Rebecca Houzel

A Burning Soil Beneath our Feet

“I return to Poland 25 years after directing a film about the traces of a destroyed Jewish world. This time, I am accompanied by Jen, my French-Israeli companion of Sephardic origin. Upon the ruins of the past, we look for signs like pieces of a puzzle that built our history, our memory, our emotions.” (Julien Donada)

Paradise

In 2021, an extreme heatwave gave rise to huge wildfires in the vast subarctic forests of Sakha, a northeastern republic in Siberia. The village of Shologon lies in this taiga landscape, shrouded in orange smoke and black ash. The forest is burning and the flames are approaching fast.

Artem & Eva

Artem loves Yulia, Yulia loves Artem. They recently graduated from school, moved to Moscow and began an independent life. In search of part-time jobs, Artem comes up with the idea of creating another image from Yulia - Eva Elfie - and making an amateur video for Pornhub. Suddenly, the video becomes popular, Eva gets more and more job offers, and Artem becomes the boyfriend and producer of a world celebrity. The heroes seem to fall into the "American dream", but in their personal lives there are more and more problems and doubts.

There Where the Grass is Greener

Sylvain is a farmer. His fields, in line with the glysophated trend, surround the small island of greenery where my old but valiant mother has lived for decades. Two visions of agriculture, landscape and the world unfold in reality and in music.

The Grocer's Son, the Mayor, the Village and the World

Claire Simon goes to Lussas, in France’s Ardèche, home to a vibrant community of documentarians. She films the creation of Tënk, an online platform for auteur documentaries. The initiative is a labour of love for the passionate and optimistic people behind it, but the process is long and arduous, as cultural projects often are. The filmmaker followed them for months, capturing their doubts and dilemmas: how do you manage everyday conflicts? Be accepted by a rural population that you aren’t part of? By the general public? Reconcile private life and professional calling? Reassure the mayor? Secure funding without making ethical compromises? A fascinating, bittersweet and insightful behind-the-scenes film. (Apolline Caron-Ottavi)

Solo

Martín is a young Argentinean piano virtuoso and composer. For four years, he has been a patient of El Borda psychiatric hospital. Music filled up his life. Now he is trying to return to life outside the asylum walls, while working on his new opus, "Enfermaria".

In Another Life

This film is an African “Boyhood” that gives an insight to the political and historical situation of Burundi throughout the last 24 years through the eyes of six street children that now have become adults.

The Son

In 2013, Dima Ilukhin, the cousin of the film’s director and a soldier in the Russian army, died on duty in the Republic of Dagestan in the North Caucasus. He was 21 years old. This incident marks the starting point for Abaturov’s reflection on the military. He films the training of new recruits in Siberia, as they bid farewell to their mothers and girlfriends, learn the mechanics of a Kalashnikov, or how to throw a hand grenade and administer first aid. While his parents try to cope with their loss, Dima’s former fellow recruits have to return to battle.

Divine Victorine

What is a film studio? It's a multitude of shed-like buildings of varying sizes set on a piece of wasteland. This is exactly what we find at the Victorine Studios, except that the site overlooks Nice and the Mediterranean. The spot is not only remarkable but filled with ghosts. Visit.

We'll Be Alright

A story of the Siberian province. Girls passed directly on from orphanage to neuropsychiatric institutions are deprived of their rights as citizens: no freedom, no work, and no family. The path to reconquer these rights, in the face of fearsome Russian institutional bureaucracy, is long and difficult. At times, someone succeeds, but the new freedom is then a leap into the unknown.

Territory Of Liberty

For several years, Arina, her father Valeri, Nicolai, Roman have been coming to the natural reserve of Stolby, situated a few kilometers away from the city of Krasnoyarsk in Siberia, fleeing the rough day-to-day life of their hometown and come here to rest, dance, climb and talk for hours.

Sleeping Souls

Atchinsk, 4000 km from Moscow. In a building in this Siberia town, the residents cross paths in the stairs, not prone to discuss the current campaign to elect the next president.. Outside, the city lives by the rhythm of the cold, only the sound of the radio echos the anti-governemant protests of the capital. Those images of a sleeping town blend with some of the salaried-militants of Poutine's party. Iouri, political mercenary for united Russia coldly explains to me the mechanic of the system. The mise en scène of democratic life becomes a theater…