The Commission

Se ti Sabir

2019

"Se ti sabir" is a film reflecting on language, intelligence, and our relationship with new technologies and non-human species.

Writing the Land

2007

In this short documentary, a Musqueam elder rediscovers his Native language and traditions in the city of Vancouver, in the vicinity of which the Musqueam people have lived for thousands of years. Writing the Land captures the ever-changing nature of a modern city - the glass and steel towers cut against the sky, grass, trees and a sudden flash of birds in flight and the enduring power of language to shape perception and create memory.

Sheher-E-Lucknow

2025

A docu-film about the city Lucknow where the creators ask their family members important questions they have always wanted answers to, while indulging in tomfoolery around town. The film showcases the differences in the way three different generations perceive Lucknow. An ode to the city, and an attempt to provide solace to the social misfits of the creators' hometown.

I'm Khoisan, not Coloured

2021

During his stay in Cape Town as a film student, Shatho Tibone was inspired by an initial casual trip he took to the scenic but informal settlement of Hangberg. This film focuses on the uncertainties and inhumane acts of police and state brutality faced by the predominantly Rastafarian, KhoiSan identifying community of Hangberg in Cape Town, South Africa. So, through the participatory collective effort of a few journalists, filmmaker and community leaders Shatho went on a 5 year journey to document the story of this community which has become an enigma in South African imagination,

I'm Not Black, I'm Coloured: Identity Crisis at the Cape of Good Hope

2009

In the wake of one of the worst social experiments in the history of mankind, 'I'm not Black, I'm Coloured' is one of the first documentary films to look at the legacy of Apartheid from the viewpoint of the Cape Coloured. A people who in 1994, embraced the concept of Desmond Tutu's all encompassing 'rainbow nation', but soon thereafter realized that freedom, privilege, economic growth and equality would not include them. A people who for more than 350 years has been disregarded, ignored, belittled, and stripped of anything they can call their own enduring a complex psychological oppression and identity crisis unparalleled in South African history.

The Language Master

1997

Michel Thomas is one of the most brilliant language teachers in the world. His usual clients are movie stars and business leaders. This programme takes him to a Sixth Form College in London to work with school pupils, to test his claim that he can teach anyone a language in a week - with no reading, writing or homework. The film also explores his personal history - as a hero of the French Resistance during WW II. Nigel’s documentary with the 85 year old Michel Thomas was the first time that Thomas allowed his techniques to be made public. The subsequent success of the film transformed Thomas into a global celebrity and his method into one of the most highly regarded in the world of education.

Sonaggios

2025

In the Sardinian town of Tonara, where the ancient art of crafting cowbells teeters on the edge of extinction, a family battles to preserve their heritage, passing down skills to a new generation while grappling with personal struggles and the pull of modernity. English subtitles.

Pāragate

2023 · ★ 6

From Belgium, Jialai Wang maintains contact via smartphone and camera with her mother and grandmother in China. When her grandmother’s health deteriorates, Jialai returns to Shanghai, but when she arrives, her grandmother has already died, and she is left alone with her mother. A devout Buddhist, her mother seems to pay more attention to her daily prayers, Maoist past and dog Dongdong than she does to her daughter. She herself had been abandoned as a child by her own mother, when she divorced Jialai’s grandfather and moved to the city.

Gyani Maiya

2019 · ★ 10

“We left our language and started speaking others’. The girls have got married and have left for the villages. Boys are getting married in villages. It should be taught to children”. — Gyani Maiya Sen-Kusunda The Gi Mihaq (also known as Kusunda) was a semi-nomadic hunter and gatherer community that settled in villages around the mid-western Nepalese district of Dang. They have long lost their native language Mihaq (Kusunda), to acculturation and other barriers to active use. The community also lost their 83-year-old elder Gyani Maiya Sen-Kusunda in 2020, the most and the only known fluent Kusunda speaker then. Filmed in Kulmor in the Dang District in 2018, this openly-licensed documentary is a memoir of Sen-Kusunda in her own words and a biography of her people who were forced to leave their language and cultural identity. Kusunda is being revived by Kamala Sen Khatri, Sen-Kusunda’s younger sister, and Uday Raj Aaley, a local researcher who is the key interviewer for this film.

Lon Marum

2012

A TV-hour length documentary film depicting the relationship between language, culture, place, music, tradition, and magic on an active volcano, in the Pacific nation of Vanuatu, on the island of Ambrym.

Chasing Voices: The Story of John Peabody Harrington

2021

For 50 years, controversial ethnographer John Peabody Harrington crisscrossed the United States, frantically searching and documenting dying Native American languages. Harrington amassed over a million pages of notes on over 150 different tribal languages. Some of these languages were considered dead until his notes were discovered. Today tribes are accessing the notes, reviving their once dormant languages, and bringing together a new generation of language learners in the hope of saving Native languages.

Ghuza da Sher

The story of Nisar Ahmed Khan, told through his children and the people he served, a spiritual guide whose followers still visit his tomb on his birth and death anniversaries. And alongside how his family spends a few days at the village keeping his traditions alive.