Documentary Zone
Our Doc Zone will feature powerful documentaries that bring light to significant and challenging stories that need to be voiced.
In Competition
One Mile Down: Siberian Scramble
Alexander Hick • Ireland • 2022 • 70 mins
Nov/Samhain 12, An Díseart, 6pm • 214
Six daredevil motorbike riders and one fearless driver of an Uaz 4×4 off-road vehicle embark on an epic Siberian journey to drive 800km on treacherous ice over Lake Baikal, the deepest lake in the world. At stake are the very lives of these intrepid riders, as they traverse this hazardous and severe landscape, in their thrilling quest for not one, but two Guinness World Records.
Over these seven days the team experiences severe cold and challenging adventures. They also visit some of the most isolated and remote villages in Siberia, while meeting amazing people along the way.
This film is not only about an extreme motorbike expedition but how a common passion for life and adventure can bring together a team of people from all corners of the planet.
The Rocking Baritone
Bertrand Normand • France • 2022 • 84 mins
With English subtitles
Nov/Samhain 11, An Díseart, 4pm • 141
Nov/Samhain 12, An Díseart, 10pm • 245
Evgeny Nikitin is a world-renowned bass-baritone who is acclaimed for his Wagnerian roles. In addition, he is also a rock musician. Struck by scandal at the height of his artistic career, he strives for achievement and redemption, as he pursues his life’s two passions: opera and heavy metal.
Director Bertrand Normand: ”I was inspired by this very unique artist and besides, I thought he would be the right character to help make the art of opera more accessible to a wider audience”.
”I have worked mostly on projects which have been shot or even made completely out of France. I collaborate with co-producers, sales agents and distributors abroad thanks to whom my films have a higher international scope and more prospects in other countries and worldwide”.
Retour à Reimes
Jean-Gabriel Périot • France • 2021 • 83 mins
With English subtitles
Nov/Samhain 12, An Díseart, 4pm • 242
The director dissects the intimate and political history of the French working class by laying bare the social inequalities and the violence of exploitation by going back in time from the memory and the everyday of a working class family spanning over a long period of time starting in the 1930’s.
The director cleverly uses archival images, both real and fictional, carefully chosen and smartly positioned.
Terra Femme
Courtney Stephens • US • 2021 • 62 mins
Nov/Samhain 13, An Díseart, 4pm • 332
Terra Femme is an essay film comprised of amateur travelogues filmed by women in the 1920s-1950s. With a score by Sarah Davachi, the film weaves between geographical essay, personal inquiry, and historical speculation, examining these films as both private documents and accidental ethnographies. The films present a new type of traveler: no longer a male seeker of conquests, she might be a divorcee on a tour of biblical gardens, or a widow on a cruise to the North Pole.
Representing the world through women’s eyes, the films raise questions about female representation in the archive, the role of amateurism in early non-fiction filmmaking, and the politics of the Western gaze. At once a film about longing for past worlds through cinematic excavation, this force flows in both directions: as women from the past search for self-making in the act of looking.
The Laughing Boy
An Buachaill
Gealgháireach
Alan Gilsenan • Ireland • 2022 • 91 mins
With English subtitles
Nov/Samhain 12, An Díseart, 2pm • 241
An Buachaill Geal Gáireach/The Laughing Boy is an Irish song written by a teenage rebel called Brendan Behan in memory of another iconic rebel, Michael Collins – the centenary of whose death is commemorated this year.
But this song also had an extraordinary and dramatic afterlife as To Gelasto Paidi, the powerful left-wing anthem of resistance against the dictatorship that ruled Greece in the late Sixties and early Seventies. Translated by the poet Vassilis Rotas, Behan’s words in Greek were set to music by the legendary Mikis Theodorakis, the most famous Greek composer of all time. The song remains an enduring and potent cultural force in the heart of Greece today. The film takes the poet Theo Dorgan on an odyssey of his own, as he discovers the truth of the story behind the song.
Delle
Andrejs Verhoustinskis • Latvia • 2022 • 78 mins
With English subtitles
Nov/Samhain 12, An Díseart, 8pm • 244
Nov/Samhain 13, An Díseart, 6pm • 333
The incredible story of painter Biruta also called Ruta Delle, a representative of the so-called “uncensored generation” in Latvian art.
After a life full of hardships – the mental illness of her beloved husband and son, the betrayal of her second husband – a KGB agent, the murder committed by her son, and the suicide of her son’s father, Ruta all the time stubbornly and persistently has kept on painting.
Delle is a story of loneliness and inadequacy but also a story of a great talent.
Daughters
Döttrar
Jenifer Malmqvist • Sweden • 2022 • 77 mins
With English subtitles
Nov/Samhain 11, An Díseart, 10pm • 143
Sofia, Hedvig and Maja grew up together in the countryside in Southern Sweden with their mom Carolina – a radiant personality and a devoted mother. The day Hedvig turned 10 years old her mother killed herself. Left behind were three girls – 8, 10 and 16 years old. Today, they are young adults. They have moved on with their lives, but all have struggled in their own ways to cope with their loss.
Filmmaker Jenifer Malmqvist met the sisters in 2011. She started filming almost immediately and followed them during a difficult year in their lives. Now, a decade later, Jenifer reconnects with the girls and tries to understand their journey with grief.
Little Palestine (Diary of a Siege)
Abdallah Al-Khatib • Lebanon/France/Qatar • 2021 • 89 mins
With English subtitles
Nov/Samhain 11, An Díseart, 6pm • 142
The district of Yarmouk (Damascus, Syria) sheltered the biggest Palestinian refugee camp in the world from 1957 to 2018.
When the Syrian revolution broke out, the regime of Bashar Al-Assad saw Yarmouk as a refuge of rebels and resistance and set up a siege from 2013 on. Gradually deprived of food, medicine and electricity, Yarmouk was cut off from the rest of the world.
Abdallah Al-Khatib was born in Yarmouk and lived there until his expulsion by Daesh in 2015. Between 2011 and 2015, he and his friends documented the daily life of the besieged inhabitants, who decided to face bombing, displacement and hunger with rallying, study, music, love and joy.
Beyond the White
Evgeny Kalachikhin • Germany • 2021 • 90 mins
With English subtitles
Nov/Samhain 12, An Díseart, 2pm • 212
Three villages combine in one timeless space — somewhere beyond the Arctic Circle. On the Kola peninsula in the Russian North, a few dozen people still live in their traditional timber houses surrounded by water, forests, and sand. Nature provides for them, mainly the White Sea, but fish population has dwindled over the years. Fewer and fewer people want to stay; many move to the city, leaving their homes behind. Over time, these houses have turned into spectres from the past, ownerless and lonely ruins. Only young children, visiting their grandparents in the summer, breathe new life into this place.
Out of Competition
The Man with the Moving House: The Directors Cut
Directed by Mark Mc Loughlin and Seán Mac an tSithigh • 2022 • 60:00
With English subtitles
Nov/Samhain 13, Blasket Centre, 3pm • 351
Imagine owning land in a community you grew up in, that the local council actively want to re-populate but you are not granted planning permission to build a small house – consistent with the traditional design of the other houses in your ancestral village. This was the case for respected musician, Gaeilgeoir and TV presenter Breanndán Begley from the Dingle Peninsula.
The documentary highlights both Breanndán’s plight and a much broader battle to save the culture, music, heritage and language of rural communities both in Ireland and further afield, as their souls are decimated due to locals no longer securing planning permission and being priced out of houses that are instead snapped up as holiday homes and short term lets.
Present at the screening will be filmmakers Mark Mc Loughlin and Seán Mac an tSíthigh with Breanndán Beaglaoích.
Pure Grit
Kim Bartley • Ireland/US • 2022 • 88 mins
With English subtitles
Nov/Samhain 12, An Díseart, 8pm • 235
In the remote Wyoming wilderness of the Wind River reservation, Sharmaine and her girlfriend Savannah begin to build a life for themselves. They hope for better. But the atmosphere at home soon turns toxic and the young lovers are forced to leave for the industrial Commerce City, Denver. The city brings freedom and opportunity, but also distractions and a strain on their fledgling relationship. When racing season starts up, Sharmaine and Savannah hit the road and put it all on the line. With a new horse from her city earnings, Sharmaine sees the potential for a fresh start. But life, like the race track, doesn’t always go according to plan.
Pure Grit is both a thrilling tale of extreme bareback horse racing, and an intimate love story. Chronicling three years in the life of a young Native American bareback horse racer.
