DocNomads

A story about the separation of a mother and her 3-year-old daughter who now live in different countries and cannot reunite due to visa problems. Every day they communicate via video chat and dream about meeting soon.

The reading of a letter addressed to his brother Theo is the metaphorical starting point of this suggestive immersion in the work and the places that Vincent Van Gogh lived in a key moment of his artistic life, the one in which he abandoned the faith to rediscover himself the world of painting in the Belgian mining town of Borinage. A strange presence enters the house where he lived, recreates his studio, breathes his surroundings and travels the landscape until he merges with his own paintings, pure oil painting that takes the form of a mysterious and unattainable dream like the great Dutch teacher.

During the summer of 2014 Gaza war, in the battered neighbourhood of Shujaiya, 37-year-Salma made her home her shelter from the attacks. She and her daughter are protected in relative calm, until she receives a text message warning her of their impending fate.

In Lisbon, from the height of the Torel viewpoint, the city expands as far as the eye can see making it the perfect place to think and remember. Through encounters with the people that inhabit the viewpoint in different ways, Daniela proposes a reflection on belonging to a new city, crafting a journey to her family memories. She imagines her mother and grandmother when they were her age, thinking about the first places where they lived.

A father finds refuge in memories created together with his daughter, who has been stricken with an illness. She has decided to keep her distance from him and they have not spoken for years. The film encourages her to reconsider her decision.

A heartbreaking portrait of 16-year-old Ukrainian refugees Andrey and Alisa, who help out at a school for refugee children in Budapest. Andrey asks the children to draw pictures of something from back home in Ukraine. What beautiful things can they recall? He offers the example of his own grandfather’s cherry orchard. The children use confrontational, adult vocabulary to describe their experiences of war. A young boy earnestly goes through a number of battle strategies, and a girl provides a vivid account of a rocket attack.

Occupied by Israel in 1967, the Syrian Golan has a military border running through it, which families “cross” by shouting to their loved ones. From his European exile, anxiety-ridden Alhasan Yousef attempts to break free from his inner isolation with this exploration of the power of sound, in an effort to reconnect with his lost country from afar.