Close Up Films

Summer 1998—Kabul under Taliban rule. Zunaira and Mohsen are young and in love. Despite the daily violence and misery, they hope for a better future. One day, a foolish gesture causes life to take an irrevocable turn.

Three siblings comprise the latest generation in a family of puppeteers led with passion by their father. They are magicians of a kind, but can barely make ends meet, working mainly for the love of their craft. Their grandmother contributes too, not only as a seamstress but also as a repository of memories and wisdom. A tragic event will challenge the desire of each sibling to carry on.

Judith leads a double life between Switzerland and France. On the one hand Abdel, with whom she is raising a little girl, on the other Melvil with whom she has two older boys. Little by little, this fragile balance, made up of lies, secrets and back and forth, cracks dangerously. Trapped, Judith chooses to head forward, at the risk of losing everything.

Pierre and Manon are poor. They make documentaries with nothing and they live by doing odd jobs. Pierre meets a young intern, Elisabeth, and she becomes his mistress. But Pierre will not leave Manon for Elisabeth; he wants to keep both.

Maryam accidentally killed her husband Nasser and is sentenced to death. The only person who can save her is Mona, Nasser's daughter. All Mona has to do is appear on a TV show and forgive Maryam. But forgiveness proves difficult when they are forced to relive the past.

Summer 1900, Switzerland. Elisabeth, 17, is about to take her vows when the sudden death of her older sister forces her to leave the convent and return to the family farm. Stifled by the suffocating and strict rules of the village, walking in her sister’s step to uncover the mystery of her death, Elisabeth is slowly driven to rebel against the local order and for her right to live her life.

Luc travels to Paris for the first time to sit the entrance exam for a carpentry school. There he meets Djemila, a young worker with whom he enjoys a short romance, before returning to his home town and beginning a relationship with Geneviève, whom he has known since childhood. Caught between two passions, Luc runs, resolving to fulfil his father's dreams by devoting himself to his future... until finally, he experiences true love.

People's associations with flora goes back a long way, taking us back to our own roots as well as to new ways of life and creative potential that reveal themselves as we deal with plants.

A woman wakes up with the urge to film blood. In Paris, her city, she meets a blood conveyor, a transplant doctor, a chimaera… And she remembers a trial she followed a long time ago: the contaminated blood trial. Yamina Zoutat has constructed a moving quest about transmission, drawing on the hidden matter from which our bodies are made.

As the Internet finally arrives in tiny Bhutan, documentarian Thomas Balmès is there to witness its transformative impact on a young Buddhist monk whose initial trepidation gives way to profound engagement with the technology.

This is the story of an encounter. An encounter between a groupie and the rock star she has always worshipped, This is a story of fascination and despair. She has loved him for many years, idolized his every move, lived for his songs. He is a shell. Scarred, alcoholic and paranoid, ruined by success. They find each other one morning, in a hotel room. He needs to be saved and all she wants is to protect him.

Agadez in Niger has long been the starting point for people smugglers moving migrants through the desert to Libya. Under pressure from Europe, the Niger government has been trying to combat people smuggling, but the local economy offers few alternatives. Those who give up smuggling usually end up in gold mining. But it’s hard and dangerous work, and only a few make their fortunes.

After a long period of isolation, Antonin rediscovers the world in a bird shelter where, rocked by the noise of planes, troubled souls are saved just as much as the birds.

At Uz, an isolated hamlet in the northern mountains of Portugal, four generations live together in a group of around fifty people. When life is rough, solidarity is of the highest order. Everything else is left in God’s hands. They could have emigrated, like so many others, but chose to stay and keep their ancestral way of life, away from the racket of modernity.

The Alba Angela sails along the middle of the Strait of Sicily. Salvuccio, the captain, orders the crew to switch off the lights and to cut the engine, as a police patrol will soon be nearby, on the lookout for further landings of illegal immigrants. The crew brings up the nets and silently waits in the dark. In the port of Catania, Ahmed imagines ways of leaving the abandoned boat in which he has been living for five years. At nightfall, he watches a cargo ship unloading goods which are free to circulate throughout Europe. At daybreak, the Alba Angela reaches the port of Catania and berths alongside Ahmed. In this Sicilian town, the illegally fishing trawler, its crew, and the illegal migrant both struggle with poverty, living side by side, in complete ignorance of one another.

Sam, a seven years old kid, has been living with his mother since the divorce of his parents. He has to temporarily move in with his father, Gerome, who has never taken care of him. So, Sam is not close with his father. Everyone around Gerome thinks that he's incapable to look after a child. After a chaotic start, Sam, by the force of his convictions, is going to help Gerome to get mature and to teach him how to become a father that he missed so much.

Lea Tsemel, a Jewish-Israeli lawyer, defends Palestinians: from feminists to fundamentalists, from nonviolent demonstrators to armed militants. As far as most Israelis are concerned, she defends the indefensible. As far as Palestinians are concerned, she’s more than an attorney, she’s an ally. «Advocate» follows Tsemel in real time, including the trial of a 13-year-old boy — her youngest client to date.

Jean-François, Ronald, Alexis, Cédric, Benoit and Maxim are gladiators of modern times. From the strongman to the top-class bodybuilder, to the veteran who has become a trainer, they all share the same definition and obsession with overcoming their limitations. They are waiting for the next competition, working hard in the gym and following extreme diets.

Oscar, not quite a child anymore, scavenges for scrap metal for his father. He spends his life in improvised landfills among what remains of leftovers. Worlds apart, yet close-by, there is Stanley. He tidies the church in exchange for a monetised hospitality, picks fruits, herds sheep: anything that keep his foreign body busy. Oscar, the young Sicilian, and Stanley the Nigerian don’t seem to have much in common. Except for the feeling of being thrown into the world, to suffer the same refusal, the same overwhelming wave of choices imposed on them by others.

Finding Fidel tells the remarkable story of war cameraman Erik Durschmied, who in 1958 journeyed to Cuba's Sierra Maestra mountains to interview a little-known rebel leader named Fidel Castro. A month later, Castro's band of fighters rolled into Havana, and the world would never be the same. Finding Fidel follows Durschmied as he returns to Cuba on the 50th Anniversary of the Revolution, retracing his original route to the mountains after an ailing Fidel has handed power over to his brother Raul and the island is waiting for change.