Maite Jáuregui

Forensic experts scan Pompeii’s victims to investigate why they didn’t escape the eruption.

By decoding ancient hieroglyphic texts, Jean-François Champollion gave voice to an enigmatic civilization, but behind his legendary feat is a mysterious brother who made it possible. The recent discovery of correspondence between Jean-François Champollion and his brother Jacques-Joseph now allows us to fully understand how a young, self-taught genius was able to make one of the most important discoveries of the 19th century. Without the ingenuity and unfailing support of his older brother, Jean-François would never have succeeded in solving this enigma, which had international repercussions. With animated sequences of their private correspondence, and with the help of archives and expert analysis, this film revisits this unique scientific, human and intellectual adventure to celebrate the bicentenary of the decoding of hieroglyphics.

Most of us think of death as something clear-cut, and that medical science has it neatly figured out. This feature documentary explodes such assumptions through its exploration of a phenomenon that blurs life and death to an unprecedented degree.  In what Tibetan Buddhists call tukdam, advanced meditators die in a consciously controlled manner. Though dead according to our biomedical standards, they often stay sitting upright in meditation; remarkably, their bodies remain fresh and lifelike, without signs of decay for days, sometimes weeks after clinical death.  Following ground-breaking scientific research into tukdam and taking us into intimate death stories of Tibetan meditators, the film juxtaposes scientific and Tibetan perspectives as it tries to unravel the mystery of tukdam.

Revolcadero Beach in Acapulco, Guerrero, is one of the areas most affected by Hurricane Otis. Residents struggle daily with the effects of climate change to maintain their main source of income: providing tourist services.

The 19th of September of 2021 the volcanic ridge of Cumbre Vieja, on the island of La Palma started erupting. This eruption lasted until the 13th of December of 2021. Lucía and two other filmmakers decided to travel and register the volcano. This is the journal of the first two days, based on the camera errors and casual conversations that were on the footage:  Bad focus, being sleepy, journalists not knowing how to name the eruption, instagram, the crunch of Pringles fries, glutamato monosodico, the radio fluctuating between Prince and Elvis, selfies with the volcano, plans for illegal stuff and the seconds before a final system error.

Through a series of animated art boards depicting a decaying Venice, the film unfolds like a set of postcards, capturing the mythical city's final moments of fragility.  Blending archival footage with contemporary observations, and anchored by the story of the 1902 collapse of St Mark's Campanile, Venezia Diorama invites us to reflect on a city slowly eroding, yet suspended in time.

Former corporate whiz kid Robert McNamara was the controversial Secretary of Defense in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, during the height of the Vietnam War. Augmented by archival footage and cabinet conversation recordings, Errol Morris gives the conflicted McNamara a platform on which he attempts to confront his and the U.S. government's actions in Southeast Asia in light of the horrors of modern warfare, the end of ideology and the punitive judgment of history.

Disintegration Loop 1.1 consists of one static shot of lower Manhattan billowing smoke during the last hour of daylight on September 11th, 2001, set to the decaying pastoral tape loop Basinski had recorded in August, 2001. Shot from Basinski's roof in Williamsburg Brooklyn, this is an actual documentary of how he and his neighbors witnessed the end of that fateful day. It is a tragically beautiful cinema verite elegy dedicated to those who perished in the atrocities of September 11th, 2001.

A look at the people, history, and recovery of the mountain since the eruption in 1980.