Views of Vidigal is a series of six shorts I filmed in 2014 while doing ethnographic research in Vidigal, a self- built area in the South Zone of Rio de Janeiro. I walked the favela streets and alleyways with friends and collaborators who were as interested as I on learning about how different people were experiencing life in 'pacified' Vidigal. Gentrification was one of the effects of pacification, a new securitisation policy the government implemented in preparation for the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics. It brought both challenges and opportunities to people in Vidigal. This series offers an impression of this period of pacification.

Yuruks are nomadic Turks who had moved to the Balkans in the 15 th and 16 th century. To this day, they fascinate with their ancestral lifestyle in villages in the eastern part of North Macedonia. Mergjuzel, a member of the Yuruk community, is a traditional but strong woman who strives to emancipate herself. Constantly pursuing a better life, her family has been changing their living place many times in the course of the past decade. How successful is the advance, and how do they facing their challenges?

The story follows a Pakistani world-class-musician preserving the families' classical Indian music heritage and a mystic Sufi who sacrifices his complete life for God, in doing good in his surroundings. Coming from two different directions, singer Ustad Saami and Sufi Gogha Sain meet at a similar point of wisdom and self-knowledge to act for the welfare of all – which proves a universal desire.

Newtopia is a visually rich, up close and personal documentary filmed over fifteen years. The young and adventurous backpacker Audun Amundsen is spellbound by the pure, unspoiled tribal life deep in the jungle of Indonesia. He wants to get as far away as possible from his own modern life in Norway. A strong bond grows between him and the shaman, Aman Paksa. As the years pass by, the romantic harmony starts to crumble. The Mentawaians are introduced to rapid modernization, or rather to the rubbish of the modern world. Natural materials are swapped with plastic, barter with capitalism. Aman Paksa is torn between two worlds that seem impossible to unite. He craves modernity and is longing for a safer, simpler life for himself and his family. However, accessing the modernity that is currently available to him would mean giving up on his traditional way of living and thinking.

Set amid the remote hills of Eastern Bosnia, Then comes the evening provides a quiet meditation on the seemingly uncomplicated pastoral lives of two women. Through simple and precise composition with attention to light and texture, the mundane details of their lives are rendered with the tactile richness of an oil painting. Their every action and word is infused with ceremony, ritual, and intangible cultural heritage in this intimate yet epic examination of how nature and humanity interact.

Sisters Maggie and Nora are from the Irish Traveller community – an indigenous nomadic ethnic minority group. Although forced off the road in the 1980s with the introduction of anti-trespass legislation, Maggie and Nora still travel back to Connemara (West Galway, Ireland) every summer to rekindle their connection with the land. With their caravans pulled up on the side of the road they recall a childhood spent in the area, lamenting the loss of loved ones, a close-knit community and the travelling way of life. However, their culture endures in nature and ritual; and the wings of their grand- nephew Connie.

To save a language tells the story of the endeavour to save an endangered Plains Indian language with the help of a language programme led by the Estonian linguist, Indrek Park. He has been working with Native American languages for over ten years. The film sees him recording the language of the Mandan, who live in the prairies of North Dakota, on the banks of the Missouri River. Indrek is running out of time – his language guide, the 84-year-old Edwin Benson, is the last native speaker of Mandan. The plans are much bigger than just recording the language for future generations – it has become a mission to revive Mandan, so that it would be used as a native language again. Several factors threaten the project. The Mandan have been providing ample financial support for the high-cost programme, but due to the falling prices of oil, the sale of which is a major source of livelihood, they might not be able to continue funding the initiative. The highest risk factor is Indrek himself. He is tired of living abroad and wishes to move back home to Estonia to start a family. Will he succeed in both the challenging job of saving a language as well as having a satisfying personal life?

Arne-Børge is retiring after many years at sea. His son, Tom-Richard, after spending his young adult life on shore and behind a desk, is taking over his father’s fishing boat after his retirement. The film deals with this transferral of knowledge and the impact it has on the family. The film is located on Vengsøya, an island just outside of Tromsø. It is inhabited by a small fishing community, in which Tom- Richard and his family have lived for generations. Ebb and Flow tells the story of the learning curves involved, of a relationship to the sea, and of the relationship between father and son.

The (mis)adventures of five tourist groups in a dry and poor area of Tanzania are explained and commented on by both the Dutch tourists and Maasai villagers involved, revealing and destroying not only the widespread Maasai stereotype, but also the imagery Maasai have of ‘whites’. As they send each other video messages, both hosts and guests discover what the ‘others’ were actually saying during the interactions, gaining insight in each other’s and own life situations and attitudes. The surprised, emotional, and ashamed reactions culminate in revealing, regretful and sincere dialogues, facilitated by the camera. The storyline and cinematography playfully address the entanglements of contrast and continuities between the two worlds, or is it only one?

At dawn, while the neighbourhood is still asleep, a few people are quietly entering a mysterious, busy lighted place. Inside, a man is cooking the bread dough prepared by his son. This duo of men then fills crates with warm bread, which a third man known as "the boss" regularly comes to pick up to deliver the bread in town, using his bicycle. In the early hours of the day, this trio of craftsmen are spreading their humble production throughout the city and its homes.

At the top of Serra do Espinhaço, near the centre of Brazil, Jandira's family lives the first days of the flower gathering harvest season, searching for the valuable golden grass flowers.

Ocak tells the story of a family who earns their livelihood as hazelnut cultivators in rural north-eastern Turkey. Filmed in an observational style, it offers glimpses into the local everyday life in the village and explores the relationship between people and their hazelnut gardens which have been inherited throughout generations. As the film reflects on labour and gender, it also asks questions about the heart, land and family. Ocak hopes to challenge the all too prevalent mainstream narrative within the documentary media tradition, which frame gender dynamics in the Muslim Middle East simply as an oppressor-oppressed dichotomy. By taking the audience closer to the daily worries and desires, joys and quarrels of the people on screen, Ocak provides an in-depth ethnographic understanding of life as lived by the members of this community.

Under Paris' glittering Eiffel Tower, undocumented Senegalese migrants sell miniature souvenirs of the monument, to support their families back home. Far from their loved ones and hounded by the police, each day is

A war between government and ISIS-affiliated jihadists in Marawi, Philippines, forced hundreds of thousands to flee from their homes. After the war, residents struggle to rebuild their homes and lives in a deformed city. The film unfolds as an emotional journey weaving together the stories of its protagonists over a period of two years. Displaced couple Yusop and Farhanna and their children yearn for freedom, income, and comfort after returning to their city. But even to return to normalcy is already a struggle. Nancy, a once wealthy woman, has to cope with her loss of home in an evacuation shelter where she will have to remain for years. An anonymous driver with striking insights shuttles back and forth between places and stories around a city which will never be the same again.

In one of the last remote forests of the Philippines on the island of Palawan, Medsinu an old shaman, traditional healer and spiritual guide is worrying about his own people’s survival. He feels his aura diminishing to the profit of government will and intrusions of missionaries of which he laughs about and mocks. He claims that, in the past, a pastor came into the forest, pretending to spread god’s word but in fact were more interested in tchatting up their young women. In his mind, spirits are worth fare more than any missionaries. Medsinu is resigned and guesses his people will be dragged down by dangers coming from the coast. He is expecting death as a liberation. When he died, Medsinu left behind him an orphan society. A deafening sound of bulldozers, backhoe machines, opening a track close to the Palawans’ huts. As they are frightened by those big machines the natives run away. A foreign mining company is considering settling on Palawan land of which the earth abounds with nickel. Without a shaman and having lost their bearings, facing modern intrusion from an outside world, the Palawan are looking for a new shaman.

Reindeer rider is based on the archive records of the Soviet time reindeer herders' team leader and the video-diary of a modern herder describing the cultural traditions and innovations of the Kamchatka Evens – an ethnic minority people living in the Far East of Russia.

In a hamlet of Portugal’s remote inland, between the rivers Douro and Tâmega, there live about thirty people. At the top of a hill, we find sisters Ana and Glória living in an isolated place which the baker, the fishmonger, the grocer, and their children visit once a week. Everything else comes from the soil, which the two sisters work from sunrise to sunset, amidst the strips of farmed land. We follow the agricultural cycle over the course of a year as the relationship between the director and the protagonists ripens. The veil is lifted on these women’s day-to-day lives and their deepest thoughts about life in the countryside, the only life they know.

A Ramadan in Lisbon, a collective film, reveals the atmosphere of the month of Ramadan at different moments, from its beginning, full of enthusiasm and frenzy, to the exhaustion of the last days. Filmed in a context where fasting is neither widespread nor common, the documentary follows its characters on the streets, in their landscapes and through their worlds. It is the outcome of a shared creative process, and it sets in the background a Lisbon which is close and familiar, in a movement of humane cinematographic approach.

The story of an old woman who talks to her birds to escape loneliness. She raised her seven children with hard work but They did not come to her after leaving home and living their private lives. She lives on the outskirts of the town. Her self-esteem does not allow her to seek government support for a living, even in difficult economic situations, and makes a living by selling the products She produces herself. She does not change the natural way of life with industrial life. Her only wish is to see her children again.

More than a thousand autumns ago, humans arrived with their animals to a land pushed up against the Arctic ocean. Autumns came and autumns went. Where the road ends, Úlfar, the last in a long line of farmers, lives with his wife. As autumn returns their grandchildren arrive from the city to attend the last herding of the flock. Next autumn farming will cease and all the sheep will be gone, but the landscape pushed up against the Arctic ocean will continue to tell about that one last autumn at the end of the world.

Sebastian and Pastora are a Shuar couple living in the Amazonian rainforest of southern Ecuador. Their everyday activities such as communal works organised with other villagers are mediated through manioc based alcoholic drink called "Chicha". Sebastian is a healer, and his unique practice of plant knowledge experimentation opens up new dimensions of co-existence with the ecology of the forest, now threatened by deforestation and extinction of wild animals in the area. Through these practices, including visionary experiences induced by powerful plants such as ayahuasca, they create, invent and revive their sense of reality and future. While their life has been undeniably affected by the state system, they struggle to find their own sense of authenticity. Then, a serious accident occurs, which they must overcome with their faith in plants.

Old age, illness and death are writ large in all our fates. Many moments of farewell await. Sometimes sudden ones. How can you be ready for those, and can you avoid having too many regrets? This documentary follows anthropologist Luo Hongguang at his 102-year-old mother's side, as well as ""Together""'s director Wang Ningtong (Nina) as she witnesses her cancer-stricken father's last few months. They focus an unsparing lens on each other as they approach issues like old-age support in the home and end-of-life care. As they explore each other's boundary looking into themselves and each other, the wall starts to break down between observer and subject.

Pico island, Azores. A lava crust in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, where it’s inhabitants, in lack of good soil, drove the vine into the stone. Lashed by the ocean winds and by the winter cold descending the mountain, the vine thrives in the draughtiness of the stone with the aid of men, whose lives revolve around the vine and wine culture. In Pico island, the wine houses, more than storage places for wine, firewater, liquors, are places opened to encounter, sharing, arguing, playing and singing, or a hideout at the end of a working day.