An expansive Russian drama, this film focuses on the life of revered religious icon painter Andrei Rublev. Drifting from place to place in a tumultuous era, the peace-seeking monk eventually gains a reputation for his art. But after Rublev witnesses a brutal battle and unintentionally becomes involved, he takes a vow of silence and spends time away from his work. As he begins to ease his troubled soul, he takes steps towards becoming a painter once again.

Set in a small village in the Moroccan countryside, Alyam, Alyam tells a story culled from the lived reality of young men almost forty years ago while still remaining very much of the present day. A young man named Abdelwahed pins his dreams of a better life for himself and his family on travelling to France and finding work there. As the eldest of eight children, he becomes the principal caretaker and breadwinner for his family after his father passes away. He fills out forms and waits for his work permit to arrive. Meanwhile, Hlima, his recently widowed mother who’s reticent to let him go, tries in vain to dissuade him and enlists the help of Abdelwahed’s grandfather too. As the days flow by to the cadence of life in the countryside, marked by the hardships of farming, Abdelwahed waits. All he can do is wait. Straddling fiction and documentary, Alyam, Alyam is Ahmed El Maanouni’s first narrative feature, and the first Moroccan film ever to be selected at the Cannes Film Festival. Recently restored, the film’s splendor and finely crafted editing has become available once again for cinéphiles and new generations to discover.

Dat and his sister live with their eternally drunk father in a small village in the Vietnamese mountains. One day a travelling circus appears. Dat makes friends with the girl from the circus: He hopes to get behind the trick with which the jugglers suddenly conjure up rice for everyone from an empty basket. Could Dat and his sister, could all the starving people from now on have enough to eat through this incredible miracle? Dat is bitterly disappointed: everything was just dizziness and lazy magic. Set in the central highlands of Vietnam, Travelling Circus is a bittersweet story of famine-ridden villagers and was one of the most internationally acclaimed Vietnamese movies from the 1980s.

A little-known, passionate tale of a revolutionary hero returning to civilian life after the liberation from Dutch colonial rule that took top honours at Indonesia’s Citra Film Awards, 1955. Lewat Djam Malam (After the Curfew) is a passionate work looking directly at a crucial moment of conflict in Indonesian history: the aftermath of the four-year Republican revolution which brought an end to Dutch rule. This is a visually and dramatically potent film about anger and disillusionment, about the dream of a new society cheapened and misshapen by government repression on the one hand and bourgeois complacency on the other. The film’s director, Usmar Ismail, is generally considered to be the father of Indonesian cinema, and his entire body of work was directly engaged with ongoing evolution of Indonesian society. He began as a playwright and founder of Maya, a drama collective that began during the years of Japanese occupation. And it was during this period when Ismail developed an interest in filmmaking. He began making films for Andjar Asmara in the late 40s and then started Perfini (Perusahaan Film Nasional Indonesian) in 1950, which he considered his real beginning as a filmmaker. Lewat Djam Malam, a co-production between Perfini and Djamaluddin Malik’s company Persari, was perhaps Ismail’s greatest critical and commercial success.

Widowed for a long time, a mother lives alone with her only son, Do-joon. He is 28 years old, a shy and quiet young man. In the aftermath of a terrible murder, the woman’s hopeless, helpless son becomes the prime suspect. There is no real evidence against him, but the police throw groundless suspicion at him simply because there is no way he can prove his innocence. Eager to close the case, the police are happy with their cursory investigation and arrest the boy. His defense attorney turns out to be incompetent and unreliable, making a conviction seem inevitable. Faced with no other choice, his mother gets involved, determined to prove her son’s innocence.

In the sorrow of exile, a group of Argentinians in Paris seek solace and connection to their culture by staging a set of tangos. The film alternates between their vibrant rehearsals and their circumscribed lives in low-rent apartments, underemployed, fitfully communicating with families back home, trying to make do with what they hope are only temporary arrangements in a foreign land. Director Fernando Solanas had to spend several years in exile, some of them in Paris. There he tells us the story of people from Argentina spending their time in Paris and longing for Buenos Aires. One of the strongest movies about living in exile.

An artist, a musician, a filmmaker. Three worlds, three ways of thinking, three interpretations. Fused to an energetic work. Beat Zoderer’s work fascinate with quiet humor and the intelligent challenge of distrusting a conventional view of things. Nik Bärtsch’s sound is characterized by his love for the architecturally articulated space and rhythmic overlaps. Filmmaker Jürg Egli has brought the two artists together in a studio session. The result is a cinematic performance of unique intensity. „The idea can sometimes only be thought out in its realization.“ Beat Zoderer Sketchbook IX 1999