City of Light

THE PERFUMED GARDEN is an exploration of the myths and realities of sensuality and sexuality in Arab society, a world of taboos and of erotic literature. Through interviews with men and women of all ages, classes, and sexual orientation, the film lifts a corner of the veil that usually shrouds discussion of this subject in the Arab world. Made by an Algerian-French woman director, the film begins by looking at the record of a more permissive history, and ends with the experiences of contemporary lovers from mixed backgrounds. It examines the personal issues raised by the desire for pleasure, amidst societal pressures for chastity and virginity. The film discusses pre-marital sex, courtship and marriage, familial pressures, private vs. public spaces, social taboos (and the desire to break them), and issues of language.

The views and thoughts of Canadian writer Margaret Atwood have never been more relevant than today. Readers turn to her work for answers as they confront the rise of authoritarian leaders, deal with increasingly intrusive technologies, and discuss climate change. Her books are useful as survival tools for hard times. But few know her private life. Who is the woman behind the stories? How does she always seem to know what is coming?

A mother and daughter, estranged by divorce and mental health issues, reconnect through patience, understanding, and their a shared appreciation of their Native Hawaiian heritage.

Amina lives with an invisible chronic illness that has imprisoned her in an exhausted body. To better understand this elusive illness, her brother Liam makes her a room of her own where she can exist as something other than a patient.

A couple decides to watch Big, a successful film released in 1988, starring Tom Hanks and directed by Penny Marshall, not once, but thirty times, sometimes accompanied by family and friends who come to their home to watch and discuss it.

A heartwarming story about a precautious, 8-year-old girl exploring the world with her globetrotting father and growing up in an unconventional family.

It is normal for 15-year-old Linn to have two mothers. But when she finds out that there are still numerous siblings, she realizes that she is part of an extraordinary extended family. Her father Eike not only had an appointment with Linn's mothers to donate sperm, Petra and Anny also have three children with him. A film crew followed this rainbow family for twelve years.

A short film about ties and gaps between a child and a parent. The author rediscovers letters her dad used to write her from prison. That love seems to be gone now. She decides to write back in hope to find the connection again. She puts in writing what could not be said: blaming him for family´s break-up but also trying to understand.

Edie Bouvier Beale and her mother, Edith, two aging, eccentric relatives of Jackie Kennedy Onassis, are the sole inhabitants of a Long Island estate. The women reveal themselves to be misfits with outsized, engaging personalities. Much of the conversation is centered on their pasts, as mother and daughter now rarely leave home.

A family falls prey to the manipulative charms of a neighbor, who abducts their adolescent daughter. Twice.

In his heartfelt documentary, co-director and subject Elad Cohen explores the meaning and experience of family. Growing up deaf and gay in a family of hearing people, Cohen never felt at home and always felt alone. That feeling of estrangement was exacerbated during his adolescence by the sudden death of his mother and the subsequent rift with his father as the family scattered in different directions. Cohen creates a sense of family with a small group of friends, including his best friend, Yaeli, a deaf woman. While he wants a child and a life partner, he fears that he won’t find the right man in the small deaf community in his “sweet little country.” Sharing a desire with Yaeli to be parents, the new “couple” decide to have a child in a shared parenting arrangement.

The film is an intimate record of a difficult period in the life of the creators. The main character, eight months pregnant, was diagnosed with aggressive breast cancer. The dramatic event disrupted the joy associated with the birth of her child.

Currently Mongolia’s capital has 1.5 million inhabitants - half the population of the country. 50-year Tumurbaatar is only one of many coming to the city to fulfil their dreams of a better life.

Damien Samedi is 43 years old. When he was a child in his Belgian village on the banks of the river Meuse, they called him the “Petit Samedi”. To his mother, Ysma, Damien is still her child, the one she never abandoned when he got caught up in drugs. A son who sought to protect his mother despite it all, a man attempting to liberate himself from his addictions and faces his past to get through.

Several high-budget epic films became Omar Sharif (1932-2015) a film star. He was an actor, but also a bridge player, a womanizer, a bon vivant; he was a man full of contradictions, who enjoyed card games more than movies; he was an eternal nomad who spent half his life in a hotel.

In 2014, the University of Florida women's softball team was the best it's ever been - and it's all thanks to one young woman, Heather Braswell. Though not an official member of the team, Braswell, a cancer patient and huge Gator fan, was their heart and soul. Find out why the ladies still wear sunflowers on game day in their hair to this day.

A photojournalist turns her lens on the decades of sexual abuse her family and community experienced at the hands of her grandfather in this unflinching portrait of intergenerational trauma, family secrets, and redemption.

Biggi lives with her two daughters, four dogs and her exboyfriend Alfred on a dilapidated farm in a small village in Saxony-Anhalt. Biggi and Alfred are out of work and they live very modestly. The 14 and 17 year-old daughters Saskia and Denise should really go to school, but there are always reasons for them to stay at home. This gives rise to tension with Alfred. We accompany them during their conflict-ridden everyday lives and learn something about their dreams, fears and hopes. And how difficult it is to break out of a circle.

After twenty-five years spent in France, I return to Bulgaria, camera in hand, with a vertiginous suspicion: what if my family had collaborated with the political police of the communist regime? And what if they were part of the "red trash" that the demonstrators on the street want to see disappear? I decide to investigate and to film, constantly, ready for anything. My adventure transforms itself into a tragic comic odyssey; a film that combines espionage with family.

Capturing life of a family with a disabled father and deaf mother in a Chinese village during the lunar New Year. Yao, a successful businessman in Beijing, left home young. Now middle-aged, he returns to face demons from the past and fulfill his parent's dying wish to settle down and complete the family.