"Rift Finfinne" takes the viewer on a journey through the periphery of the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa. In strictly composed images and a soundtrack that interweaves the original conversations in a complex way, the film takes the concrete geography, architecture and the everyday life of individual agricultural and construction workers in the east of Addis Ababa (in Oromo: Finfinnee) as the starting point for an allegorical narrative about the urbanisation of African societies on the edge of civil war. The film documents the rural-urban transformation of space and its consequences for living together using the example of four settlements in the east of the fast-growing Ethiopian capital: the village of Dingaja, the Bole Arabsa social housing estate, the Ayat Condominiums, and the gated community CCD Homes. Four different backdrops for the profound social change in Ethiopia, all four within sight of each other, but separated by a deep rift, which divides city and non-city, present from projected future, Oromo from Amhara: the gorge of the Akaki River.

Jury Declaration:

"Rift Finfinnee" witnesses the evolving landscape of an emergent Addis Ababa, with impressive technical precision, empathy and insight. The film’s European formalist style productively amplifies the architectural colonial technologies unleashed on this previously rural Ethiopian environment. A dérive through its streets and surroundings, seamlessly gathers conversations with its inhabitants, revealing the ruthless social change, dislocation and homelessness underpinning the city’s construction.

When director Asmae El Moudir finds an old picture postcard of a mountain village among her mother’s belongings, it brings a remarkable story to life. The picture is of Zawia, the village in Morocco that her mother left as a child and never returned to. El Moudir decides to go to this remote place. In Zawia, where time seems to have stood still, she embarks on a quest into her mother’s past, and thereby her own. She connects on a personal level with women and girls in the village; one of the young girls is Oum Elaid. The better El Moudir gets to know her and her family, the more she realizes how different her life would have been if her mother had stayed in the village. What begins as an intimate, personal journey in search of her family’s roots, evolves into a universal story about emancipation, migration, and the human longing to belong to a community.

Jury Declaration:

A poetic and emotional journey to the roots of a young filmmaker, through which she shows us, with an always respectful camera that flees from the limelight, the world that she would have lived but did not live. Small stories, snippets of a daily reality that show a world that is disappearing to make way for another new reality, marked by the invasion of the outside world and the end of a way of life. All this told through hypnotic images and deep beauty and delicacy.

This impressionistic documentary is set in the remote desert community of Illaut, Northern Kenya. The Samburus are nomadic pastoralists who live by the rhythm of the sun and the moon. The film asks the question, what will remain of their customs once electricity makes its appearance? Will artificial light, water pumps, refrigerators and a mobile network pose challenges to the preservation of their culture? What consequences will the temptations of modern times impose? After a decade of living under pylons that provided electricity to cities, the government is now making efforts to connect their community as well. This results in structural changes for the way they organize their lives. For example, in order to have a safe electrical connection, the impermanent huts must make way for permanent houses with fencing, which in turn makes public land private property. Although electricity offers new possibilities, it also has a socio-economic impact: a new dependence with consequences for their formerly self-sufficient way of life. The transition that the Samburu is currently going through is at the tail end of broader global transformation; since 2007 more than half of humanity has been living in cities. The nomadic Samburu settle in villages while a share move to the nearby city. While we as viewers experience the excitement of the Samburu for the changes, we also feel melancholy at the disappearance of a traditional way of life.

Éva Fahidi avait 20 ans lorsqu’elle réchappa d’Auschwitz-Birkenau et revint en Hongrie. Elle était seule, 49 membres de sa famille ayant été assassinés. À l’âge de 90 ans, 70 ans plus tard, elle est sollicitée pour participer à un spectacle de théâtre dansé sur sa vie. Réka, la metteuse en scène, imagine un duo réunissant Éva et la jeune danseuse de renommée internationale Emese. Réka veut voir comment les corps et les histoires de ces deux femmes peuvent s’entremêler sur scène. Éva accepte immédiatement. Tandis que les moments clés de la vie d’Éva se distillent dans les scènes du spectacle, une puissante relation se noue entre les trois femmes.

Film actor RONNY has an awakening to end poverty and brands himself a modern Robin Hood, making money from slum tourism. His son Brandon narrates his father's loss of grip with reality.

Left-wing and Christian, hermit and an alcoholic, damned poet Nikos Karouzos is the central figure of this hybrid-genre feature. In this essay film about a documentary, the viewer is taken through the Athenian urban landscape, the editing room, prison island of Makronissos, Stockholm and Kronstadt, following a frustrated researcher in a journey through time to restore the collective memory of Greece’s most underrated poet and his tumultuous times through pictures, celluloid and testimonies. A story about life and death, about Greece’s troubled post-war history, and about the advent of Spring.