Documentary movies

A dystopian future that’s ever nearer, Acid City floats in toxic waters and is left to its own devices. But under the boiling sun, the city weaves together its own social fabric. With audio recordings taken off the streets of NYC, this animation offers us something rare in the face of climate catastrophe: hope.

A woman browses photographs of a young girl. The child visits Disneyland, celebrates birthdays and poses with her parents. But the woman does not recognise the girl, even though it is her. Filmmaker and visual effects artist Yana Lineva distorts images and memories to draw a parallel with a puzzling event from the 90s, when hundreds of people flocked to a Bulgarian airport to welcome aliens that were supposed to look just like us.

Three pairs of artists engage in different instances of collaborative creation. As they get to know each other and discuss art and life, each pair creates an unexpected new work.

On 3 December 2024, at 22:27 KST, President Yoon Suk Yeol declared martial law, accusing the Democratic Party of collaborating with North Korean communists and compromising state security. Police vehicles and soldiers blocked the National Assembly, preventing members of parliament from opening a session and repealing the martial law. What they totally underestimated was the collective memory of the Gwangju Massacre and its aftermath. People, along with the press, poured onto the streets and stood up against the armed martial law troops.

Where Comes Mulan follows artist and filmmaker Tianyi Zheng as she returns to her ancestral village in Huangpi, Wuhan, where the legendary figure of Mulan is said to have originated. Beginning with intimate conversations with relatives and local residents, the film traces how Mulan has been remembered or forgotten in everyday life, only to collide with how local authorities have transformed her image into a powerful tourism brand. Through walks across tourist sites and abandoned ruins, Zheng questions the gap between lived memory and official narrative.

The maverick entrepreneur and multi-millionaire Hennie van der Most built a business empire from scratch. Now we follow him as he works on what is set to be his final project: creating a large-scale theme park on Rotterdam's Maashaven.

After a painful break-up, Amsterdam-based researcher Noa is in mourning. She keeps dreaming about meeting her ex-lover Anna in the dunes by the sea, and about a mysterious glass hammer. When Noa tries to uncover the meaning of this object, she meets Saffron, a fellow lover of literature, poetry and theoretical research.

For the freelance drivers who took the initial opportunity offered by the international company Uber, the prospects of self-management and grand earnings were irresistible. Changes in Uber procedures, however, left the drivers frustrated and struggling. This innovative documentary probes the case of drivers in the Netherlands.

The only constant in life is change – and that applies to the Amsterdam harbour as well. As part of the energy transition, public authorities decided in 2019 to close down the coal-fired power station. This meant that a landmark on the Amsterdam skyline – Hemweg 8’s smokestack – would disappear.

In extreme cold, the human body can turn against itself through paradoxical undressing: failing nerves mistake freezing for heat, compelling the dying to shed their last protection. In 水托邦 (Hydrotopia), hydrophones frozen into a block of ice capture the material disintegration of their frozen body as a projected film gradually emerges into clarity.