Lisboners
Sergio Trefaut | 2005 | 100 min | Portugal

A documentary about the wave of immigration that has changed Portugal in recent years. This is a portrait of a unique moment, when the country and the city began a process of irreversible change. The film is a secret window open on new realities: ways of life, the job market, rights, religious cults and identities. This is trip to an unknown city, to places where we have never been before, but which are right here

No man is an island (Ei kulaan ole saari)
Sonja Lindén | 2006 | 40 min | Finland

The father of the director, Krister, lives alone on his island, but each day he makes a phone call to his wife in a nursing home. While always sticking to his curious sense of humor, the old man spends his days writing a book for the family in which he records maintenance directions for the house and the grounds for the next generation, preparing for his final voyage and listening to his rare collection of musical recordings. A film about love and loneliness.

4 Elements
Jiska Rickels | 2006 | 89 min | Netherlands

A poetic visual essay about man's uneasy relationship with fire, water, earth and air, as seen through the experiences of firefighters in Siberia, king crab fisherman on the Bering Sea in Alaska, German mineworkers and Russian cosmonauts preparing a launch to the international space station.

Calais : the Last Border
Marc Isaacs | 2003 | 58 min | Great Britain

For the English the French port of Calais is the gateway to Europe, but is also a place to buy cheap alcohol. For hundreds of émigrés, it is the final hurdle to cross in their desperate quest for a new life in England. This intimate film combines the stories of refugees, migrants, and English ex-pats painting a portrait of a transit town in which the inhabitants dream of a better future.

Full metal Village
Sung-Hyung Cho | 2006 | 91 min | Germany

Once a year, the tiny village of Wacken in Schleswig-Holstein bids farewell to the peace and tranquillity to host a worldwide metal music festival. Through its focus on the temporary music event, however, the film documents a picture of a rural community whose sense of identity and cohesion would now be practically unimaginable without the heavy metal festival.

Still life (Natureza Morta)
Susana de Sousa Dias | 2005 | 72 min

Within an image, another one is always hiding. Using only archive footage and without words, Still Life aims to rediscover and delve into the opacity of images made during the 48 years (1926-1974) of Portuguese dictatorship (news, war footage, propaganda documentaries, photos of political prisoners and also previously never seen rushes) in order to foster new interpretations.

Feltrinelli
Alessandro Rossetto | 2006 | 80min

Feltrinellli tells the story of the Italian publishing house « La Feltrinelli ». A film about books and the work and passion that goes into their making, development and circulation. It’s a story that delves into the discovery of literature and into a world that has been changed by books.

Welcome to Bataville (Bienvenue à Bataville)
François Caillat | 2007 | 86 min | France

In Lorraine, in a corner of the Moselle region, an economic and social experiment was instigated in 1932. Tomas Bata, the French shoe manufacturer, whose dream it was to make shoes for the whole of humanity, set up a modernist laboratory in the region. The location was called "Bataville", and next door to the Bata shoe factory was a model city and living community. The film tells the story of this utopian invention and its revealing history. It plunges us into the heart of one of the terrifying and giddy adventures of paternalism, and stands as a fable of the perils of forced happiness. The factory closed in 2001.

Low level flight
Jan Sikl | 2006 | 52 min | Czech republic

Low-level Flight is about life during communism by the personal story of Tána and Václav during the 1960s and 70s. Tána is captivated by Václav, an attractive, very ambitious man who dreams of becoming a pilot in the Czech army. The marriage turns bad during Václav’s training in the USSR when Tána discovers his alcoholism and relations with other women. The film is based entirely on the archives filmed by Václav and Tána.

Exit : le droit de mourir
Fernand Melgar | 2005 | 76 min | Switzerland

Switzerland is the only country in the world where associations, such as Exit, quite legally provide suicide assistance to people at the end of their lives. For over twenty years volunteers have accompanied sick and handicapped people towards the death of their choice that seems more dignified to them. In a society tending to control everything, they question us : Is choosing our death not our ultimate freedom ?

Your flesh and blood
Christine Seghezzi | 2004 | 24 min | France

Béatrice Turquand d’Auzay is a painter and sculptor. Her family is of French and German origin. Her two grand-fathers fought during World War I, both being sworn enemies. The work of Béatrice Turquand d’Auzay begins where family narration stops. Defying impossible mourning, she gives a body to the story of her origins.

Out of time (Aus der Zeit)
Harald Friedl | 2006 | 80 min | Austria

The small old-fashioned family shops in Vienna are disappearing or holding out. These are the last days of the Button Queen, the drugstore owner, the butcher and the fine leather–goods dealer. Yet this quaint picture is soon shattered by stories and gestures marked by the disruptions of History, social violence and disappointment, behind the jumble of goods and obsessive tidying up.

Nazê
Ümit Kivanç | 2006 | 72 min | Turkey

« It’s sunset for me. I didn’t see myself as a part of this world anymore. I am a poor, dirty, ugly old woman. I’ve no mind left, no eyes, no teeth. What am I good for ? » Certainly what makes Nazê’s life special is not only that it has lasted for over 105 years. Before she was born her father was poisoned ; she left the country with a total stranger to start a totally different life ; for decades she lived as a « stranger » in places that she wouldn’t really like to live in.

One More Hour With You (Un' ora sola ti vorrei )
Alina Marazzi | 2002 | 55 min | Italie

«A few years ago I found some old films shot by my grandfather during his life. I started to watch them with great curiosity and strong emotion, especially those marked with an “L”, the initial of my mother’s name: Liseli. As if by magic those images projected in front of my eyes seemed to give life back to a mysterious and unknown person to me: my mother, died when I was 7 years old.»

Stella
Vanina Vignal | 2006 | 77 min | France

Stella, her husband and sister live in a shantytown installed under the motorway in Plaine Saint-Denis just north of Paris. Stella begs in the metro, and the hospital where she goes for treatment is her only contact with society. One of the invisible, illegal immigrants of our cities, she was a factory worker during the Ceausescu regime. She has devoted her life to saving the man she loves. She fights on silently.

Vous êtes ici
Jorge Léon | 2006 | 80 min | Belgium

Vous êtes ici guides its viewer through a personal voyage, interwoven with the encounter of exceptional characters. The filmmaker –an unconscious character in the film – is driven to the limits of the dream world, where the real leads to either anxiety or an awakening. The film imitates the fragmented nature of dreams and borrows from the reality of violence.