Rake Films

Asalif and his mother defy Ethiopia’s omnipresent modern housing development culture, by continuing to live a life characterised by proximity to nature and rootedness in community. The boy counters the ruptures in his accustomed surroundings and the threat posed by the hyena that haunts his neighbourhood by reinventing himself as a hero: as Anbessa, the lion.

A young film director returns to Venezuela, inspired to make a film based on his father's life in the Amazon jungle (La Fortaleza, Jorge Thielen Armand). He casts Father to play himself. What starts as an act of love and ambition — filmmaking to more deeply understand the self, and the other — spirals into a process which confronts Father’s struggles with addiction and his life devoid of his son. EL FATHER PLAYS HIMSELF holds a steady lens to the way the act of cinema unearths, binds, heals and destroys.

When the Taliban ruled Afghanistan, taking a photo was a crime. After the regime fell from power in 2001, a fledgling free press emerged and a photography revolution was born. Now, as foreign troops and media withdraw, Afghanistan is left to stand on its own and so are its journalists. Set in a modern Afghanistan bursting with color and character, FRAME BY FRAME follows four Afghan photojournalists navigating a dangerous media landscape as they reframe Afghanistan for the world, and for themselves. Through cinema vérité, powerful photojournalism, and never-before-seen footage shot in secret during the Taliban regime, the film connects an audience with four humans in the pursuit of the truth.

How do the fortresses we build to protect ourselves affect the people we become? El Hara follows one man's break with the neighborhood of his youth, the Jewish quarter of Tunis, highlighting how such moments of rupture haunt us forever.