BUDAPEST SILO

József has been working at the largest grain mill still in operation in Budapest for more than 30 years. During the day, he wanders through the thick coat of dust at the mill, then he descends into the 25-metre-deep silos, undertaking the seemingly hopeless task of cleaning them. József suffers from the long-term effects of grain dust on his lungs, yet he seems unable to escape the mill. An unspoken bond seems to tie them together, during his work he hangs in his harness, utterly alone, and performs dazzling dance-like movements in the depths of the silo.

Original title: Szabadkikötő
Director: Zsófi Paczolay
Cinematographer: Ezequiel Salinas
Produced by: Doc Nomads, MOHA Films
Country and year: Netherlands, Hungary, Portugal, Belgium, 2022

ECHO

An operation 10 years ago left Allister with damaged vocal cords and a barrier to communication. His remarkable solution reminds us that community thrives in surprising places.

Director: Ross McClean
Cinematographer: Ronnie McQuillan
Produced by: Ross McClean
Country and year: Northern Ireland, 2023

GRANDMA & GRANDMA

Nǎi Nai is my grandma. Wài Pó is also my grandma. Together, they are a grandma super team that dances, stretches, and farts their sorrows away.

Original title: Nǎi Nai & Wài Pó
Director: Sean Wang
Cinematographer: Sam Davis
Produced by: Even/Odd, Junk Drawer
Country and year: USA, 2023

HANDFUL OF DIRT

Is it possible to envision one’s funeral? Halina is one of the last funeral singers in Podlasie. Her son Andrzej is a gravedigger. Over the years they have accompanied thousands of people to the other side. He dug, she sung. In their everyday existence, life and death intermingle. The ordinary with the ghostly. Reality with dreams. The silence is broken by the tune of a funeral song.

Original title: Garstka ziemi
Director: Izabela Zubrycka
Cinematographer: Stefan Żółtowski
Produced by: Lodz Film School
Country and year: Poland, 2023

A MAN'S MAN

A Man’s Man is a searing and deeply personal journey into the lives of seven strangers from the North-East of England whose lives intersect at a weekly men’s mental health support group. Heart-wrenching and often confrontational, this deeply compassionate and aesthetically rich film is a provocative exploration into what it means to be a man in the twenty-first century. We are confronted with the devastating impact of toxic masculinity, the continuing stigma surrounding mental health and the heart-breaking toll it inevitably takes. Remarkably, we are also confronted by something else: the power of connection, the strength of community, and the hope that comes from sharing our stories. In the end, this is a film about the human spirit and the strength of enduring hope.

Director: Myles Desenberg
Cinematographer: Ben Cotgrove
Produced by: Elsies Runaways
Country and year: UK, 2023

OASIS

At the dawn of their teenage years, Raphaël and Rémi are twins who see their fusional attachment crumble while one of them, suffering from an increasingly marked disability, remains a prisoner of childhood. During one last summer surrounded by nature, time seems to want to stand still.

Director: Justine Martin
Cinematographer: Myriam Payette
Produced by: Déjà Vu
Country and year: Canada, 2022

OLD SUMMER

Krystyna is 72 years old, but she has never known true love. In order to change that, she signs up with a dating agency. However, subsequent dates only bring disappointment and her meetings with ageing men make her realize that a romantic relationship may not be at all what she needs to be happy.

Original title: Starsza pani szuka
Director: Maria Wider
Cinematographer: Miłosz Kasiura
Produced by: Studio Munka SFP
Country and year: Poland, 2023

POSTCARDS FROM THE VERGE

A filmmaking couple gets stuck on the Bolivian-Chilean border for a year and a half due to the pandemic. Filmed by the protagonists, this is a visual story about growing up and trying to stabilize their relationship in a world that is going through a crisis.

Original title: Pocztówki znad krawędzi
Director: Natalia Koniarz
Cinematographer: Stanisław Cuske
Produced by: Stone Studio
Country and year: Poland, 2023

PUFFLING

On a remote Icelandic island, teenagers Birta and Selma rescue pufflings (young puffins) from imminent danger; as pufflings leave their nests for the first time, they often get lost in town, mistaking the harbour lights for the Moon. Over the course of one night, we follow Birta and Selma as they take it upon themselves to counteract humanity’s damaging impact on nature: swapping night-time parties for puffin rescues. A coming-of-age documentary about growing up and making choices, Puffling explores the delicate interplay between wildlife, the environment and human life.

Director: Jessica Bishopp
Cinematographer: Anna MacDonald
Produced by: Beehive Films
Country and year: UK, Iceland, 2023

SQUID FLEET

On any given night, tens of thousands of fishermen in China’s distant-water squid fleet perform an industrial ballet thousands of miles out on the high seas. With unprecedented access to the extremely remote fishing grounds, Squid Fleet is a poetic exploration of the motivations of the fishermen, the brutality of systemic labour abuses in the Chinese fishing industry, and the destruction wrought by the commodification of people and nature in our globalized world. It is based on two years of rigorous investigative journalism from the Pulitzer Prize-winning team of The Outlaw Ocean Project.

Directors: Will N. Miller, Ed Ou
Cinematographers: Will N. Miller, Ed Ou
Produced by: Documist, The Outlaw Ocean Project
Country and year: USA, 2023

SWANS REFLECTING ELEPHANTS

What if you look at yourself in the mirror and you always see someone who looks so monstrously ugly, it almost seems inhuman. Director Niek Silvan was diagnosed with Body Dysmorphic Disorder, the most severe form of a negative body image. Looking for answers to learn to live with himself, Niek goes in search of a young man whom he saw only once on television 17 years ago. This man, Jesse, openly talked about his Body Dysmorphic Disorder on an episode of “The Oprah Winfrey Show”.

Director: Niek Silvan
Cinematographer: Sean Louw
Produced by: Netherlands Film Academy (AHK)
Country and year: Netherlands, 2022

THEN COMES THE BODY

When a video of kids dancing in the rain goes viral, it brings global attention to an unlikely ballet school outside Lagos, Nigeria. Daniel Ajala – who learned ballet by watching YouTube – is training students to perform on the world stage.

Director: Jacob Krupnick
Cinematographer: Soren Nielsen
Produced by: Wild Combination
Country and year: Nigeria, USA, 2022