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International Documentary Film Competition: Unfamiliar Worlds

Three films offer a fascinating insight into the world of Asia. In the premiere THE MOUSO SISTERS, we follow the contrary lives of two sisters caught between traditions and modernity in current-day China. CHINA HEAVYWEIGHT is the portrait of two amateur boxers who want to use their sport to liberate themselves from their origins – China from a different angle. Our eyes turn to India in THE WORLD BEFORE HER. Nisha Pahuja’s fascinating documentary portrays strong women: While one takes part in a beauty competition, the other is a fundamentalist Hindu group member fighting against Western values. Both, however, have more in common than is first apparent. The world of medicine is indeed unfamiliar to us as the next two films show: With the camera focussed on the paramedics, SOFIA’S LAST AMBULANCE follows an ambulance as it journeys through the pot-holed streets of Sofia. Humour, absurdity and poetry – this year’s festival hit. THE WAITING ROOM observes with precision the never seen before events that take place in a hospital waiting room – and highlights with subtlety the problems of the American health system.