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Itamar Rose sets out to discover the recipe for YouTube success. In his own attempt to go viral, the Israeli satirical activist and ineffective content creator comes up against gatekeepers and powerful monopolies. 

Two decades of intimate home video show the story of the Sanford family whose struggles with addiction and gun violence eventually lead them to a journey of love, loss, and acceptance.17 Blocks illuminates a nation's ongoing crisis through one family's raw, stirring, and deeply personal saga.

Johnny believes in the future of Africa. He lives in Israel, but dreams of returning home with modern fish farming techniques. His wife, Thérèse, sees little hope back home. She is determined to create the best possible future for their children. When their visas expire, tensions between the two arise, leading to an inevitable clash.

Twenty years after Nigerian asylum seeker, Semira Adamu, was assassinated in Belgium, two women tell the story of a war cry combined with feminism. In their stories, they highlight the reality of closed centers for migrants, the conditions of detention, the suffering of detainees, and the acts of guards and police forces.

A filmmaker travels to San Francisco to be with the love of his life, only to discover that their ideas on love are painfully but beautifully incompatible.

A cargo to dismantle called “Ocean Master” opens up dialogue with immigrant workers from Pakistan. We discover that they might have more in common than what we imagined. Monumental shots reveal vestiges and victims of globalized capitalism washed ashore.

Gul Muhammad Baluchi is a folk singer and musician living in Balochistan in the south-east part of Iran. He dreams of forming a band to perform the traditional music of his region. This documentary follows him in his quest, taking us on a journey across the Balochistan region to meet its musicians, its everyday people, its culture and the traditions that Gul Muhammad is trying to keep alive.

In a film made up of interviews with the director and meticulously selected film extracts by Tarkovsky's son, this documentary is much more than a son's tribute to his father or a perfect introduction to the works of one of the greatest Soviet directors. It offers us a crucial reflection on the role of the artist and of art in our time. 

Fifty years ago, the Creole population of the Chagos Islands was expelled by the British authorities. They leased the main island to the US government so that it could build one of its largest and most secretive military bases. A charismatic woman, Sabrina Jean, leads the Chagossian exile fights in the UK. She strives to to return home before elders disappear and memory fades.

Haunted by the images of the factory in which he worked for 30 years, Marc Coton meets his former colleagues in an attempt to answer the question left open by the sudden closure of the industrial flagship: “What has become of us now that the factory has closed?”

In a bucolic, pastoral setting, young Asho herds goats and dreams of being a movie actor. Wearing a straw hat, and equipped with a rifle, he poses, and plays the most important role of his life -  a suitor to his cousin, Pari. When this boy’s fantasies meets reality, the frontiers between fiction and nonfiction become blurry.

The Millenium Festival wants to stop the cinema projector one afternoon to invite the audience into the space of listening and let the presence and the clinking of the sound take up the whole space around and on the imaginary screen.

In Collaboration with the Radio Sound Making-Workshop (ACSR)

By 2050, there will be more plastic in the sea than fish. With the mass industrialization that has occurred in the oceans over the last century, more than half of all marine life is already lost. Industrial scale fishing, habitat destruction, species loss and pollution have placed the ocean in peril. “Blue” sets out the challenges we are facing and the opportunities for positive change.

Flames, smokes, milky way, as much elements accelerating and dilating themselves, at the pace of timelapses and slowmotions which ponctuate the movie carried by the squeaking notes of an exhilarated guitar. This video of brutal beauty uses catastrophic effects of climate change as a backdrop to examine the experience of grief and loss. The movie follows the five grief steps. 

Marine, a 26-year-old photographer, formerly obese, captures portraits of various bodybuilders. She follows them through their daily life and their intimacy and questions them about their bodies, their cracks, and their shells. Beyond the portraits of these "out of the ordinary" men and women inevitably stands that of Marine -  a young woman in search of transformation.

The Romanian village of Mâlăncrav. These days, there's always people leaving for uncertain and temporary work in western Europe, in the hope of making a better life back home. The ebb and flow of departures and homecomings affects every family. Through intimate portraits of people at the heart of the community, the film tells the stories of Natalia, Alina, Andrei, Ioan and Niculae. Strong and determined women; young people still without a care; and the last remaining shepherds clinging onto their land and their flocks.

In 2011, Oriane left France to begin with Marreco, her Brazilian partner, an alternative life in a rural environment in Brazil. Lead by the dream of an anti-capitalist utopia and of building her own earth house, she films in first person, the challenges of this seven-year-long adventure.

In 2010, one year after his second child’s birth, Dimitri got a vasectomy. Without full knowledge of this life choice, Dimitri finds new discoveries about a decision intended toward good will.

Coral Compass takes travelers to Palau, a small island nation in Micronesia home to some of the world’s most pristine coral reefs. See and experience how Palau is adapting to climate change to combat its effects on their reefs and economy. In the clear, warm waters surrounding Palau, exist resilient coral reefs and the will of a people fighting to keep it alive.

What kind of future can be read in the impersonal fragments of our reality? With the help of an old magic lantern, the director asked children from Brussels, Athens and Sarajevo to project their own impressions, dreams and fears onto countless abstract patterns. The result is a form of “magical reading”, as the perception of unforeseen correspondences and constellations that confront us with the undercurrent of the present.

This film tells the vivid story of Soviet cuisine, a unique socio-cultural phenomenon of the history and life of the Soviet Union. As the German philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach noted back in the 19th century: “A man is what he eats.” Boris Karadzhev hopes that this culinary journey will help European viewers to understand the mentality and the motives of the people in Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia.

An apprentice filmmaker meets a woman in Berlin and alludes to a previous journey in this city after he had been very sick a few years back. Throughout this inner journey, over which looms the shadow of disease and death, emerge here and there, moments and faces which helped him to come back to life. The pictures come in fragments, like little pieces of memories, in this intimate experiment filmed on the spot and on the amateur Super 8 film format.

Following truck drivers from Germany to the Philippines, “EUtopia” investigates the dark reality of the European trucking industry.

A Norwegian artist reconstructs her kafkaesque journey through the US justice system, as her partner is arrested, convicted, and imprisoned without cause in New York. By analyzing what at first seems to be a minor case, False Belief uncovers the larger picture of a society that employs incarceration as a political and economic weapon.

On March 11, 2011, a powerful earthquake 130 kilometres off the coast killed thousands of people and changed Japan's history forever. The country was once again confronted with one of its greatest demons: the nuclear nightmare. The accident at the Fukushima power plant caused the evacuation of some 100,000 people and an emergency comparable to the atomic bombs of the Second World War. Five years later, thousands of Japanese people are still living in barracks under the threat of radiation.

If love is a pill, and marriage an injection with big side effects, then what is the right prescription for girls' self-determination in India today?  "Paadhai" is a home for disadvantaged girls offering them shelter, education, and empowerment. Their stories and doubts reveal to us, especially through Amulpriya, why gender issues are so important in Indian society and how they even determine the structure of the caste system.

The director Nathan Grossman follows teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg, from her early involvement in activism to when she became the figurehead of the environmental movement.

Austyn Tester is 16 years old and plans to escape the grim life he leads in rural Tennessee by becoming a social networking star. But achieving fame in a world where the ephemeral is king is far more complicated than it seems.

Philippe Vandenberg is one of the most radical post-war Belgian artists. In June 2009 he decides to take his own life. Ten years later, his studio opens its doors again. One long shot glides over his works, belongings, sources of inspiration and memories. Video archives are projected on the way and bring the painter back to his studio.

Cultivating plots and fields in Africa, without fertilizers or pesticides is possible. Without revolutionary inventions as well.. Sometimes it is enough to reflect back a few years and see what our ancestors used to do.

What is this strange blue light that switches on at night in the dark and obscure corners of Paris?

Intrigued by the project to build a mosque near his home, the director goes to meet Hassan and Idriss, his Muslim neighbours. Between the difficulties encountered as a result of amalgamation and an often questioned identity, these Muslim men and women interrogate us on our own bias.

La musique de Soline reveals the bond between a mother and her daughter, who is gradually losing the use of her body. Torn between emotions ranging from dependence and exhaustion to the desire to escape, the film portrays an everyday relationship punctuated by anger and frustration, yet dominated above all by love.

A great part of our lives is determined by the school’s benches, but what can we do if we don’t get used to the system ? This movie is a coming of age portrait through a focus on 20 years old Nicole’s life. She tries to get her diploma in an alternative way, but sometines life isn’t that simple, life intervene

When director Elina Talvensaari moves into a new apartment in Helsinki, all of the furniture and personal belongings of the previous owner, a dead woman, remains. How does the unknown woman gradually become a precious friend?

Danielle, an old-age pensioner, takes voluntarily care of Moubarak who is getting ready to make an application for asylum in Belgium. However, she is then in conflict with her daughter Francesca, who is angry at her for not taking care of her own family.

A tea factory, which resisted threats from the giant Unilever, has converted to a cooperative and is now facing the difficulties of self-management. So begins a second struggle, this time against the cruel world of the market and its race for profit.

In the heart of Ouagadougou, there is a granite quarry where nearly 2,500 people, adults and children, work in Dantean conditions, on the fringes of a society that refuse to see them. But in 2014, the revolution took place, left its marks, and gave people hope and courage.

Three Chinese women, despite their flourishing careers, still live with an inescapable prejudice : “Leftover Women” - a term used in China to describe educated women in their mid-twenties who are not married.

During a period of six months, 30 young people from Brussels eager to take part in the Eloquentia competition learn the specific oratory techniques that will give them the courage to stand up and speak in public.

Free-spirited Jola, after escaping from a marital nightmare, is letting loose with her friends and finds herself thrust into a new romance at a Latino dance class. A highly cinematic and joyful journey into a woman’s battle to reinvent herself in her best age of life - when you are 69.

The modern alien, whom everyone calls an idiot, lives on the outskirts of reality. He wanders around a jungle city incapable of embracing his wisdom. Young boy Artur deludes himself with the beauty of life, finding happiness everywhere. Just like a little prince lost in the streets of Warsaw. Can his story end happily?

With global warming and population growth, the demand for water is exploding. Behind-the-scenes investigation of the blue gold market. 

On a boat crossing the Danube from its source in Germany to the Black Sea, virtuoso musicians are brought together to entertain tourists in a festival dedicated to the river. The music awakens the memory of the Danube and it begins to send images and messages of the forgotten events that took place on its banks. Strangely that images and memories make references to our present and the remake of History. The film features 29 virtuoso musicians.

A battle for the love of the family’s cat.

Travelling on foot from Marrakech to reach the dunes of the Sahara, a 600 km journey through the Atlas, a dream for Aurélia. A dream but also a challenge, that of undertaking this trip with her 3 daughters of 4, 6 and 8 years old. Together, they will experience nomadic life for two months, cross wonderful landscapes and discover Berber hospitality. But they will also share laughter, unexpectedness, fatigue, fear and joy. An initiatory journey that this little family will accomplish with extraordinary courage and from which both mother and daughters will grow up.

Master Class with Vitaly Mansky 

There will be two master classes  : 

- “Fiction and Factuality in the Age of Virtual Worlds” - by the artist and teacher in  "Arts numériques" at La Cambre, Nikolay K. Nikolov.

- “VR Cinema for the SDG's” - in co-organisation with screen.brussels 

In a Chinese capital that is growing at an exponential rate, everyone dreams of a better life. What will happen when the city's dream overtakes the dream of its residents?

Lubnan is a young man from Iraq who has just arrived in Belgium. While he is struggling to get his papers, he takes us on an existential journey through his feelings, thoughts and desires. Me Miss Me is a rollercoaster of emotions through a life full of despair, but also full of resilience and humour.

A pen scratches a notebook, rotary presses print a book, a double bass against the light. This is the film where words become music…  Intimate portrait of Charles Mingus, the documentary is also about the process of creating music, showing simultaneously the work of an artist and how it was conceived.

In a village in Thailand, Pomm takes care of Europeans with Alzheimer’s. Separated from her children to earn a better living, she welcomes a new patient arrived from Switzerland. In Switzerland a family prepares to say goodbye to their mother, with Alzheimer’s.

This film is the subtle portrait about a family of Brussels drag queens from more than four generations at a box party. As the masculine features become feminine under several layers of makeup, hearts open up.

It’s The story ... of a legacy, 
A sort of disenchanted tale, passed down from mother to daughter, a loose heap in which the story of a family is tied up. 
Once upon a time “Shipwrecked in the open”. 

In Italy, two new whistleblowers denounce the criminal acts of their superiors everyday. Marco Ferrari puts together the testimonies of seven italian whistleblowers in a single narrative and shows, by doing so, the systemic corruption of the country.

Through the unlikely friendship of shaman Aman Paska and the director, an epic journey takes place from the Indonesian jungle to the roaring modernity of Jakarta. For more than 15 years, Amundsen records a historical paradigm shift. Through puzzling questions, the film asks us how we should shape our future.  

The Iranian National Women's inline hockey team is getting ready to compete in South Korea. Throughout the film, these women struggle with their greatest fears and become stronger when they begin to believe in themselves.

Sung-Ho, who is autistic, has Savant's Syndrome. His mother accompanies him in all his trials and dedicates her life to trying to build a future for him. Gun-ki, his brother, holds a grudge against both of them.

The inhabitants of the small Auvergne breathe according to the rhythm of the Ander, however, their love story with their small town is upset by the pollution. Nos Rivières Fantômes reminds us of the damage caused to the highest streams, and of the real impact the polluting discharges have on its inhabitants ….. and on the downstream watercourses !

In southern Italy, the narrator tells, in first-person, the story of his return to the native country, within the framework of suffering and misery of a ghetto of African communities. They have to work tirelessly, in harsh conditions, for poor wages, and under the suspicious gaze of the Italians.

October 2014. What no one dreamed of occured. The Burkinabè peacefully ended the mandate of Blaise Compaoré, self-declared lifelong president. The rapper Serge Bambara, known as Smokey, was among the insurgents. Today he is considered as one of the makers of this political change. ”On a le temps pour nous” brings us into the daily life of the iconic rapper.

In a training center for house work, like many others in the Philippines, candidates who are about to leave prepare themselves for the homesickness and mistreatment that could occur overseas. They do so by “pre-enacting” the abuse they will likely face in their deployment across the world.

Pacific is the name of the Brussels building where the director lives, on the 18th floor. Also called "the suicide tower", it is a typical example of collective housing. In a subtle play between interior and exterior, between private and public places, Angie Obeid reveals an anxiety-provoking and closed-in space, even though the windows of the apartments offer a dizzying, suspended view …

One day, One room, One take. After her spinal surgery, she was always in pain, intense pain, unendurable pain. Painkillers have been her refuge for a long time, but one day, she decided to stop.

Six years after the opening of the Kalsaka mine in northeastern Burkina Faso, the situation is bitter. Despite all the hopes for development, gold has not shone for Kalsaka. The mine is closing and leaving behind a priceless legacy of social and environmental catastrophe. Through the storyteller’s declamation, courageous men and women fight for reparations and become the actors and actresses of a contemporary western.

We live in an environment saturated with chemicals and electromagnetic fields. The effects of these massive exposures are being felt by a growing number of people, including Isabelle, Kathya, Jean-François, Sylvain and Jayden. An incursion into the little-known world of environmental hypersensitivity.

An intimate and sincere portrait of teenagers with problems who are placed under temporary supervision. The challenging conversations with a counselor are meant to lead to a better life, but their past won’t leave them alone.

In the cold light of the Kremlin, we are placed in the position of a voyeur at the heart of Vladimir Putin's rise to power. Putin, Yelstin, Gorbachev appear on the screen, while the director's voice-over unravels Putin's games of false pretense and mutes the ghosts of the Soviet past. 

In Vollsmose, a notorious suburb in Denmark, "Qs Barbershop" is flourishing. For its customers, it’s much more than a hairdressing salon. Somali-descent owner, Qasim, is arguably the best in his field. However, he’s also very good at listening to the dreams, plans and fears of his clients.

In this sound portrait of the Meuse department, Guillaume Istace conducts an exhaustive investigation of a landfill project for radioactive waste by National Agency For Radioactive Waste Management. 

In their Montreal elementary school, children in their early teens wonder about the world around them. Each child expresses himself or herself, in his or her own way, on essential issues that make up the society in which they grow up.

Shakespeare's King Lear is delicately remodelled into Queen Lear in the hands of a travelling theatre troupe of Turkish peasant women. They travel on the dusty and perilous roads that lead to the remotest villages in the mountains, where even drinking water is hardly accessible. 

This documentary immerses us in contemporary Mexican society full of scandalous political affairs, the Mexican activist journalist Carmen Aristegui fights corruption and defends freedom of expression body and soul.

The touching and delicate story of a doctor who resuscitates children, constantly oscillating between life and death, in his work as well as in his private life. He finds himself at the centre of two tragedies, bringing attention to the world and all eyes on him.

Raised in Chicago’s notorious South Side, two friends and rivals, Kenny Jr. and Destyne Jr., began promising boxing careers at roughly the same time. At one point, there paths parted. One became a professional boxer, the other went to prison.

An old Brazilian legend says that the African gods created the feeling of sauda to remind people where they come from and who they are. Now that the director’s old parents need more support, the sense of dislocation is really making its presence felt.

In Putin’s Russia, where there are almost twice as many women as men and where men earn 30% more than women for equal work, women invest in workshops that purport to teach the skills necessary to seduce wealthy men.

In the Gulf of California, poaching threatens the vaquita, the world's smallest harbour porpoise, which is on the verge of extinction. To save it and bring those responsible for the disaster to justice, a team of leading scientists, environmental advocates, investigative journalists and Mexican naval agents are willing to risk their lives.

As the Internet finally arrives in tiny Bhutan, we witness its transformative impact on a young Buddhist monk whose initial trepidation gives way to profound engagement with the technology. Unexpected and profound, this teenager’s journey challenges us to reassess our own perceptions of relatedness and self-worth in an age of unparalleled connectivity. 

An inspection team investigates and fights against pollution and the smoke-laden fog which covers the city of Langfang, one of the most polluted cities in China. Despite the inspectors' best efforts, the Chinese government's strict environmental policy remains a big obstacle. What will happen to Langfang city in the years to come? 

Boniface “Softie” Mwangi, political activist, runs for office in a regional Kenyan election. But running a clean campaign against corrupt and strong political dynasties who threaten his relatives becomes increasingly harder to combat with idealism alone. Should a country really come before his family, as he’s always believed?

A group of refugees in search of a better life try to reach a safer country. They pay a smuggler to carry them across the borders in a fridge truck. However, the freezing temperature of the truck turns their hopes for a better future into a fierce struggle for survival.

Family ties sometimes manage to close intergenerational gaps. In Belarus, a retired soldier blocked in the Soviet past shares his life with his grandson, ex-engineer, who now seeks to earn more money while enjoying his new profession : stripping.

A lonely old man lives in an old trailer. Everyday he works in the fields, and everyday he attempts to call someone. While listening to the ringtones of his phone, he tells us about his life and search for love…

In an Iranian juvenile detention center, a group of adolescent girls serve their sentence for the grave crime of murdering their father, their husband or another male family member. It gradually starts to dawn on us that apart from being a prison, this closed, all-female environment is also a shelter from an aggressively male-dominated society. 

Online players describe their struggles with "swatting", a life-threatening cyber-harassment phenomenon that looms over them whenever they play. The events take shape through Youtube videos and wireframe images from a video game.

« Système K. “ as Kinshasa. In the midst of an unspeakable social and political chaos, a boiling contemporary artistic scene that started from nothing shouts out its anger and dreams of recognition. Despite harassment from authorities and personal difficulties of the artists, the movement invades the streets and nothing can stop it!

In Agadez, a Nigerian city at the gateway to the Sahara, migrants on their way to Europe cross paths with those fleeing Libya or who have been expelled from Algeria. We spend several days with them, as well as with a smuggler. They tell us about their hopes, their dreams, the difficulties of the road. Sometimes they play, cook or dance. They are human beings.

In India and around the world, in an era of globalized marketing, Valentine's Day is not just a cause of over-consumption. Feelings of loneliness, guilt, isolation can lead to other excesses.  In India, young people are giving more and more importance to "Parents worship day", which is gradually replacing the celebration of lovers and carries real family values. 

The story of a fisherman in Seychelles’s waters, intertwined by an economist’s report, brings to the surface the deep truth about oceans: to what extent is overfishing ecologically, and economically, sustainable? 

This documentary invites us into "The Cave", an underground hospital located in Ghouta, a city near Damascus. We discover the daily life of Amani Ballor, a pediatrician who has to face on the one hand the atrocities of war and on the other hand the tyranny of a patriarchy still very present in the Middle East.

The story of an Estonian eco-community of 12 adults and 6 children who lead an ecological and sustainable lifestyle. Over time, some ideas are eroded due to the lack of structure, new sexual relationships amongst the adults, loss of direction, and confusion. The biggest challenge is to overcome these difficulties and continue to live sustainably.

Anna and her four children live in a small town in the "red zone" of Donbass, Ukraine. To cope with a life disrupted by war, they decide to shoot films about their daily life, and their real-life misadventures as if they were in a fiction. An unexpected and meaningful point of view that makes us see love, friendship and hope in the midst of an extreme situation. 

In a subdued Athens, three characters in solitary conversation talk about their losses, their regrets, their desire for redemption. Their stories, almost confessions, are interwoven with the urban fabric, in a cinematic arrangement between the characters' inner worlds and the urban landscapes. Our heroes wander, perform their little rituals, and reveal unexpected facets of Athens. Three timelines, three voices, three confessions. Of these experiences, of these thoughts, some could be ours. They could be us.

Encouraging patients in a psychiatric hospital to form relationships with each other and to marry and live as a family, this is the bold new idea from the head of Ehsan House in southern Tehran. A selection committee chooses two patients to form the first couple. But are they capable of having a relationship that leads to marriage?

"The Overview Effect" is a cognitive shift in awareness reported by the astronauts who saw the Earth from space. Senior astronaut Jean-François Clervoy is one of the few to have experienced it. Discover his story from a legendary astronomical observatory at the top of the Pyrenees Mountains before going to space. 

In Roman times, the thermal baths were key places in public life. These establishments, accessible free of charge, were then essential places for social interaction. In the city of Varna in Bulgaria, this tradition has survived in a spa known locally as "the pit". But over this place floats the dark cloud of monetisation that has infiltrated every corner of our lives.

After years of war, terrorism and oppression, a group of Iraqi paragliders is resuming its life in the city of Mosul. Following a long entertainment ban, they rediscover their freedom, the sensations of their beloved sport and the simplicity of life after ISIS was pushed out of the city. In this documentary narrated by journalist Hugo Clément and directed by Chloé Rochereuil, explore the remains of the city of Mosul through the stories of Captain Muhammad and his friends and take to the skies for a paragliding ride with them in the Iraqi mountains.

My mother is dead. I'm in chaos. I think about her, I think about us. Hence where this film "An Essay on Us" came from. A film with no effect, raw. Tragic, tender and funny as life can be. Like memories rushing or missing, suddenly.

A man is on a bed, which is in a room, which is in a building, which is in a city, which is in a country, which is on Earth, which is in the universe, which is someplace else... Attempt to exhaust a seemingly simple question: where am I?

Victor is a teenager who suffers from a degenerative vision disorder that causes him to lose his sight gradually over time.

For the 12th edition, the Millenium Festival launches its first-ever edition of immersive documentary films. The main objectives are to explore the creative potential of virtual reality in the face of social challenges, and to analyse its added value compared to the "classic vision" of socially engaged cinema. VR-Millenium offers a panorama of Belgian and international VR films, as well as a day of reflection on VR and its challenges in relation to SDGs. Audiovisual creation professionals, political and social actors and the general public are invited to this unique event. 

Sakineh Karimbadi is one of the thirty women on Hengam Island who makes a living from her daily fishing. In a contemplative style, the documentary is a one-day ethnography of this micro-society. It shows us the beauty of the landscapes as well as the beauty of human traditions. Behind this ethereal portrait hides a bitter situation. 

Aishe, Khawla and Rehab have come to make a change. The first female plumbers in Jordan, one of the driest countries on earth, repair leakages, clean water tanks and show housewives how to handle water properly. But then a lawsuit puts their friendship to a test.