A Place of Absence

Once Upon a Time in Harlem splices together footage shot by William Greaves in 1972 of a group of Harlem Renaissance luminaries in conversation at Duke Ellington’s townhouse. The film is a living archive of memory, disagreement, style, and Black genius.

Whispers in May follows Qihuo and her friends in China’s Liangshan Mountains as childhood gives way to womanhood. It blends close observation and scenes of the girls' search with animated fragments of Yi oral myth to create a hypnotic coming-of-age film.

In the South Sulawesi province of Indonesia, Eka, one of the few remaining bissu — spiritual leaders who embody the aspects of all genders — struggles to reconcile their identity with community expectations and their own devout Muslim faith.

Heat explores the unequal realities of a warming planet. Taking a sensory approach to its subject, director Jacqueline Zünd reveals how extreme heat intersects with labour rights, migration, and social inequality.

Told through phone videos, voice notes, texts, and news footage, Birds of War documents the love story of Lebanese journalist Janay Boulos and Syrian activist Abd Alkader Habak as their connection deepens and their communications grow in urgency.

Filmed over 10 years, Gabin follows Gabin Jourdel from age 8 to 18 and the animals, schoolwork, chores, and imagined futures that define his youth. As he grows, his adolescence becomes a question of inheritance and choosing one’s own future.

Filmed over eight years, Concrete Land follows the Najar family, one of Jordan’s last Afro-Palestinian-Bedouin families, as luxury villas close in on their grazing space outside Amman. Asmahan Bkerat preserves their way of life in the face of erasure.

Winner of the Special Jury Award at Visions du Réel, A Fire There follows three teenage friends in rural Georgia as adulthood arrives. Marlene Edoyan’s finely observed film redefines coming of age as something slower and more quietly rebellious.

Image: © Nemesis Films F3M

A Place of Absence follows the Caravan of Mothers of Missing Migrants along migration routes through Mexico and toward the United States, while tracing the disappearance that shaped the filmmaker’s own family history.

Innu poet Joséphine Bacon and filmmaker Kim O’Bomsawin weave poetry and observation in Nitassinan, a lyrical portrait of the Innu people’s enduring bond with their ancestral land.

Who Moves America follows UPS teamsters through their 2023 contract negotiations. Director Yael Bridge turns meetings, rallies, votes, and everyday conversations into a clear-eyed portrait of solidarity and building power.

In The Wind’s Thirst, three Indigenous Wayuu guardians confront mining and energy corporations exploiting Colombia’s La Guajira desert to defend their water, sacred sites, and right to remain.

Revolutionaries Never Die is Mohanad Yaqubi’s reply to Jocelyne Saab, who passed away before the two could collaborate. Yaqubi's film serves as equal parts tribute, conversation, and partnership with the revolutionary past.

Winner of the highly coveted Sundance Grand Jury Prize for Documentary, Nuisance Bear follows a polar bear through Churchill, Manitoba, where the town profits from bears as spectacle while treating their arrival as a problem.

In Closure, Michał Marczak follows Daniel, a father searching the Vistula River after his teenage son disappears from Warsaw’s Gdański Bridge. Resisting true-crime spectacle, this is a film questions whether hope can sometimes keep you trapped.

Kikuyu Land follows Mr. Mungai’s struggle to reclaim family land taken during the colonial era. Through personal stories and archival research, the film explores the enduring impact of land dispossession in Kenya.