2025: The Year from Space

While global attention focuses on Ukraine, the Middle East, and Trump’s trade policies, the situation in East Asia is shifting rapidly. Former wartime enemies Japan and South Korea are drawing closer and aligning themselves with Taiwan. An emerging alliance is forming—one that, together with the U.S., positions itself against China. But does this strengthen peace, or turn East Asia into a powder keg?

This Traveltalk series short showcases the Mexico City police department's various units as they participate in a yearly festival. Included are a marching band, a parade of patrol cars, the motorcycle unit, equestrian unit, and the department's pistol team.

On December 20, 2023, at the age of 84, Jack Lang was reappointed for a fourth term as head of the Arab World Institute. Proof, if any were needed, of the incredible longevity of a man who has embodied culture in motion for more than sixty years. From the creation of the Nancy Festival in 1963 to his legendary tenure as Minister of Culture on Rue de Valois, Jack Lang has moved through the decades without ever stopping. Professor, mayor, deputy, minister in all Mitterrand governments... he has remained a central figure in cultural and political life, always in action. Jack Lang tells his story, recounting his decisive encounters, his great achievements, his failures, and his personal dramas.

In 2022, Mantas Kvedaravičius went back to Ukraine, Mariupol, at the heart of the war, to be with the people he had met and filmed in 2015. Following his death, his producers and collaborators have put all their strength into continuing transmitting his work, his vision and his films. Also a PhD in anthropology, Mantas Kvedaravičius wished to testify as a filmmaker as far as possible from the agitation of the media and the politicians. With huge force and sensitivity, Mariupolis 2 depicts life as it continues amidst the bombing and reveals images that convey both tragedy and hope.

The jaw-dropping story of the spectacular rise and dramatic fall of British music and festival company Pollen. The company was launched in 2014 by two young British brothers, Callum and Liam Negus-Fancey. Riding the wave of the tech boom which saw start-ups like Deliveroo, Airbnb and Uber become ‘unicorn’ giants valued at $1bn or more, the brothers created a simple idea that soon attracted huge investment. Beginning as a ticketing platform – giving festivals goers the chance to earn VIP rewards for selling tickets to their friends – the company tapped into a lucrative area when music festivals and Instagram influencing were flourishing. They promised their customers a ‘bigger life’, gave staff a glamorous, party-fuelled workplace and soon went global.

Ten years after the film Home (2009), Yann Arthus-Bertrand looks back, with Legacy, on his life and fifty years of commitment. It's his most personal film. The photographer and director tells the story of nature and man. He also reveals a suffering planet and the ecological damage caused by man. He finally invites us to reconcile with nature and proposes several solutions

The biggest wildfire in North American history is brought to life, revealing what it means to us today, when the people of America are still figuring out how their federal government should manage and protect federal lands. It also explores how 21st century frontier technologies and people are coping with each other and with the ancient cycles of fire in a harsh yet beautiful land.

A documentary about Cairo Jazz Festival's Amr Salah and his struggle every year to bring people and arts together in a country where 70% of people are under 30 and the Officials do not care about culture too much.

Takes us to locations all around the US and shows us the heavy toll that modern technology is having on humans and the earth. The visual tone poem contains neither dialogue nor a vocalized narration: its tone is set by the juxtaposition of images and the exceptional music by Philip Glass.

This is a silent film, with a musical soundtrack, shot during a boat journey along the waterways of Kashmir that took him to the festival. Using the simplest equipment, a Super-8-camera with a special lens, and directing his attention at simple things--the rhythmic splashing of a heart-shaped oar, the sparkle of evening sun on still waters--Albert Falzon has captured the timeless slow motion of Northern India.

A year ago, on 29 December 2019, prisoners were exchanged with the self-proclaimed ‘LPR’ and ‘DPR’. Among the Ukrainians who returned home were journalist Stanislav Aseyev, tanker Bohdan Pantiushenko, and human rights activist Andriy Yarovoi. Four months earlier, on 7 September, Crimeans Oleg Sentsov and Oleksandr Kolchenko were released from Russian colonies. We spoke to the former prisoners about their first year of freedom.

During the last forty years, the photographer Sebastião Salgado has been travelling through the continents, in the footsteps of an ever-changing humanity. He has witnessed the major events of our recent history: international conflicts, starvations and exodus… He is now embarking on the discovery of pristine territories, of the wild fauna and flora, of grandiose landscapes: a huge photographic project which is a tribute to the planet's beauty. Salgado's life and work are revealed to us by his son, Juliano, who went with him during his last journeys, and by Wim Wenders, a photographer himself.

How could the Cannes Film Festival become the biggest cinema event in the world? For 75 years, Cannes has succeeded in this prodigy of placing cinema, its sometimes paltry splendors but also its requirements of great modern art, at the center of everything, as if, for ten days in May, nothing was more important than it. This film tells how Cannes has become the largest film festival in the world by opening up to cinematic modernity while never forgetting that cinema remains a performing art, a popular art.

A great flood arrives in a desert kingdom, transforming a dustbowl into a vast and lush wetland, in one of the most diverse habitats on earth. This breath-taking blue-chip natural history film is a journey through Okavango’s seasons, seen through the eyes of an indigenous River Bushman. Our storyteller guides us through the course of Okavango’s flood and into a savage drought, interweaving intimate and spectacular wildlife stories. The arrival and disappearance of precious water determines the destiny of the millions of animals that call Okavango home. For many, the flood is a lifeline. For others, it brings the greatest challenges. Everyone lives or dies by this epic event. It is the heartbeat of the Kalahari.