Current Films

Open­ing Program This split-screen work begins with total views as if from Mars, approach­ing the ground simul­ta­ne­ous­ly or alter­nate­ly from dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives. Many people are build­ing a coun­try road with … read more

Due to unex­p­tect­ed cir­cum­stanced this event has to be cancelled We are very sorry for this!   On Feb­ru­ary 1st, 2021 Myan­mar Mil­i­tary under the lead­er­ship of Min Aung Hlaing staged … read more

Three mil­lion Afghan refugees live in Iran, often facing dis­crim­i­na­tion and endur­ing mostly pre­car­i­ous con­di­tions. Since the tight­en­ing of U.S. sanc­tions and the result­ing infla­tion, thou­sands of refugees are return­ing … read more

The rela­tion­ship that Varso­vians have with clams is sim­i­lar to the one that once joined canaries and miners. Both species can sense danger sooner than humans because they are much … read more

A busy train­ing center for domes­tic work­ers in Indra­mayu, West Java. Like mil­lions of Indone­sian rural women, Sukma, Meri, Muji and Tari dream of a better life and find­ing hap­pi­ness work­ing in fam­i­lies over­seas. A boom­ing domes­tic worker indus­try places thou­sands of mostly Muslim women each year, in coun­tries such as Taiwan, Hong Kong and Sin­ga­pore. Recruit­ed by local agents, they are trained as house­keep­ers and care­givers, given rudi­men­ta­ry lan­guage skills while they com­plete their paper­work and wait for placement.

And “even though the child hasn’t even left yet, her family is already dream­ing of buying things like a goat or a motor­cy­cle. And that’s just the par­ents, not count­ing the wish lists of other rel­a­tives,” Ismail Fahmi Lubis tells Jakar­ta­Post in an inter­view about the making of his film.

The women do bring in an income that can alle­vi­ate the fam­i­ly’s pover­ty, but does it really improve their lives? And at what cost?

Ismail Fahmi Lubis is one of Indonesia’s pre­miere doc­u­men­tary film­mak­ers. Upon grad­u­at­ing from Insti­tut Kesen­ian (Insti­tute of Arts) Jakar­ta in 1993, he direct­ed sev­er­al Indone­sian drama series before switch­ing his focus to doc­u­men­tary in 1998. As a cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er, Ismail has worked with notable film­mak­ers includ­ing Leonard Retel Helm­rich and Cathy Henkel. He has also worked as a tutor for Doc­u­men­tary Master Class­es at the Jakar­ta Int. Film Fes­ti­val in 2006 and 2007.

MASKED MONKEY: THE EVOLUTION OF DARWIN’S THEORY (2014) depicts street artists in Jakar­ta, who use mon­keys in their shows. TARLING IS DARLING (2017) fol­lows a musi­cal enter­tain­er in single-shot cin­e­matog­ra­phy and won a Spe­cial Jury Men­tion at Taiwan Int. Film Festival.

Direc­tor, cin­e­matog­ra­phy: Ismail Fahmi Lubis
Edit­ing: Nick Calpakdjian
Com­pos­er: Arlo Picas­so Enemark
Sound­de­sign: Hadri­anus Eko
Pro­duc­tion: Nick Cal­pakd­jian, Mark Olsen
Dis­tri­b­u­tion: fil­mo­tor, Prag filmotorfest@gmail.com

Even though China does not cel­e­brate Christ­mas, there are over 600 Christ­mas-dec­o­ra­tion fac­to­ries in Yiwu, China. They are often run as a family busi­ness and man­u­fac­ture year round, employ­ing people … read more

Work­ing to the rhythm of the aisles of a banal super­mar­ket, the employ­ees seem seized by the repet­i­tive tasks and their rou­tine. There is the team from the bakery sec­tion … read more

Fahed wants to change his life. It’s been almost twenty years that he left Alge­ria. At the time he was full of hope when he arrived at the British sea­port … read more

Like many African metrop­o­lis­es, the Ethiopi­an cap­i­tal Addis Ababa is grow­ing rapid­ly. The Oromo farm­ers in the sur­round­ing area call it Fin­finnee, and a part of the Great Rift Valley … read more

Fünf Jahre lang kämpft die Bürg­erini­tia­tive DoucheFLUX dafür, ein Gebäude zu finden, zu finanzieren und zu sanieren, wo die am meis­ten Benachteiligten der Stadt sich duschen und wo sie ärztliche … read more

In a lab­o­ra­to­ry-like setup, The View­ing Booth recounts a unique encounter between a film­mak­er and a viewer. The film explores the way we make mean­ings for non­fic­tion images, and how … read more

“Mama, I miss you so much,” begins a letter Alima writes to her mother. She is one of count­less Indone­sian women work­ing as a “babu,” or nanny, for a Dutch … read more

Out of five mil­lion Costa Ricans, just over 100,000 belong to the coun­try’s eight indige­nous groups. Under a 1977 law, 24 areas of the coun­try are pro­tect­ed as indige­nous ter­ri­to­ries. … read more

This film describes the cre­ation of a work of art in all its amaz­ing indi­vid­ual steps. We are in the west­ern moun­tains of Iran, the land of the Bakhtiaris. Wool … read more