Babies at 50

The Story of the Weeping Camel

June 2003 •Mongolian

When a Mongolian nomadic family's newest camel colt is rejected by its mother, a musician is needed for a ritual to change her mind.

After You

January 2013 •Swedish

"My mother is spending all her time with her dying father. I’m spending all my time filming her. As the end is getting closer, my mother and I start doing the filming more and more together. It becomes our way of dealing with the time we have left." —Marius Dybwad Brandrud

In The Womb

January 2005 •English

In The Womb is a 2005 National Geographic Channel documentary that focus on studying and showing the development of the embryo in the uterus. The show makes extensive use of Computer-generated imagery to recreate the real stages of the process.

Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father

October 2008 •English

In 2001, Andrew Bagby, a medical resident, is murdered not long after breaking up with his girlfriend. Soon after, when she announces she's pregnant, one of Andrew's many close friends, Kurt Kuenne, begins this film, a gift to the child.

Der lange Weg ans Licht

February 2008 •German

Edeltraut Hertel - a midwife caught between two worlds. She has been working as a midwife in a small village near Chemnitz for almost 20 years, supporting expectant mothers before, during and after the birth of their offspring. However, working as a midwife brings with it social problems such as a decline in birth rates and migration from the provinces. Competition for babies between birthing centers has become fierce, particularly in financial terms. Obstetrics in Tanzania, Africa, Edeltraud's second place of work, is completely different. Here, the midwife not only delivers babies, she also trains successors, carries out educational and development work and struggles with the country's cultural and social problems.

The Baby Formula

July 2008 •English

Two adventurous women in love are desperate to have their own biological child. They take a chance on an experimental scientific process and make sperm from their own stem cells. Pregnant with humor and unexpected twists, their journey ultimately confirms that all life is a gift and all families are crazy.

Olmo and the Seagull

November 2015 •English

'Olmo and the Seagull' is a poetic and existential dive into an actress's mind during the nine months of her pregnancy as she must confront her most fiery inner demons while trying to rewrite a new philosophy of life, identity and love. Underlying this hybrid film is mounting tension over what is real and what is enacted when one is performing one's own life.

I Bought a Time Machine

April 2020 •Korean

Yeon Park orders a time machine on eBay for her father’s birthday, seeing it as an opportunity to discover a few truths about her family’s past. Yeon responds to her father’s private prints through another distribution of the sensible. Fun and intimate, I Bought a Time Machine uses technology like a mediation necessary for communication.

Aria

July 2017 •French

Aria, a film about queer parents, identity and family constructions. It is through a series of portraits, of people leaning their faces over her belly that the artist proposes a diversity of stories and reflections on motherhood, parenthood, the desire or not to have a child, descent, and childhood. Entirely shot using smartphones, the film proposes an intimate journey, told via sensitive, fun or moving words, a contemporary family album.

The Mirror and the Window

November 2021 •Spanish

Filmmaker Diego Gutiérrez knows that he is soon to lose two loved ones: his mother Gina Coppe and his best friend Danniel Danniel. Both ask him to film them during this final phase of their lives—Gina in her apartment in Mexico City, Danniel in a Dutch restaurant where he feels at home. What stories do they want to leave behind?

American Thrift: An Expansive Tribute to the "Woman American"

January 1962 •English

Chevrolet presents this tribute to the American woman and her thrifty ways with money. The film also salutes the individuality of the Amerian citizen and the variety of choices we have in the marketplace.

Elders & Family: The Family Meeting

January 1996 •English

This unique video teaches families who need to care for an elderly parent how to work together to develop a shared caregiving plan. It takes an in-depth look at how one typical family comes together to assess its elder parent’s needs.

Terwijl het liefde was

August 2021 •Dutch

Artistic director of the National Theater Eric de Vroedt writes and directs a performance about his own mother Winnie, who passed away in 2020. This piece, titled The Century of My Mother, is a family story about the migration from the Dutch East Indies to the Netherlands. It is De Vroedt's way of examining the relationship with his mother and not having to say goodbye to her yet: 'I can let her live on stage, but when the curtain falls, when the play is completely finished, then she is really dead'.

Bodysong

December 2003 •English

Documentary footage from various sources, set to music. Showing the whole of human life, from birth to death and beyond.

Deshilando Luz

May 2025 •Spanish

A film essay that intertwines the director's gaze with that of her late mother. Beyond exploring mourning and absence as exclusively painful experiences, the film pays tribute to her mother through memories embodied by places and objects that evidence the traces of her existence. The filmmaker asks herself: What does she owe her mother for who she is and how she films? To what extent does her film belong to her?

Než přijde dítě

January 1953 •Czech

Mothers

February 2011 •Macedonian

Two nine-year-old girls report a flasher to the police even though they never saw him. Three filmmakers meet the only residents of a deserted village - an elderly brother and sister who have not spoken to each other in 16 years. Retired cleaning women are found raped and strangled in a small town. The fiction slowly turns into a documentary.

Mother

April 2009 •English

Mother compiles clips of mother figures from classic Hollywood cinema and television dramas. The figures range from the Virgin Mary and Mother Courage, to characters from Maude (1972–78), Aliens (1986), Imitation of Life (1959), and American Gangster (2007). The characters play out scenes of care, loss, emotional manipulation, abandonment, and grief. The intense relationships between mothers and daughters are especially prominent.

Le monde selon bébé

December 2005 •French

From the seventh month of pregnancy, the five senses of the baby in utero become functional. In the closed universe that is his, a formidable sensory exploration begins. How does he perceive his world and ours? What are its learning and memorization capacities? What happens when he is born in our world of air and gravity, which is far different from the world of his gestation, where all his needs were satisfied "to the nanosecond"? This documentary explains with precision, and a certain wonder, what we know today about the experiences and faculties of the little man, before and after birth.

Heaven Can Wait – Wir leben jetzt

October 2023 •German

The film accompanies members of a Hamburg choir singing modern pop songs.