Noth­ing shocked the polit­i­cal left in the 1960s as much as the brutal murder of Con­golese Prime Min­is­ter Patrice Lumum­ba. He was the sym­bol­ic figure for the lib­er­a­tion of the African con­ti­nent from Euro­pean colo­nial­ism. While the USA and Bel­gium were still secret­ly plan­ning Lumum­ba’s elim­i­na­tion, the US State Depart­ment sent jazz greats such as Nina Simone and Louis Arm­strong to the Congo - a tac­ti­cal diversion? 

SOUNDTRACK TO A COUP D’ETAT is a tes­ti­mo­ny to this per­fid­i­ous coup. Visu­al­ly and musi­cal­ly designed in the style of the iconic Blue Note jazz label, Johan Gri­mon­prez’s film draws view­ers into the mael­strom of the Cold War and the polit­i­cal power games between Europe and the USA. After exten­sive research, unpub­lished inter­views, speech­es by Lumum­ba, and musi­cal per­for­mances by Miles Davies, Miriam Makeba and many others were woven into a grip­ping narrative. 

The film won numer­ous awards at inter­na­tion­al fes­ti­vals and was nom­i­nat­ed for “Best Doc­u­men­tary” at the 2025 Oscars. 

In April 2019, the mil­i­tary staged a coup in Sudan, over­throw­ing long-time ruler Omar Al-Bashir. In response, thou­sands of young people took to the streets of Khar­toum, fight­ing against the regime, for a freer, more self-deter­mined life in a new demo­c­ra­t­ic Sudan.

Amidst the eupho­ria of these days, film­mak­er Hind Meddeb cap­tures her images of the rev­o­lu­tion. She meets young activists such as Sha­jane, Maha, Muza­mil and others who are risk­ing every­thing to demand a civil­ian gov­ern­ment after 30 years of dic­ta­tor­ship. They are loud and cre­ative as they raise their voices and remind us of Sudan’s poets and their verses of human­i­ty and jus­tice. In her mon­tage, Med­de­b’s cre­ates a col­lec­tive por­trait of the Sudanese spring of 2019.

Six weeks later, in early June, the mil­i­tary opened fire on the demon­stra­tors for the first time. But bul­lets cannot silence these images.

Hind Meddeb (*1978) grew up between France, Moroc­co and Tunisia. She switched from jour­nal­ism to doc­u­men­tary film and made two fea­ture-length films about the Arab Spring from the per­spec­tive of young people.

At a bend in the Rue de Charonne, I come across the letter car­ri­er start­ing his second daily round on foot. He wants me to accom­pa­ny him. It’s very, very hot, he’s got sneak­ers and a cart, I’ve got clogs and a microphone.

Tess­lye Lopez, after a mas­ter’s degree and a pro­fes­sion­al career in infor­ma­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tion, she start­ed work­ing as an audio­vi­su­al direc­tor, making com­mis­sioned reports for the farm­ing world and short “carte blanche” films for the cul­tur­al world.

Work­shop: Sound in doc­u­men­tary film, Paris

Ini­tial­ly, Gul­noza thought she knew her­self well enough and was open enough to start a film project about the rela­tion­ship between her and Denis, her boyfriend. She didn’t want to be afraid of talk­ing about the future, about reli­gion and faith, wanted to be honest and straight­for­ward, show­ing vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty. The film­ing was sup­posed to take over ten days but took a dif­fer­ent direction.

Gul­noza Irga­she­va is a film­mak­er and activist based in Naman­gan, Uzbek­istan. Gul­noza­’s artis­tic and activist prac­tices focus on decolo­nial­i­ty, Muslim wom­en’s agency, and resis­tance strat­e­gy to oppres­sion dynam­ics and colo­nial con­structs based on gender, eth­nic­i­ty, reli­gion, race, and sexual ori­en­ta­tion. Uti­liz­ing a par­tic­i­pa­to­ry approach, their artistry involves decen­tral­ized deci­sion-making, engag­ing the entire cast in every stage of filmmaking.

They com­menced their film­mak­ing jour­ney with the short film GURUNG during an archival footage film­mak­ing pro­gramme. Engag­ing in Ate­liers Varan’s doc­u­men­tary pro­gramme, Gul­noza craft­ed the exper­i­men­tal doc­u­men­tary DEVORDAGI BOLALIK SURATIM that is set for fes­ti­val dis­tri­b­u­tion soon.

Gul­noza Irga­she­va con­cep­tu­al­ized and guided a series of site-spe­cif­ic per­for­mances, bring­ing togeth­er thir­teen young women from Uzbek­istan to explore themes of domes­tic­i­ty and every­day rit­u­als at Venice Bien­nale 2024

Zamira is fes­tive­ly attired, singing in a choir. A line from a love song poses the ques­tion “What is my pur­pose in life here on earth?”, becom­ing the guid­ing theme of the film. Zamira’s daugh­ter Sabina asks it of her mother; she asks it of the public behind the camera – and of herself.
The ques­tion is not meant to be reli­gious, nor moral­is­tic, but ana­lyt­i­cal and reveal­ing, and Sabina metic­u­lous­ly lists all the unspo­ken, con­tra­dic­to­ry and misog­y­nis­tic things she per­ceived grow­ing up as a girl in Uzbek­istan. Pow­er­ful, deform­ing, accept­ed – naked truths hang in the air that women live in. The ques­tion is not answered; the film fol­lows a dif­fer­ent track: the daugh­ter accom­pa­nies her mother through every­day life and a nar­ra­tive unfolds where obser­va­tions con­tra­dict what has been said. It seems pos­si­ble to make your­self happy, to counter the social impo­si­tions with other images, to show solidarity.

Sabina Bakae­va’s debut film, made in a work­shop at Tashkent Film School, is an open, coura­geous por­trait of women and an unadorned jour­ney through the expe­ri­ences of dif­fer­ent gen­er­a­tions of Uzbek women. (Berli­nale 2025)

In Songs of Slow Burn­ing Earth, film­mak­er Olha Zhurba doc­u­ments Ukraine’s slow descent into the abyss of war over two years. But what does war truly mean and what images can cap­ture its impact on people? Crowds push­ing onto over­crowd­ed trains, tank tracks lining the streets, destroyed homes?

In this film, war creeps in through your ear. You cannot pro­tect your­self from it, even in your sleep. A caller asks the night-time hot­line - she thinks she has heard rocket fire. What should she do? A pro­jec­tile rips through the air above a bread fac­to­ry. The work­ers briefly glance up at the ceil­ing, then con­tin­ue work­ing. Olha Zurba col­lects these moments almost like a diary.

Death is present. Graves are being dug, yet the camera respect­ful­ly turns away from those killed. Again and again, gun­fire sounds, sirens wail, and the explo­sions come closer. Then, sud­den­ly, the film falls almost silent. In the longest shot, the camera peers through the wind­screen of a pickup truck lead­ing a convoy of corpses. Along the road­side, people kneel in silent respect for the dead.

With a clear focus on the side of human­i­ty, the direc­tor cap­tures what this war does to people, but also what they do to resist it.

Olha Zhurba is a Ukrain­ian film direc­tor, editor and screen­writer. Songs of Slow Burn­ing Earth is her second fea­ture length doc­u­men­tary. Films: DAD’s SNEAKERS (2021), OUTSIDE (2022), SONGS OF SLOW BURNING EARTH  (2024)

Awards: RIGA IFF FEATURE FILM COMPETITION; DOC FUTURE AWARD at Verzio IDFF Hun­gary; BEST FILM at Tertio Mil­len­nio Film Fest; Spe­cial Jury Award at Rome Doc­u­men­tary FF; Best Fea­ture film at Big Sky Doc­u­men­tary FF

In Guil­laume Apol­li­naire’s poem, two visions col­lide: the image of France learned in Mada­gas­car and the real­i­ty later expe­ri­enced in the former metrop­o­lis. For a for­eign­er, adapt­ing to French life means over­com­ing count­less dif­fi­cul­ties. For a Mala­gasy, the oblig­a­tory tran­si­tion from oral to writ­ten cul­ture is one of the worst.

Work­shop: Doc­u­men­tary film-making, Paris

Élie Rajaonar­i­son (died 11. 27. 2010) was a poet, uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sor and senior civil ser­vant from Mada­gas­car. Élie Rajaonar­i­son is con­sid­ered a pio­neer of modern Mala­gasy poetry. His vol­umes of poetry have earned him inter­na­tion­al recog­ni­tion and have been trans­lat­ed into French and Eng­lish. He has also con­tributed to the devel­op­ment of the per­form­ing arts in Madagascar.

One day, I lost my mother. Slowly, I am trac­ing my steps back to her. This film is an attempt to under­stand moth­er­hood for women of West Indian descent in France through my own rela­tion­ship with my mother. What is moth­er­hood in terms of rela­tion­ships, inti­ma­cy, and sorrow? What tools and sup­port were moth­ers pro­vid­ed with? Where were the fathers? Was there a stable and reli­able com­mu­ni­ty - and if not, how could one be built amid geo­graph­ic dis­place­ment and dias­poric family ties?

Allyson Félic­ité is a multi-dis­ci­pli­nary, non-binary cre­ator born in Nor­mandy to par­ents from Mar­tinique, Sene­gal, and Mali. They stud­ied Rhetor­i­cal Com­mu­ni­ca­tion and Gender at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Long Beach, worked with Vice France, and after grad­u­at­ing from La Fémis in 2020, direct­ed their first short film LANMÈ during the Ate­lier Varan workshops.

Change of date: The film screen­ing will take place on Sunday, 21. May at 11:30 AM (not at 10:30 AM)

Witch­craft is a social real­i­ty in Sub-Sahara Africa. In Braz­zav­ille, the courts are full of cases involv­ing voodoo rit­u­als, sor­cer­ers, ghosts and other invis­i­ble evil forces. The film doc­u­ments the work of a tra­di­tion­al court, which sees itself pri­mar­i­ly as a court of rec­on­cil­i­a­tion. To con­vict the guilty, the judges may con­sult ” the invis­i­ble” - clair­voy­ants who reveal the iden­ti­ty of the sor­cer­er. After that, the judges decide which ritual to per­form to resolve the con­flict. This phase of the spirit ver­dict is called ordalie by the judges. In the times of the Euro­pean Inqui­si­tion, an ordalie was used to hand over the judge­ment of a person to the divine.

Hadrien La Vapeur, After assist­ing the direc­tor Philippe Garrel for ten years, he turns to the real­iza­tion of exper­i­men­tal films and pho­to­graph­ic work. In 2009, as he pur­sued a quest for uncul­ti­vat­ed build­ings in Rio de Janeiro, he landed by mis­take in a pos­ses­sion ritual. This encounter with the spir­its upsets his vision of the world and urges La Vapeur to inves­ti­gate the rela­tion­ships that humans can main­tain with the invis­i­ble entities.

Corto Vaclav,  stud­ied anthro­pol­o­gy at Uni­ver­sité Paris Nan­terre. He dis­cov­ered the work of Jean Rouch and worked for the Ethno­graph­ic Film Com­mit­tee. There he met Hadrien La Vapeur, who was seek­ing a sound­man to go to the Congo. Very quick­ly, their jour­ney was trans­formed into an ini­tia­to­ry and pro­tean explo­ration. Since then the two are col­lab­o­rat­ing on their films.  Films: L’ÉTRANGE HISTOIRE DE PRINCE DETHMER (2018, 23 min), KONGO (2019).

Direc­tors: Hadrien La Vapeur, Corto Vaclav
Cin­e­matog­ra­phy: H. La Vapeur, C. Vaclav, Y. Schreck
Pro­duc­tion: Broth­er Films, Expédi­tion Invisible

Three rooms in a narrow labyrinthine apart­ment next to Mar­seille St Charles train sta­tion that belong to a Chi­nese family: Yuan, her broth­er Bin and their father. The two sib­lings work irreg­u­lar hours in Mar­seille. In the lim­it­ed rest­ing times between their stren­u­ous work, the two sib­lings con­tem­plate about stay­ing in Mar­seille and their long­ing to return to China. In the enclosed spaces of their small apart­ment, Yuan and Bin imag­ine anoth­er life through the dig­i­tal. Is “not so bad” all you can ask for as a migrant living a for­eign coun­try?