Tradition

Western Ukraine, on the eve of a traditional carnival. Pamfir returns to his family after months of absence. Their love is so unconditional that when his only child starts a fire in the prayer house, Pamfir has no other choice but to reconnect with his troubled past to repair his son’s fault. He will be taken on a risky path with irreversible consequences. More

Amongst the pythonic mountains of landlocked Lesotho, an 80 year old widow winds up her earthly affairs, makes arrangements for her burial and prepares to die. But when her village is threatened with forced resettlement due to the construction of a reservoir, she finds a new will to live and ignites a collective spirit of defiance within her community. In the final dramatic moments of her life, Mantoa’s legend is forged and made eternal. More

Nanook and Sedna are the last members of their ethnic group and live in a yurt on the snow-covered fields in the far north. Spring arrives earlier than usual, ice fishing is less productive than it used to be and airplanes make their way in the sky. Sedna also notices that Nanook is beginning to forget things. In beautiful pictures Milko Lazarov tells this calm story in gentle reference to the great pioneer of the documentary film Robert J. Flaherty with his Nanook of the North. More

A nomadic family lives with their horses in the intoxicating nature of Kyrgyzstan. Schaiyr's husband drowned in the nearby river years ago. A new love is on the horizon as meteorologist Jermek sets up his measuring station next to Schaiyr's home. Told in the gentle rhythm of the nomadic life, director Mirlan Abdykalykow takes us on a journey through time into the easily vulnerable heart of a family and into the dreamlike nature. More

In a traditional tribal society in the South Pacific, a young girl, Wawa, falls in love with her chief’s grandson, Dain. When an intertribal war escalates, Wawa is unknowingly betrothed as part of a peace deal. The young lovers run away, refusing her arranged fate. They must choose between their hearts and the future of the tribe, while the villagers must wrestle with preserving their traditional culture and adapting it to the increasing outside demands for individual freedom. More

María, a 17-year-old Kaqchikel Maya, lives with her parents on a coffee plantation at the foot of an active volcano. She is set to be married to the farm’s foreman. But María longs to discover the world on the other side of the mountain, a place she cannot even imagine. And so she seduces a coffee-harvester who wants to escape to the USA. When this man leaves her behind, María discovers her own world and culture anew. Director Jayro Bustamante grew up in the region of the Kaqchikel Maya in Guatemala and returned there to make his film. More

Year after year, for an endless eight months, thousands of families move to a desert in India to extract salt from the burning earth. Every monsoon their salt fields are washed away, as the desert turns into sea. And still they return, striving to make the whitest salt in the world. More

The Asuka region is the birthplace of Japan. Here, in ancient times, there were those who fulfilled their lives in the midst of waiting. Modern people, apparently having lost this sense of waiting, seem unable to feel grateful for the present, and cling to the illusion that all things will move constantly forward according to one’s own plan. In ancient times, there were three small mountains that people believed were inhabited by gods. They were Mt. Unebi, Mt. Miminashi, and Mt. Kagu, and they still stand. More

While The Orator's status as Samoa's first feature film makes it a native landmark, writer/director Tusi Tamasese's deft command of atmospherics, tone, and rhythm transforms it into a genuinely noteworthy achievement. Primarily employing first-time actors to bring this delicately wrought tale to life, Tamasese centers his film on Saili (Fiaula Sagote), a diminutive pariah who lives with his wife Vaaiga and her wilful daughter at the outskirts of a remote jungle village. More

When Miron’s beloved wife Tanya passes away, he asks his best friend Aist to help him say goodbye to her according to the rituals of the Merja culture, an ancient Finno-Ugric tribe from Lake Nero, a picturesque region in West-Central Russia. Although the Merja people assimilated into Russians in the 17th century, their myths and traditions live on in their descendants’ modern life. The two men set out on a roadtrip thousands of miles across the boundlesslands. With them, two small birds in a cage. More

A very special journey: In 1914 Paul Klee visited the South of Tunis. More than 90 years later, the filmmaker Nacer Khemir, a painter himself and admirer of Klee, makes the same journey, following the marks Klee has left and guiding the spectator into the tunisian culture in all its richness. We learn about Khemir's films as well as the fascination of Paul Klee and his work. More

Is it possible to justify the bride kidnapping if “he” and “she” will create a happy family after that? People marry by mutual agreement and love. And it happens that they marry of parents’ interests will. But Kyrgyz people have such a custom when the bride is kidnapped. Rural herder Sagyn’s mother decides to marry her son to a modest girl Anara with parents of whom she has already come to an agreement. And he is in love with rural beauty Asyl, but who has a fiancé. More

Under the encouragement of the Chinese government, the traditional way of life of the nomads of the Mongolian plains change. Once a culture with a great emphasis on raising horses on the grassy plains, they are encouraged to move into the cities to work as industrial workers. However, one family tries to resist this change, trying to raise money to send their child to school by selling yogurt. Unfortunately, this is hardly sufficient and they are forced to sell their beloved horses. More

Seibei Iguchi (Hiroyuki Sanada), a low-ranking samurai and family man, leads a life without glory as a bureaucrat in the mid-XIX century Japan. A widower, he has charge of two daughters (whom he adores) and a senile mother; he must therefore work in the fields and accept piecework to make both ends meet. New prospects seem to open up when Tomoe (Rie Miyazama), his long-time love, divorces a brutal husband. However, even as the Japanese feudal system is unraveling, Seibei remains bound by the code of honour of the samurai and by his own sense of social precedences. The consequences are cruel. More

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A story of friendship, courage and a politically naive man’s transformation into someone painfully aware of the social realities in contemporary Turkey … Mehmet and Berzan, two young men from different regions of Turkey bond together as lower – class citizens in Istanbul. When Mehmet is unjustly arrested, his frightened roomates evict him and he loses his job. Mehmet’s loyalty to Berzan will eventually force him to disregard an uncompassionate bureaucracy and embark on a journey eastward across Turkey. More

There is an old Indian tradition according to which the parents teach their children the songs of wisdom, in order to enable them to bear their fate and their lives with more calmness. Pallavi - acted by India's most successful TV-star Kitu Gidwani - is a young, successful singer who has learnt her art with the help of her mother. She's convinced that she'd still had to learn a lot of her, whereas the mother thinks her already talented enough to keep the tradition of making music and oral deliverance alive herself. More

This Senegalese melodrama tells the story of a young girl called Mossane who lives in a village between the ocean and the savannah. There, veneration for the traditions is very common. There's a legend saying that every other century a girl is born who is doomed because of her beauty. Mossane is only fourteen years old but is already considered to be extraordinary beautiful. Even her own brother is in love with her. According to the custom she has been promised to a rather wealthy man called Diogoye since the day of her birth. More

This film, in the style of an African folk tale, is set in the forest village of Amanha Lundju, a place where the birth of children is celebrated by the planting of a tree. The trees are considered spiritual twins. But for every tree planted, the rapacious state destroys many more for firewood and lumber. The tale begins as the wanderer Dou returns to the village. He discovers that Hami, his twin brother just died for no apparent reason. According to the tradition Dou takes on his late brother's wife and children, something that displeases Saly, his betrothed. More

Ta dona is the story about a young forest ranger and his life in the African country of Mali in the 1990s. He's a young Bambara man, an employee in Mali's Ministry of Rivers and Forests, searching for an ancient herbal remedy for childbirth, a plant with mythical healing powers. The secret knowledge he is trying to achieve, he wants to use for the people's good. He sees that his work holds the key to the future of his country (through reforestation) and he dislikes the short-sighted, money-grubbing ways of his superiors. More

A blind master wanders through a mythic landscape of a terrific beauty to play his songs and sing his ballads. His whole life he's had one hope, one dream of another world: According to a prophecy he shall be able to see, if he has broken 1000 of his banjo strings. His blind disciple, on the contrary, doesn't want to rely on one hope. He longs for a woman's love. Does sight await the saint when the 1000th string breaks? Can the disciple's strength of character overcome provincial prejudice to win the hand of his love and a place in the village? More

The fairy tale "the dove's lost necklace" by Nacer Khemir tells the story of Hassan, a young man who is taught calligraphy by his master. One day he runs across a portion of an old text which convinces him that it holds the secrets to love. With the help of an impudent young boy and the boy's monkey (whom the boy thinks is an enchanted prince), Hassan sets out to find the rest of the manuscript. What he finds instead is the beauteous Aziz. Despite their being separated by war, they are soon reunited. This film takes us in the midst of a time when djinns and visions were still, real. More

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Gaston Kaboré’s movie «Zan Boko explores the conflict between tradition and modernity with a family in a rural contexr. It has been for long time a central theme in many African films. Kaboré tells the poignant story of a village family swept up in the current tide of urbanization. In doing so, «Zan Boko» expertly reveals the transformation of an agrarian, subsistence society into an industrialized commodity economy. More

An ageing father waits, in vain, at the bus stop for his son Raghu, a student at the University of Trivandrum, who is supposed to be coming home for the holidays. The elderly Chakyar’s eager happiness slowly turns to disappointment and then anxiety. After several days with no news of Raghu, his family learn that the police have arrested him for singing revolutionary songs at the university’s annual fête. Chakyar goes to the capital, hoping to find support from the Minister of Internal Affairs, and is soon joined by his daughter, who does not, however, share his optimism. More

Shin, a nobleman, had been trying to conceive a male heir to pass his family name. Unable to provide a male heir, Shin's wife gives her husband permission to search for a surrogate wife to bear a male heir. On the way to finding a surrogate wife, Shin runs into a 17 year old girl, Ok-nyo (Kang Soo-yeon). She was a poor feisty girl who stated she would do anything for money. More

It is in a village lost at the bottom of the desert, a young teacher was named, to teach, but there is no school. Through the yant glance foudro of a girl, our teacher is aspired by another world to the suspended time where côtoient Thousand and One Nights. Coordinate all the hidden force of an underground memory. One of the most beautiful desert movies, in which storyteller and painter Nacer Khemir tells us the journey of a young teacher that arrives in a desert village. More

Senegalese filmmaker Ababacar Samb says, «Jom is a Wolof word which has no equivalent in English or French, Jom means courage, dignity, respect. It is the origin of all virtues.» To celebrate the concept, Samb uses the griot as the nexus of multiple stories and Senegal’s collective memory. To inspire striking workers, the griot tells of a legendary prince, Dieri Dior Ndella, who sacrificed his life during colonialism, and Koura Thiaw, an entertainer who took up the cause of oppressed domestics in the 1940s, both becoming heroes to their people. More

Between the autumn of 1897 and the summer of 1898, four families live together on a farm near Bergamo in the Bassa Bergamasca. Among the members of the community there is a deep spiritual connection that leads them to experience beautiful and tragic things, ordinary moments and extraordinary events together. Two young people court each other and marry; a penniless father secretly cuts down a tree to carve new wooden shoes for his son, who goes to school six kilometres a day; an old man fertilizes his tomatoes with chicken excrement so that they ripen faster. More