The best of VOD

Manakamana

Filmed entirely inside the narrow confines of a cable car, high above a jungle in Nepal, that transports villagers to an ancient mountaintop temple, _Manakamana_ is an acute ethnographic investigation into culture, religion, technology and modernity.

Elementary

In the Makarenko public elementary school in the Paris outskirts, children want to learn and to be cheered while teachers know they do not only teach, they also educate. With care, tenacity and efforts, children are trained to become not only responsible citizens but also human beings.

Still Recording

For five years, at the heart of the Syrian civil war, a group of aspiring filmmakers documented the fighting and the daily life of the people in the city of Douma, in Eastern Ghouta, a besieged suburb of Damascus.

Don't Blink - Robert Frank

Robert Frank revolutionised photography and independent film. He documented the Beats, Welsh coal miners, Peruvian Indians, The Stones, London bankers, and the Americans. This is the bumpy ride, revealed with unblinking honesty by the reclusive artist himself.

Damascus Dreams

How does one remember a homeland they are so deeply connected to and disconnected from? When Canadian-born filmmaker Emilie Serri travels to Syria for the first time in ten years, she feels alienated. A year later, when her grandmother dies and the war begins, she tries to piece back together an image of this elusive country she desperately wants to call her own. Gathering evidence from the pas...

Born in Flames

A political science fiction film shot as a documentary, _Born in Flames_ takes us to the near future of New York, ten years after the failure of a social revolution. At the call of the Women's Army, several groups of activists finally unite to form a shifting, non-hierarchical network that baffles the FBI. They fought in an explosive atmosphere against a society whose institutions were racist, ...

Clotheslines

_Clotheslines_ poetically documents the pragmatic, symbolic and artistic role of laundry in women's lives. The film presents an enduring, vivid account, showing how the creative energies of women have been sapped by mundane tasks, and in turn how such tasks reflect a ritualistic approach to life.

record found here

Ten years ago, lanaire aderemi’s grandmother told her about the Egba Women’s Revolt, a resistance movement against colonial taxation in the late 1940s in Abeokuta, Nigeria. Inspired by this story, lanaire explores archival documents, historical sites and oral testimonies to document the imaginative and revolutionary spirit of Abeokuta women in the 1940s. 

Sisters in the Struggle

This documentary features Black women active in politics as well as in community, labour, and feminist organizing. They share their insights and personal testimonies on the dual legacy of racism and sexism, linking their lived experiences to the ongoing struggle to end systemic discrimination and violence against women and people of colour.

Mountain Flesh

In a Swiss mountain village, hikers head out, a fountain splashes reassuringly and a churchwarden prepares a mass. There’s something going on here, but what is it? Men with high-tech measuring instruments pepper the landscape, and local people study their surroundings intensely. An ecological dystopia about a community living under constant threat.

Manakamana

Filmed entirely inside the narrow confines of a cable car, high above a jungle in Nepal, that transports villagers to an ancient mountaintop temple, _Manakamana_ is an acute ethnographic investigation into culture, religion, technology and modernity.

Mat and Her Mates

October 2018. Mat and her friends organize a self-gynecology workshop in their squat in Nantes. It's an opportunity for filmmaker Pauline Pénichout to paint a portrait of this young woman.