Cidades Fantasmas

A documentary portrait of Calcutta

The old world is gone. Our landscape bears scars. Entire cities have been levelled. Is it possible to regenerate the city without covering over the warnings of war’s aggressions? Or can these ruins provide a unique chance to reinvent the city thoroughly? The art historian Heinrich Klotz took precisely these questions, concerning the reconstruction of Germany’s historical districts after World War II, as the departure point of his practice.

Florent Tillon takes an anthropological lens to Las Vegas, Nevada. What he finds is some curious new species of Americana. (Dorothy Woodend, DOXA Documentary Film Festival)

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An urban documentary that explores economic inequality in Buenos Aires through the contrast between large mansions and skyscrapers that coexist with slums.

Ancient Explorer, Amish Shah travels to the west coast of India in search of an ancient submerged city. With a passion for the truth, he stumbles into a cover up and in this film, he goes public with what he found.

A Cincinnati public school fights to break the cycle of poverty in its Urban Appalachian neighborhood, where senior Raven Gribbins aims to become the first in her troubled family to graduate and go to college. When Principal Craig Hockenberry's job is threatened, it becomes clear it's a make-or-break year for both of them.

In continuous motion with no end or barrier in its way.

A manufactured memory.

A Texan begins a cross-country journey in hope of finding the empty loft she keeps seeing in visions.

Rotterdam 2040 is a film about the city’s future, departing from the principle of Gyz La Rivière that you can’t look ahead without considering your past (something that hasn’t always been Rotterdam’s strongest feature). At high speed, La Rivière reconstructs the history of Rotterdam from the time before the bombings until now, and expands the developments to the year 2040 (100 years after the bombing and the 700th anniversary of the city). La Rivière made a specific choice to expose his personal vision, which is sometimes radical or a little absurd. So no experts and no talking heads, but an assault of old and new imagery, held together by La Rivière as the narrator of the film. Although Rotterdam 2040 deals with architecture and urban renewal, it is actually a film about people. The subjective experience of the city by its (future) occupants mainly determines the parade of architectural blunders and suggestions for the future. All tongue-in-cheek of course.

A 7-minute portrait of natural born fashion and street photographer 'Jimmy on the Run'. Coming from rural China, he now roams the streets of Amsterdam always chasing the next best picture. This short film shows Jimmy's passion for the lens, his dynamic lifestyle and his struggle with family expectations.

A film about "the father" of Malmö Eric Svenning and how the city has developed during his time.

A short documentary film that follows and describes the city of Rijeka through one day - its port, shipyard, fish market, streets, bridges, parks, houses and the old town of Trsat.

Bikes vs Cars depicts a global crisis that we all deep down know we need to talk about: Climate, earth's resources, cities where the entire surface is consumed by the car. An ever-growing, dirty, noisy traffic chaos. The bike is a great tool for change, but the powerful interests who gain from the private car invest billions each year on lobbying and advertising to protect their business. In the film we meet activists and thinkers who are fighting for better cities, who refuse to stop riding despite the increasing number killed in traffic.

"The theme of the film HIDDEN CITIES is personal urban perceptions, which we call 'the city'. The city, as a living organism, reflecting social processes and interactions, economic relations, political conditions and private matters. In the city, human memories, desires and tragedies find expression in the form of designations and marks engraved in house walls and paving slabs. But what the city really is under this thick layer of signs, what it contains or conceals, is what we are researching in the HIDDEN CITIES project. The source material for the film are 9 sequential photo works created by Gusztáv Hámos between 1975 and 2010. Each of these 'city perceptions' depicts essential situations of urban experiences containing human and inhuman acts in a compact form. The cities in which the photo sequences have been made are Berlin, Budapest and New York – places with a traumatised past: Wars, dictatorships, terrorist catastrophes."

A documentary about Croatia's capital aspirations of becoming metropolis. Camera follows everyday life of random city-goers. Title cards bring interesting plot twists, indeed making this film a mockumentary. One of the earliest preserved pieces of cinema in Croatia.

We mark a new milestone in the chapter of human flight. Join Jetman Yves Rossy and his protege, Jetman Vince Reffet as they explore the limits in the city of dreams. "The real dream is to be completely free"

The city from the unique perspective of the many wild animals and plants that inhabit it. Seen through the eyes of the adventurous urban cat, Abatutu.

A film commissioned by the Municipal Housing Authority that was meant to praise the city council's social housing policy; It was screened in a private session for Mayor Porcioles and was not accepted; a new, happier, more hopeful ending was added, but even so it was never publicly shown and came to be known as "the movie that never existed."