Alone

Park Hong-min : 2015
Honja

Su-min spies from his balcony on the house of neighbours over the road and happens to photograph a brutal murder. It marks the start for a series of muddy events. Until Su-min wakes up and it seems he has dreamt it all. But there is no avoiding of horrific events, while it becomes less and less clear whether they are real or inside his head. Memories, dream and reality become entangled. Victims and culprits continually swap roles. A nightmare set in a labyrinthine residential area of Seoul. Houses are close together, but there's no one on the street. Su-min can run as far as he likes, but always seems to return to the same spot. Park Hong-min's second feature had its international premiere in competition in the Bright Future section at International Film Festival Rotterdam 2016.

Pacífico

Fernanda Romandía : 2016

On the beach of Puerto Escondido in Mexico, a sleepy community where very little seems to happen, people are working hard on constructing a house designed by the famous Japanese architect Ando Tadao. The tranquil coastline is a strange place for such a huge concrete construction, and it's not clear who commissioned the work, but the villagers and workmen don't seem to mind. Through the construction work, we get to know three people, each with their own problems, dreams and fears. Seven-year-old Coral goes to the building site every day after school to visit her godfather Diego, a bricklayer addicted to his telephone. There she also meets the carpenter Oriente, a poet muttering profundities whom she hopes will become her godfather, but who himself yearns to return to his family. Fernanda Romandía's fictional feature debut premiered in competition in the Bright Future section at International Film Festival Rotterdam 2016.

Endorphine

André Turpin : 2015

Twelve-year-old Simone is a witness to the gruesome murder of her mother, a trauma that causes her increasingly to shut herself off from reality. Together with her cousin, she plays a game in which they suffocate each other until they faint. At the age of twenty, Simone works in a parking garage, where panic attacks and visions make her life unbearable. And in her sixties, as a professor of physics, Simone gives a lecture about how the senses deceive our view of reality. Continuously turning in circles, a beautifully filmed puzzle unfolds, a hypnotic mix of dream, nightmare and mystery, in which the lives of three women going by the name of Simone are linked together through time and space. André Turpin's feature premiered at Toronto Independent Film Festival 2015, and screened in the Voices section at International Film Festival Rotterdam 2016.

Alba

Ana Cristina Barragán : 2016

Alba is eleven years old and terribly shy. She has great difficulty standing up for herself among the precocious girls in her class, who talk like little adults about relationships but keep making fun of Alba with the cruelty of children. The fact that she wears a plastic corset to straighten her crooked spine and gets nosebleeds at inconvenient moments doesn't help. And then she is occasionally dumped off with her eccentric father Igor, who she never knew and of whom she is very ashamed. Very slowly and cautiously, the father and daughter get to know each other. Ana Cristina Barragán's feature debut was winner of the Lions Film Award when it premiered in the Bright Future section at International Film Festival Rotterdam 2016.

Kollektivet

Thomas Vinterberg : 2016
The Commune

Erik and Anna are an academic couple with a dream. Together with their daughter Freja, they set up a commune in Erik's huge villa in an upmarket district of Copenhagen. With the family at the centre of the story, we are invited into their dream of a real commune. We participate in the house meetings, the dinners and parties. There is friendship, love and togetherness under one roof, until an earth-shattering love affair puts the small community to its greatest test yet. A humorous, delicate but also painful and touching portrait of an entire generation, a gentle yet confrontational declaration of love for a group of idealists and dreamers who have long since awakened to reality. Thomas Vinterberg's feature was winner of the Silver Bear for Best Actress at its international premiere in competition at Berlin International Film Festival 2016.

Julieta

Pedro Almodóvar : 2016

Spanning 30 years in Julieta's life from a nostalgic 1985, at a more prosperous time in her life where everything seems hopeful, to 2015 where her life appears to be beyond repair and she is on the verge of madness. 12 years ago Julieta's daughter, Antía, abandoned her without warning and hasn't spoken to Julieta since. When a chance encounter brings news of her daughter, Julieta returns to her former home to revive her search for Antía, whilst also examining the events leading to her daughter's estrangement. The film speaks of inevitable destiny, a guilt complex, the unfathomable mystery which makes us abandon the ones we love, wiping them out of our life as if they had never meant anything to us – and about the pain this abandonment causes in the victim. Pedro Almodóvar's feature had its international premiere in competition at Festival de Cannes 2016.

Quand on a 17 ans

André Téchiné : 2016
Being 17

Damien is the pampered teenage son of a soldier and a doctor. He lives with his mother in Army barracks in the south of France while his father is on a military mission in the Central African Republic. Damien shows a new, defiant side of himself in high school in order to stave off the bullies who taunt him over his effeminate ways: a friend of his father's is teaching him to wrestle. When he meets Tom, the adopted son of local farmers, the hatred between the two boys is immediate and visceral. But when Tom's mother is forced to go to the hospital, Damien's mother quite naturally offers to take Tom into their home for a short while. The tension between the two boys becomes more and more palpable. André Téchiné's feature premiered in competition at Berlin International Film Festival 2016.

L'avenir

Mia Hansen-Løve : 2016
Things to Come

Nathalie teaches philosophy at a high school in Paris. She is passionate about her job and particularly enjoys passing on the pleasure of thinking. Married with two children, she divides her time between her family, former students and her very possessive mother. But when her husband announces he is leaving her for another woman, she finds a newfound freedom suddenly thrust upon her that is simultaneously liberating and disconcerting. An intelligent, poetic and naturalistic exploration of one woman's pursuit of contentment in the face of adversity. Mia Hansen-Løve's fifth feature was winner of the Silver Bear for Best Director when it premiered in competition at Berlin International Film Festival 2016.

Beyond Sleep

Boudewijn Koole : 2016

A mythical quest for a stone that fell from the sky. Alfred Issendorf, a young, ambitious geologist, goes in search of meteorites in the swampy north of Norway, hoping that the journey will cement his academic reputation by uncovering a significant scientific proof. Alfred is also trying to continue where his father left off when he died during a similar research trip of his own. Alfred searches, stumbles and suffers on the pitiless Northern European tundra. He finds redemption only when he has reached the very brink of insanity. Based on the Dutch literary classic Nooit meer slapen by Willem Frederik Hermans. Boudewijn Koole's feature premiered as the opening film at International Film Festival Rotterdam 2016.