A por­trait of daily life and work in an African vil­lage. Seem­ing­ly untouched by colo­nial influ­ences, the inhab­i­tants are entire­ly self-suf­fi­cient. Eth­nol­o­gist Gulla Pfef­fer and cam­era­man Friedrich Dal­sheim found the … read more

Alha­jji Ibrahim Gonji is an Islam­ic schol­ar. For 46 years, he has served as judge at the Sul­tanate of Ngaoundéré in North­ern Cameroon. The film fol­lows Alha­jji during the last … read more

This is an excep­tion­al film about the con­flict in Syria. Far removed from typ­i­cal war report­ing, the anthro­pol­o­gist Stéphane Breton fol­lows Kur­dish women sol­diers, how­ev­er not in combat, but while … read more

Why do people sing when they work? In Phek, a vil­lage in the hills close to the border between India and Myan­mar, almost all res­i­dents work togeth­er in the fields. … read more

A por­trait of one of the rich­est Cameroon­ian indus­tri­al­ists Al Hajji Mohamadou Ous­man­ou Abbo. Filmed over a period of more than ten years. The red thread of the story is the con­struc­tion of Al Hajji’s spec­tac­u­lar palace on the out­skirts of his native town, Ngaoundéré in North­ern Cameroon. The camera fol­lows Al Hajji on var­i­ous arenas in France, Italy and Cameroon. We learn about his rela­tion­ships and nego­ti­a­tions with the local pop­u­la­tion and Euro­pean arti­sans, who work on the con­struc­tion site, his busi­ness part­ners in the coun­try and abroad as well as local, region­al and nation­al author­i­ties and politi­cians. Through a por­trait of this man, Al Hajji Abbo, as well as through his “love-hate” rela­tion­ship with his Euro­pean part­ners, the film tries to grasp the equal­ly ambiva­lent and com­pli­cat­ed rela­tion­ship between the rich and the poor and between the Global North and the Global South. Pro­gres­sive­ly, the spec­ta­tor dis­cov­ers that the rich man from the poor coun­try can offer new insights about you and me, about poor and rich coun­tries alike.

The indus­tri­al city of Sisak, which is one of the oldest set­tle­ments in the region south of the Croa­t­ian metrop­o­lis of Zagreb, is the director’s home­town and is locat­ed where … read more