Botánicos

Portrait of an Artist

There are estimated to be 71 million pets in Britain today, and 45% of households now own at least one. However, for some, one is nowhere near enough. In this documentary, we learn all about their lifestyle and witness the effect it has on their lives and relationships. In this remarkable film, we reveal Britain's most staggering animal obsessives and witness what happens when animal obsessions get out of hand.... the animosity, the relationship breakdowns, the risk of losing everything and the tales of people who love animals so much they collect dozens of them in their homes. Lynn loves her pet dogs so much she shares her semi-detached home with 41 of them. We meet Britain's Got Talent performer Steve and his 60 animals, there's dog enthusiast Emmie who's so devoted to her 12 pets that she has spent £60,000 on pampering them – with two hounds even getting hitched and Mary's small house is overrun with cats.

Leonora is no ordinary orangutan, she is a pioneer. With her three year old son in her arms, she is about to set off on an epic journey back to the wild - the great ape escape. It is a long way from what she is used to. After being orphaned as a baby, she has spent the majority of her life in a rescue centre. She is leaving behind 600 other orangutans, all of whom are relying on her for their chance at freedom. If Leonora can make it, they could too.

For the last decade, a team of frontline medics has been fighting to save Borneo's critically endangered orangutans. Armed with cameras, International Animal Rescue has documented their struggle: pulling apes from devastated jungle, giving emergency medical care, rehabilitating and releasing the healthiest orangutans back into the wild. This is both the story of their life-saving work and of how one of our closest wild relatives has been pushed to the brink of extinction. Combining genuine rescue footage with contributions from experts throughout, this documentary looks toward the future and asks what hope remains to save the orangutan.

Sunderbans (Forest of Beauty) is in West Bengal, India, and is the only place on Earth that is the natural habitat of Royal Bengal Tigers that have never known to be fearful of humans. One tiger has been known to kill three fully grown men, leaving behind orphans and widows who belong to poor tribes, dependent on harvesting wild honey and fishing, in a swampy mangrove region. About 80 people are killed annually by these ferocious beasts with razor-sharp jaws, whose forepaws can shatter bones, and sharp teeth can pierce a skull in one bite. Amidst religious superstitions, the narrator attempts to explain the cause behind their taste for human meat in a region devoid of electricity, roadways, firearms and safe drinking water, and why the villagers continue to live there despite of being stalked and mauled on land and water alike.

Thomas Haemmerli is about to celebrate his fortieth birthday when he learns of his mother's death. A further shock follows when he and his brother Erik discover her apartment, which is filthy and full to bursting with junk. It takes the brothers an entire month to clean out the place. Among the chaos, they find films going back to the 1930s, photos and other memorabilia.

Amid violence and war, Ukrainian citizens are coming together to rescue animals that have been left behind by those forced to flee. From cats and dogs in abandoned buildings to lions and tigers in the nation’s zoos, extraordinary rescue efforts are underway to bring them to safety. The film is a tribute to the very best of the human spirit despite the horrors of war.

A desktop documentary about the online afterlife of the late French filmmaker, Chris Marker.

The title Good Light, Good Air is oddly paradoxical. Keenly working at the point where his artistic identity and persistent attention on modern Korean history meet, director Im in this film focused on where the history of oppression and struggle intersect between Gwangju and Buenos Aires. In both cities, a great number of people who fought against the dictatorship were slaughtered and disappeared. The people of both societies still live with that trauma. When the testimonies of the victims of the two cities cross over, the film gives us chills as the eerie history of the two is very similar. Through Good Light, Good Air, director Im asks us how we will remember the past from where we stand right now.

Curiosity and Control examines our complex relationship to nature itself. A multi layered look at the world of Museums of Natural History and Zoological gardens, with voices from historians, authors, architects and zoo managers. It raises questions about how we perceive nature and our contradictory behavior of caging what we fear may be lost.

Edie Bouvier Beale and her mother, Edith, two aging, eccentric relatives of Jackie Kennedy Onassis, are the sole inhabitants of a Long Island estate. The women reveal themselves to be misfits with outsized, engaging personalities. Much of the conversation is centered on their pasts, as mother and daughter now rarely leave home.