Concrete Pharaohs

A troupe of gypsies takes a traveler along with them on their day trip.

Varanasi is the Indian city where Hindus go to die. Stretching along the Ganges, Varanasi holds great spiritual significance because Hindu scriptutres say that anyone who dies there will attain moksha—liberation from the cycle of rebirth. Berlin-based director Dan Braga Ulvestad captures life and death in India’s heartland in this moving documentary filled with exquisite cinematic moments. By the River starts its narrative journey with the city’s “death hotels,” dedicated apartments where people wait to die, sometimes for decades, so they can be cremated on the banks of the Ganges.

Milana, Sephora, and Mario are between seventeen and twenty-six years old. They grew up in modest, stigmatized rural Manouche families. Unlike their parents, they have degrees and work as employees. They have dreams to fulfill.

A film that immerses its audience in subjective states of consciousness they might experience when they die, imagining what they can see and think and hear in a seamless but fragmentary flow of poetic images, words and music. The viewer undertakes a journey into their own interior world of dreams and projections in which time and space, and cause and effect logic, are turned on their heads. Text Messages from the Universe is inspired by The Tibetan Book of the Dead, a text which guides souls on their journey of 49 days through the 'Bardo', or intermediate state, between dying and rebirth.

Four experts in different areas such as religion, philosophy and thanatology, share their wisdom when it comes to death.

Roma are an important part of Ukraine's population. There are quite a large number of them living in the country—between fifty and one hundred thousand. This documentary shows the peculiarities of the Gypsy people's life in modern society. You will see the stories of five Gypsy barons who will talk about the traditions of their people and reveal some secrets that were previously known only to the Roma.

A young woman from Barcelona's La Mina neighborhood inquires into the past of the Roma people in this documentary about the persecution of the Roma people.

A team of Romany football players try to overcome prejudice in this Czech documentary.

Moving away from the conventions of traditional documentary filmmaking, Gitani presents itself as a vibrant "emotional vision" of Romani life. Rather than a rigid factual account, the film immerses the audience in an atmosphere of pure euphoria and shared joy. Music serves as the essential thread that weaves the entire work together, while the visual narrative mirrors the fluidity of dance—constantly assembling and dissolving to the beat of the performers' movements. It is a rhythmic and sensory experience that prioritizes feeling and atmosphere, capturing the spirit of a culture through the harmony of sound and motion.

After I died from suicide, I was punished for this deadly sin, to live alone in the spirit world deep in the sea, but He gave me a chance to redeem my sin by shooting a film of a philanthropist's afterlife to ask and get the merits, I've been waiting for overly time to see a philanthropist's spirit.