S1.E1 ∙ Christoph Niemann: Illustration

Howard Gibbs's 80-year-old gas station needs new tanks or inspectors will shut him down. Nearing retirement, he's desperate to lure his daughter back from the city help carry on the family legacy. Next-door, things seem better. A couple that moved from the city is opening a boutique guesthouse that serves cappuccino and stages eclectic music performances. But what would lead them to build here, along a stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway so poor that it could be mistaken for darkest Appalachia? Once the main road between Toronto, Canada's biggest city, and Ottawa, the nation's capital, this stretch of highway is now a black ribbon of failed businesses and derelict properties. What happened ? And why, despite the hardship, do some think it can be turned around?

Rottnest Island, Western Australia. A beautiful place that is culturally and spiritually significant to Aboriginal people. And also a site where gross harm took place and hundreds of Aboriginal men are buried in unmarked graves.

Suicide Italy is a journey into crisis' reasons. Through archive, demonstration and interviewing material it describes the Italian recession in its most recent and cruel evolution.

Buenos Aries Zero Degree is a "Making-Of..." documentary for about Wong Kar-Wai's 1997 film Happy Together. Included are interviews, on-set footage, deleted scenes, and footage of crew members revisiting the locations where Happy Together was filmed.

A Matter of Land recounts the first year of application of Colombian's Land Restitution Act from the perspective of a community who decide to engage with the process. The film explores the tensions that arise when such communities come face to face with the complex institutions responsible for enforcing the law. The result of these tensions is a narrative worthy of Kafka, in which a doorway to justice is opened for the sole purpose of demonstrating that no one can pass through it.

Ingrid tells the story of a prominent Dallas socialite/fashion designer in the 80s-- who dropped her life and ran off to the woods in order to pursue a personal and creative one. She has since become a total hermit and spends her time creating art out of rocks from the nearby creek. It is a never-ending project. Ingrid peels off the layers of this woman's persona, questioning what would drive a successful Texas fashion designer to leave her profession and family to immerse herself in nature and become an entirely self sufficient woman of the woods.