Documentary reports on the annual icing of the Oder in the 160-kilometer border area between the GDR and the People's Republic of Poland. Icebreakers from both countries with experienced skippers join forces to make the international waterway between Frankfurt and Szczecin navigable again. Everyone works hard as a team and even a broken-down ship cannot stop them from achieving their goal. A look back at the winter of 1947 with its flooding shows what the freezing of the river and the subsequent thaw can do if the ice floes are not drained into the Baltic Sea via Lake Dammsch in good time. The skippers from both countries have known each other for years and trust each other; the camaraderie that has developed on the Oder unites the people, they control the river in winter for the common benefit of all.
Composed from the conversations that the director holds with people passing by in the street under his Warsaw apartment, each story in 'The Balcony Movie' is unique and deals with the way we try to cope with life as individuals.
Habibur Rahman’s The River of Partition (Ichamati, 2023) documents this riverine environment, the diverse communities that live around it, and the socio-historical role played by the river in the wake of the partition of India in 1947 and the creation of Bangladesh in 1971.
A man and his spirit navigate in harmony with nature. By day, by night, by the upheavals of unpredictability, he navigates the river as we all navigate our lives.
During another snowless winter, a famous freeride skier has a chance encounter with two kids on the street, which prompts him to dig through his grandfather's old family albums, capturing the snowy winters of the past.
Danusia and her daughter Basia live far away from the modern world, in tune with the rhythm and laws of nature, among animals and the spirits of the dead.
Jon Sistiaga takes an immersive trip to Poland, a country divided into two zones: on the one hand, the urban and pro-European, and on the other, the rural and ultra-Catholic, still anchored in the traumas of the war and the post-war period.
Rosana is an attractive teacher who is losing his youth with such discipline in the study. When suddenly bursts into his life a perfect cheeky who lives of game and odd jobs as photographer, but wants to acquire a little culture for personal reasons.
