the future in today

Some days, the black kites lit­er­al­ly drop from the sky—the air pol­lu­tion in Delhi, India, can be so intense that flocks of the birds fall to earth. If they’re lucky, … read more

The vil­lage of Shol­o­gon is locat­ed in the taiga in north­east­ern Siberia. An extreme heat wave ignit­ed fierce forest fires in the remote region two years ago. At first, res­i­dents remained calm, but the con­fla­gra­tion was get­ting closer and closer. No help could be expect­ed from the state, because the vil­lage lies on the edge of a con­trol zone - too few people settle there for it to be worth the effort to save their homes. The pop­u­la­tion has no choice but to orga­nize itself and hold back the fire as much as pos­si­ble until it rains again. Dif­fer­ent squads, always in con­tact with each other, mon­i­tor the fires, all men and also women fight with the sim­plest means against the “dragon” of the flames.   

The cam­era­man Paul Guil­haume right­ly received an award for his work. The burn­ing land­scape becomes a vivid paint­ing of the threat of cli­mate change. Through the dense smoke, a spec­ta­cle of colors from yellow to red, one fol­lows human sil­hou­ettes and fears and won­ders how they can bear the heat and smoke at all. An intense­ly obser­va­tion­al doc­u­men­tary trans­fers the entire drama to the viewer. 

Alexan­der Abatur­ov is born in Novosi­birsk in 1984. After study­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion sci­ence he worked as jour­nal­ist for the Fed­er­al press agency. In 2010 he obtained an MA in cre­ative doc­u­men­tary film­mak­ing from the Doc­u­men­tary School of Lussas in France. Films: SLEEPING SOULS (2013, 53 min); THE SON (2018, 71 min). 

Direc­tor: Alexan­der Abaturov
Cin­e­matog­ra­phy: Paul Guilhaume
Edit­ing: Luc For­veille, Alexan­der Abaturov
Sound: Myriam René, Sorin Apos­tol, Frédéric Buy
Pro­duc­tion: Petit à Petit Production
Dis­tri­b­u­tion: The Party Film Sales

This short film explores the entan­gle­ments of smoke and pixels, trees and humans, loss and recov­ery. When the film­mak­er dives into a burnt forest in Oregon, U.S.A., memory and place … read more

Toly­at­ti is the Russ­ian Detroit. Toly­at­ti used to be con­sid­ered the center of the Soviet auto­mo­tive indus­try, with full employ­ment for all and modest pros­per­i­ty. But today, the almost-metrop­o­lis lags … read more

Nestor, Aaron and Ben­jamin are Rafiki’s clos­est friends. They are all study­ing eco­nom­ics at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Bangui. But Rafiki wants to make films and starts doc­u­ment­ing their lives with … read more