Love, Ava

Anne-Marie

{Anne-Marie, rhythmician, art-therapist and organist, is an amazing musician. At the moment where I realized an interview was needed for my ECAL entrance contest, my mind directly thought of her. With years of experience, she tels us about all the memories she has and explains to us the beauty of this endangered profession.}

Hide and Seek

This documentary follows two long-lost Ukrainian friends, Arsalan and Nastya, as they reconnect in Germany after russia's full-scale invasion against Ukraine. Arsalan, an actor now in Frankfurt after time in a refugee camp, and Nastya, journalist and producer who stayed in Kyiv, reflect on the divergent paths their lives have taken due to the war. Through their conversations and therapy sessions, the film explores themes of displacement, identity, and the emotional impact of war on youth.

yaya/ayat

yaya/ayat explores identities, being lost in translation and distance. But at its core it's about the filmmaker longing for a relationship with her geographically distant grandma and her journey to Greece to find her. This is an experimental documentary about how being a part of any diaspora shapes a person's identity.

Mama Rosa

Rosa is from Croatia and lives in Switzerland, with her husband who depends on her care. She takes care of everything. Her children have grown up and want to leave home. Rosa stays behind alone.

The Story of the Weeping Camel

When a Mongolian nomadic family's newest camel colt is rejected by its mother, a musician is needed for a ritual to change her mind.

Buzz One Four

Buzz One Four chronicles the ill-fated flight of a Cold War B-52 Stratofortress loaded with two 3-4-megaton nuclear bombs that crashed 90 miles from Washington DC in 1961. Information suggests that detonation came closer than official reports indicated. The full details of the crash have remained classified and otherwise repressed by the Air Force, but the filmmaker, Portlander Matt McCormick, grew up with this story because the pilot was his grandfather. As McCormick recounts the history of the era, aspects of this crash, and other little-know nuclear-weapons accidents, he leaves us wondering if the U.S. was in greater danger of nuking itself than of being attacked by the Russians.

2 or 3 Things I Know About Him

What would your family reminiscences about dad sound like if he had been an early supporter of Hitler’s, a leader of the notorious SA and the Third Reich’s minister in charge of Slovakia, including its Final Solution? Executed as a war criminal in 1947, Hanns Ludin left behind a grieving widow and six young children, the youngest of whom became a filmmaker. It's a fascinating, maddening, sometimes even humorous look at what the director calls "a typical German story." (Film Forum)

Dream Boat

A cruise ship and 3,000 men – it is a universe without heteros and women that usually remains a mystery to the outside world. Once a year the Dream Boat sets sail for a cruise exclusively for gay men where most passengers are united by the wish to live life authentically as themselves in a protected place.

La vie heureuse de maman Louise

Beyond the Straight and Narrow

How did the rise of LGBTQ visibility, political progress, and digital technologies in the 2000s come together to offer the abundance of complex queer and transgender representations we see today? Media scholar Katherine Sender shows how LGBTQ visibility and political progress have combined with new digital media technologies and television platforms to produce an increasingly complex range of queer and transgender representations.

The Day of No One

A silent day unfolds on the slope of a mountain… A child exists alongside his mother and father, yet each of them seems to inhabit a different world. With no dialogue, the film relies on visual storytelling. In certain close-up shots, color fades to black and white; symbolizing moments of inner solitude, personal conflict, and emotional disconnection. The unseen distances within the family are revealed not through words, but through images.

Granny's Flags

Haja Fatma, a mother to eight children, tells the tale of family life in Tripoli during the Libyan Revolution. Women, young and old, all contributed during these hostile months in their own unique way. A human portal into the acts of ordinary people in their hope for freedom.

Gossip - Wie eine Band die Nuller Jahre umkrempelte

Hong Kong Heels - 港出我天后

Pan lives two lives. During the day he is the son of a traditional Hong Kong family. But at night he transforms into the unapologetic drag queen Pansze Diva entertaining the underground of the city. Ultimately looking for acceptance by their parents, what does a death in the family change?

W milczeniu

Until now, they have stood on the sidelines. They have not appeared before the cameras. They have not taken part in public discussion. It is mainly to them that the documentary film by the well-known journalist Ewa Ewart was devoted. It shows the face of the Smolensk catastrophe through the eyes of the victims' families. April 10, 2010 went down in the memory of Poles as a day of national drama. But for the characters in the film, it was the day of their greatest personal drama. Along with the presidential couple, their loved ones passed away in shocking circumstances. For most, the time passing since the Smolensk catastrophe does not bring relief. Ewa Ewart and her film crew accompany the families at various stages of their struggle with difficult emotions. The film is in the process of being made and will include sequences and stills that have not been used anywhere before.

The Spiral Generation

A significant group of trans and queer artists gather to mourn the loss of their friend – Indigo, AKA Spiral – to suicide.

De Wolkenfietsers - erfenis van een droom

On the outskirts of Den Helder lies De Nollen, an inland dune area where nature, sculpture, and painting merge into a truly immersive experience. It is the life's work of artist Rudi van de Wint. He died unexpectedly in 2006. His sons, Ruud and Gijs, carried on his dream, out of love for their father and for De Nollen. But plans for a Rudi van de Wint museum in the area led to cracks in their idyllic existence.

Tout le temps, tout le temps, tout le temps...?

Gaza-London

Made With Love

A short film depicting the universality of life, growth, and how beautiful life is to simply exist. The film shows how beautiful it can be when we show tenderness & love for one another, through the narration & home movies of four sisters & their mother from when they were born up to the present. The film was made over 18 years on The Australian Coast.