An atmospheric and dreamy picture poem from Argentina's vast La Pampa region, where ancient stories of spirits are evoked in dark and evocative images between reality and the beyond.
Social & External
At the Limit is a documentary about extreme climbing. In this sports documentary, Pepe Danquart shows brothers Thomas and Alexander Huber climbing in Patagonia and on the granite rock "El Capitan" in Yosemite Valley (USA). A key part of the film is their attempt at a speed ascent of the 1,000-meter-high route "The Nose," in which the two athletes aim to break the then speed record of 2:48:30 hours, set by Hans Florine and Yuji Hirayama in September 2002.
Maverick soulmates Ged and Dave are on a mission through the winding lanes and hidden tracks of North Devon, to record the lives and experiences of people living without mains electricity.
Andreas Kieling, a famous German documentary film maker, explores the coldest places in the world. He observes various animals in Patagonia, the Falkland Islands, Cape Horn, South Georgia and Antarctica.
A documentary that records the daily life of a mother with a limited life expectancy and a grandmother, directed by the daughter, Haruyo Kato.
A representation of queer and feminist imagery that was mainly shot in the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau, remote and developing areas in southwest China, and metropolitan cities like Beijing from 2000 to 2004 to document the social changes in contemporary China. The director sympathetically and erotically represents a variety of women, including women as laborers, women as prayers, women in the ground, women in marriage, and women who lie on the funeral pyre with their dead husbands. Her camera juxtaposes the mountains and rivers in old times, the commercialized handicrafts as exposition, the capital exploitation of the elders’ living space, and the erotic freedom of the young people in a changing city.
A mechanic discovers the fossil of a huge carnivorous dinosaur, unleashing a war between scientists, mayors and neighboring towns to keep “the biggest dinosaur in the world.” Among bone thefts, replicas and a mayor obsessed with creating Dinolandia, anything goes when it comes to surviving.
A group of Welsh settlers decided to emigrate to Argentine Patagonia in 1865. Among them, a woman named Catherine Roberts, her husband, and their three children. Aboard the ship Mimosa they arrived at the current Puerto Madryn, Chubut, on July 28, 1865. Catherine died on August 21 and was buried near the coast, but her traces were lost until 1995 when some bones were discovered by chance. Argentine scientists Silvia Dahinten, Julieta Gómez Otero and Fernando Coronato have been working for twenty years to determine if the remains found are those of Catherine. In 2015, the arrival in Puerto Madryn of a Welsh descendant of Catherine, and new scientific advances, allow us to confirm that the bones found in 1995 are those of Catherine.
Leandre, 20, dreams of having a child with Juliette, with whom he has been in a relationship for several months. This summer will be an opportunity for him to question his ability to become a father and to reflect on himself.
Through a collage of spaces and times, the interventions and interferences of nature and human beings in the south of Brazil reveals themselves... or try to hide.
Marc-André Leclerc, an exceptional climber, has made solo his religion and ice his homeland. When filmmaker Peter Mortimer begins his film, he places his camera at the base of a British Columbia cliff and waits patiently for the star climber to come down to answer his questions. Marc André, a little uncomfortable, prefers to return to the depths of the forest where he lives in a tent with his girlfriend Brette Harrington. In the heart of winter, Peter films vertiginous solos on fragile ice. He tries to make appointments with the climber who is never there and does not seem really concerned by this camera pointed at him "For me, it would not be a solo if there was someone else" . Marc-André is thus, the "pure light" of the mountaineers of his time, which marvel Barry Blanchard, Alex Honnold or Reinhold Messner, interviewed in the film. An event film for an extraordinary character.
From Oscar-winning filmmakers Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin, "Wild Life" follows conservationist Kris Tompkins on an epic, decades-spanning love story as wild as the landscapes she dedicated her life to protecting. After falling in love in mid-life, Kris and the outdoorsman and entrepreneur Doug Tompkins left behind the world of the massively successful outdoor brands they'd helped pioneer like Patagonia, The North Face, and Esprit, and turned their attention to a visionary effort to create National Parks throughout Chile and Argentina. "Wild Life" chronicles the highs and lows of their journey to effect the largest private land donation in history.
Set in the sparsely populated lobster fishing villages of southern Nova Scotia, Plains is a cinema vérité approach to documenting the curious lives of Jon and Cat, a young couple who are developing politically left-leaning virtual reality video games. Against the busy backdrop of their art practice, we sit in on their quiet rural life, which, in its proximity to nature and the vast green and oceanic spaces that surround, echoes the romanticism of a simpler time. As the decaying world of physical labour and the mechanical industry faces up to an expanding digital empire, Jon gradually retreats into the alternative realities of his own design.
In 1959, Cesare Maestri and Toni Egger are said to have been the first to climb the more than 3,000-metre-high granite needle of Cerro Torre. Egger had a fatal accident on the descent and Maestri was unable to prove that they had reached the summit. Reinhold Messner searches for the truth in this documentary.
Former flight attendant Émilienne, 76, lives on a small farm in Centre-du-Québec. As the seasons go by, she helps us discover a way of life in symbiosis with the living and the passing of time.