Black Box Diaries and The Battle For Laikipia
Agent Of Happiness
(Country: Bhutan, Hungary; Year: 2024; Director: Arun Bhattarai, Dorottya Zurbó)
Amber is one of the many agents working for the Bhutanese government to measure people’s happiness levels among the remote Himalayan mountains. But will he find his own along the way?
World premiere
The Battle For Laikipia
(Country: Kenya, US; Year: 2024; Director: Daphne Matziaraki, Peter Murimi)
Unresolved historical injustices and climate change raise the stakes in a generations-old conflict between Indigenous pastoralists and white landowners in Laikipia, Kenya, a wildlife conservation haven.
World premiere
Black Box Diaries
(Country: US, UK, Japan; Year: 2024; Director: Shiori Ito)
Journalist Shiori Ito embarks on a courageous investigation of her own sexual assault in an improbable attempt to prosecute her high-profile offender. Her quest becomes a landmark case in Japan, exposing the country’s outdated judicial and societal systems.
World premiere
Eternal You
(Country: Germany, US; Year: 2024; Director: Hans Block, Moritz Riesewieck)
Startups are using AI to create avatars that allow relatives to talk with their loved ones after they have died. An exploration of a profound human desire and the consequences of turning the dream of immortality into a product.
World premiere
Igualada
(Country: Colombia, US, Mexico; Year: 2024; Director: Juan Mejia Botero)
In one of Latin America’s most unequal countries, Francia Márquez, a Black Colombian rural activist, challenges the status quo with a presidential campaign that reappropriates the derogatory term "Igualada" - someone who acts as if they deserve rights that supposedly don’t correspond to them - and inspires a nation to dream.
World premiere
Eternal You and Nocturnes
Never Look Away
(Country: New Zealand; Year: 2024; Director: Lucy Lawless; Writer: Tom Blackwell, Matthew Metcalfe; Stars: Margaret Moth)
New Zealand–born groundbreaking CNN camerawoman Margaret Moth risks it all to show the reality of war from inside the conflict, staring down danger and confronting those who perpetuate it.
World premiere
A New Kind Of Wilderness
(Country: Norway; Year: 2024; Director: Silje Evensmo Jacobsen)
In a forest in Norway, a family lives an isolated lifestyle in an attempt to be wild and free, but a tragic event changes everything, and they are forced to adjust to modern society.
World premiere
Nocturnes
(Country: US, India; Year: 2024; Director: Anirban Dutta, Anupama Srinivasan)
In the dense forests of the Eastern Himalayas, moths are whispering something to us. In the dark of night, two curious observers shine a light on this secret universe.
World premiere
The Remarkable Life Of Ibelin
(Country: Norway; Year: 2024; Director: Benjamin Ree; Stars: Kelsey Ellison, Zoe Croft, Paul Wild, Ed Larkin, Elena Pitsiaeli, Sebastian Tjørstad, John Andrew Mclay)
Mats Steen, a Norwegian gamer, died of a degenerative muscular disease at the age of 25. His parents mourned what they thought had been a lonely and isolated life, when they started receiving messages from online friends around the world.
World premiere
Soundtrack To A Coup d’Etat
(Country: Belgium, France; Year: 2024; Director: Johan Grimonprez; Writer: Johan Grimonprez; Stars: Dag Hammarskjöld, Nikita Khrushchev, Patrice Lumumba, Andrée Blouin)
In 1960, United Nations: the Global South ignites a political earthquake, musicians Abbey Lincoln and Max Roach crash the Security Council, Nikita Khrushchev bangs his shoe denouncing America’s color bar, while the U.S. dispatches jazz ambassador Louis Armstrong to the Congo to deflect attention from its first African post-colonial coup.
World premiere