Documentary movies

Winter 2019. Spanish war photographer Gervasio Sánchez, who documented with his camera the long and tragic siege of Sarajevo during the Bosnian War (1992-95), returns to the city in search of the children he met among the ruins, those who survived to grow up, live and remember.

The film aims to answer two questions: What is flamenco? Who is the singer Niño de Elche? This child prodigy, who inspired artists such as C. Tangana, started challenging the rules of flamenco in his adolescence, which led to a violent confrontation with his family and flamenco fans that continues today.

In Peru, Sergio García Locatelli visits both those places where human life is fragile and personal fate is uncertain and those where death reigns, places where everything is already lost, where appeal is not possible. A walk in search of the meaning of death that is actually a celebration of life and the living.

An account of the life and work of the Spanish clown, mime, acrobat and actor Marcelino Orbés (1873-1927), known as Marceline, who, between 1900 and 1914, was unanimously acclaimed as the best in the world.

A Hungarian explorer claims to have discovered a "Gold Library" inside a cave. Lacking evidence, he tries to get the recognition he believes he deserves but struggles to get support from the local governments and religious leaders.

The regular visitors to a recycling center in the Brooklyn borough of New York, run by René, a discreet Mexican who works and sleeps there, and by the Spaniard Ana de Luco, form a community capable of transcending their reality to turn it into a realm of their own, sometimes surreal, outside the great collective swindle of the American dream. (Based on the short film The Fourth Kingdom, 2017.)

Jon Sistiaga takes an immersive trip to Poland, a country divided into two zones: on the one hand, the urban and pro-European, and on the other, the rural and ultra-Catholic, still anchored in the traumas of the war and the post-war period. Is Poland a homophobic country or does it have a homophobic government? How does the European Union allow this situation?

The Trans Memory Archive gathers the images and stories of trans women for more than 50 years, preserving the memory of those who suffered the outrages of the police, the abandonment of the State and the hostility of the society that witnessed, indolent, a silent genocide. Cintia, Edith, María Belén and Trachyn survived. They share with us the intimacy and complexity of those who faced injustice and pain with humor and creativity, but also with organization and community. In the style of a documentary essay, the series is structured along four axes, each one starring one of them: they talk about carnival, affection, exile and organization, and through their personal experiences they open the door to understand the reality of an entire community.

The Rastreadoras de El Fuerte are a group of mothers of disappeared persons in northern Sinaloa who, in the absence of the authorities, twice a week go out with picks and shovels in search of the remains of their children; a testimony of the abandonment of the State, the aggressions of the drug traffickers, the indifference of society and the pain, but also of the strength and courage that keep these women together, and of their empowerment to mobilize society in community organization.

We accompany a world-renowned transgender surgeon and his patients, each in a different stage of gender reassignment. A film full of feeling that unfolds the full spectrum and radicalness of this transition.

A Bolivian by birth, who grew up with adoptive parents in the Swabian town of Mössingen, is looking for his family in the mountains of Potosí. Out of poverty, his mother gave the little boy away when he was just a few months old. The search carries a story that goes far beyond personal fate. Because Manuel was born in a region known for the ruthless exploitation of silver. It's a film about identity, homeland and equal opportunities.

A german bottle of beer, washed up on the shore of an almost inaccessible Lofoten island in the Arctic Ocean. Where did it come from? Did it really travel all the way up from Germany? Back in his hometown, Dresden, filmmaker Steffen Krones can’t get this incidence out of his mind. Is Dresden, by any chance, connected to the Arctic circle via its waterways?

In Cairo, a German-Egyptian team is searching for traces of the largest temple of the Pharaohs, seeking answers as to why the sanctuary was abandoned more than 2000 years ago.

A Jewish wedding cameraman falls in love with a klezmer clarinetist and pretends to be making a documentary in order to spend time with her. His fake project leads to a real journey through Eastern Europe in search of lost klezmer melodies and the remnants of Yiddish culture. A documentary-fiction hybrid. Winner of the Best First Feature Award at the Berlin Film Festival.

Accompany Osvaldo, "El Mariana", on an intimate six-month journey as he prepares for his fight at La Velada del Año 4, at the Santiago Bernabéu stadium in Madrid. Through his training, we not only see him face physical and emotional challenges, but also discover new facets of himself, where his public and personal lives become deeply intertwined.