Nicole Santé

With incredible creativity, care and integrity, Maria Esteve Silvia has made a film that is as compelling as it is harrowing, about the traumatic impact of abuse within the Catholic Church and the exhausting struggle for justice. From the very first moment, we are seized by the combination of images and materials that are masterfully edited into a flowing, gripping and balanced tale.

How can you overcome the desperate fear of losing your loved ones? Filmmaker Rafael Palacio Illingworth tries to find a way which, while raising serious questions about ethics and morality, at the same time immerses the viewer in an enchanting experience where the boundaries between fiction and reality completely dissolve.

This truly eye-opening film observes the proceedings in India’s first women-led Islamic court, highlighting the (still) astonishingly unequal status of women in India, but also the powerful and unstoppable way in which women are striving to secure justice. The film dismantles clichés about Muslim women as defenceless victims and Islam as a misogynistic religion. For these women are, in fact, taking religious law into their own hands as a powerful weapon against male dominance.

Inspired by the writings of Ursula K. Le Guin and other feminist thinkers, Irene Margrethe Kaltenborn’s The Mother Age is a sumptuously filmed ode to the beauty and power of nature, in which the director all the time seeks alternative ways to relate to, and learn, from the natural world. The film acknowledges our human limitations when it comes to understanding that world, and how we must be willing to learn in order to find what we are looking for.

Just like its subject - 79-year old entomologist Professor Arthur M. Shapiro - this documentary is a wonderful example of focus, calm and modesty. With thoughtful persistence and an eye for detail, the film shows the life of a “slow scientist” who has made an enormous impact with his seemingly small deeds. It is a wonderful film to lose yourself in and reflect upon – a labour of love, not unlike the body of scientific work that Shapira has painstakingly built over more than half a century. 

In the intimate and personal, at times melancholic All My Sisters, two sisters’ coming of age in Iran is beautifully documented by their uncle. The subsequent film, in which the sisters are invited to observe and comment on the material he had shot for almost two decades, speaks of family, loyalty and compassion, but also of oppression and resistance.

Amy Goodman is remarkable. As host and executive producer of Democracy Now, she is a multi-award-winning standard-bearer for independent journalism and a fearless advocate for a just society. Besides a multi-layered portrait, Steal this Story Please! film is a celebration of resistance and compassion, but which furthermore shows just how much the concept of a free press is in danger.

A pool of love and laughter, 50 Metres is Yomna Khattab's first film, about her father, who inspired her to become a filmmaker. But it is also an emotionally layered contemplation about their relationship, motherhood, growing old and the fear of loneliness. The clever choice of format and her dad’s refusal to act as therapist turn it into a delightful and witty observation of life.

Over a period of twenty years, filmmaker Tova Mozard gathered material on Russ Kingston as he tried to make it in Hollywood. From this material she has created a glorious, multifaceted, touching monument to an extraordinary extra that should (and will) touch the hearts and cinematic souls of audiences everywhere. “Yes, I like to pretend and make believe,” says Russ Kingston somewhere in the middle of the wonderful film in which he finally stars.

What is a witch? In this warm, cinematic and atmospheric documentary, Danish filmmaker Emil Nørgaard Munk portrays Andrea Hejlskov, a self-proclaimed witch, writer and public debater. It is an exciting and informative film about the spiritual world, driven by a very striking score and offering insight and understanding into why Hejlskov is so sensitive to the signs and gifts of nature…and why she so desperately wants people to listen to her.