In order to provide various entry points into the rich spectrum of the programme, we have devised five thematic pathways.
Siblings, lineage, intergenerational, origins
What is behind the need to tell one’s story, to make one’s origins traceable? From a psychoanalytic perspective, we are the by-products of the family novel. For documentary cinema, it serves as an inexhaustible source of inspiration, reconstructing lineages, untangling the complexities of parenthood, testing the strength of sibling bonds and gauging the gulfs between generations.
Friendships, love stories, grief, sexual liberation, emancipation, consent, feminisms
Love, like any other social phenomenon, is not immune to social determinants or pressures. Some films wind along the meanders of the heart, the body and desire. Behind the portrayal of emotions and the driving forces that shape or obstruct our relationships with the Other, there emerges an intimate quest for the bonds that liberate.
Decolonialism and neocolonialism, diasporas, migrations, minorities, BIPOC issues, discrimination
The liberation movements of the 20th century succeeded in dismantling the empires, yet without overcoming the colonial ideology that inspired them. Filmmakers throw a harsh light on the persistence of mechanisms of remembrance and forgetting that shape multicultural societies, where the dominated and the dominant continue to confront one another.
The bright future of war, state oppression, post-conflict trauma, resistance, militarism, geopolitics, counterpowers
Since the 2020s, we have entered an age of permanent crises, whose frequency is accelerating at a dizzying pace. In fact, open war and state oppression appear to be the only certainties, despite the persistent and widespread resistance of populations. Documentary, as both lookout and witness, continues to “take stock” of the darkness of the times.
Failed utopia, no future, techno-dystopias, the space age and the climate crisis
Humans have a taste for the future, which is not always synonymous with progress, and an ability to dream of a bright tomorrow that can quickly turn against them. By exhausting the nurturing Earth and imagining themselves colonising another, the futurists have opened Pandora’s box. From failed utopias to techno-dystopias, cinema reveals its peripheral visions at the edge of the precipice.
