Religion, the violence of war, friendship, abuse, music or dance... Documentaries are a source of varied knowledge that viewers of DocsBarcelona will be able to enjoy, the documentary film festival, which starts today in the Catalan capital.
The contest will open this afternoon at the Aribau cinema with the screening of Smoke Sauna Sisterhood. Directed by Estonian filmmaker Anna Hints, the film delves into the relationship between several women around a Finnish sauna, where they talk, share experiences and reconcile with their bodies. The film, which won the award for best direction at the last Sundance festival, has also received unanimous applause from critics.
The tenderness of these women who share a bathroom contrasts with the violence of the Belarusian military exposed to humiliation, torture, cruel hazing and even rape. Hanna Badziaka and Alexander Mihalkovich, a former conscript in the Belarusian army, delve into that terror in Motherland. No less painful is the gender violence that the Greek director based in Barcelona Efthymia Zymvragaki portrays in Ara la llum cau vertical with Ernesto, an abuser, as the protagonist.
Antek, a young Pole, has been educated in the most rigorous Catholicism. His family, nationalistic and homophobic, preaches celibacy, but when Antek falls in love with a progressive girl, he changes his way of seeing life. Hanka Nobis's camera captures and captures that transformation in Polish Prayers. And it is that religion does not always give the answers that the faithful seek. Ahsen Nadeem, born in Saudi Arabia, processes the Muslim religion, but is full of doubts, so he tried to find some truths in a Japanese monastery that hosts a sect of Buddhist monks who seek enlightenment through extreme physical labor. In Crows Are White , Nadeem recounts that experience, which was not easy at all.
Nor was it a bed of roses for Antonia Singla, the deaf bailaora whose trail Paloma Zapata has followed to film La Singla. And after so much drama, a bit of joy with the wonderful music of Césaria Évora. The Portuguese director Ana Sofia Fonseca recreates the life of the Cape Verdean singer in Cesária Évora, another of the essential titles of this documentary film festival that will be on the bill until May 28.
