Breaking Vegas

Architecture of Happiness

For a hundred years, the former fishing village of Campione d'Italia, an Italian enclave in Switzerland, has drawn enormous wealth from a monumental casino. There is hardly a resident who has not benefited economically or socially from it. But the bankruptcy of this colossus destroys all prospects and autonomy. The reopening gives the village one last chance.

Blindsight

Six blind Tibetan teenagers climb the Lhakpa-Ri peak of Mount Everest, led by seven-summit blind mountain-climber Erik Weihenmayer.

Laci's Great Escape

Laci is almost ready for his great escape - standing in his way are his watchful parents, a depressed grandmother, and a cat who still has a lot to forgive.

Dreamland

Las Vegas — to many it's a 24-hour fantasy world filled with showgirls, high rollers and outrageous theme hotels. With a roll of the dice, 75 year-old Lou stakes everything to retire and start a new life there. But beneath the glittering surface of the city, Lou discovers a world quite different from his dreams. This compassionate portrait follows Lou and several other residents over a two-year period, documenting a community living in the shadow of the Las Vegas strip, where gambling is a constant temptation and reality is more subtle and stirring than any game.

Dance for All

Pieces of a Dream: A Story of Gambling

When Michelle Wong's brother, Philip, committed suicide at the age of 36, she felt that she had to find out why. Her film, Pieces of a Dream, is her attempt to understand her brother's death and to deal with his loss.

Untold: Operation Flagrant Foul

Years after serving time for betting on games he officiated, former NBA referee Tim Donaghy revisits the scandal that shook up the league.

Játék a tér

An apartment for 3.30 forints. Petra Pelsőczy's film deals with LOTTO houses and their owners of the 1960s.

Rhythm is it!

RHYTHM IS IT! records the first big educational project of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra under Sir Simon Rattle. The orchestra ventured out of the ivory tower of high culture into boroughs of low life for the sake of 250 youngsters. They had been strangers to classical music, but after arduous but thrilling preparation they danced to Stravinsky's 'Le Sacre du Printemps' ('The Rite of Spring'). Recorded with a breathtaking fidelity of sound, this film from Thomas Grube and Enrique Sánchez Lansch documents the stages of the Sacre project and offers deep insights into the rehearsals of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra.

Permission to Exist

In just sixty years, South Korea went from being one of the poorest countries on the Asian continent to having the 12th largest economy in the entire world. Every year, it is measured that Korean students have some of the highest test scores and a higher rate of acceptance into Ivy League schools compared to all other nations. But on the flip side, South Korea also has one of the highest suicide rates in the developed world, the highest gender pay gap of all developed countries, and the highest plastic surgery rate per capita. Always expected to receive top scores and constantly bombarded by media and messages that seem to demand nothing short of visual “perfection,” how do these individuals come to accept and learn to love themselves as they are?

Fruteira

Out of Luck

An in depth look at the full effect of State Lotteries on the players and the people around them.

See you in Vegas

This is a documentary about the Dutch magician Hans Klok. It's a story about his quest to make his dream come true in the magician capital of the world: Las Vegas.

A Wealth of Nations

Experimental ethnographic digital feature exploring International student and teacher identity expressed through musical performance at the University of Jinan, Shandong, China.

Pride of Place

In this first project of Kim Longinotto while she was a student at Englands National School of Television and Film she filmed the daily life in a girls boarding school situated in an old isolated castle in Buckinghamshire. Until she was 17, Longinotto lived in this boarding school, finaly she run away from there. In this dark and expressive black and white documentary, Longinotto exposes the repressive school from the students perspective. It seems to be a kind of miniature state with bizzare rules, idigestibel food and absurd punishments. The documentary begins with an graduation ceremony. The director blows her own trumpet, afterwards the film describes the daily routine of schoollife. The film ends up with the students leaving for holidays. As a result of this documentary, the boarding school was closed down one year after the release of the film.

Berkeley in the Sixties

A documentary about militant student political activity at the University of California, Berkeley in the 1960s.

Conductivity

Conductivity is a film about creative leadership told through the story of three young conductors at the prestigious Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, Finland; I-Han Fu (Taiwan), Emilia Hoving (Finland) and James Kahane (France). When stepping on the podium, they are put under a magnifying glass. Conductor training, in essence, is leadership training. The film gives a unique viewpoint to follow the students, as this is the first film about conductor training at the Sibelius Academy.

Freakonomics

Some of the world's most innovative documentary filmmakers will explore the hidden side of everything.

A Simpler Way

Four students from the President's Leadership Circle at Frostburg State University journey to a remote village in Uganda to discover a radically simple solution to an urgent global problem. What they find there changes their lives in unexpected ways. A Simpler Way is a documentary production from Frostburg State University and Interdependent Pictures that explores the need for simple, affordable solutions to global development issues and the role of personal experience in meaningful, transformative education.

Flogsta Heaven

Viktor Johansson is back with a new semi-documentary. This time about teenage outsiders from Flogsta, on the outskirts of Uppsala.