Best of DAFilms 2025

Botanical and film archives weave together in the art of overcoming time, attempting to preserve what will become memory.

Documentary follows trees that are transported, at great expense and inconvenience, from the coast of the Republic of Georgia to the private garden of that country's former prime minister.

Chris Marker's epic film-essay on the worldwide political wars of the 60's and 70's: Vietnam, Bolivia, May '68, Prague, Chile, and the fate of the New Left.

Experimental movie that broke new ground for its exploration of lesbian identity and desire, beloved for its radical depiction of queer sexuality on screen.

Monique and Michel Pinçon-Charlot, famed sociologists of the ultra-rich, enjoy retirement - yet rest is impossible when capitalism remains their lifelong adversary.

There is Portugal, there is the Portuguese language and there is a Ukrainian filmmaker who learns the language and approaches the role of the potential migrant.

The road, the house, the key, the animals, Bamssi. Images with the urgency of an Instagram story create a dialogue within the family across the sea.

A filmmaker’s inquiry into transcendence becomes a three-hour trip across countries and cultures, interconnecting people, places and times.

A rich, unnamed, enigmatic woman embarks on a single-minded quest to drink her way into oblivion.

Glimpses of the solar eclipse of march 20, 2015 in Lisbon. A letter from elsewhere recounts life in a distant land.

How do we perceive nature? Is it a thing to which we humans are external? Or are we all part of a mesh where there is no centre nor periphery?

The haunting landscapes, abandoned ruins, and rusting shipwrecks of Elefsina, Greece, take on a heightened, almost science-fiction-like quality in this visually and sonically arresting essay.

In 1998, filmmaker Barbara Hammer had an artist residency in a shack without running water or electricity. While there, she shot film, recorded sounds and kept a journal.

At the Natural History Museum in Vienna, everything that is found on earth and in outer space, is collected, archived, and studied in the name of evolutionary research.

Ukrainian children are confronted with their past as they explore their new home in Germany: a former Wehrmacht military barracks.

On the coal road linking the Shanxi mines with the large port of Tianjin, in northern China, the drivers of 100-ton trucks shuttle endlessly to and fro, day and night.

The director reflects on her mother Nutsa, Georgia's trailblazing first female filmmaker, whose work spotlighted humanity, feminism, love, and anti-violence in dark times.

Evidence is both an analysis of corporate spending and the impact of dark money on US politics and ideology and a personal meditation on ideas of family and care.

The art of delusion is sculpted with images from a family archive from the 70s and 80s and sound clips from films.

In the very waters where Melville’s pequod gave chase to Moby Dick, Leviathan captures the collaborative clash of man, nature, and machine.

Portrayed in black and white photography, this observational documentary depicts the twilight days of a village and its people by the dreamlike Inland Sea.

In the northern Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico, there is an abundance of cenotes-underground springs that flow into caves. This film tells the story of the people, past and present, whose lives intersect with the cenotes, which are believed to be the connection between this world and the next.

Between birth and death, is the power to love and live. Political rules, religious orders, social norms and cultural taboos control who we love and how we love.

The mysterious world of the sleepless. Four insomniacs from different countries and continents invite us to spend a night in their world.

A documentary about a film workshop for children given by Alicia Vega, a teacher in a marginal quarter of Santiago, to kids whose common characteristic is that they have never been to the movies.

Blight was made in collaboration with the composer Jocelyn Pook. It revolves around the building of the M11 Link Road in East London, which provoked a long and bitter campaign by local residents to protect their homes from demolition.

The life of human beings, seen from birth to old age. Only that this generic life is not represented with humans, but with toys.

Director Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese analyzes the complexities of his relationship to his native country of Lesotho from his new home in Berlin.