Current Films

Elephant´s Dream

Netherlands 2014 | 74 Min. | OmeU
After a lengthy and dev­as­tat­ing civil war in the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Repub­lic of Congo (DRC), the cap­i­tal city of Kin­shasa is rebuild­ing. Through the eyes of three civic work­ers strug­gling to … read more

Flowers of freedom

Mirjam Leuze
Germany 2014 | 96 Min. | OmeU
Every day huge trucks thun­der through the Kyrgyz vil­lage of Barskoon. They are car­ry­ing a deadly freight: cyanide, which is used to extract gold at the nearby Kumtor mine. In … read more

Ice Poison
(Bing Du)

Fan Sheng-Siang, Midi Z
Myanmar, Taiwan 2014 | 95 Min. | OmeU
Faced with dimin­ish­ing returns on his har­vest, a poor young farmer in Myan­mar pawns his cow for a moped and seeks alter­na­tive income as a taxi driver. Among his first … read more

Iranian

Jakob Gross, Mehran Tamadon
France, Switzerland | OmeU

It took Mehran Tamadon two years to con­vince four Shia cler­ics to take part in an unusu­al dia­logue. The film­mak­er, who lives in Paris, used his family’s idyl­lic coun­try house as a place to sim­u­late a plural soci­ety for one week­end. He begins by pre­sent­ing his ideal for a sec­u­lar Iran to the Mul­lahs. His guests do not lose their coun­te­nance, but instead answer his ques­tions about the role of women in Iran, abor­tion, and free­dom of speech in a calm and rhetor­i­cal­ly pre­cise way.

What ensues is a con­stant nego­ti­a­tion about what rules apply, what they are talk­ing about, and what can be said. The Mul­lahs con­front the host, who is crit­i­cal of the regime, with his own story of immi­gra­tion. They crit­i­cize “Mr. Sec­u­lar” for his west­ern­ized iden­ti­ty, and they skill­ful­ly maneu­ver the con­ver­sa­tion toward topics they prefer: How much ide­ol­o­gy is accept­able in a plural soci­ety? How free can the press be? And how much singing by a woman can be tol­er­at­ed in an Iran­ian hit song?

In his exper­i­ment, Tamadon is able to defuse ten­sions within the group repeat­ed­ly, cre­at­ing comic sit­u­a­tions unwit­ting­ly. While the women retreat within the house, the men have con­tro­ver­sial dis­cus­sions. The mood could change abrupt­ly at any moment; the sur­re­al cham­ber drama could become a polit­i­cal scan­dal. Although sat­is­fied that the meet­ing took place, the film­mak­er ulti­mate­ly feels the con­se­quences of his daring experiment.

Photo Wallahs

David MacDougall
Australia, England | OmeU
Renowned ethno­graph­ic film­mak­ers David and Judith Mac­Dougall explore the many mean­ings of pho­tog­ra­phy in this pro­found and pen­e­trat­ing doc­u­men­tary. The film focus­es on the pho­tog­ra­phers of Mus­soorie, a hill sta­tion … read more

Scent of revolution

Viola Shafik
Egypt | OmU
Four people recount­ing their expe­ri­ences in Egypt: The owner of the largest col­lec­tion of photo neg­a­tives in the coun­try, a Coptic polit­i­cal activist, an elder­ly social­ist writer, and a younger … read more

Tales

Farid Mostafavi, Rakhshan Bani-Etemad
Iran | OmeU
TALES depicts a coura­geous and honest image of today’s Iran­ian soci­ety and its recent issues, cov­er­ing sub­jects like stu­dents’ and work­ers’ move­ments as well as many others. The char­ac­ters, which … read more

The laundry room

Floriane Devigne, Frédéric Florey
France, Switzerland | OmU
In a Lau­sanne hous­ing block with 80 ten­ants who have multi-lin­gual names that the mail­man will never be able to remem­ber, the renters from many dif­fer­ent nations share four wash­ing … read more

Under the palace wall

David MacDougall
Australia, India | OmeU
From the 16th cen­tu­ry the Indian vil­lage of Del­wara in south­ern Rajasthan was ruled as a prin­ci­pal­i­ty of the king­dom of Mewar. Its palace, which over­looks the vil­lage, is now … read more