growing up queer in Tunisia today.
A portrait of contemporary suburban youth seeking to invent new contours of collective identity, against the backdrop of France in the throes of recession.
Filmmaker Nahid Rezaei returns to her all-girls high school to explore the lives of young students in Tehran. At times, the girls are very open about their hopes and dreams, sweet even, but when their future is discussed, they are occasionally sad.
Drawing on digital memories and using online tools such as Google Maps, Aulona Fetahaj reflects on how it feels to be the child of refugees in the digital age.
Mexico, October 2011. A mysterious dream gives birth to Cuco, a transgender latex pirate activist. This essayistic film follows their quest to create more recognition for the queer community.
The Brazilian trans woman Gisberta lived as an immigrant in Portugal. After she was brutally murdered, she became an icon for the transgender rights cause.
Pierre, 25 years old and on a scholarship for a prestigious Parisian university, is lodged by Francine, who is 75, disabled, and confined to her wheelchair. Both puzzled and disoriented, they witness the French presidential elections of 2017 play out.
Two siblings roam the mystical landscapes of Colombia, searching for their dead father's spirit. Their journey takes them from the city of Bogotá to the jungle, through realms of thought and deep into their haunted dreams.
In 1962, beloved and controversial poetess Forugh Farrokhzad went to Azerbaijan and made her only short film: a portrait of a leper colony. The House is Black is an empathetic portrait that illuminates a world burdened by tragedy, yet sustained by community.
A portrait of young skateboarders growing up in a Flemish suburban town. We meet different characters going through their daily routines: riding around on their skateboards, waiting, hanging out, daydreaming...
In a container, sitting between crates of merchandise, two men talk about their exile. Their stories about the crossing of endless borders come together in a common dream: to reach England.
In 1998, Semira Adamu, a 20-year-old Nigerian immigrant, died on Belgian soil of suffocation under a police pillow. Twenty years later, two women tell her story in a cry for justice. Through this film, they highlight the reality of detention centres: the harsh conditions of confinement, the suffering of detainees and the abuse by guards and police officers.
In the dressing room of Cabaret Mademoiselle, Brussels’ hotspot for drag queens, four queer performers are getting ready in front of the mirror. It’s the perfect moment to talk and open up: an intergenerational conversation about coming out and a mother’s love.
A ship drifts in the middle of an endless sea. Aboard is a crew of five. They all cope with boredom — some by trying to overpower it; others by escaping into a parallel world guided by dreams.
