Lyrical and powerfully personal essay film that reflects on the deaths of her husband Lou Reed, her mother, her beloved dog, and such diverse subjects as family memories, surveillance, and Buddhist teachings.

Tells the history of skateboard art and its evolution through the decades, as iconic and rebellious skateboarders and artists give firsthand experiences and stories about their art that challenged the establishment.

Since the beginning of her career, Sinéad O’Connor has used her powerful voice to challenge the narratives she was surrounded by while growing up in predominantly Roman Catholic Ireland. Despite her agency, depth and perspective, O’Connor’s unflinching refusal to conform means that she has often been patronized and unfairly dismissed as an attention-seeking pop star.

The ostensibly simple story of a sympathetic veteran teacher giving Italian lessons to a weekly class of diverse immigrants is given infinitely more depth and complexity by the manner in which director Daniele Gaglianone renders his story. Blurring the lines between fact and fiction, truth and artifice, and between documentary and drama, Gaglianone has created a film within a film. You see the apparent artifice of Gaglianone’s crew using professionals, including the noted film actor Valerio Mastandrea as the teacher, interlinked with ‘real’ immigrant protagonists, studying the language to improve their chances of employment and of gaining a permanent residence permit. Thus in the course of the lessons there is simultaneously the painful and upsetting relation of the students’ personal stories but also humour, as they interact and share their humanity, bridging cultural differences, united in their striving to make a better life for themselves. (Source: LFF programme)

Archaeologists generally regard Mesopotamia as “the beginning of civilization” but shocking new evidence the defies comprehension clearly suggests that highly advanced civilizations existed in pre history. With new advanced technology, archaeologists are now able to image undiscovered worlds before our own from above. The truth to mankind’s true origins is being rapidly revealed to be very different than what we’ve been told.

On January 6, 2021, Americans witnessed an attack on the U.S. Capitol without precedent in our history. Armed militiamen and QAnon followers made headlines, but among them were a sea of crosses and Christian flags, rosaries and “Jesus Saves” signs. What motivated so many Christians to participate in this violent assault?

Acclaimed writer, Shelby Steele, has long argued that systemic racism is more a strategy than a truth, and that the universal oppression of black Americans is largely over with. But the 2014 shooting of a black teen, Michael Brown, in Ferguson, Missouri by a white policeman shook the nation to its core. During Steele’s investigation of Ferguson, America was once again rocked by the brutal killing of George Floyd. Didn’t these killings, and the long list of others like them, put the lie to Steele’s argument?

Aus der Ferne is a personal travelogue, a documentary about a trip through Turkey. Thomas Arslan, who filmed the journey himself, undertook the trip in May/June 2005. The route takes him through Istanbul and Ankara to Gaziantep in the southeastern part of the country, from there further eastwards via Diyarbakir and Van to Dogubayazit near the Iranian border. The film describes moments during the journey that differ from the usual motifs that inform the image of present-day Turkey – from impressions of day-to-day life in such Western cities as Istanbul and Ankara all the way to regions in the country’s easternmost territory that were locked in battle until recently.

New Zealand film archivist Heperi Mita traces the cinematic legacy of his mother and trailblazing Maori filmmaker Merata Mita.

Using original footage and interviews, this documentary tells the nail-biting story of Apollo 13 and the struggle to bring its astronauts safely home.

Two teams of experts go to extraordinary lengths to take shark science into the wild as they investigate two of the most iconic shark superpowers – speed and bite force.

After surviving poisoning by a Novichok nerve agent, Alexey Navalny made his most important film. Putin’s Palace: History of World’s Largest Bribe is about the palace near Gelendzhik that presumably belongs to Russian President Vladimir Putin. It also shows vineyards, corruption schemes and more.