A Journey in Afghanistan. After two decades of chaos and destruction, a country searches for its identity. Eight places. A cinematic encounter with people and their realities. A nightclub, a school, a hospital, a taxi – the people there talk about daily life in Afghanistan beyond the war and the Taliban. The director observes people and incidents on his journey, starting in the northern province and eventually reaching the capital Kabul. The result is a mosaic, presented as episodes leaving out West-European commentary.

July 1st, 1997. An elderly man arrives in Italy on a flight from Paris. The special forces of the Carabinieri immediately arrest him. Antonio Negri had voluntarily returned to his home country after 15 years in exile. The newspaper Liberation hails it as, “The return of the Devil”. Over the years, few intellectuals have experienced as much admiration and hatred, or as much praise and rejection, as Antonio Negri. His book “Empire”, a critical analysis of the new global economy, was hailed as a bold new manifesto for the 21st century and overnight it turned Negri into a leading spokesperson for the international anti-globalization movement.

For Antonio Negri, renowned political philosopher and author of “Empire” with Michael Hardt, a 17 year long chapter of repressive Italian politics of detention, exile, and imprisonment recently ended. The question for Negri is how one can preserve the freedom of spirit within a penal structure that focuses more on the interior than exterior life of the prisoner. For Antonio Negri, the cell of resistance from which he wrote became an enclosure of peace. The Cell is comprised of three video interviews with Antonio Negri: 1997 while he was in exile in Paris, 1998 in the Roman prison of Rebibbia, and 2003 after his release in Rome.

This is an essay on the aesthetics of National Socialist cinema. The history of the Third Reich is investigated in light of its own image making. What hopes, desires and fears are reflected in these images? The film unfolds chronologically, with original material dating from 1918 to 1945.

In 1925 William Faulkner lived in New Orleans for a few months writing short sketches in which he called the city to life. Inspired by Faulkner's impressions, Dutch Filmmaker Marjoleine Boonstra drifts through the devastated streets of New Orleans, at any hour of the day, looking for the fears and dreams of people whose lives have gone adrift as a result of hurricane Katrina.

Above all, Mast Qalandar (Ecstasy) is a look at heterodoxy and a celebration of its existence. Qalandars are a Sufi brotherhood of roaming dervishes who once ranged through an arch that crossed Asia, from Turkey to Pakistan and India. They are characterized by extreme mystical devotion and their revolutionary and anti-dogmatic attitudes within Islam, such as use of hachis and the rejection of alcohol and free submission to Haqq, the truth, which they see as the absence of limits rather than something which narrows and defines horizons. “Mast Qalandar” immerses us in the ritual encounter of these dervishes around the grave of the brotherhood's founder in Pakistan. A vision of heir devotion to “the beloved” that leads them into trance and ecstasy, where death means simply to “draw aside a veil”. Available online until December 27th 2020.

Even at night the Wana shamans from the Sulawesi see the “shadow” in each of us. For them, this shadow, which the sun defines on the ground during the day, is a spiritually essential part of us. A French woman, Claudia, shares her illness and suffering with Indo Pino, a shaman. However, in spite of the trust that Claudia has in Indo Pino and without Claudia's actual body being present, will she be able to heal her from so far away?

Khue, a Buddhist monk, the clown Phong and the young prostitute Thuy reflect on their personal experiences during three different decades of Vietnamese history. French colonialism, the Vietnam war and the current effects of globalization create an image of a Hanoi teetering between the influences of modern, Western ideas and traditional Asian values. The protagonists' fragmented memories draw a picture of Vietnamese day to day life but also deal with the social changes of the past 70 years.