Area C

In the West Bank, Area C is a Palestinian area surrounded by Israeli settlements. Facing poverty and violence, a clever and sensitive Palestinian child tries his hardest to keep his home and family safe from aggressive settlers, even if just for a little while.

The Way Back Home

An atmospheric venture into slow cinema, following Rose, a down and out gay prostitute, trapped in the minutiae of his quiet and isolated life.

Jorge Drexler - Eco2

The Korean Wedding Chest

Ulrike Ottinger’s provocative mélange of ethnography, stunning tableaux and baroque vignettes was inspired by what she calls the “well-stocked miracle” of Korean wedding chests, assembled according to time-honored customs. This exploration of love and marriage in South Korea looks closely at ancient and present-day rituals, revealing what is old in the new and new in the old. Her inquiry leads us from shamans, temples and priests, to the enchanted maze of 21st-century Seoul, where vendors of medicinal herbs co-exist with high-tech beauty salons for wedding couples and secular marriage palaces. Using film much like a canvas, Ottinger creates a modern fairytale flush with mythological heroes, traditional rites, ancestral symbolism, dreams of eternal love, and a whole lot of Western kitsch. One of her most acclaimed documentaries, it captures the amazing phenomenon of new mega-cities and their contradictory societies caught in a balancing act.