Category Archives: Documentary Section

The Last Expedition (Eliza Kubarska) Poland

The Last Expedition
Eliza Kubarska
Poland. 2024. 85 min

Pioneering Polish mountain climber Wanda Rutkiewicz disappeared in the Himalayas in 1992.
What happened on that final climb? Filmmaker and mountaineer Eliza Kubarska traces Wanda’s footsteps on the world’s highest peaks in a journey into the mystery surrounding the fate of the first woman to summit K2. Could Wanda be still alive, in a monastery in Tibet? Weaving
together Wanda’s own, previously unseen diaries, audio and video archives from her Himalayan expeditions, interviews with legendary climbers, Sherpas, Buddhist nuns and monks, this is a riveting account of the emotional struggles and aspirations of a woman who rose above a world that often sought to limit her and charted her own path to freedom.

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Far From Home (Kristi Tethong) Canada, India

Far From Home
Kristi Tethong
Canada, India. 2025. 76 min

Far From Home is about the fight against the erasure of both the Tibetan nation and a father’s memories, collected against the ticking clock of Alzheimer’s. TC Tethong and his Canadian wife, Judy, helped carve a Tibetan settlement out of a South Indian jungle in the 1960s. Featuring a never-before-seen archive of a precarious era for Tibetans struggling to survive on borrowed soil, this intimate family story of love and courage reflects upon the nature of memory and intergenerational loss and resilience, while preserving a vulnerable oral history of the aging, last connection to a free Tibet.

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Champions of The Golden Valley (Ben Sturgulewski) USA

Champions of The Golden Valley
Ben Sturgulewski
USA. 2025. 81 min

After narrowly missing his chance to become Afghanistan’s first Olympic skier, Alishah Farhang returns to the remote mountains of his homeland to inspire a vibrant new ski culture. Bringing together young athletes from rival villages with makeshift wooden skis and secondhand gear, he organizes a ski race like no other, uniting his community in a rare moment of hope and triumph. When their world is suddenly upended, he and the athletes must call upon those lessons learned on the slopes to find their way forward. Revealing a stunning unseen side of Afghanistan, the film is a captivating and uplifting story about how champions can be made by more than Olympic medals.

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Child of Dust (Weronika Mliczewska) Poland

Child of Dust
Weronika Mliczewska
Poland. 2025. 93 min

Sang is one of countless children left behind by American soldiers after the Vietnam War—unwanted, discriminated against, and scarred by a war that took more than just his father. When Sang unexpectedly locates his gravely ill father in the U.S., he becomes determined to meet him, even though it comes at a price. The only way to fulfill this need is to move to the U.S. permanently, leaving behind his beloved wife, daughter, and grandson. In this foreign land, he struggles to find his place—not only in a society that sees him as an outsider but also within an American family that never knew of his existence. Cultural barriers collide when the past catches up with the present in the least expected ways.

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Searching for The Band (Musa AK, Hasan Basri Ozdemir) Turkey

Searching for The Band
Musa AK, Hasan Basri Ozdemir
Turkey. 2024. 74 min

The documentary tells the story of the Eroğlu Girls’ Orchestra, which was founded in 1968 as the first girls’ orchestra in Turkey and gained great popularity by appearing on television and radio programs on TRT and in newspaper reports in the 1970s, and how it was brought together again by Cenk Eroğlu and the process of making music. It tells the story of the artists of the period, the understanding of music and art, social developments, and the characters’ past lives in a way that intertwines their present and past lives.

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Here Children do not Play Together (Mohsen Makhmalbaf) Iran

Here Children do not Play Together
Mohsen Makhmalbaf
Iran. 2024. 62 min

Here, Children Do Not Play Together, is a portrait of people in Jerusalem whose survival is in question on a daily basis. In the heat of the war, the film pictures those Ordinary Palestinians and Israelis who are still in search of peace and coexistence between Muslims and Jews. Ali, who was released from Israeli prison after eighteen years and works as a tourist guide in the market, is one of these people…

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Whispering Walls (Eylem Kaftan) Turkey

Whispering Walls
Eylem Kaftan
Turkey. 2025. 70 min

Whispering Walls is a creative, cinematic, and artistic meditation on a Turkish artist in New York in 1960’s trying to navigate his way in a complicated time in American history when people were out on the streets for civil rights and when art was a true act of struggle expressing itself in the most intense way on street walls.

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Maroun Returns to Beirut (Feyrouz Serhal) Lebanon

Maroun Returns to Beirut
Feyrouz Serhal
Lebanon, Qatar. 2024. 125 min

2023 marked the thirtieth anniversary of Maroun Baghdadi’s sudden and tragic death. Maroun was a Lebanese filmmaker who wrote and directed films during the Lebanese civil war and contributed to documentary and fiction filmmaking from 1973 up until his death in 1993. In this film, Feyrouz Serhal embarks on a day trip in Beirut and navigates the city that profoundly shaped Maroun’s journey in life and cinema. Here she encounters individuals who were close to him and who shared his experiences. And as she traverses Maroun’s life and career, the social and political backdrop moves to the foreground. The film reflects on the last fifty years of the history of the country from a present standpoint. Through Maroun’s story, we perceive how cinema can, beautifully and dramatically, portray our stories and discourse our life events.

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What will People Say (Rafina Khatun) India

What will People Say
Rafina Khatun
India. 2024. 40 min

Gulnaaz remains committed to using community radio to shed light on injustices and oppressions faced by marginalised communities, despite constant scrutiny and control by her family and community. Through her empathetic storytelling, she brings attention to untold narratives and advocates for unity and harmony. Amidst her fight for social change, Gulnaaz grapples with her own struggles for freedom and autonomy. This is the story of a young Muslim woman dreaming differently in a patriarchal society determined to silence her.

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The Forest in Me (Rebecca E. Marshall) UK

The Forest in Me
Rebecca E. Marshall
UK. 2024. 69 min

Epic forests of the Siberian Taiga and black lava landscapes of a Hawaiian volcano are woven through this quietly powerful film that opens out from a personal story about living with uncertainty, to reflect upon possibilities of love and human connection.
In an intimate letter to her young child, the filmmaker builds connections between Agafya Lykova, an elderly woman surviving alone in the Siberian forest since her birth, who scares bears away by banging on space-rocket debris, a crew in Hawaii simulating what isolated life could be on Mars and her young child discovering the world minute by minute. This endlessly surprising journey offers up images that shake ideas of past, present and future to form a deeply tender vision of humanity and timeless survival on planet Earth.

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