top of page
OKO GLOBAL NON-FICTION 2025
Against the Tide, 2023
Director: Sarvnik Kaur
Country: India, France
Bombay fishermen Rakesh and Ganesh are inheritors of the great Koli knowledge system – a way to harvest the sea by following the moon and the tides. Rakesh has kept faith in the traditional fishing methods while Ganesh has strayed away from them, embracing technology.
House with a Voice, 2024
Director: Kristine Nrecaj, Birthe Templin
Country: Germany
The story of six Burrneshas who, for different reasons, have decided to take on the social role of men. They have done this to circumvent patriarchal structures, to avoid misogynistic attacks, to support the family economically, to avoid compelled marriage and to be free. They speak about freedom and oppression, about the promise of sacrificing their lives for the sake of their families’ survival. But also about the breaking of gender barriers and the power of the human mind to decide who we want to be.
Machtat, 2023
Director: Sonia Ben Slama
Country: France, Lebanon, Tunisia
Fatma and her daughters, Najeh and Waffeh, are wedding musicians—machtat—in Mahdia, Tunisia. As Najeh seeks freedom through remarriage and Waffeh hopes to escape her violent husband, Fatma is caught between them, wishing for a peaceful future.
On Dusty Tracks / Chemin de terre, 2025
Director: Simon Desjobert
Country: France
In the half-abandoned workshops of the Ethiopian Railway, railway workers Goshou, Berhanu, and Basha try to keep their machine alive every day. To cover the 207-kilometer journey through the desert takes more than ten hours, sometimes longer. Sometimes, the train doesn't leave. Just a stone's throw away, a new electrified line built by China threatens to push this historic line into oblivion.
Silent Observers, 2024
Director: Eliza Petkova
Country: Bulgaria, Germany
In a remote village in the mountains of Bulgaria, six domestic animals reveal the dark side of human fear and superstition. ‘Silent Observers’ is a cinematic and deeply original film about imaginary worlds in closed communities, somewhere between documentary and folk horror – all of it seen from the silent perspective of the animals. Matsa the cat is suspected of being a vampire and Kirka the shapeshifting donkey is suspected of being his owner’s bewitched son in another form. Without much dialog and with great sensory tactility, director Eliza Petkov conjures a timeless world where ancient folklore seeps into the present and occult forces rumble in the twilight. But although her film shifts its perspective from humans to animals, it deliberately avoids giving the animals human characteristics – the last inhabitants of the village will handle that themselves.
The Lions on the River Tigris, 2025
Director: Zaradasht Ahmed
Country: Norway, Netherlands, Iraq
In Mosul, a city devastated during the battle for liberation from the Islamic State, the fight to heal and preserve its identity, culture, and art is not over. Three men refuse to let Mosul remain in ruins. A city with 8,000 years of history, struggling to reclaim its soul through those who refuse to let it fade into oblivion.
The Mother of All Lies, 2023
Director: Asmae El Moudir
Country: Morocco, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Egypt
A young Moroccan woman’s search for truth tangles with a web of lies in her family’s history. As a daughter and filmmaker, Asmae fuses personal and national history as she reflects on the 1981 Bread Riots, drawing out connections to contemporary Morocco.
The Road to Patagonia, 2022
Director: Matty Hannon
Country: Australia
Ecologist Matty Hannon begins an incredible solo adventure, to surf the west coast of the Americas by motorbike, from the top of Alaska to the tip of Patagonia. But deep in the wilderness - alone with the wolves and the bears - the journeyer’s plans unexpectedly fall to pieces. After losing everything, and on the cusp of quitting he meets the girl of his dreams, a permaculture farmer named Heather. Shot over 16 years, the result is an adventurous exposé on the more-than-human-world, offering a physical and spiritual odyssey to better understand our place in Nature.
Tomorrow I Leave — Mâine mă duc, 2023
Director: Lukas Schöffel, Maria Lisa Pichler
Country: Austria
Maria, in her 40s, travels regularly between Romania and Austria, working as a live-in caregiver. The film empathetically explores the emotional and moral tension between personal sacrifice and the need to support her family.
To the West, in Zapata / Al oeste, en Zapata, 2025
Director: David Bim
Country: Cuba, Spain
Landi and Mercedes are a married couple remaining in the marshlands of Zapata, the toughest area in Cuba. In the midst of a pandemic, shortages and social unrest, they must go to extreme lengths to provide for their son.
bottom of page