An intimate and heartbreaking chronicle of a few days in the life of a group of homeless children aged from 8 to 14, living in Leningradsky Railway Station. They spend their days begging, playing, sniffing glue, drinking vodka, and missing their mothers. They've been beaten, abandoned, abused, and discarded by drug-addicted or alcoholic parents, abusive passers-by and inhuman policemen. Many will never live to see their 15th birthdays. The camera descends into the children's murky underground dwellings or slyly captures a policeman viciously pouring glue over a young boy's head. The documentary combines footage of the children and of the authorities, who prefer to ignore or suppress the problem. This remarkably honest, compelling journey into the hidden world of Moscow's homeless children was nominated for an Academy Award in Best Documentary Short Subject in 2004.

producers: Hanna Polak, Andrzej Celinski
executive producer: Sheila Nevins
screenplay: Andrzej Celinski
camera: Hanna Polak, Andrzej Celinski, Hans Jürgen Burkard
editor: Ewa Romanowska-Rózewicz, Andrzej Celinski

festival info:
IFDA, 2005 / Leeds International Film Festival, 2005 / Tinklai, 7th International Short Film Festival, Klaipeda, 2005 / 7th International Film Festival, Bratislava, 2005 / 5th Human Rights In Film International Film Festival, Warsaw, 2005 / Platinum Billy Goat - 23rd International Young Audience Film Festival, Poznan´, 2006

production and sales info:
A Hanna Polak production
info@childrenofleningradsky.com
www.childrenofleningradsky.com

filmography:
Andrzej Celinski:
A Crazy World, 2003 / Grey, 2003 / A Railway Station Ballad, 2004 / Time for Theatre, 2004 / A Crazy World, 2004 / Kaegi, 2004

Hanna Polak:
Al, 2004

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A hilarious insight into the nature of local politics in communist China, where birth control policy plays an important role in the struggle against overpopulation. The rural village of Fanshen in northeast China is about to hold its village council elections, where contraception meets electoral politics. The village was given the award for "Model Family Planning Village" in 1999. But the Birth Control Officer Mr. Lu and his colleagues are in danger of losing their jobs when a local woman who is pregnant with her third child flees the village, seriously violating the community's annual quota of newborns and jeopardizing the careers of all the village officials. Ambitious Mr. Lu will stop at nothing to keep his hold on power. The worried officials form a search party to look for her, while Mr. Lu conspires to fix the upcoming elections, which ultimately hinge on a question of absentee votes. Sharply observed details of human behavior and rich, painterly cinematography lend a fable-like quality to this microcosmic study of fledgling Chinese democracy.

producer: Mark Frith
camera: Jinchuan Duan
editor: Jinchuan Duan
sound: Cheng Min

festival info:
Silver Wolf - IDFA, Amsterdam, 2002 / 5th Thessaloniki Documentary Film Festival

production info:
Decameron Films Ltd/ACE
Mark Frith
Tel:. +44 (1453) 544 375
dec@dircon.co.uk

sales info:
TV2 WORLD
Sortedam Dossering 55 A
2100 Copenhagen
Denmark
www.tv2world.com
sales@tv2.dk
Tel:. +45 65212223
Fax.: +45 65214199

filmography:
Highand Barley, 1986 / The Sacred Site for Ascetics, 1993 / The Square, 1995 / Man and Women in Jiada Village, 1997 / The Ends of the Earth, 1997 / No.16 Barkhor South Street, 1997 / The Sunken National Treasures, 1999 / The War of Love, 2002

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Her parents called Zainap Gashaeva "Coca" - the Dove. Born in exile in Kazakhstan, she raised four children and became a businesswoman. Since 1994, Zainap has been documenting what have become daily events in Chechnya: discrimination, abduction, torture, murder. Zainap is a founder of Echoes of War, a group of Chechen women who document the atrocities that the Russian government has committed in Chechnya while declaring war on terror. The videos, hundreds of them, are hidden by the women, buried under floorboards, stashed in the backs of closets and in hollowed out walls, and smuggled out of the country by Gashaeva and others in nondescript shopping bags as often as they can get them out. In addition to the mountains of dusty tapes, Gashaeva and her partners have built a database of information linking and cross-referencing facts about Chechens who have disappeared at the hands of the state police - a painstaking record which they hope will someday be used as a reckoning, and perhaps as a link to find out what happened to the missing. With Chechnya closed to the international media, Zainap Gashaeva is now bringing these tapes to the United Nations and other international organisations to serve as evidence so that the guilty will be punished.

producer: Rose-Marie Schneider
screenplay: Eric Bergkraut
camera: Laurent Stoop
editor: Mireille Abramovici
music: Marie-Jeanne Serero

festival info:
Berlinale Forum, 2005 / Visions du réel, Nyon, 2005 / Tribeca Film Festival, 2005 / International Film Festival Innsbruck, 2005 / Brisbane International Film Festival, 2005 / The World Film Festival of Montreal, 2005 / Films from the South, Oslo, 2005 / Flanders International Film Festival, Ghent, 2005 / One World Film Festival, Bratislava, 2005 / IDFA, 2005 / Thessaloniki Documentary Film Festival, 2006

production info:
Doc Productions - Dienerstr. 7 CH-8004 Zürich
Tel: +41 44 241 1656
Fax: +41 44 241 1655
info@docproductions.ch
www.cocathedove.com

sales info:
Accent films international ltd.
Carol Spycher
46 rue de la Gare, CH-1820 Montreux
Tel: +41 21 963 93 00, mobile +41 79 631 84 14
cspycher@accent-films.com
www.accent-films.com

filmography:
Oggi siamo tutti un po' bene, 1992 / Eine Reise in den Tod, 1992 / Das Gute Leben ist nur eine Falle, 1997 / Kontinent K., 1998-1999 / Gesichter eines Spielers, 1999 / Sprenge deine Grenzen, 2002 / Der fliegende Abt, 2003

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Over the past five years, new ideologists of radical far-right extremism have emerged all over Europe, North America and Russia. They do not necessarily shave their heads; they have created corporations, distribution companies, music clubs, magazines, publishing houses, internet sites and they have replaced the old symbols with new ones. With globalization taking a firmer hold and with clear demarcation lines blurring, the hate-mongers are rekindling the fires of the past, blowing on their glowing ashes. In this era of new technologies, the United States and Sweden have been deeply shocked to find their youth roused to racist violence, which has since contaminated the whole of the Western world as well as Russia and its neighbouring countries. For young Neo-nazis the past is virtual history where real cannot be distinguished from fake; their version of the future looks bleak and threatening. Daniel Schweizer investigates the forces that hide behind the 'White Power' and the 'New Racists' slogans.

producer: Samir
screenplay: Daniel Schweizer
camera: Piotr Jaxa
editor: Kathrin Plüss
music: Tapani Rinne

festival info:
Sevilla Festival de Cine, Spain, 2005 / Locarno International Film Festival, Switzerland, 2005 / One World 8th International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival, Prague, Czech Republic, 2006

production info:
Dschoint Ventschr Filmproduktion
Zentralstrasse 156
Zurich
8003 Switzerland
tel: +41 145 630 20
fax: +41 145 630 25
office@dschointventschr.ch
www.dschointventschr.ch
www.whiteterror.com

sales info:
WIDE MANAGEMENT
Loic Magneron
42 bis, rue de Lourmel
Paris
75015 France
tel: +33 153 950 464
fax: +33 153 950 465
wide@widemanagement.com
www.widemanagement.com

filmography:
Various experimentals, 1980 / Derneir Amour, 1988 / Vivre avec, 1993 / Sylvie, 1995 / Skin or Die, 1998 / Helldorado, 2000 / Skinhead Attitude, 2003

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After his daughter survived eight months of treatment for leukaemia, the Lithuanian filmmaker Arunas Matelis did not turn his back on the hospital. He filmed the kids in the leukaemia ward in Vilnius during their day-to-day routine, without becoming sentimental. For the parents, their worst nightmare has come true, but what do the children themselves think? A life among medicine and tubes does not prevent them from just carrying on. Their adaptability is incredible. The children practise karate or dream of getting hamburgers and Coke instead of the same old cabbage soup. The future is often brought up, as if it were not finite: they hope they will not turn blond when their hair grows back, or they want to become a doctor, "but not in the leukaemia ward." Before Flying Back to the Earth is interlaced with black-and-white pictures showing the children in the middle of a smile, yawn or gesture, momentarily freezing time in this thorough documentary that does not deal with death, but with life.

producers: Gerd Haag, Arunas Matelis
screenplay: Arunas Matelis
camera: Audrius Kemezys
editor: Katharina Schmidt
sound: Viktoras Juzonis
music: Kipras Masanauskas

festival info:
Golden Dove - International Leipzig Festival for Documentary And Animation, 2005 / Big Stamp Award - Zagreb Dox International Documentary Film Festival / Thessaloniki Documentary Film Festival, 2005 / First Prize - International Documentary Festival Documenta Madrid, 2006 / Spirit Award - International Brooklyn Film Festival / Grand Prix - 20th Pärnu International Documentary and Anthropology Film Festival, 2006

production info:
Studio "Nominum"
Nemencines pl. 4
Vilnius
LT-1 Lithuania
tel: +370 612 410 12
fax: +370 523 731 53
arunas@nominum.lt
www.nominum.lt

sales info:
First Hand Films
Schaffhauserstrasse 359
Zürich
8050 Switzerland
tel: +41 131 220 60
fax: +41 131 220 80
esther.van.messel@firsthandfilms.com
www.firsthandfilms.com

filmography:
Giants of Pelesa, 1989 / Baltic Way, 1989 / Ten Minutes Before the Flight of Icarus, 1991 / Self-portrait, 1993 / From Unfinished Tales of Jerusalem, 1996 / First Farewell to Paradise, 1998 / The Diary of Forced Emigration, 1999 / Flight over Lithuania or 510 Seconds of Silence, 2000 / Sunday. The Gospel According to Liftman Albertas, 2003

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"I don't ever want to be famous", Tobias mumbles. Tobias is a seriously disabled man and a great Bach enthusiast. Before he went into cardiac arrest and was left handicapped, he was a successful cellist. Now he is in a wheelchair suffering from spastic paralysis and unable to understand very much. By means of archival footage of concerts, photographs and memories of his relatives and a good friend, a picture emerges of the former Tobias, Tobias the cellist. This image is interwoven with images of Tobias today and his life in an institution for the mentally disabled. The contrast between these two worlds illustrates the tough issues Tobias's relatives must grapple with. How much of Tobias is still there? Would he have wanted to live like this? Would it be better if the heart failure had been fatal, or can Tobias still enjoy life? Candidly and sincerely, his relatives and friends discuss the dilemmas that confront them. Tobias himself is hardly, if at all, aware of the questions surrounding him. He enjoys Bach, cries when people leave and says he wants to live to be a thousand years old.

producers: Niek Koppen, Jan de Ruiter for Self Made Films
screenplay: Mercedes Stalenhoef
camera: Peter Brugman, Erik van Empel
editor: Gys Zevenbergen
sound: Bouwe Mulder

festival info:
IDFA, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 2005 / International Film Festival, Rotterdam, The Netherlands, 2006

production and sales info:
Selfmade Films
Willemsparkweg 63
1071 GS Amsterdam
The Netherlands
Tel: + 31 20 3058555
Fax: +31 203058550
mail@selfmadefilms.nl
www.selfmadefilms.nl

filmography:
I just take my toys with me, 2001 / Godofredo lives, 2004

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