A creative, critical and sometimes humorous film on the history of Cameroon. Using music and archive footage, this mix of fiction and documentary affirms a personal and indigenous perspective that breaks away from colonial visions of Africa.

Three sisters, still young children, live in poverty in a village in Yunnan province, China. Their mother has left and their father works in the city. They work on the land and go to school only occasionally, with no prospects for a better future.

A dusty courtyard in Bamako, Mali, is the scene of a court case against the World Bank and the IMF. The witnesses, spectators and passersby are ordinary Africans who experience the consequences of globalization on a daily basis.

It’s 2002, and the small Chinese port town of Fengjie is about to be demolished and completely submerged for the construction of the Three Gorges Dam. In the months leading up to their move, local residents clash with the “relocation committee”. 

Bing’ai is a farmer in China, and she’s refusing to move for the construction of the Three Gorges Dam. While her years-long battle continues, the viewer gets a unique glimpse into her life around the turn of the millennium.

An experimental, kaleidoscopic short portrait of East Jerusalem hypermasculinity. Fragmentary, often nearly abstract shots, follow the protagonist, Ahmad, into places where men socialize: car repair shops, barbers and gyms.

A poignant story of petitioners in Beijing: Chinese citizens who feel they have been wronged by local authorities and seek justice in the capital. They are driven by the desire for redress, but just how far should they go to get it?

In this rediscovered film rich in subtle irony, a Nigerian drama student in San Francisco encounters racism at every turn. A fictional drama about his adventures unexpectedly turns into a documentary when he is wrongfully arrested.

Life is no cakewalk for this Arabian camel. The working animal walks around in circles for hours at a time in a stifling sesame mill. During his rest break he looks up at the birds flying free in the sky, and realizes that life could be different.

Poverty in Egypt continues to rise, but property magnates keep developing luxury residential complexes for the ultra-rich elite. This is just one of multiple themes explored in this satirical experimental short film by Palestinian artist Basma al-Sharif.

Eight junkies are playing jazz music together in a seedy New York apartment, while a filmmaker tries to shoot a documentary about them. In this provocative and influential classic by Shirley Clarke, the director pokes fun at cinema verité.

They bake bread, sell accordions, style hair or teach people to drive: the business people of the Rue Daguerre in Paris talk about their lives, loves and dreams, documented by the camera of their neighbor, filmmaker Agnès Varda.

A hypnotic trip in Super 8, taking in the ruins of Athens, Malta and Gaza—where modern civilization also lies in rubble. Filmmaker Basma al-Sharif was not allowed to visit Palestine in person, so she transcends all geographical boundaries in a trance.

Flickering images and atonal music contrast with a calmly told story of displacement. A woman’s recollections of the Palestinian exodus from Jerusalem are told in reverse order, scattered through time and space.

“This flick is all I have to say about being 17, the United States Navy, American Christmas and the 4th of July,” said gay underground filmmaker Kenneth Anger about his debut short film from 1947, full of bizarre, disturbing dream images.

Iran, spring 1979: With revolution in the air, religious leaders, administrators and intellectuals gather to comment on a case study concerning discipline and resistance in the classroom. It’s a psychological test disguised as an instructional film.

In 1970—President Salvador Allende’s first year in office—miners, fishermen, workers and indigenous people speak in unique recordings about their hopes for this political breakthrough in Chili, in Patricio Guzmán’s first feature-length documentary.

Revolutionary fire has given the island of Fogo a new future. Hard work and expressions of triumph prevail in this portrait of a free people, filmed shortly after the independence of Cape Verde.

Slow cinema at its best, this is a visual account of travels through Eastern Europe shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union—a world about to undergo radical changes.

A radical, unvarnished portrait of people with cerebral palsy (CP). They speak candidly about their experiences as outsiders and their desire to live freely, documented unrelentingly by the 16mm camera of Kazuo Hara.

A blueprint of the life of filmmaker Peter Greenaway, arranged in an alphabet. In playful conversations, he and his perceptive 16-year-old daughter Zoë pierce to the core of his personality and his art.

A treatise on racism filmed in a German forest in the style of an American Western. This graduate project by one of the filmmakers from the later Sudanese Film Group follows a white mob hunting for a Black farmworker.

Keeping the family together is the toughest job of all for the workers of the factories of a changing China, who only see their children on New Year. While the parents long for their village, the children dream of the city.

A docufiction film about the shy romance between Ngor and Coumba. The story is set against the backdrop of a harsh life in rural Senegal, and loosely framed as the filmmaker’s audiovisual letter about the village where she was born.

Sitting naked in a beautifully lit theater in Paris and sometimes drowned out by his own music, 86-year-old composer Xilin Wang tells of his persecution in the name of Chinese Communism during the Cultural Revolution.

Maya Deren’s groundbreaking experimental short film follows a woman (played by the director) through a menacing, circular dream world in which she repeatedly enters the same house.

An elegant pas de deux performed by two young lovers dancing in an ever-changing landscape—from natural idyll to deserted city—which causes the first ripples in their romantic affair. A lyrical and emotionally moving dance film.

It is a privilege to be present at a person’s deathbed. With family members and neighbors crowded around her, Fang silently waits for her end to come. In calm observational style we experience the final days of her life.

In 2008, the Chinese province of Sichuan was struck by a devastating earthquake. A couple who lost their only child in the disaster turns to IVF, hoping a new pregnancy will again give meaning to their life.

With his celebrated visual and intellectual flair, Peter Greenaway presents a murder mystery surrounding “The Night Watch”. Martin Freeman plays Rembrandt in a rich film about art, love and betrayal.