International Documentaries

Calvin & Hobbes dominated the Sunday comics in thousands of newspapers for over 10 years, having a profound effect on millions of readers across the globe.  When the strip’s creator, Bill Watterson, retired the strip on New Year’s Eve in 1995, devoted readers everywhere felt the void left by the departure of Calvin, Hobbes, and Watterson’s other cast of characters, and many fans would never find a satisfactory replacement.

It has now been more than a decade since the end of the Calvin & Hobbes era.  Bill Watterson has kept an extremely low profile during this time, living a very private life outside of Cleveland, Ohio.  Despite his quiet lifestyle, Mr. Watterson is remembered and appreciated daily by fans who still enjoy his amazing collection of work.

Mr. Watterson has inspired and influenced millions of people through Calvin & Hobbes.  Newspaper readership and book sales can be tracked and recorded, but the human impact he has had and the value of his art are perhaps impossible to measure.

This film is not a quest to find Bill Watterson, or to invade his privacy.  It is an exploration to discover why his 'simple' comic strip made such an impact on so many readers in the 80s and 90s, and why it still means so much to us today.

PRESS
"This affectionate doc includes some insightful points about the declining state of comic strips." (The Hollywood Reporter) 

“The film offers not only an in-depth look at the comic strip's unique influence but also a concise snapshot of the dwindling state of newspapers and their "funny pages."” (L.A. Times)

"Schroeder tracks the end of innocence in much the same way that the strip captured it each time out (..) he hardly makes a spectacle out of Watterson's secluded tendencies. The pileup of interview subjects speak eloquently on his behalf.” (indieWIRE)

A large three-master filled with artists, scientists and a sense of adventure sets off for the end of the world. Or in this case the quickly melting ice-covered world of Greenland. It ends up being an epic journey full of experiences, nightmares about polar bears and the discovery of entirely new species. But the most unexpected encounter of the adventure on this breathtaking journey are their own questions about life itself. An excursion full of curiosity, big feelings, magnificent landscapes and of course, a sense of humor.

"This conversation we're about to have never happened," says a dealer of diplomatic passports in the opening sequence of The Ambassador. It is a statement that sets the tone for a substantial part of this secretly shot film, and also proves the value of the method. The Ambassador reveals the dark side of Africa, an underworld that cannot be recorded in any other way. Mads Brügger is a Danish journalist and master satirist who won the 2010 Sundance World Cinema Documentary Award for The Red Chapel, in which he manages to get a Danish-Korean acting duo into North Korea for a performance. This time, dressed as a neo-colonialist, he sets off for the Central African Republic to impersonate the Liberian consul. He sets up a match factory run by pygmies as a cover for his ambitions in diamond trafficking. But Brügger is really there to show how the power in the country is allotted and traded. This mission is most definitely not without its dangers, as borne out by the murder of the chief of the security service, a former foreign legionnaire, some time after the two meet. Winner of the "Weten & Geweten Award" on DOCVILLE.

David Sieveking portrays the domestic care of his mother Gretel, who, like millions of others, is suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. David’s parents were active in the student movement of the 1960s and led an „open relationship“, which is now being tested in a dramatic way through the mother’s illness. The changes taking place within the mother forces the family to deal with its own conflicts and even teaches them new ways to express their feelings and experience intimacy, bringing them all closer together. With humor and candor, David Sieveking’s family chronicle is characterized by unaffected participation and loving affection, where it is the human being at the center of the story, not the illness.

Does money make you HAPPY? Kids and family? Your work? Do you live in a world that values and promotes happiness and well-being? Are we in the midst of a happiness revolution?

Roko Belic, director of the Academy Award® nominated “Genghis Blues” now brings us HAPPY, a film that sets out to answer these questions and more. Taking us from the bayous of Louisiana to the deserts of Namibia, from the beaches of Brazil to the villages of Okinawa, HAPPY explores the secrets behind our most valued emotion.

This DVD has only Dutch subtitles!