The Perfect Circle

Earth to earth, water to water. The body weight of a newborn child is up to 85 percent water, but in adulthood, the ratio can be cut into half. In a way, people dry up as they grow older. In Claudia Tosi’s documentary, people drink water, watch the rain and wait for their death. The Perfect Circle depicts a man and a woman, Ivano and Meris, who spend their final days at a hospice in the hills of Reggio Emilia, Northern Italy. Their illnesses are in the terminal stage and they know that death is only a matter of time. But the ever-nearing end may fleetingly be forgotten, like when they close their eyes and get lost in the music – until the bodies being carried out next door once again remind them of the inevitable. Death also becomes a part of life for the patients’ loved ones, who want to spend the last available moments with the soon to be departed.

There is a Place

We follow the story of a Bulgarian elderly couple living in a stagnant small village called Balabansko. Taking care of the family house passed down the generations has been their life’s work. What does their future hold and why can’t they let go of the past?

Small Talk

In the table that symbolizes the value of traditional women, a woman who wants to break free from her family must face her daughter.

Frozen Dead Guy Days

In the quirky mountains of Colorado, people from all over the world gather to throw a party for a frozen dead guy. “Grandpa” died in 1989 and was frozen by his Norwegian grandson who hid him away in a tiny shed along with one other body. The uncovering of the bodies, as well as the controversy that followed, led to an annual celebration of costumed weirdos looking to drink, dance, race coffins, and dive into a frozen lake.

95 and 6 to Go

Filmmaker Kimi Takesue captures the cadence of daily life for Grandpa Tom, a retired postal worker born to Japanese immigrants to Hawai’i in the 1910s. Amidst the solitude of his home routines — coupon clipping, rigging an improvised barbecue, lighting firecrackers on the New Year — we glimpse an unexpectedly rich inner life.

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.

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)

Capturing the Friedmans

An Oscar nominated documentary about a middle-class American family who is torn apart when the father Arnold and son Jesse are accused of sexually abusing numerous children. Director Jarecki interviews people from different sides of this tragic story and raises the question of whether they were rightfully tried when they claim they were innocent and there was never any evidence against them.

Canvas of My Life

Jason Momoa's story of fatherhood, craftsmanship, and the legacy he'll leave behind.

Sieben Mulden und eine Leiche

Thomas Haemmerli is about to celebrate his fortieth birthday when he learns of his mother's death. A further shock follows when he and his brother Erik discover her apartment, which is filthy and full to bursting with junk. It takes the brothers an entire month to clean out the place. Among the chaos, they find films going back to the 1930s, photos and other memorabilia.

The Self-Made Man

Is it ever rational to choose death? On Independence Day at Stern Ranch, 77-year-old solar energy pioneer Bob Stern finds out he’s seriously ill – possibly dying. Meanwhile, an elderly in-law is dying on artificial life support. Bob decides to cheat that fate and take his own life. His family tries to stop him. Bob sets up a video camera. Daughter Susan Stern explores “rational suicide,” the “right-to-die” and the difficult end-of-life choices faced by an aging population.

Anything Can Happen

A story of life and death, featuring Lozinski's six-year-old son Tomaszek and elderly people spending time on the benches of a Warsaw park. Riding his scooter, Tomaszek asks the elderly very adult, though basic, questions, which they are happy to answer. The boy's ideas of future and life are confronted with those of men at the end of their lives.

Fragments de route

I Know a Place

Young people who decide to leave their home to seek opportunities for the future face different difficulties on a daily basis. The inevitable estrangement with family and lifelong friends. The constant lack of understanding, the coldness and individualism of the new city. The stress and even the feeling of being a stranger back home. This journey to the future sets out issues about identity, nostalgia and courage, while they fight to find their place in a changeable world.

La Carpète

Gary's Story - No Second Best

Gary's Story is part of a collective filmmaking project that looks at relationships between teenagers and their grandparents in families that have recently immigrated to the US from the former Soviet Union. Gary's family is from Moscow.

Danny

A moving personal documentary about Danny, a friend of Kybartas who died of an AIDS-related illness in 1986. This powerful work explores the reason for Danny’s return home and his attempts to reconcile his relationship with his family members who had difficulty facing his homosexuality and his imminent death.

History and Memory: For Akiko and Takashige

This film is a poetic composition of recorded history and non-recorded memory. Filmmaker Rea Tajiri’s family was among the 120,000 Japanese and Japanese Americans who were imprisoned in internment camps after the attack on Pearl Harbor. And like so many who were in the camps, Tajiri’s family wrapped their memories of that experience in a shroud of silence and forgetting. This film raises questions about collective history – questions that prompt Tajiri to daringly re-imagine and re-create what has been stolen and what has been lost.

Milestone No. 2

A documentary showcasing a family as they pack up their home of twelve years and begin looking towards the future.

Tim Leary: The Art of Dying

LSD Guru Tim Leary teaches us all to die by dying himself in what he calls his "custom death". This documentary deals with Mr. Leary's last days, all captured on camera by his own request.