Familiar Phantoms is an experimental documentary short film about memory, history and trauma.
Social & External
The people behind it
Sofia Asir
Narrator
Sofie Baldgiev
Young Larissa
Leila Sansour
Aunt
Maxim Sansour
Father
Kaya Sansour Lind
Young Girl
Anton Sansour
Young Boy
Reverend David Poe and his psychiatrist wife trade hectic New York life for an idyllic rural farmhouse; the perfect place for 10 year old twins Jack & Emily to run, play and imagine. Documenting this lifestyle change, David decides to film every holiday and special family event. To the Poe's horror their home movies reveal an increasing malice and evil within their children.
Angels Gather Here’ follows Jacki Trapman’s journey back to her hometown of Brewarrina to celebrate her parents, Bill and Barbara’s 60th Wedding Anniversary. Going home is never easy for Jacki. Amidst the family celebrations she reflects on her life; her story symbolising the strength, dignity and resilience of many Aboriginal people in the face of adversity.
The lastest neuroscience discoveries show surprising results: false memories, distortion, modification, déjà vus. Our memory is affected in many ways, and deceives us every day. The very fact of recalling souvenirs modifies them. The everyday consequences are manyfold. To what extent can we rely on our souvenirs? How much credit can we give them during trials? Even more shocking, scientists have proved to be able to manipulate our memory: creating artificial souvenirs, deleting, emphasizing or restoring them on demand.
A young man wrestles with his demons by way of a skateboard.
In May 1974, the Israeli Air Force carried out an extermination operation against the Palestinian refugee camp Nabatiyeh. With this as a starting point, it is reviewed how the last 50 years of Zionist colonization of Palestine have partly led to the establishment of the state of Israel, partly to the expulsion of a people, the Palestinians, from their land. The film shows scenes of daily life in Palestinian refugee camps. We hear various of the inhabitants talk about their desire to return to their country, and we follow how the resistance movement works to free women from their traditional backward role. At the same time, the emergence of the armed resistance struggle is analysed, and the significance of the latest military technological developments for guerilla wars in the 3rd world is explained.
Hammer and compass in Mozambique. We see a GDR flag waved at a rally in Maputo, carried by "Madgermanes", contract workers who once toiled in eastern Germany. Some of them founded families there, like Eulidio. His daughter Sarah grows up with her mother in Berlin. The relationship with her "second home" is slow in growing, partly thanks to Luana, Sarah's baby, whose father, Eduardo is also from Mozambique.
A coming of age story of members of a Nahal group, volunteering in a kibbutz named "Kissufim" ("Yearnings" in Hebrew), on the outskirts of the Gaza strip in the 70s, who meet with the hardships of love, sexuality, morality and responsibility near the end of their military service and the beginning of their civilian adult lives.
Lawrence, a former amateur boxer with dementia, fights for his tie to his own identity; while his daughters grapple with the decision of whether it’s time to put him in a nursing home.
Hirayama Jirou has lost his mother in the Great Kanto Earthquake and now runs a soba stall with his father. He decides to join the crew of the famous ocean liner Hikawa Maru and finds work cooking in the ship's galley. Through his eyes, the film explores the ship's 85-year history.
A human being sometimes needs to share and have his complaints heard, and feelings of shared fate can make humans empathize with each other.
An epic 3+ hour chronology of scenes from over 200 films and television shows shot in Massachusetts from the silent era to today. Highlighting recognizable locales from Martha’s Vineyard to Harvard Square to Great Barrington, along with bygone landmarks and Boston streets, and featuring James Cagney, Tony Curtis, Elizabeth Taylor, Luciano Pavarotti, Harrison Ford, and all the Afflecks and Wahlbergs you can handle.
An unconventional romantic comedy about a young American photographer and a French girl with a taste for the macabre. Paul and Paulette’s chance encounter on a Parisian boulevard sparks an unusual friendship that grows around a dark game; reenacting scenes of notorious crimes from bygone eras at the sites they occurred. As their morbid road trip approaches the more recent past it becomes more uncomfortable, blurring the lines between reality and fantasy, but finding a surprising joy in the darker corners of humanity.
An aristocratic woman, Lady Isabel, leaves her husband and children when she suspects him of adultery, a notion which had been suggested to her by the scheming and murderous Captain Levison. Life on the continent with Levison does not work out as she had envisaged so, eight years later, she returns to England and finds her husband has remarried. She cannot bear to be away from her family and so dons a disguise, gaining employment with them as a governess. When her young son, Willie, dies she is unable to comfort him as she would like, and she too dies.
Here and Elsewhere takes its name from the contrasting footage it shows of the fedayeen and of a French family watching television at home. Originally shot by the Dziga Vertov Group as a film on Palestinian freedom fighters, Godard later reworked the material alongside Anne-Marie Miéville.
Reminiscences of a trip to Čáslav
Told through performances, TV interviews, home movies, family photographs, private letters and unpublished memoirs, the film reveals the essence of an extraordinary woman who rose from humble beginnings in New York City to become a glamorous international superstar and one of the greatest artists of all time.
An actress confronts her quarter-life crisis by breaking up with New York City and returning home to win back the love of her life.
The film "Searching for Freedom: The Holy Land Foundation" is a two part documentary focussing on the story of the Holy Land Foundation, established in the late 80s by three Americans from Palestinian origin, Shukri Abu Baker, Ghassan Elashi and Mohammad El-Mezain. The foundation aimed to supply humanitarian aid to the Palestinians in Palestine and countries hosting Palestinian refugees, it later became the largest charity association in the US to distribute humanitarian aid to Palestinians. After 9/11, the former US President George W. Bush issued a decision to shut down the Holy Land Foundation and freeze its assets. In 2007 the Holy Land Foundation trials began, where five of its members were charged with funding terrorism and sending money to Hamas, a blacklisted political group in the US. A second trial for the Holy Land Foundation members took place in 2008, which issued the convictions of five members of the Foundation and their sentencing of 65 years imprisonment.
What happened after Einstein fled Nazi Germany? Using archival footage and his own words, this docudrama dives into the mind of a tortured genius.
A documentary shot by filmmakers all over the world that serves as a time capsule to show future generations what it was like to be alive on the 24th of July, 2010.
In this documentary, Alex trusts his twin, Marcus, to tell him about his past after he loses his memory. But Marcus is hiding a dark family secret.
The history of cinematic sound, told by legendary sound designers and visionary filmmakers.
Ten Minutes Older is a 2002 film project consisting of two compilation feature films entitled The Trumpet and The Cello. The project was conceived by the producer Nicolas McClintock as a reflection on the theme of time at the turn of the Millennium. Fifteen celebrated film-makers were invited to create their own vision of what time means in ten minutes of film.
Filmmaker Amy Berg sheds light on the sexual, financial and spiritual abuses heaped upon members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints by their former leader, Warren Jeffs.
An unprecedented and intimate look at the life, work and enduring legacy of British actress Audrey Hepburn (1929-1993).
A drama-documentary presented by Alan Yentob, with Benedict Cumberbatch in the lead role. Every word spoken by the actors in this film is sourced from the letters that Van Gogh sent to his younger brother Theo, and of those around him. What emerges is a complex portrait of a sophisticated, civilised and yet tormented man.
The story of how Sicilian Mafia boss Tommaso Buscetta (1928-2000), the Godfather of Two Worlds, revealed, starting in 1984, the deepest secrets of the organization, thus helping to convict the hundreds of mafiosi who were tried in the trial held in Palermo between 1986 and 1987.
Experience the events of September 11, 2001 through the eyes of President Bush and his closest advisors as they personally detail the crucial hours and key decisions from that historic day.
Ashes and Snow, a film by Gregory Colbert, uses both still and movie cameras to explore extraordinary interactions between humans and animals. The 60-minute feature is a poetic narrative rather than a documentary. It aims to lift the natural and artificial barriers between humans and other species, dissolving the distance that exists between them.
For the 20th anniversary of "Titanic," James Cameron reopens the file on the disaster.
In 1972, a seemingly typical shoestring budget pornographic film was made in a Florida hotel: "Deep Throat," starring Linda Lovelace. This film would surpass the wildest expectation of everyone involved to become one of the most successful independent films of all time. It caught the public imagination which met the spirit of the times, even as the self-appointed guardians of public morality struggled to suppress it, and created, for a brief moment, a possible future where sexuality in film had a bold artistic potential. This film covers the story of the making of this controversial film, its stunning success, its hysterical opposition along with its dark side of mob influence and allegations of the on set mistreatment of the film's star.
The documentary recounts the world's first nuclear attack and examines the alarming repercussions. Covering a three-week period from the Trinity test to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, the program chronicles America's political gamble and the planning for the momentous event. Archival film, dramatizations, and special effects feature what occurred aboard the Enola Gay (the aircraft that dropped the bomb) and inside the exploding bomb.
Pete Postlethwaite stars as a man living alone in the devastated future world of 2055, looking at old footage from 2008 and asking: why didn’t we stop climate change when we had the chance?
A documentary about the legendary series of nationally televised debates in 1968 between two great public intellectuals, the liberal Gore Vidal and the conservative William F. Buckley Jr. Intended as commentary on the issues of their day, these vitriolic and explosive encounters came to define the modern era of public discourse in the media, marking the big bang moment of our contemporary media landscape when spectacle trumped content and argument replaced substance. Best of Enemies delves into the entangled biographies of these two great thinkers, and luxuriates in the language and the theater of their debates, begging the question, "What has television done to the way we discuss politics in our democracy today?"
A documentary chronicling the shared experiences of prominent former child stars and the personal and professional price of fame and failure on a child.
An ecological drama/documentary, filmed throughout the globe. Part thriller, part meditation on the vanishing wonders of the sub-aquatic world.
Based on real near-death experiences, the afterlife is explored with the guidance of New York Times bestselling authors, medical experts, scientists and survivors who shed a light on what awaits us.
Meet the real-life airmen who inspired Masters of the Air as they share the harrowing and transformative events of the 100th Bomb Group.