The devil is in the system
DEATH PENALTY: The Berlin winner There is no devil is a strong statement against Iran's state executions and a morally complex depiction of living in a totalitarian society.
To love is to be gripped by the incomprehensibility of the world and ...
DOCUMENTS: Ancient Egyptian art and the later Sufi tradition have access to insights that modern man has gradually forgotten.
The monstrous cost of the cheap fish
FISHING INDUSTRY: The United States imports 91 percent of all food fish from the other side of the globe, and fish intake is limited to five varieties while ancient coastal communities are in ruins. In Cambodia, the seabed is being emptied and emptied of illegal fishing from Vietnam. The theme is gloomy, but two different documentaries find bright spots.
Bittersweet comedy in New York
DRAMA COMEDY: Director Sofia Coppola and actress Bill Murray were successful Lost in Translation and are now reunited in On The Rocks, in which Murray portrays a skirt hunter who is never far from a dry martini.
A powerful and different beast
HOLOCAUST: The Painted Bird is a powerful and disturbing film that depicts a young boy's cruel experiences in Eastern Europe during World War II.
HUXLEY'S DYSTOPIA: What would you rather be – happy or free?
SCIENCE FICTION: The TV series based on Aldous Huxley's Brave New World contains – by including digital surveillance – also an essential element from George Orwell's dystopian vision of the future.
Brave soldiers and lost system criticism
cinema Relevant The Outpost confirms the turn American war films have taken from system criticism of the hero cult.
Behind the idyll lurks the landmines
WASTES OF WAR: Five female miners try to remove land mines in the beautiful landscape of Nagorno-Karabakh.
Forty years of dreaming of a better life
NINOSCAS CAMP: Independence and detachment from violence and oppressive macho culture in Nicaragua – filmed for forty years.
Blacklisted workers were denied a job
CONTROL: Unthinkable bureaucrats, sneaky employer organizations and a corrupt police monitor and blacklist "troubled" or suspicious workers systematically.
Who dares disappoint the camera?
NUDENESS: Norwegian Jan Dalchow's new documentary series about body shame is honorable, but also trivial and sentimental.
Short film winners with political sting
NORWEGIAN SHORT MOVIE: Many of the films at this year's digital short film festival in Grimstad dealt with current political themes.
Short film program about the Y-block and the vulnerability of architecture
ARCHITECTURE: Two films about the Y-block have, in the shelter of the ongoing demolition, become both documentation of ideological oscillations and mourning hymns over a lost time.
Strong hostage drama from reality
DANISH IS-CATCH: The feature film about Danish Daniel Rye captured by IS in Syria shows that Scandinavian film does not have to be toothless entertainment to hit wide.
The limits of the genuine
TOURISM AND AUTHENTICITY: The distinctive feature film Bait describes the conflict between local fishermen and holidaymakers in Cornwall and is a social realist drama portrayed in a strikingly small social realist way.
Warning of the future
Utopia: An essayistic documentary that stretches towards future visions and utopias, but with a bleak foundational tone and inability to see any way out of the paralysis it describes.
Attentive and timeless presence
SLOW TRAVEL: Animals often have an almost enviable ability to find their place in the whole. Why can't people do the same?
To escape the ultra-Orthodox lifestyle
Thoughtful story of a young girl leaving a Hasidic society for a better life outside.
False priest listens to true testimony
DIFFICULT ASKED: In Thy Kingdom Come, photographer and filmmaker Eugene Richards gives voice to ordinary people who are largely invisible in today's United States.
The omniscient but predetermined man
FREE WILL: Masterfully, the miniseries ask Dev's big questions about a deterministic worldview versus free will, and the almost unlimited power of modern "tech" companies.
Michael Moore's new film: Critical to alternative energy
ENVIRONMENT: For many, green energy solutions are just a new way to make money, says director Jeff Gibbs.
Chinese loyalty clashes with American tradition on the factory floor
GLOBALIZATION: American Factory offers a cultural collision and fraternity between high-tech China and American working class workers.
Nature determines, not we
PHOTO: The theme of the exhibition 'The Beginning' with Lennart Nilsson's photographs is particularly touching and thought provoking now that the pandemic is raging.
Wild West conditions in 90's Russia
oligarchs: Is former Yukos chief and one of Russia's powerful oligarchs, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a villain or a dissident?
When killing is the only solution
ABUSE: In an Iranian youth detention center, a group of teenage girls is being detained. They have all killed a father, brother or spouse.