Britain's Weirdest Phobias

The lives of people plagued by irrational fears and the journeys they take in the battle to overcome them. Therapist David Allison helps sufferers come to terms with their condition.

Fear

In Fear, documentary filmmaker Michiel van Erp creates a collage of inhabitants of the city of Amsterdam who struggle with various anxiety disorders. Today, more patients with anxiety disorders seek professional help than those who suffer from depression, making anxiety the number one mental illness in the Netherlands. This film will show how a small number of those patients attempt to overcome their fears, in order to get on with their lives in the crowded cosmopolitan city that Amsterdam is today.

Agoraphobia

A series of interviews with young adults about their fears and frustrations.

Bitter Lake

An experimental documentary that explores Saudi Arabia's relationship with the U.S. and the role this has played in the war in Afghanistan.

Love Costs Everything

Love Costs Everything maps the history of Christian persecution from the first Christian martyrs to seven present-day stories of faith that knows no price. In the face of persecution, these followers of Christ fear compromise more than death itself. Filmed in Iraq, Columbia, India, Egypt, France and the United States, this feature-length documentary includes commentary from United States Congressmen, foreign government officials, religious leaders and scholars.

Memórias do Medo

In this original film from the multistreaming O POVO+, five supernatural narratives from Ceará intertwine in a suspense that blurs between reality and fiction. The exhumation of a body, a child with an unexpected attitude, the story of the woman in black, the house from which a character is expelled and a woman who hears and sees things "from another world".

We're All Going to Die

Ben is worried. Overwhelmed by the world's encroaching crises, he travels from Brandenburg to London to Kansas to the Yucatan peninsula and many places in between, to find out how to cope with social and ecological collapse.

End of the World

The Mayan doomsday prophecy looms over a dark night in Poland. A late-night radio host takes in calls from citizens expressing their concerns, predictions and speculations on what may happen when—or even if—the sun comes up. Simultaneously, a crisis centre dispatcher fields panicked calls from people experiencing real-life traumatic situations in need of immediate attention. The voices of these callers are interwoven with an intimate therapy session and a wandering taxicab to build a profile of a place where citizens want to be heard. Never showing the callers on the other end of the line, the film creates an aural overview of a darkened city. As the night progresses, the calls continue coming in, revealing the various struggles people are experiencing in dealing with conceptual fears and current woes—all in a world that soon may be over.

The Other Side of Fear

The Other Side of Fear signifies the actions which incite religious violence and broaden the divide of cultural and moral beliefs in society. The film shadows two clashing perspectives both of which are searching for safety in their own communities and these perspectives blend testimonies of trauma and manifestos of power. By using poetic documentation, the director acknowledges that there are more than two sides to every story and intertwines these sentiments, embodiments and experiences into one journey to understand what is happening behind the doors of communities the other hasn’t experienced.

La Meilleure Façon de tracer

Nowhere Home

In 2009 the Norwegian government introduced several measures to restrict immigration. One of the measures was to provide unaccompanied asylum seeking children temporary residence permits. They should be returned to their country of origin when they turn 18. In Norway child welfare custody of their children without close caregivers. This does not apply to unaccompanied asylum-seeking children between 15 and 18 years.

The Lie Detector

In the first decades of the 20th century, when life was being transformed by scientific innovations, researchers made a thrilling new claim: they could tell whether someone was lying by using a machine. Popularly known as the “lie detector,” the device transformed police work, seized headlines and was extolled in movies, TV and comics as an infallible crime-fighting tool. Husbands and wives tested each other’s fidelity. Corporations routinely tested employees’ honesty and government workers were tested for loyalty and “morals.” But the promise of the polygraph turned dark, and the lie detector too often became an apparatus of fear and intimidation. Written and directed by Rob Rapley and executive produced by Cameo George, The Lie Detector is a tale of good intentions, twisted morals and unintended consequences.

Shoot Me

The Iranian filmmaker Narges Kalhor, daughter of a former advisor of Ahmadinejad's, has been living in exile in Germany for four years. When she hears that the fellow Iranian rapper Shahin Najafi, who is also living in exile in Germany, faces death threats and has to hide because of one of his songs, she doesn't hesitate and has to find him. On her search she encounters fear everywhere. Narges Kalhor has to face her inconvenient memories of suppression, hatred and anger for her past in Iran.

So No Harm Comes to You

This story is based on Lisa Rydberg's teenage experiences. An unknown man shows Lisa the way to the bus station on a dark night. After a while she wants to go by herself, but he doesn't allow it. This is a story about making the wrong decision, about fear and about our society.

Shadowlands

Shadowlands is an animated short film about darkness that won't let go. About the constant fear that something terrible might happen. It describes a journey into the inner world and psyche of a young person in distress, a world far from "normal".

Irreversible

A woman’s lover and her ex-boyfriend take justice into their own hands after she becomes the victim of a rapist. Because some acts can’t be undone. Because man is an animal. Because the desire for vengeance is a natural impulse. Because most crimes remain unpunished.