The Stendhal Syndrome or My Dinner with Turhan Bey

Joan Crawford's close-up in Humoresque. Michelangelo's David and Boticelli's "Birth of Venus". Stendhal was overwhelmed by the cultural overstimulation in Florence, which Graziella Magherini described scientifically in 1979 as Stendhal syndrome. Mark Rappaport describes his fascination for the Austrian actor Turhan Bey, who made a career in exotic roles in Hollywood in the 1940s. A very personal essay about the effect of close-ups, the canvas idols of the dream factory and the role of their admirers and fans.

Comedy Against the Odds

10-year-old Austin Eletto has autism. He’s also an aspiring stand-up comic. This short documentary spotlights the struggle of growing up with labels, and how Austin uses comedy to embrace and overcome them. Through the intimate story of Austin as he faces adversity and hardships, our audience will be thoroughly connected to his childhood experience, making the inevitable laughs bigger and more inspired.

Fragments on the flow

Fragments from Brussels, about the flow of the city, A cinema, A body, A film, and a wind that blows through the town. The film is a Schizomentry experience that blends real stories and fiction. After all, where is the border?

Secret Ingredients

While the debate continues about GMOs, Roundup and other toxic pesticides, this powerful film shares remarkable stories of people who regain their health after discovering the secret ingredients in their food and making a bold commitment to avoid them.

Blush: An Extraordinary Voyage

For 18-year-old Finnish–Kosovan Fatu, a simple visit to the grocery store feels as nerve-racking as a lunar expedition: for the first time in his life, he’s wearing makeup in public. Luckily his best friend Rai, a young woman on the spectrum of autism, is there to ferociously support him through the voyage.

Shapeless Tracking

Inside a computer a space-time is revealed in which image and sound become numbers and motion manifests as rhythm, flow and chaos. This tracking and integration experiment removes the superficial identity of video to detect kinetic disturbances in everyday environment.

Loucura e Cultura

Documentary with fragments and records about the boundaries between art and counterculture, based on a debate held at the Museum of Modern Art, Rio de Janeiro, in October 1968.

Daedalus

"Fly too high and you will burn, go too low and you won't breathe." A 7 day vlog during the summer of 2023, a story of dreamers and drowners.

Dancing Plague

Dancing Plague, a GTA V mod, flips the script. Holding H key forces male NPCs to dance uncontrollably, revealing the game's biased animations where female characters (often sex workers) have the flashiest moves. This disrupts the game's gender roles, making masculinity both playful and challenged. Interestingly, female characters ignore the male dance frenzy. This is a humorous critique of the game's gender politics. The mod's soundtrack, by Azu Tiwaline, blends electronic music with trance traditions, deepening the critique and adding an immersive ritualistic feel.

Autism: The Musical

Follows five autistic children as they work together to create and perform a live musical production.

Archipelago of Earthen Bones — To Bunya

Forming part of a film constellation that stretches from Chile across the Pacific, in which Malena Szlam trains her camera on far-flung volcanic landscapes — by turns barren and verdant — the dazzling in-camera multiple exposures of Archipelago of Earthen Bones — To Bunya evoke the layered histories of the titular Bunya Mountains in eastern Australia’s Beerwah region, further deepened by sonified atmospheres from artist Lawrence English.

And the Moon Sets Over the Temple That Was

The camera sets out on a journey to find the headless Buddha statues scattered across Namsan Mountain in Gyeongju. What has disappeared, who caused it to vanish, and how has it been recorded? People stroll along the river, the sea, and mountain paths, taking photographs, where images from the past and the desire for excavation overlap.

Printemps Now!

How Montreal is transformed from winter to spring. Inspired by Berlin: Symphony of a great city, Printemps Now! is a cinematographic poem, an audiovisual symphony of the city of Montreal transitioning from winter to spring.

Nova the Film

An inspiring 75min DIY documentary film on new art and the young artists behind it. It was all filmed on the heat of live action of the first NOVA Contemporary Culture Festival, July and August 2010 in São Paulo, Brazil.

Autism and the Arts: Poetry with Peter Street

Born in 1948, Peter Street struggled at school with epilepsy and illiteracy in Bolton, Lancashire, and, later in life, as a slaughterman, a gravedigger and a war poet. At 66 years old he was then diagnosed with autism, and his world changed forever.

Markéta chce taštičku

Heart of a Bull

A concert film documenting a performance from the Houston artist Orpheus Von Doom.

Time to Change

Angolan director and screenwriter Pocas Pascoal reminds us that it’s time for a change, proposing through this film a look at colonialism, capitalism, and their impact on global biodiversity. We observe that the destruction of the ecosystem goes back a long way and is already underway through land exploitation, big game hunting, and the exploitation of man by man.

The Forgotten

An exploration of memory after death.

Cormac McCarthy's Veer

Cormac McCarthy has spent the last 25 years writing his novels at the mountain top retreat of the Santa Fe Institute (SFI) in New Mexico. An institute dedicated to the formal analysis of complex systems. In this documentary filmed at the library at SFI (and in the desert), Cormac in conversation with his colleague David Krakauer, reflects on isolation, mathematics, character, and the nature of the unconscious

Struggle: The Life and Lost Art of Szukalski

Artists in LA discover the work of forgotten Polish sculptor Stanislav Szukalski, a mad genius whose true story unfolds chapter by astounding chapter.

Elstree 1976

A documentary about ten very different lives connected by having appeared onscreen wearing masks or helmets in Star Wars.

A Brief History of Time

This shows physicist Stephen Hawking's life as he deals with the ALS that renders him immobile and unable to speak without the use of a computer. Hawking's friends, family, classmates, and peers are interviewed not only about his theories but the man himself.

Cameraperson

As a visually radical memoir, CAMERAPERSON draws on the remarkable footage that filmmaker Kirsten Johnson has shot and reframes it in ways that illuminate moments and situations that have personally affected her. What emerges is an elegant meditation on the relationship between truth and the camera frame, as Johnson transforms scenes that have been presented on Festival screens as one kind of truth into another kind of story—one about personal journey, craft, and direct human connection.

Seduced and Abandoned

SEDUCED AND ABANDONED combines acting legend Alec Baldwin with director James Toback as they lead us on a troublesome and often hilarious journey of raising financing for their next feature film. Moving from director to financier to star actor, the two players provide us with a unique look behind the curtain at the world's biggest and most glamourous film festival, shining a light on the bitter-sweet relationship filmmakers have with Cannes and the film business. Featuring insights from directors Martin Scorsese, 'Bernando Bertolucci' and Roman Polanski; actors Ryan Gosling and Jessica Chastain and a host of film distribution luminaries.

The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley

With a magical new invention that promised to revolutionize blood testing, Elizabeth Holmes became the world’s youngest self-made billionaire, heralded as the next Steve Jobs. Then, overnight, her 10-billion-dollar company dissolved. The rise and fall of Theranos is a window into the psychology of fraud.

First Position

A documentary that follows six young dancers from around the world as they prepare for the Youth America Grand Prix, one of the most prestigious ballet competitions in the world.

The Swamp

A look behind the curtain of Washington politics following three "renegade" Republican Congressmen as they bring libertarian and conservative zeal to champion the President’s call to “drain the swamp.”

Evil Influencer: The Jodi Hildebrandt Story

Unravel the case of Utah therapist Jodi Hildebrandt, whose child abuse arrest with parenting YouTuber Ruby Franke exposed a twisted tale of manipulation.

Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God

Alex Gibney explores the charged issue of pedophilia in the Catholic Church, following a trail from the first known protest against clerical sexual abuse in the United States and all way to the Vatican.

Life in a Day

A documentary shot by filmmakers all over the world that serves as a time capsule to show future generations what it was like to be alive on the 24th of July, 2010.

Room 666

During the 1982 Cannes Film Festival, Wim Wenders asked a number of global film directors to, one at a time, go into a hotel room, turn on the camera, and answer a simple question: "What is the future of cinema?"

The Captains

The Captains is a feature-length documentary film written and directed by William Shatner. The film follows Shatner as he interviews the other actors who have portrayed starship captains in the Star Trek franchise.

Stephen Curry: Underrated

The remarkable coming-of-age story of Stephen Curry—one of the most influential, dynamic, and unexpected players in basketball history—and his rise from an undersized college player to a four-time NBA champion.

What We Left Behind: Looking Back at Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

A documentary exploring the legacy of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, the reasons it went from the black sheep of Star Trek to a beloved mainstay of the franchise, and a brainstorm with the original writers on what a theoretical eighth season of the show could look like.

BRATS

In the 1980s, Andrew McCarthy was part of a young generation of actors who were set to take over Hollywood after a string of successful teen movies. However, when the New York magazine cover story in 1985 dubs them the Brat Pack, stars in the making suddenly find themselves losing control over the trajectory of their careers. Now, almost forty years later, McCarthy looks to reconnect with peers and co-stars so that together they can reflect on their respective legacies.

Unknown Number: The High School Catfish

Vulgar, taunting texts blow up the phones of a teen and her boyfriend. Who's sending them — and why? This twisty documentary reveals the shocking answer.

Above Majestic

A look at the origins, history and conspiracies behind the "Majestic 12", a clandestine group of military and corporate figureheads charged with reverse-engineering extraterrestrial technology.

The Unbelievers

Scientists Richard Dawkins and Lawrence Krauss travel the globe promoting a scientific worldview and the rational questioning of religious belief.

John Wick Chapter 2: Wick-vizzed

A candid look at rehearsal footage in support of a focus on pre-viz.