Synopsis

When a juvenile giraffe named Marius was euthanized by the Copenhagen Zoo a decade ago, the decision sparked an international outcry. But filmmaker Max Kestner was more intrigued than flabbergasted, and uses the provocative incident as a launching pad for this wry and provocative essay film about life, death, biology, genetics, human and animal consciousness, and, well, just about everything else.

Jumping around the planet for a plethora of fascinating interviews — including Italian microbiologist Donato Giovannelli and Oxford veterinarian Charles Foster, who lives as a wolf to better understand them — the film explores the nature of life at a brisk pace, mixing the massive and the microscopic with the existential and the scientific using the lightest of touches. (The Flaming Lips’ “Do You Realize?” makes for a memorable framing device.) Fascinating and funny, Life and Other Problems delves into the quandaries of existence while offering no single solution.

Synopsis

From Oscar-nominated director Joshua Oppenheimer (The Act of Killing, The Look of Silence) comes a poignant and deeply human musical about a family that survived the end of the world. Twenty-five years after environmental collapse left the Earth uninhabitable, Mother (Tilda Swinton), Father (Michael Shannon) and Son (George McKay) are confined to their palatial bunker, where they struggle to maintain hope and a sense of normalcy by clinging to the rituals of daily life — until the arrival of a stranger, Girl, upends their happy routine.

As tensions rise, their seemingly idyllic existence starts to crumble, with long-repressed feelings of remorse and resentment threatening to destroy the family’s delicate balance. But their reckoning with difficult truths also points to a different way forward, one based on acceptance, love, and a capacity for change. An urgent and unforgettable cautionary tale.

Synopsis

Karoline, a pregnant factory worker living in post-WW1 Copenhagen, is struggling to make ends meet. Fearing her unborn child will be doomed to a life of poverty and hardship, she searches for a solution. By chance (or is it fate?) she meets Dagmar, a friendly woman who runs an illegal adoption agency hidden behind the facade of a candy store. Seeing a way out, Karoline accepts a job as a wet nurse. But she slowly begins to realize that things are not what they seem. Director Magnus von Horn, helmer of the Gold Hugo-winning Sweat, returns to the Festival with this expressive, nightmarish, Gothic fairytale. Sublime black and white photography, long shadows, and grimy streets conjure a striking, if grim, vision of early 20th century Copenhagen that hides dark secrets and unsettling truths.

Synopsis

Where does a democracy end and a theocracy begin? Oscar-nominated filmmaker Petra Costa (The Edge of Democracy) investigates the increasingly powerful grip that evangelicals hold over politics in Brazil, home to one of the largest and swiftest religious shifts in human history. As Costa tells us in her haunting and insightful voiceover, evangelicals have risen from some 5% to 30% of the Brazilian population in just 40 years.

With extraordinary access to the country’s top leaders, including President Lulu da Silva, former President Jair Bolsonaro, and Bolsonaro’s right-hand man, popular Pentecostal televangelist Silas Malafaia, Costa offers a lucid, poetic, and chilling look at the ways in which fear, poverty, and apocalyptic theology can be exploited to consolidate power. It’s a brilliant and gripping case study about the precarity of contemporary democracies with clear resonances in the U.S. today.

Synopsis

In a small village in southern Egypt, a group of girls form a street theater troupe as both a creative outlet and a fearless act of defiance. Challenging the patriarchal norms of their conservative Coptic Christian community, the girls dream of becoming actresses, dancers, and singers. They take to the dusty roads of their town to enact short plays that offer provocative challenges to passersby, asking questions like why a girl cannot marry the boy she loves.

Shot over four years with extraordinary access to its subjects, Nada Riyadh and Ayman El Amir’s film follows these brave girls from adolescence to adulthood, charting the complex and myriad ways in which each must navigate growing up as they form romantic partnerships and  face the social demands of womanhood. As feminist empowerment and aspirational dreams collide with the sobering realities of life, The Brink of Dreams offers a poignant and absorbing coming-of-age story of female solidarity and youthful rebellion. Winner of the top documentary prize at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival.