DENMARK    DR

Muldvarpen
(The Mole)

Mads Brügger's new documentary The Mole is a real life spy thriller about a retired chef from Denmark, and his double life as a secret agent. Together with his side kick, a former jet set cocaine pusher from Copenhagen, "the mole" manages to infiltrate one of the most brutal dictatorships in the world: North Korea. Over a period of more than 10 years, the film team gains access to the heart of an international criminal network that produces and distributes weapons and drugs for the rogue state of North Korea. Contracts are signed, deals are cut and soon the protagonists become deeply involved in a plan to make a secret, underground weapon and drug factory somewhere in Africa. But how far can they push the envelope before the trap clicks?

FRANCE    ARTE FRANCE

Petite fille
(Little Girl)

7-year-old Sasha has always known she was a little girl, even though she was born a boy. As society fails to treat her like the other children of her age - in her daily life at school, dance lessons or birthday parties - her supportive family leads a constant battle to make her difference understood and accepted. Multi-award winner Sébastien Lifshitz (4 selections in Cannes and 4 selections in Berlin) follows Sasha and her family for a year, capturing with his insightful, delicate and subtle camera their truly moving moments of joy and the many challenges they face together.

FRANCE    FRANCE2

On the line, les expulsés de l'Amérique
(On the line)

In Tijuana, thousands of Mexicans are expelled every year from the USA. For decades, some of them have lived, worked, paid taxes and started a family on the other side of the border. Mothers and fathers living in the USA end up finding themselves separated from their children for decades. This border town has become an airlock between two worlds where the broken lives of migrants end up. South of the wall, paths of reconstruction are winding and the spiral of exclusion is ruthless for those expelled from America.

GERMANY    ARD

Eine Klinik im Untergrund - The Cave
(The Cave)

The war in Syria has spread death and destruction across the country. In besieged Eastern Al Ghouta, incessant bombardment makes going outside a life-threatening proposition. Residential neighborhoods are targeted as indiscriminately as markets, schools, hospitals, medical centers and ambulances. Safety and hope lie underground, where a brave group of doctors and nurses have established a subterranean hospital called the "cave". Under the leadership of a young female pediatrician, Dr. Amani Ballour, the cave offers hope and healing to the sick and injured civilians. In a conservative patriarchal society Dr. Amani and her female colleagues have reclaimed their right to work as equals alongside their male counterparts. Their battle is not only to survive but to maintain their dreams and hopes for their country and for women.

KOREA (SOUTH)    MBC

Meeting You: Meeting Yong-gyun

Twenty-four year old Yong-gyun Kim died after his body was caught in a conveyor belt at a coal power plant where he was working as a temporary worker. After the death of her son, Yong-gyun's mother turned into a labor activist calling for stronger measures to stop industrial accidents. However, not many empathise with his death when roughly 2,000 lives are lost due to industrial accidents every year in the country. The Meeting You team wanted to ask the question: can sensory content contribute to empathy? So they recreated Yong-gyun's working environment with VR technology to invite average citizens for a walk in his shoes. Our version of "VR journalism" is composed of two parts: the first is to experience the work at a coal power plant where accidents are foreseeable, and the second is to get to know Yong-gyun as a person.

NETHERLANDS (THE)    NPO

Stop Filming Us

Stop Filming Us dissects the mechanisms underpinning the dominance of Western perspectives of the Congo and African countries in general. Journalist Ley Uwera, Photographer Mugabo Baritegera and Filmmaker Bernadette Vivuya are among the frontrunners of a new generation of Congolese that want to show their own reality in response to the one-sided Western dominated perceptions of their region. With their cameras, they are showing a picture that is miles apart from the standard Western imagery of misery and violence. Are there ways to adjust this paradigm and is a Western filmmaker capable of telling this story?

SWEDEN    SVT

Push

The local working and middle classes have become unable to afford housing in major cities across the world. London, New York, Hong Kong, Toronto, Tokyo, Valparaiso, Sydney, Caracas, Barcelona, Paris, Amsterdam, Stockholm… the list seems endless. People are being pushed out of their very own homes - because living in them has become unaffordable. We follow in the footsteps of Leilani Farha, UN Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing, who means that if we really want to make change to ensure all people can live in the city - then we have to be able to hold someone responsible for what is going on. Who are the players and what are the factors that make housing one of today's most pressing world issues? It is time to recognise that housing is a human right, not a commodity.