Syndicado Film Sales

Germany 2022, 84 min
by Joya Thome

Whitney is a rising star of the US gymnastics scene, who has a sizeable following on YouTube. Among them is Yara, who lives in Germany and is one of her biggest fans. Two teenage girls live in different continents but are connected by their screens. Whitney Bjerken has a million YouTube subscribers; she creates challenges and posts updates on her training. Yara idolizes Whitney and follows her every move. As time progresses, Whitney starts looking for other sources of content outside gymnastics. Yara discovers a new side to her personality, which develops in tandem with Whitney’s ever-expanding online activity. Joya Thome’s cautionary film about our increasing attachment to social media reflects on the limits of what we can – or should – share online. [29 Sheffield DocFest]

2021, 113 min
by Jide Tom Akinleminu

A tale about my mother and brothers from other mothers.A reflection on his parents assumed monogamous long distance marriage as well as his own Nigerian background and identity. He thereafter accidentally discovers his father‘s secret; a second family throughout the last 30 years. This revelation sends the filmmaker on a new quest, now focusing on his retired Danish mother and his newly acquainted younger Nigerian half brother. When a farm goes aflame is set in the aftermath of a lifetime of secrecy and denial, and attempts to bring together the stories and beliefs of all protagonists as they come to terms with their common past and shape their future. Moving fluidly between Denmark, Nigeria, Canada and USA, the film gently unfolds as a poetic and psychologically complex exploration of the meeting between western and African concepts of love, relationships and family.202171 Berlinale PERSPECTIVECPH:DOX36 DOK.fest Munich18 dokumentarfimwoche hamburgBFI London FFACHTUNG BERLIN FF – new berlin film award • Ecumenical Jury Award • Special Mention Best CinematographyBiografilm Festival 63 Nordic Film DaysAfrica in MotionSIFF ShanghaiIDFA Amsterdam45 MOSTRA, Sao Paulo AFRIFF – Africa International Film Festival, Lagos

Germany, Austria 2019, 100 min
by Marayam Zaree

Born in Evin follows filmmaker and actress, Maryam Zaree, on her quest to find out the violent circumstances surrounding her birth inside one of the most notorious political prisons in the world. Exactly forty years have passed since the monarchy of the Shah of Iran was toppled and the Islamic Republic declared. In the 1980’s Ayatollah Khomeini, the so-called religious leader, had tens of thousands of political opponents arrested, persecuted and murdered. Among them the filmmaker’s parents who, after years in prison, managed to seek asylum in Germany. The family never talked about their persecution and imprisonment. Maryam Zaree faces the decades-long silence and explores her own questions about the place and the circumstances of her birth.She meets other survivors, talks to experts and looks for the children born in the same prison. She tries to find answers to her personal and political questions. What are the personal consequences of persecution and violence when the same perpetrators remain in power while the victims internalize their stories? And what does it mean, politically, to face the silence within the family. The political is private and the private political. With this conviction, Maryam Zaree works through the complexities of trauma and denial.

Germany 2017, 100 min
by Nicole Wegner

PARALLEL PLANES is a documentary film portraying 12 American musicians. It is a journey between genres, an essay on free thinking and an intimate look at how 12 critical players relate to the potential of music.This film is a proof that music reminds us how and why we criticise politics and society and that our different ideas are bonded to each other.with: Michael Gira (Swans, Young God Records), Mick Barr (Orthrelm), Justin Pearson (The Locust), Ian MacKaye (Minor Threat, Fugazi), Valentine Falcon (Get Hustle), Jamie Stewart (Xiu Xiu), Anna Barie (These Are Powers), Weasel Walter (Flying Luttenbachers), Jenny Hoyston (Erase Errata), Alap Momin (Dälek), Greg Saunier (Deerhoof), Otto von Schirach

Finland, Germany 2023, 80 min
by Jesse Jokinen, Petri Luukkainen

A young gamer called Bona has, since a small kid, been trying to find his way in the harsh world of esports and now under a professional contract. Bona is very talented in CS:GO, but his mental side fails him every time he is on the verge of success, always resulting in second place.Bona seeks help from the world’s best esports psychologist Mia. The sessions with her set him on a path to self discovery to become a better player – and a person. Unexpectedly, another player – his old nemesis from the past – comes to steal his position in the team. The mentorship between the psychologist and Bona is in the key role, while he must figure out how to balance the conflicts, burden of pressure and his dreams before his professional contract runs out.

Switzerland, Germany, Georgia 2021, 91 min
by Salomé Jashi

The opening shot of filmmaker Salomé Jashi’s striking environmental tale captures a tree as tall as a 15-story building floating on a barge across the vast Black Sea. Its destination lies within a garden countless miles away, privately owned by a wealthy and anonymous man whose passion resides in the removal, and subsequent replanting, of foreign trees into his own man-made Eden.With astonishing cinematic style,Taming the Garden tracks the surreal uprooting of ancient trees from their Georgian locales. With each removal, tensions flare between workers and villagers. Some see financial incentives—new roads, handsome fees—while others angrily mourn the loss of what was assumed an immovable monolith of their town’s collective history and memory. With a steady and shrewdly observant eye, Jashi documents a single man’s power over Earth’s natural gardens: how majestic living artifacts of a country’s identity can so effortlessly become uprooted by individuals with no connection to the nature they now claim as their own.

Germany, Georgia, France 2018, 75 min
by Mari Gulbiani

In a darkened classroom, the white cracked walls serve as a movie screen. We are in a remote mountain village of Georgia. The light from the projector breaks the darkness: the kids' first cinematic experience is about to begin. Among them are Iman and Eva, two Muslim girls for whom the experience becomes a turning point and inspires them to take the camera and start filming their daily lives. The girls are growing up in a valley infested by radicalism, where most people are living in a constant fear of their relatives sacrificing their lives in the name of God.

Hungary, Germany 2017, 89 min
by Bernadett Tuza-Ritter

An intimate close-up of a woman with a lined face. She's asleep, until the filmmaker whispers, "Marish." Marish opens her eyes and sits up quickly, confused but smiling. This is an apt summary of what happened during the time director Bernadett Tuza-Ritter spent filming her. Marish has been exploited and abused for more than 10 years by the woman for whom she toils as a housekeeper—entirely unpaid. She even has to hand over the money she earns with an extra job as a cleaner in a factory. She's forbidden to do anything without permission. Marish’s 18-year-old daughter couldn’t stand it anymore and ran away a couple of years ago, but Marish lives with too much fear in her heart. Can she ever learn to trust people again? Here the old question arises as to how much the presence of the camera influences the course of events. Cautiously, Marish starts to take Tuza-Ritter into her confidence. She dreams of seeing her daughter again. Will she find the courage to take a step forward in her life? (IDFA)

Mozambique, France, Germany, Portugal, Netherlands, Norway 2024, 93 min
by Inadelso Cossa

Immersed in Mozambique's intricate history, I'm compelled to unravel the narrative woven into the film "The Nights Still Smell of Gunpowder." Returning to my grandmother Maria's village, I'm driven by a personal quest to expose the untold stories of my childhood during the civil war.This film, a sensory exploration of personal and collective memory, originates from my childhood vacations amid the civil war's paradox. A rebel attack, concealed by my grandmother as fireworks, becomes the catalyst for my cinematic endeavor—an attempt to break the silence enveloping post-civil-war Mozambique.Maria, once a storyteller, now battles Alzheimer's, blurring the lines between truth and fiction. In her village, echoes of a former rebel mirror the haunting presence of perpetrators and victims, intertwining day and night, reality and imagination. The ghosts of war that still imhabits the former rebel are possesing the presence. Motivated by the need to dismantle societal denial, the film seeks to unveil authentic stories obscured by fiction, as I return to Maria's village armed with cinematic tools. Challenging conventional aesthetics, the film becomes a sensorial journey, symbolized by Moises, the boom operator. The audience is prompted to listen closely, transcending the visual to experience the haptic nature of memory—the smell of gunpowder, the touch of suppressed emotions.In this dance between truth and fiction, memory and forgetting, THE NIGHTS STILL SMELL OF GUNPOWDER stands as my testament to the resilience of human memory. I navigate the labyrinth of my past, and use cinema for a collective endeavor to reclaim lost fragments of history and confront the haunting ghosts persisting in the darkness of societal silence.

Italy, Germany 2024, 73 min
by Caroline von der Tann

Ciretta, a streetwise kid from Naples, organizes a celebration for the Madonna while facing eviction from his temporary home in a theater space – earmarked for conversion to a B&B.In the palimpsest of a city like Naples, which holds countless stories in its heart, we stumble upon that of Ciretta, the 27-year-old son of a prostitute and an unknown father, who occasionally sells his body too, but also worships the Madonna and has an almost heavenly voice. The outcast child of a society that often has no room for those who do not fit into molds, Ciretta will find refuge and companionship among the people who gather around an old theater in Naples, now closed due to the pandemic. There he will dream of the possibility of a better life, until the theater is sold to become a hotel. Ciretta will be forced to find a new haven for both himself and his beloved statue of the Madonna, in this tender, melancholy tale of battered people who seem born to be movie heroes, and a city that changes almost before your eyes. [26 TiDF Thessaloniki]

Germany 2024, 94 min
by Mala Reinhardt

Blackness, queerness, friendship and the differences that connect us.Queer, Ghanaian-German, polyamory and the desire for a child: protagonist Akosua is accompanied for three years by her friend and director Mala on her journey through Germany and Ghana. Together they experience the highs and lows of a life full of longings, relationships and personal growth. While Akosua is still thinking about how she can make her wish for a child come true, Mala becomes pregnant during filming.

Germany, Jordan 2024, 92 min
by Rand Beiruty

TELL THEM ABOUT US is a coming of age story following seven teenage girls adjusting to their new life in Eberswalde, an East German provincial city. Over the period of four years, we witness them steer through friendships, school, finding a career and even marriage. The girls grapple with the pressures and conflicts of being immigrants and refugees while simultaneously navigating their roles as young women within their families and communities.Next to following them in their daily life, the director organizes writing, music and acting workshops where the girls reflect upon their circumstances and future goals and dreams. Afterwhich, they write scenes in order to stage in front of the camera. These scenes are turned into dream sequences where the girls envision themselves in the future as a way to work through painful experiences and playfully translate them into future perspectives under the cover of fiction.

Sweden, Germany 2023, 83 min
by Greta Stocklassa

Greta had just turned 8 years old when she watched the unfolding of 9/11 on her tv in Stockholm. In the following months and years she saw her fellow countryman, the diplomat Hans Blix, become a major player in the global crisis, as weapons inspector for the UN.Now, in the 21st century of wars, political extremes and the climate catastrophes, Greta reaches out to Blix, now 94 years old, to ask if he can help her make sense of the world. Does diplomacy still have a role? Or is he the last of the great negotiators?

Germany 2023, 100 min
by Uli Gaulke

They are five impressive women who together have spent more than 500 years on this earth. They come from Cuba, Israel, Austria, India and Turkey and have inspired the people around them through their strength and actions. With a strong will and a firm belief in themselves, they have transcended stereotypical roles and realized their dreams. They are an incentive for all women to consistently follow their path and stand up for equal rights. CENTURY OF WOMEN – WOMEN TELL THEIR STORY is 100 years of emancipation from very different perspectives.

Germany 2021, 92 min
by Antonia Kilian

In order to avoid a forced marriage, 19-year-old Hala finds shelter across the Euphrates, at the Kurdish Female Military. While learning how to fight, she gets inspired by the promise of freeing more women. When the Kurdish military liberates her hometown from ISIS, she returns there as a policewoman authorised to protect other vulnerable women. Hala finds herself ready to fulfil her greatest dream: to free her younger sisters from her father's hand.Τhe threat of a marriage and the brutal stories of female oppression lead women to the other side of the river. They are trained in a strict military style, taught that men are the enemy. But is there freedom to be found between holding a gun against the patriarchic society or be deprived of the possibility to love?