Eastern Europe

This powerful documentary short spotlights the life of Russian civil rights activist Anastasia Shevchenko as she faces the brutal repercussions of speaking out against her government. Shevchenko endured house arrest for two years, and became the first person found guilty of “organizing activity of an undesirable organization” by a Russian court for her work with the Open Russia movement. Amnesty International declared her a “prisoner of conscience.”

RED AFRICA

A fascinating and insightful documentary, Red Africa relates the history of the influence exerted by the USSR over many African states between 1960 and 1990. Incorporating extraordinary archival footage filmed by Soviet operators, excerpts from official speeches by Soviet and African leaders and audio recording made by Soviet filmmakers during their African expeditions, Red Africa reveals the hidden agenda of the USSR which, under the cloak of generosity, was aspiring to expand its socialist “paradise."

1970

1970. Striking workers in communist Poland demonstrate against price increases. In the dignitaries’ offices, tension and violent repression grow as the revolt intensifies. Using stop motion animation to bring the telephone recordings to life, Tomasz Wolski composes a highly precise and prodigious film that looks at labor and rebellion, but told from the perspective of the oppressors.

CHANGE OF LIFE

Paulo Rocha’s haunting second feature, Change of Life, is a beautifully-told story of a young man who returns from abroad to his small fishing village to discover that much has changed. Inspired by his work with Manoel de Oliveira, Rocha “cast” the local villagers as themselves, interspersed with experienced actors led by the great Isabel Ruth. The film was a critical and commercial success upon release, though it would effectively be the last film Rocha made for nearly two decades.

THE LOAD

During NATO’s bombing of Serbia in 1999, a truck driver is hired to undertake a treacherous journey across his war-torn country to deliver mysterious cargo. Brilliantly photographed and overwhelmingly atmospheric - recalling Clouzot's The Wages of Fear and Friedkin's Sorcerer - The Load is a taut suspense thriller about the choices we make in difficult times.

INFINITE FOOTBALL

In his masterful new documentary, Corneliu Porumboiu, a leading figure in the Romanian New Wave, introduces us to a former soccer star and current local bureaucrat whose dream of radically revolutionizing his beloved sport masks an attempt to understand far greater issues: functioning societies, social systems, fate, freedom, individual responsibility and utopianism.

THE DEAD NATION

A work of startling power and originality, acclaimed director Radu Jude’s documentary-essay examines the rise of anti-Semitism in Romania prior to and during World War II almost entirely through the diary of a Jewish doctor in Bucharest juxtaposed with recently unearthed photographs of provincial life in Romania between the years of 1937 and 1944.

ALL THE CITIES OF THE NORTH

Charting the languorous, mysterious existence of two men who seem to share a deep, liminal understanding beyond words, until a third man enters their secluded space, Dane Komljen's debut feature, All the Cities of the North, is a radically open-ended but ravishingly beautiful work that’s animated by rhythms and ideas entirely its own.

STARTING POINT

A pilot program in which female prisoners work at a nursing home for the elderly and disabled while serving out their sentences.