Labor

After 40 years Alain Tanner again travels to the port of Genoa, where he worked for a shipping company as a 22-year-old. On the back of his own memories he depicts the rough world of the dockworkers, another of those trades that has undergone fundamental changes as a result of recessions, modernisation and liberalisation. “The visual impression of the harbour and the city has changed very little, but what goes on there nowadays is completely different. The city is still as beautiful and alien and somewhat sad as before. But the port is dying, like so many other major ports. In Genoa, as elsewhere in Italy, the economic, social and political climate is highly explosive. But you also feel that things are in flow and the country is on the verge of some far-reaching changes. In this film I wanted to explore my own memories of Genoa, uncover its present and guess at its future. Genoa, this beautiful, this sad, this alien town has become for me a metaphor for society in change.”

As anger and resentment grow in the face of social inequalities, many citizens-led protests are being repressed with an ever-increasing violence. In this documentary, David Dufresne gathers a panel of citizens to question, exchange and confront their views on the social order and the legitimacy of the use of force by the State.

A group of German construction workers start a tough job at a remote site in the Bulgarian countryside. The foreign land awakens the men's sense of adventure, but they are also confronted with their own prejudice and mistrust due to the language barrier and cultural differences. The stage is quickly set for a showdown when men begin to compete for recognition and favor from the local villagers.

Daniel Blake, 59, who has worked as a joiner most of his life in the North East of England needs help from the State for the first time ever following an illness. He crosses paths with a single mother Katie and her two young children, Daisy and Dylan. Katie’s only chance to escape a one roomed homeless hostel in London is to accept a flat some 300 miles away. Daniel and Katie find themselves in no-man’s land caught on the barbed wire of welfare bureaucracy now played out against the rhetoric of ‘striver and skiver’ in modern day Britain. The film won the Palme d'Or at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival, the Prix du public at the 2016 Locarno International Film Festival and the 2017 BAFTA for Outstanding British Film.

Paterson is a bus driver in the city whose name her shares: Paterson, New Jersey. Every day, he drives his route and observes the city as it drifts across his windshield. During his lunch break, he writes poetry into a notebook. In contrast to Paterson's steady routine, his wife Laura's world is constantly changing. New dreams come to her almost daily, each a different and inspired project.

From the Director of I Daniel Blake (Ken Loach) comes another hard hitting dose of reality. Ricky and his family have been fighting an uphill struggle against debt since the 2008 financial crash. An opportunity to wrestle back some independence appears with a shiny new van and the chance to run a franchise as a self-employed delivery driver. It's hard work, and his wife's job as a carer is no easier. The family unit is strong but when both are pulled in different directions everything comes to breaking point.

Dima Nikitin is a simple and honest plumber who works in a small Russian town. Except for his unusual integrity, nothing makes him stand out of the crowd, until one night in a dorm mainly occupied by drunkards and outcasts, the pipes burst, endangering the occupants. Everybody needs to be immediately evacuated but nobody cares, so Nikitin sets off on a night-long odyssey to fight an entire system of corrupt bureaucrats.

Reza (35), having distanced himself from the urban quagmire, leads a simple life along with his wife and sole child, somewhere in a remote village in Northern Iran. He spends his days working in his gold fish farm. Nearby, a private company with close links to the government and local authorities, has taken control of nearly every aspect of the regional life. Its shareholders, accumulating wealth, power and economic rents, have been pushing local farmers and small owners to dilapidate their belongings, farms and estates, to the benefit of the Company's in influential network and its monopoly. It is under their pressure that many villagers have themselves become local rings of the larger network of corruption. Meanwhile, Reza strives to resist coercion and preserve his farm. Soon though, he will realize that he can no longer stand up to this powerful, yet hidden, coercive web of corruption. Giving up, he decides to sell his property and move away. The Company however, decides to raise the stakes.

A mistaken delivery in Mumbai's famously efficient lunchbox delivery system connects a young housewife to an older man in the dusk of his life as they build a fantasy world together through notes in the lunchbox.

No Man Is an Island travels across Europe, from the farmers working together in the Galline Felici cooperative in Sicily to the architects, craftspersons and elected representatives who collaborate in the Swiss Alps and in Austria. All are engaged in politics through their work and all believe in a common destiny. Is the local level the last possible place for a viable utopia?

After fifteen years of service, Henri Boulanger is dismissed from his job. Shocked, he tries to commit suicide, but can't go through with it, so he hires a hit man in a shabby bar to murder him in the future at an uncertain time. Shortly afterwards, when he falls in love with Margaret, a flower seller, Henri realizes that his life does still have a meaning. But when he goes back to the bar to cancel the contract, he realizes that it has been destroyed - and there is no way he can contact the murderer...

Camille, a young idealistic photojournalist, goes to the Central African Republic to cover the civil war that is brewing up. What she sees there will change her destiny forever. - By adopting the lead character’s first name for the film’s title, Boris Lojkine’s approach shows all its humility. He applies the same dignified treatment to the tragic fate of a country and its inhabitants as he does to the true story of Camille, a young woman who observes and inhabits the world with rare intensity and tries desperately to account for the conflicts and drama in a Black Africa that the West would rather ignore.

Present-day Chad. Adam, sixty something, a former swimming champion, is pool attendant at a smart N’Djamena hotel. When the hotel gets taken over by new Chinese owners, he is forced to give up his job to his son Abdel. Terribly resentful, he feels socially humiliated. The country is in the throes of a civil war. Rebel forces are attacking the government. The authorities demand that the population contribute to the "war effort", giving money or volunteers old enough to fight off the assailants. The District Chief constantly harasses Adam for his contribution. But Adam is penniless; he only has his son....

A chronicle of three weeks in the lives of several high school teachers, administrators and students through the eyes of substitute teacher, Henry Barthes. Henry roams from school to school, imparting modes of knowledge, but never staying long enough to form any semblance of sentient attachment.

Shy and loveable Palestinian Salam is already in his thirties without, however, having quite found his way in life. That is why he eagerly takes on an internship with the successful TV soap «Tel Aviv on Fire». In order to reach the television studio, Salam has to pass through the check-point between his home in Jerusalem and Ramallah on a daily basis. This is where he meets Assi, chief of the Israeli border crossing, who is excited to meet one of the "makers" of his wife's favourite series. To impress his sweetheart, Assi puts increasing pressure on Salam to design the series according to his preferences. Meanwhile, Salam realises that Assi’s creative ideas are his big chance to become a screenwriter. When Assi’s demands are no longer compatible with those of the Arab creator’s, Salam is faced with a dilemma... Director Sameh Zoabi uses Tel Aviv on Fire to approach the conflict in the Middle East from a completely different, original and heartfelt comedic angle.

TOKYO SONATA is a portrait of a seemingly ordinary Japanese family. The father who abruptly loses his job conceals the truth from his family; the eldest son in college hardly returns home; the youngest son furtively takes piano lessons without telling his parents; and the mother, who knows deep down that her role is to keep the family together, cannot find the will to do so. From the exterior, all is normal and the same. But somehow, a single, unforeseeable chasm has appeared within the family, only to spread ever so quietly and quickly to disintegrate them.

Director Sonia Kronlund accompanies the Afghan director, actor and screenwriter Salim Shaheen in her film Nothingwood. He is a well-known figure on the film scene in his home country, but hardly known abroad. About a hundred kilometers away from Kabul, Salim Shaheen comes to show some of his 110 films and to shoot the 111th in the process.

Argentina in 2016: in a remote region in the north of the country live about 700 Mennonites from Germany as in the 18th century. They speak old German and live from agriculture and cattle breeding. But is it really possible to refuse development?

Rafael has been a cleaner in the same light bulb factory for thirty years. It is his last day before retirement, and he even buys himself a pair of new shoes for the occasion. But his boss soon takes the wind out of this reticent man’s sails. Although Rafael has been a diligent and reliable worker, as an illegal immigrant to Tijuana from El Salvador he has no right to expect a pension ... Lidia is one of seven people keeping house for a rich Mexican woman in a wheelchair who has dedicated her life to her whippet Princess’ who eats from a golden bowl and sleeps on a silk cushion. Lidia has spent thirty years taking care of the dog and its ailing mistress, day and night. When Lidia’s employee dies and leaves her fortune to her dog nothing much changes for Lidia at first. Then she begins to think about what it means to have a dog as an employer. José-Luis Valles’ film Workers paints an affecting picture of the division of labour in today’s ostensibly egalitarian society. His point of view is political, not polemical, and his camera takes its time to describe scenes not just through actions but above all in certain moods.

An ethnographic documentary film in three movements, along the lines of a symphony. The three movements reflect the three differing stages of development co-existing within the mountainous canton. In Göschenen, at the foot of the Gotthard, which straddles Europe’s North-South axis, industrialization took hold long ago, and the mountain farmers of old now work in offices and factories. In the Schächtental, however, the traditional family-centric mountain economy survives. Meanwhile, the village of Bristen in the Maderanertal is in the throes of upheaval: while the traditional farming communities still exist, nigh on 250 inhabitants leave the area daily to go to work or school.

In 1988, Chilean military dictator Augusto Pinochet, due to international pressure, is forced to call a plebiscite on his presidency. The country will vote ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ to Pinochet extending his rule for another eight years. Opposition leaders for the ‘No’ vote persuade a brash young advertising executive, Rene Saavedra, to spearhead their campaign. Against all odds, with scant resources and while under scrutiny by the despot’s minions, Saavedra and his team devise an audacious plan to win the election and set Chile free.

The Chinese make everything and the Malagasy fix everything. The people of Madagascar pride themselves on producing things out of nothing: tires transformed into shoes, oil lamps made out of light bulbs, wheelbarrows fashioned from scrap metal. You see ingenuity, not underdevelopment, in their practices. A return to a conservationist lifestyle that encourages recycling, fraternity and self-reliance is entirely of the moment and makes perfect sense in the midst of a global economic crisis. Will the world pay attention? Filmmaker Nantenaina Lova venerates the family business, the clever artisan, the resourceful craftsman and those who possess the ability to create using everyday objects. The Malagasy Way is a poetic, proverb-packed lesson in creativity and resistance that offers fresh logic on how to live. By cultivating lifes treasuressharing, ancestral knowledge, a good soul and the sweetness in bitternessthe Malagasy hope to teach the Western superpowers a thing or two.

The beautiful woman Melé is a bar singer, her husband Chaka is out of work. The couple that lives in Bamako, the capital of Mali, is on the verge of breaking up... In the courtyard of the house, where they live together with other families, a trial court has been set up. African civil society spokesmen have taken proceedings against the World Bank and the IMF, whom they blame for Africa's woes... Amidst the pleas and the testimonies, life goes on in the courtyard. Chaka does not seem to be concerned by this novel Africa's desire to fight for its rights.

Rosemonde the Salamander is a young girl who gets by thanks to low-paid jobs of all kinds. She is suspected of attempting to kill the uncle with whom she lives. A journalist and a writer are hired to get to the bottom of this mystery, as the basis for a television film scenario. They are unsuccessful however. The truth about Rosemonde and her special appreciation of life continue to elude these two amateur detectives.

Christian, a reclusive young man from Leipzig, gets a job working the night shift at a big-box store. He's trained to stocks goods and operate a forklift by Bruno, a wistful former truck driver, who introduces Christian to a colorful group of overnight workers, including Marion, with whom Christian develops a troubled infatuation.

Liège, Belgium. Sandra is a factory worker who discovers that her workmates have opted for a EUR1,000 bonus in exchange for her dismissal. She has only a weekend to convince her colleagues to give up their bonuses in order to keep her job.

Vlada works as a truck driver during the NATO bombing of Serbia in 1999. Tasked with transporting a mysterious load from Kosovo to Belgrade, he drives through unfamiliar territory, surrounded by the consequences of the war. When his job is over, Vlada needs to return home and face the consequences of his actions.

The young Miloš Hrma, who speaks with misplaced pride of his family of misfits and malingerers, is engaged as a newly trained station guard in a small railway station during the Second World War and the German occupation of Czechoslovakia. He admires himself in his new uniform, and looks forward, like his prematurely-retired railwayman father, to avoiding real work. The sometimes pompous stationmaster is an enthusiastic pigeon-breeder with a kind wife, but is envious of the train dispatcher Hubička's success with women. Miloš holds an as-yet platonic love for the pretty, young conductor Máša. The experienced Hubička presses for details of their relationship and realizes that Miloš is still a virgin. The idyll of the railway station is periodically disturbed by the arrival of the councillor, Zednicek, a Nazi collaborator, who spouts propaganda at the staff without success. At her initiative, Máša spends the night with Miloš, but in his youthful excitability he ejaculates prematurely before achieving penetration and then is unable to perform sexually; and the next day, despairing, he attempts suicide. He is saved, and a young doctor explains to him that ejaculatio praecox is normal at Miloš's age. The doctor recommends Miloš to "think of something else" (at which point Miloš volunteers an interest in football), and to seek the assistance of an experienced woman. During the nightshift, Hubička flirts with the young telegraphist, Zdenička, and imprints her thighs and buttocks with the office's rubber stamps. Her mother sees the stamps and complains to Hubička's superiors, and the ensuing scandal helps to frustrate the stationmaster's ambition of being promoted to inspector. The Germans and their collaborators are on edge, since their trains are being attacked by the partisans. A glamorous Resistance agent (a circus artist in peacetime), code-named Viktoria Freie, delivers a time bomb to Hubička for use in blowing up a large ammunition train. At Hubička's request, the "experienced" Viktoria also helps Miloš to resolve his sexual problem. The next day, at the crucial moment when the ammunition train is approaching, Hubička is caught up in a farcical disciplinary hearing, overseen by Zednicek, over his rubber stamping of Zdenička's backside. In Hubička's place, Miloš, liberated by his experience with Viktoria from his former passivity, takes the time bomb and drops it from a semaphore gantry, that extends transversely above the tracks, onto the train. A machine-gunner on the train, spotting Miloš, sprays him with bullets, and his body falls onto the train. With the Nazi collaborator Zednicek, winding up the disciplinary hearing, dismissing the Czech people as "nothing but laughing hyenas" (a phrase actually employed by the senior Nazi official Reinhard Heydrich, the implicit retort to his jibe comes in the form of a huge series of explosions that destroys the train. Now Hubička and the other railwaymen are indeed laughing - to express their joy at the blow to the Nazi occupiers - and it is left to a wistful Máša to pick up Miloš's uniform cap, hurled across the station by the power of the blast. (wp)

A coolly observed study of familial dysfunction, Michael Haneke’s follow-up to Amour has all of the stylistic traits we have come to expect: the cut-glass precision, scenes shot to resemble static surveillance footage, significant action taking place in the margins of long shots, and the presence of Isabelle Huppert. Thematically the film revisits Haneke’s concerns with bourgeois complacency and guilt, racial prejudice and our changing relationship to technology. Moments of comedy introduce a surprising and welcome new element to the director’s winning formula.