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Approaching the elephant dives head first into the inaugural year of the Teddy McArdle Free School in New Jersey, where all classes are voluntary and rules are determined by vote – adults and children have an equal say. Wilder is there from the beginning to end of the school year, documenting and observing founder Alex Khost and an indelible cast of outspoken young personalities as they form relationships, explore their surroundings and intensely debate rule violations, until it all comes to a head. Approaching the elephant is a rare, inspired portrait of unfettered childhood.

Contact: http://approachingtheelephant.com

Concerning violence is new documentary film by Göran Hugo Olsson, based on newly discovered, powerful archive material covering the most daring moments in the struggle for liberation in the Third World, accompanied by the text from The Wretched of the Earth by Franz Fanon.

This text, written 50 years ago, is still a major tool in understanding and illuminating the neocolonialism happening today. Narrated by Lauryn Hill.

Contact: Films Boutique

A winter spent in the heart of an emergency shelter for homeless people in Lausanne. At the entrance to this hidden bunker there unfolds every night the same dramatic ritual, leading to occasionally violent confrontations. The watchmen have the difficult task of “sorting the poor”: women and children first, men later if there is room. Even if the shelter can hold 100 people, only 50 “chosen ones” will be allowed inside to receive a hot meal and a bed. The others know that the night will be a long one.

Contact: CLIMAGE

Liahona is an experimental documentary examining the culture, history, and lived experience of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, often referred to as the Mormon faith. Liahona is an examination of how mysticism becomes mundane, the balance and the tension in Mormon life experience between the illogical and the pedestrian, the public face of Mormonism and gaps in accessibility. What is it about the Mormons that make them so distinctively different? Recorded on 16mm film, Liahona traverses Utah, Nauvoo and Carthage, Illinois and Independence, Missouri to piece together this story of a faith.

Contact: Talena Sanders

A portrait of Sonja, adventurer of the twentieth century, living on an island that she built by herself : Motu Maeva

Contact: GREC

Songs from the north is an essay film which looks differently at the enigma of North Korea, a country typically seen only through the distorted lens of jingoistic propaganda and derisive satire. Interweaving footage from my three visits to North Korea, together with songs, spectacle, popular cinema and archival footage, Songs from the north tries to understand, on their own terms, the phychology and popular imaginary of the North Korean people and the political ideology of absolute love which continues to drive the nation towards its uncertain future. To look closely and objectively at North Korea, a country that challenges our most fundamental assumptions about the human condition, is ultimately to question the meaning of freedom, love and patriotism.

Contact: ROSA FILMES

Filmed over three years on China’s railways, The iron ministry traces the vast interiors of a country on the move: flesh and metal, clangs and squeals, light and dark, language and gesture. Scores of rail journeys come together into one, capturing the thrills and anxieties of social and technological transformation. The iron ministry immerses audiences in fleeting relationships and uneasy encounters between humans and machines on what will soon be the world's largest railway network.

Contact: http://www.theironministry.com