Nieulotne

Jacek Borcuch : 2013
Lasting

An emotional love story about Michal and Karina, a pair of Polish students who meet and fall in love during summer work in Spain. An unexpected nightmare brutally breaks into their carefree time in the heavenly landscape and changes their lives forever. Can a few seconds influence one's life? How can they change it? The moment in which we start wondering about this dilemma is the moment when the exciting journey into the unknown begins, a journey into human imagination, where one's intuition and instinct are the guides. The story is a contemporary observation of the human condition in a micro scale. Through the eyes of young people we observe the disintegration of their seemingly ordered world. We become emotionally attached to the destiny of the characters – unobtrusively though, but simply due to empathy and desiring to understand them. With them, or actually through them, we have the opportunity to face our own nature and ask more questions without answers. Jacek Borcuch's award-winning feature premiered at Sundance Film Festival 2013.

Un giorno devi andare

Giorgio Diritti : 2013
There Will Come a Day

Painful family issues push Augusta, a young Italian woman, to doubt the certainties on which she had built her existence. On a small boat and in the immensity of the Amazon forest she begins her journey accompanying Sister Franca, a friend of her mother's, in her mission to the Indios villages. Augusta's journey seems driven only by questions to which she doesn't have any answer. After having parted company from Franca, Augusta fits in the reality of the favelas of Manaus: here, through the meeting of the simple local people, she manages to perceive again the atavistic strength of the instinct of life. She undertakes "her" journey, as far as isolating herself in the forest, welcoming her pain and finding love again, both with her body and soul. In a dimension where nature assumes a prophetic meaning, where it scans new times and establishes existential priorities, Augusta faces the adventure seeking a reconciliation with the world and with herself. The film premiered in competition at Sundance Film Festival 2013.

Before Midnight

Richard Linklater : 2013

We meet Céline and Jesse nine years after their last rendezvous. Almost two decades have passed since their first encounter on a train bound for Vienna, and we now find them in their early forties in Greece. Continuing this enchanting tale of a chance meeting between two strangers, bringing them to a nuanced perspective only gained by years lived. As it does in each film in the series, life carries with it new responsibilities and attitudes, forcing the two dreamers to reassess what they want next. Before the clock strikes midnight, we will again become part of their story. The film premiered at Sundance Film Festival 2013.

Krugovi

Srđan Golubović : 2012
Circles

Marco, a Serbian soldier on leave during the war, returns to his Bosnian hometown. When three fellow soldiers accost Haris, a Muslim shopkeeper, Marco intervenes, but it costs him his life. Twelve years later the war is over, but the wounds remain open. Marco's father is rebuilding a church when Bogdan, the son of one of Marco's killers, appears looking for work. Meanwhile in Belgrade, Marco's friend Nabobs, a renowned surgeon, debates whether or not to operate on another of Marco's killers. And in Germany, Haris, now married with a family, strives to repay his debt when Marco's widow arrives seeking refuge. Unfolding as a triptych, exploring the moral convolutions and complex story strands that emerge from one fateful moment. Srdan Golubović's third feature was the winner of the Special Jury Award at Sundance Film Festival 2013.

Il Futuro

Alicia Scherson : 2012
The Future

When her parents die in a car accident, adolescent Bianca's universe is turned upside down. Staying alone in the family's Rome apartment and entrusted with the care of her younger brother, Tomas, she struggles to hold it together as her place in her surreal new world becomes blurry. Life is further complicated when Tomas's gym-rat friends invite themselves to stay indefinitely. Using Bianca as a lure for a heist they've concocted, they convince her to initiate a sexual relationship with enigmatic blind hermit Maciste. But as the two spend time together, Bianca unexpectedly finds normalcy and acceptance in the ageing Italian actor's rococo mansion and begins her slow climb to maturity through a series of subtle shifts and revelations. Alicia Scherson's striking third feature uses the streets of Rome to create a world both richly beautiful and unapologetically provocative – the very aesthetic reflecting Bianca's disorientation as the future becomes her present. The film premiered in competition at Sundance Film Festival 2013.

Shokuzai

Kiyoshi Kurosawa : 2012
Penance

Tragedy strikes a small Japanese town when a young elementary schoolgirl, Emili, is abducted and killed by a stranger. Four girls who had been playing with Emili at the time are the first to discover her body. The abductor is never found and the crime goes unsolved. Crazed with grief, Emili's mother Asako condemns the four girls, none of whom can remember the abductor's face. She tells them, "Do whatever you have to to find the killer. Otherwise, you can pay a penance that I approve." Fifteen years later, deeply affected by Asako's condemnation, the four girls become adults burdened with the curse of penance which will eventually trigger a chain of tragic events. Sae has acquired a distrust of men since the traumatic murder. Maki is an elementary school teacher whose unsmiling strictness is a cover for her insecurities. Akiko has become a recluse who feels herself unworthy of human company. And Yuka still resents her once-sickly older sister for monopolising their mother's attention when they were children. Whilst plotting revenge against her sister, Yuka comes across a clue to the killer's identity – and contacts Asako. Based on the novel by Kanae Minato, the film version of Kiyoshi Kurosawa's mini-series premiered out of competition at La Biennale di Venezia 2012.

Viceværten

Katrine Wiedemann : 2012
A Caretaker's Tale

Per is a 52-year-old caretaker at a bleak modern housing project. A harsh and bitter man who leads a life without much joy. His wife just left him, he has a son in prison, back pain and two pathetic male friends whom he bosses around. One day he discovers a beautiful young woman lying naked in the corner of an empty apartment, wrapped in a curtain. She can't talk or walk, but she will have sex with Per, so for him, she is almost like a gift from above. What makes us go beyond ourselves and do what we otherwise wouldn't do? Only love can do that. This is the story of a real bastard who is healed when he meets love. Love has to take a form that makes him open up, without his realising. As a creature that only reflects Per, the girl comes into his life and slowly breaks down his armour, putting him in touch with his soft underbelly whilst also making him vulnerable and defenceless. She is a different kind of saving angel. Her innocence awakens something new in Per and so his transformation and growth begins. A poignant, wildly different and offbeat love story, not without a healthy dose of pitch-black humour. Describing herself as the least feminist director in Scandinavia, Katrine Wiedemann's controversial and provocative tale, her second feature, premiered at San Sebastián International Film Festival 2012.

Salsipuedes

Mariano Luque : 2012

The dappled sunlight on the forest floor, the sound of birdsong, the two-person tent, the air of general lethargy. Then, a sudden shift in mood, the first reddening bloom of what will soon be a black eye. Summer is in full swing in the verdant natural surroundings near the northern Argentinean town of Salsipuedes and Rafa and Carmen's camping trip is about to be punctuated by a visit from her mother and sister. Yet while her mother is quick to apply her magic cream to cover up Carmen's swelling eye, there's no easy way of lifting the pall it has already cast over proceedings. These are the signs that the couple is not a couple, that there is no equality between them. The man wields more power. The woman is trapped. We see them on holiday and we imagine them in everyday life. Carmen and Rafa are the embodiment of yet another institutionalised social failure. The film conjures up an atmosphere at once suffocating and serene, suffusing the day and night spent in this troubled couple's company with the constant, yet unrealised threat of violence. It reveals the gestures, hiding games and actions the family has learnt to conceal with cynicism, resignation and indolence. Mariano Luque's debut feature premiered in competition at Berlin International Film Festival 2012.

Magic Words (Breaking a Spell)

Mercedes Moncada Rodríguez : 2012
Palabras Mágicas (para romper un encantamiento)

Here, in Lake Managua, Sandino's ashes are dissolved. Will the content convert its container? Lago Xolotlán is possessed by him, by Sandino. If this is true, then the lake is the whole of Managua, because it is the city's place of drainage, and waste from all of us has flowed into it. I resemble Lake Managua: rather than being a flowing river that continually renovates itself, it hoards and saves, just like Nicaragua. It starts with childish imagination where death is romantic and heroic, going on to grow with the deepest and most beautiful love, the pain of loss, passing through betrayal and finally arriving at emptiness. Mercedes Moncada Rodríguez's documentary, an emotional look at the Nicaraguan Revolution, screened at San Sebastián International Film Festival 2012.

Gernika bajo las bombas

Luis Marías : 2012
Gernika under the bombs

Gernika in April 1937. The Spanish Civil War is smothering the last moments of the first Basque Government decided by ballot. Bilbao is the key objective of General Mola's rebel troops in order to take the whole North of Spain. And only a few kilometres from the city, in the town of Gernika, the situation is causing indecision and fear. Other nearby towns have been harshly bombed by the German Condor Legion under insurgent command. The enemy troops may enter at any time, given that the entire Republican army has fallen back to protect Bilbao. In that place, the stories of several everyday people unknown to one another interweave. Very different stories, all marked by the brutal aerial attack on the town of Gernika. Luis Marías's TV mini-series screened at San Sebastián International Film Festival 2012.

Joven y alocada

Marialy Rivas : 2012
Young & Wild

Daniela is a quiet and elegant 17-year-old, but her thoughts are pretty wild and revolve mostly around sex and her need for self-fulfilment. Daniela lives for her blog. Only here can she speak openly about what turns her on. She has to do this in secret when she's at her parents' house, because she's from an upper-class family of wealthy, devout Protestants for whom everything is forbidden. Daniela is expelled from school after she sleeps with a boy. Her mother now sees her as a disgrace to the family and uses sanctions in an attempt to coax her daughter back onto the straight and narrow path to faith. But Daniela, who is not prepared to wait any longer for tenderness and sexual fulfilment, embarks instead on a passionate love affair with her girlfriend. Bursting with flamboyant illustrations and delighting in glaring juxtapositions, this is a film that is as experimental as its protagonist. In this, her debut feature, Marialy Rivas also experiments with the structural characteristics of a blog and the seamless fragmentation of the internet. Winner of the Sebastiane Award at San Sebastián International Film Festival 2012.

Lucía

Niles Atallah : 2010

Lucía is a young woman who works as a seamstress in a factory and lives with her father, Luis, in an old house in Santiago. The story takes place in December 2006 during the weeks from the ex-dictator Pinochet's funeral to Christmas Eve. Through the simple observation of Lucía's daily life, we are allowed access into a hidden and neglected world of a generation striving to recover from the military dictatorship; into situations marked by historical events that continue to influence contemporary Chilean society. On Christmas Eve, Lucía and Luis dress up as Santa Claus and Santa's helper and entertain the children of a doctor currently under suspicion for working as a torturer during Pinochet's regime. Much of the story takes place in Lucía's house, a place seemingly suspended in time since the 1970s, filled with dark and untouched territories, remnants of the traumas of its past. In this environment, Lucía struggles to keep up the household, support her elderly father and at the same time, nourish hopes for her own future. The film premiered at San Sebastián International Film Festival 2010.

El estudiante

Santiago Mitre : 2011
The Student

Roque Espinosa arrives in Buenos Aires to begin his studies. During the first couple of months, he attends classes and wanders through the corridors of the university feeling somewhat astray. He makes friends, goes to parties and meets girls. Then he falls in love with Paula, an assistant professor. Seeking her company and attention, Roque enters the world of university politics, a universe to which he had so far been indifferent. He gets acquainted with Alberto Acevedo, a former politician who uses his teaching position to shape strategies. With him, Roque learns the rules, the procedures, the ways to ascend, and feels he has finally found his vocation. The film unfolds a vibrant story that opens up to different directions: utilitarian relationships; the oscillation between ethics and betrayal; politics as a generational issue; the youthful urge for getting quickly ahead; a perspective that could either reproduce a rancid and corrupt past or imagine a different future. Santiago Mitre's award-winning feature premiered at Buenos Aires Film Festival 2011.

Mapa

León Siminiani : 2012
Map

The centre of this film-journal is occupied by the neurosis and disorientation of the artist, which is a mirror of the author himself: a young director living and working in Madrid who is tired and burnt out with his TV work. Seeking to renew the gaze and break his creative deadlock, he decides to head to India, light of baggage and convinced that this destination will be the best to renew himself materially, spiritually and with regard to his employment. However, what he obtains during his trip is the revelation that the objective of his search was precisely in the place he left. León Siminiani's first feature, which he describes as a "romantic documentary", premiered at Sevilla European Film Festival 2012.

If Not Us, Who?

Andres Veiel : 2011
Wer wenn nicht wir

In the early 1960s, Bernward Vesper and fellow university student Gudrun Ensslin begin a passionate love affair in the stifling atmosphere of provincial West Germany. Sensitive to the increasing restlessness of the times, the fiery couple lash out at the denial regarding their fathers' roles in Hitler's Third Reich. The war has only been over for fifteen years, old Nazis are back in positions of power, and nobody is prepared to talk about war crimes. It is a time of social and political upheaval, with liberation movements, student protests and the Black Panther movement in the USA. Dedicated to the power of the written word, Bernward and Gudrun found a publishing house for controversial political works and become part of the spreading global uprising "If not us, who; If not now, when?" But discontentment with the world takes its toll on their tumultuous relationship. By the late sixties, Gudrun has joined rebellious Andreas Baader's pro-violence cause and Bernward risks his sanity by using psychedelic drugs in his struggle to finally write the novel committed to changing the world. Based on the emotional, true story of an explosive era, Andres Veiel's debut feature premiered in competition at Berlin International Film Festival 2011.

Yes, We Are

Magda Wystub : 2011

Catholicism, Kaczyński and homophobia. These are the most common themes associated with the word 'Poland'. If you then start to talk about homophobia in Poland, you usually talk about gay men. This film offers a new perspective. It is the first documentary which focuses on lesbians and women in Poland who don't fit within the hetero-normative matrix. What are their strategies for surviving in a homophobic society? How do their everyday lives look? The variety of feelings and analyses of the interviewees – both activists as well as women who want to escape any categorisation – allow a deeper look into the political atmosphere and struggles within Poland's fast changing society. This documentary reveals an often hidden subculture as it emerges to the surface. Magda Wystub is a sociologist who works as a freelance journalist with a focus on feminism, LGBT, gender and migration, racism and colonialism. Her film debut premiered at Crossing Europe Filmfestival 2011.

The Capsule

Athina Rachel Tsangari : 2012

Seven young women. A mansion perched on a Cycladic rock. A series of lessons on discipline, desire, discovery, and disappearance. A melancholy, inescapable cycle on the brink of womanhood – infinitely. A film and projection installation of a Greek Gothic mystery inspired by the work of the young Polish artist Aleksandra Waliszewska. The installation at Barneys New York used a single screen simultaneously showing two separate films, constructed from the same story, yet juxtaposing and amplifying each other as twin narratives. By utilising digital 3D technology with a triangular lattice, it created a kaleidoscopic window projection, the experience of which was dependent on the viewer's distance from the screen and their height. The film premiered at Locarno Film Festival 2012.

Black Field

Vardis Marinakis : 2010
Mavro livadi

Set in 1654, when Greece was under Ottoman Empire occupation. A Janissary (a warrior of Greek origin recruited by force at a young age from his Christian family to serve in the Turkish army) arrives, badly wounded, at a remote female cloister where the sisters take him in and care for him. One of those nursing the soldier is Sister Anthi, a young Greek nun who has taken a vow of silence. They fall in love against all odds and eventually she helps him escape to the nearby forest where they lose themselves in a dream-like reality. But Anthi is tormented by a dark secret, soon to be revealed: she is, in fact, a boy who grew up as a girl, hidden in the monastery in order to avoid being captured and becoming a Janissary. The central focus of the film comes not from its historical context but from the relationship between the two main characters – most notably young Anthi's quest for freedom and identity, as she discovers hitherto unknown desires that lead her to a radically altered view of herself. A powerful and visually captivating drama about the search for sexual and gender identity, and the will to liberate oneself from society's rules and standards. Vardis Marinakis's feature debut received its international premiere at Karlovy Vary International Film Festival 2010, and was winner of the Cinematography Award from the Hellenic Film Academy 2010.

Çoğunluk

Seren Yüce : 2010
Majority

Twenty-one-year-old Mertkan has a stable but unfulfilling life in İstanbul: living at home with his parents, working as an office boy in his father's construction company, hanging out with his male friends in shopping malls and discos. But things might just change for the dispassionate Mertkan when he meets Gül, a girl with Kurdish roots who works at the bistro near his house. Awkward Mertkan starts to become a little more self-confident, and it seems possible that he could break away from his oppressive parents. But Mertkan's domineering father opposes any association with "those people who only want to divide our country". Will Mertkan bow to the social values of the majority when faced with a choice, or will he be strong enough to avoid becoming the kind of man that his father wants him to be? The story not only showcases the dominance and hypocrisies of the Turkish middle-class, it also reflects how patriarchal misogyny is an integral part of this society. Seren Yüce's debut feature was the winner of Golden Orange awards for Best Film, Best Director and Best Actor at Altın Portakal Film Festival 2010.

The Woman Who Brushed Off Her Tears

Teona Strugar Mitevska : 2012

Beginning in France and following its characters deep into the forests of Macedonia, a tale of the tragedies of two families. In Paris, Helena's son dies tragically. Desperate to compensate for her loss, she tries to make Lucian, a deportee, a part of her life. As his supervisor, she succeeds in abducting the young man. Helena, her husband and Lucian then travel to Macedonia where the couple have decided to scatter their son's ashes and also discover the country. In Macedonia Lucian's lover, Ajsun, is struggling for her independence. She and Lucian have a young son, but Ajsun's father has now sold his daughter to another man in order to protect her from the shame of having an illegitimate child. Both Ajsun and Helena aspire to be free and must try to hold their own in a male-dominated world. Teona Strugar Mitevska's third feature tells a story about the various types of imprisonment we create for ourselves or are forced into by others. Her film premiered at Berlin International Film Festival 2012.

Les fraises des bois

Dominique Choisy : 2011
Wild Strawberries

Violette lives in the heart of the countryside near Amiens, with her parents who are wealthy farm owners. Gabriel is a cashier in a supermarket who sleeps with men and couples for money. These two inconspicuous characters may appear to have little history, but they are suffocating in their daily lives, and both hide dark secrets. Their paths cross when Violette's senile grandmother gets lost after going out on an unapproved walk from her retirement home and runs into Gabriel, mistaking him for her son. In a dire financial situation, Gabriel, who also has to provide for his little sister, commits a crime and hides at Violette's place. She also committed a crime, a much worse one, and now two people with nothing in common are united in sharing each other's secret. From hesitant meetings to chance encounters, in the course of the seasons they will travel an unpredictable path as they seek to break free of their chains and resort to radical solutions.

Salt White

Keti Machavariani : 2011
Marilivit Tetri

In a story that unfolds on post-Soviet Georgia's Black Sea coast, three people try to change their current lives. Thirty-five-year-old Nana works as a seasonal waitress. She saves her income and dreams of opening a small café in her hometown. Police officer Niko is an Abkhazian refugee who has yet to deal with the wounds he suffered during the former conflict. He takes care of his elderly parents, living in a hotel with other refugees. Young Sopo is homeless. She hangs around with a group of young people whose high jinks the police are trying to keep under control. Whilst running from the police, Sopo meets Nana, who decides to help her. Nana and Niko's closed world is thus disrupted by the homeless child as she points them to a new path – a path of hope. The girl's dream of beaches as white as salt moves Nana to take a decisive step. Director Keti Machavariani's debut feature focuses primarily on atmosphere, with simple visual compositions, punctuated by sparse dialogue. Her film premiered in competition at Karlovy Vary International Film Festival 2011.

Sangue do meu sangue

João Canijo : 2011
Blood of my Blood

Márcia is a single mother with two grown-up children. She works as a cook and shares her home in the Lisbon suburbs with her sister Ivete, a hairdresser. One day, Cláudia, her daughter, who is studying to become a nurse and works at a supermarket checkout, tells her mother that she's fallen in love with an older, married man. On meeting the man in question, Márcia realises the relationship poses a terrible threat to her family. She is determined to bring the affair to an end, even if it means compromising her cherished relationship with Cláudia. Meanwhile, her son Joca, a small-time drug pusher, tries to cheat his own dealer, but the plan misfires, obliging his aunt Ivete to make a great sacrifice in order to bail him out. The fallout from the incident has perilous consequences for them both. A story of unconditional love – the love of a mother for her daughter and of an aunt for her nephew – and about the lengths these women are prepared to go to in order to protect the ones they love. Winner of the FIPRESCI Prize at San Sebastián International Film Festival 2011.

Bertsolari

Asier Altuna : 2011

In the Basque language of Euskera, oral compositions are known as bertsos, each of which is sung by a competitor called a bertsolari. The singers are each given different topics and then have to quickly compose an improvised poem. This oral tradition has skilfully evolved and adapted to the times, connecting with the youngest generations. A surprising art of austere aesthetics in these days of specularity and special effects. A performance that in the grand finale of the last championship gathered 14,000 people to watch eight bertsolaris vie live against one another. As the singers compete with their poetic, extemporaneous verses, people in the audience always break down and cry. Basque filmmaker Asier Altuna's documentary is a voyage through improvised verse, silence and art in the raw. The film premiered at San Sebastián International Film Festival 2011.

Verano

José Luis Torres Leiva : 2011
Summertime

During one hot summer day, little things happen to the visitors and workers of an old thermal resort in the mountains of southern Chile. They experience the long vacation hours in nature, sleeping in the sun, learning how to drive, cleaning the house, kissing for the first time, swimming at night or just walking and talking, while the day slowly unravels into small fragments of happiness and discovery. To wander in the forest, the joy of losing oneself, to not belong to any place. The film is a mosaic filled with minor everyday occurrences and moving observations about the certainties and uncertainties of love, family and other relationships. It is a story that walks a thin line between beauty and desperation. A story that lives in the interior of the characters but also on the exterior of what surrounds them. The film premiered in the Orizzonti section at La Biennale di Venezia 2011.

Iceberg

Gabriel Velázquez : 2011

The tip of the iceberg only shows a fraction of a larger picture. The same applies to the emotions of the teenagers in this subdued coming-of-age film. Jean-Jacques Rousseau commented: "Adolescence is like a second birth. In the first a child is born, in the second, a man or a woman. And it's always painful". We follow several teenagers during a cold winter in a small town by the river. 13-year-old Mauri is mourning his father who died in an accident. Rebecca, 12, tries to survive during her first year at boarding school, in the belief that her parents don't care about her. And two boys aged 17 and 18 lead an apparently carefree life in a small hut by the river. Little is said in this fragile, delicate and beautifully filmed drama, but the feelings of these struggling children are revealing. Sometimes their stories brush against each other, but all are bearing a hidden trauma, wrestling with their own demons. The film won a Special Mention at Gijón International Film Festival 2011.

Khalifah

Nurman Hakim : 2011

Khalifah is twenty-three and works at a hair salon in Jakarta. She agrees to an arranged marriage to a successful businessman, Rasyid, since the marriage is beneficial for the financial situation of her family. She soon realises, however, that her husband is strongly religious and expects her to wear the niqāb in public which draws much attention and negative reaction. She cannot work with the niqāb on and cannot be seen by other men with it off. Sometimes she is insulted on the street by passers-by and once is even accused of being a terrorist. However, the veil also has a positive effect and Khalifah enjoys the freedom from the stares of men. Even the teenage boys on the street corner who always whistled after her ignore her now. But when her husband is killed and the police ask her to identify his body, she meets Rasyid's other wife and child, of whom she had no knowledge. With her husband dead and his double life revealed, leaving her alone and pregnant, Khalifah tries to find her own standing towards the veil. A tale of one woman's strength in facing discrimination, love and betrayal.

Wajma (An Afghan Love Story)

Barmak Akram : 2012

A young man in Kabul seduces a girl. She gives him her virginity, convinced that he will marry her. When she tells him that she is pregnant, he hesitates, he moves backwards, he questions having taken her virginity. Is it due to a lack of experience? Is he just a coward? He pretends that he is not certain he can be the father. Then another story begins, unexpected and scaring. It's like a veil that tears. The girl's father arrives and a timeless, archaic violence erupts, old terrors reappear that could lead to a crime, and even to a sacrifice. Barmak Akram's award-winning second feature premiered at Sundance Film Festival 2013.

She Sings

Caroline Sascha Cogez & Dechen Roder : 2012

19-year-old Dechen lives with her mother and little brother in Thimphu. She dreams of becoming a successful singer and is selected to be a contestant in the Bhutan TV singing contest Druk Super Star. As the competition progresses, Dechen explores the story of her beloved late grandmother who was a great singer. But in the search for her own identity, Dechen uncovers the dark history of her family in which blessings and curses stand side by side. The film challenges the limits of documentary language, using a poetic visual approach that leads us into the inner life of a young girl, alienated by her own mythical culture. It is the first experimental documentary ever made in the formerly secluded country in the midst of the Himalaya. Bhutan was the last country in the world to allow television in 1999 and has only in the past decade established its own film industry. Young Dechen's journey from childhood to adulthood reflects the transition of the old world into a new and modern world.

The Sound of Old Rooms

Sandeep Ray : 2012
Kokkho-Poth

Kolkata, 2011. Amidst the restless mood of the family's birthday celebrations, we are thrown back to the student years of the ambitious and promising communist poet Sarthak Roychowdhury. As a young idealist and bon vivant, he works to refine his empathy for the social problems of his nation, his altruistic concern for living beings, and his revolutionary consciousness. The past is woven together from memories, dilemmas, and basic human fears, concerns and joys. The echoes of old rooms resonate with a revolutionary ethos, artistic elitism, and the inability to take care of oneself. Shot over 20 years, this exquisite Bengali documentary shows Sarthak's struggles to keep the poetry in him alive even as he is consumed by the daily business of living – teaching, marrying, raising a son, and dealing with a constantly nagging but affectionate mother. Remarkable for the way in which it celebrates the ordinary, the film evokes an amazing intimacy and empathy with the poet, his family, publisher, students and teacher, as well as the lively addas and dark alleys of Kolkata.

Diaz: Don't Clean Up This Blood

Daniele Vicari : 2012

The G8 summit in July 2001 was drawing to a close. At the Diaz Pascoli School in Genova, which had been set up as a social forum for journalists, the young people were in good spirits, in spite of the violent clashes with the police that had occurred during the previous days. As had been the case in other countries during the same year, here too the anti-globalisation protests had been met with heavy police presence. Yet nothing was to prepare the temporary inhabitants of the Diaz school – most of them young men and women from all over Europe – for what was to happen. Shortly after midnight, the anti-riot police stormed the school and brutally attacked these young people for two hours until almost all of them ended up in hospital and were later taken to a detention centre where they suffered shameless humiliation and abuse following arrests. To justify their actions, the police planted Molotov cocktails in the building. By the end of the G8 summit, one individual had lost his life. Daniele Vicari places young, likable demonstrators, who just wanted a slightly more humane world, in opposition to a horde of brutality-obsessed policemen, who bloodily beat and remorselessly interrogated dozens of innocent people. The film depicts the injustice of one night with maximum transparency.

Mai morire

Enrique Rivero : 2012

Chayo returns to Xochimilco, her hometown, to care for her elderly mother who is on the verge of death. Of native Mexican descent, Chayo is a woman who radiates inner calm but also seems to be hiding some secret sadness. We see her being punted down one of Xochimilco's waterways to the country shack where her ageing and ailing mother lives with two young girls and their father. Chayo is the girls' mother, and the man her husband. But Chayo is a woman of exceptional courage and subtle sensibility who dares to refuse to stay bound in a life that was never hers. Surrounded by love and sublime beauty, she has to give up something that as a woman and mother is inalienable. That will be the price of her freedom. Focusing on the existential crisis of a strong and grounded woman who gives little outward sign of her overwhelming inner turmoil, Enrique Rivero's second feature premiered in competition at Rome Film Festival 2012.

Nosilatiaj. La Belleza

Daniela Seggiaro : 2012
Beauty

Sixteen-year-old Yolanda, who belongs to the Argentinean Wichí ethnic group, lives with a white family, far from her people. She tells her story in her native language, Wichí Lhämtes. From her culture, Yolanda treasures her childhood memories in the native community, and in particular, values her thick black hair that cascades down to her hips, a symbol of her ethnic origin. Now she works as a maid in Sara's house, who is determined to throw an extravagant Quinceañera, one that the entire village will never forget, for her daughter Antonella. The garden, the food and the dress, everything needs to be perfect. If only Antonella had naturally beautiful hair like Yola's. When her long hair is then cut off for the daughter to wear as a decorative braid at her party, Yolanda is sick with sadness. The event destroys her cultural ties with the "criollo" world and will define her destiny forever. Documentary filmmaker Daniela Seggiaro's first feature transforms everyday life into a powerful allegory that shows how the colonisers' descendants totally fail to understand the indigenous peoples, even to the point of denying their existence. Her film premiered at Berlin International Film Festival 2012.

House with a Turret

Eva Neymann : 2012
Dom s bashenkoy

An eight-year-old boy travels with his mother to visit his grandfather during wartime. The mother, who is lying on the floor in a crowded freight car, has typhus and her condition is getting worse. They are forced to abandon the train in a nameless town where she is placed on a stretcher and four men take her to hospital. In this war-torn setting, surrounded by adults preoccupied with their own survival, the boy must shoulder a man's responsibility, take care of his baggage and get a telegram sent to his grandfather, no matter what the cost. Through a child's eyes, we see a country in chaos, a society exhausted by the interminable war and persistent food shortages, grotesque figures on the verge of losing their humanity and families torn apart by the war. Placing his trust in strangers, he is soon aboard a train. The beautiful wintry landscapes glimpsed from the window reflect the steely ice in the souls of people fighting for their survival. Eva Neymann's emotionally charged and captivating feature won the East of the West Award at Karlovy Vary International Film Festival 2012.

The Patience Stone

Atiq Rahimi : 2012
Syngué sabour

A beautiful Afghan woman tends to her fighter husband in their bomb-shelled bedroom. He is comatose, a bullet wound in his neck. She protects her two daughters from the ongoing guerilla fighting that rages outside whilst she clings desperately to the hope that one day he will wake up and recover consciousness. In Persian mythology, Syngué sabour is a magical stone to which one tells one's misfortunes and miseries, everything that one does not tell anyone else. The stone absorbs all these secrets like a sponge until one day it bursts. And then one is freed. Thus, the convalescent husband becomes the silent confidant as the wife starts a monologue about her personal story, the story of men and society's oppression against women. Finally able to speak openly for the first time, she reveals her deepest secrets and desires. Appearances, however, are not what they seem. Gradually, the woman turns the tables on the patriarchal society she has been born into and uses her husband's condition to her advantage, confounding the various hostile men around her.

For Ellen

So Yong Kim : 2012

Joby Taylor plays in a rock band and is totally dedicated to his art. But his musical ambitions, as well as his private life, are on the point of collapse. He's in the midst of divorce proceedings when he learns that his incompetent lawyer has failed to ensure him legal access to his six-year-old daughter Ellen. Whilst he has never had a role in her life, he realises that he is not yet ready to say goodbye to this part of his life. Joby negotiates a visit with his daughter to explore whether he is able to walk away from his child, and whether it might be too late for reconciliation. Again and again Joby finds himself in his car, driving through a vast snow-covered landscape. This boundless white expanse becomes a screen on to which his uncertainty and indecision is projected as he sets off on a journey into a past that never actually happened. Using the stark beauty and vast farmlands of an American winter as its backdrop, the film charts Joby's emotional journey as he realises what he has lost – and what, if anything, can still be saved. The film premiered at Berlin International Film Festival 2012.

La scoperta dell'alba

Susanna Nicchiarelli : 2012
Discovery at Dawn

Rome, 1981. With seven shots from a revolver, two members of the Red Brigade gun down Professor Mario Tessandori in the university courtyard, in plain sight. He dies in the arms of his friend and colleague Lucio Astengo. A few weeks later, Lucio Astengo himself disappears. It is now 2011. Caterina and Barbara Astengo, who were six and twelve years old when their father vanished, have put their family's beach home – now abandoned for some time – up for sale. The house is full of memories of a childhood interrupted by their father's disappearance, of a family broken and never put back together. In one corner, a 1970s rotary dial telephone is still plugged in to the wall, though the line has been disconnected for years. Caterina feeling nostalgic at the sight of the old phone, lifts the receiver and inexplicably hears a dial tone. She tries dialling a few numbers, but the phone remains silent. Then, almost as a game, she tries the number of their home in the city thirty years earlier. This time, she hears ringing and a child's voice unexpectedly answers. It is herself, twelve years old, one week before her father's disappearance. The film premiered in the Prospettive Italia section at Rome Film Festival 2012.

Ginger & Rosa

Sally Potter : 2012

London in 1962 and two teenage girls, Ginger and Rosa, are inseparable. They play truant together, discuss religion, politics and hairstyles, and dream of lives bigger than their mothers' frustrated domesticity. Ginger fears annihilation and is preoccupied with the Cold War and the mounting threat of nuclear devastation. Rosa is defiant and her revolution is sexual, a form of protest that will irrevocably impact on their families. The left-leaning adults, Ginger's carefree bohemian father, her frustrated mother and her mother's politically active friends all give lessons on freedom and responsibility that prove flawed and hypocritical when turbulent reality encroaches on idealism. But as the Cold War meets the sexual revolution, and the threat of nuclear holocaust escalates, the lifelong friendship of the two girls is shattered by the clash of desire and the determination to survive. Drawn from her own memories, Sally Potter's drama of teenage friendship overshadowed by the Cuban missile crisis is an evocative and beautifully shot portrait of post-war Britain.

Pénélope

Claire Doyon : 2012

Mother of an autistic little girl, director Claire Doyon decides to try to find a way to make her child feel better by undertaking a long journey. They leave Paris to reach the Mongolian steppes in their journey to find a shaman with healing powers. The city which only emphasised the child's suffocating feeling gives way to a huge space in which her movements, although still with signs of pain, or apnoea, suddenly take another dimension. Going up high and beyond, they journey towards another concept of disease and medicine, towards a different way of travelling and meeting the unknown. Pénélope is a great adventuress, a positive heroine who faces obstacles, overcoming her own limitations for the pleasure of having adventures and meeting people. The immense open spaces finally give the girl a chance to find her dimension in the landscape, even with the uncertainty of her movements and the crises typical of her condition. The trip therefore becomes a way to disperse bits of malaise in those unfamiliar skies, and to imagine a nomadic life that never lets you stop. This prize-winning documentary premiered at Marseille International Film Festival 2012.

Hemel

Sacha Polak : 2012

Hemel changes her sexual partners at an even quicker pace than her father Gijs changes his girlfriends. Since the death of the mother, the father and daughter have had an unusually close, at times even overly intimate relationship which tolerates no real commitment in their respective affairs. When Gijs dumps his girlfriend Emma at a party, Hemel's "secret" triumph is written all over her face. She is thus all the more shaken when her father falls in love with Sophie for real, whom Hemel snidely refers to as "her new mother" and who is now to move in with them. Tinged with empathy and sadness, the film takes a painfully precise look at the life of a troubled young woman who uses her sexuality to provoke in a scathingly aggressive manner but ends up doing the most damage to herself. Sacha Polak's debut feature won the FIPRESCI Prize at Berlin International Film Festival 2012.

Cosimo e Nicole

Francesco Amato : 2012
Cosimo and Nicole

Cosimo is Italian, Nicole is French. They meet in Genova, during the G8 protests. It takes one look for them to fall in love and they have never been apart since. Wanderers by nature, their home is Europe and music is their passion. They decide to return to Genova where they begin working for Paul, a concert promoter whom Cosimo knew back in the bloody demonstrations of July 2001. Everything seems to be going well until an illegal immigrant, working on the assembly of a stage, is involved in a tragic accident which threatens to disrupt the couple's love and forces a decision that will determine their future, changing their lives forever. A contemporary and authentic love story of two people who refuse to compromise with the cynicism and harshness of reality. Winner of the Prospettive Italia Award for Best Feature Film at Rome Film Festival 2012.

Beyond

Pernilla August : 2010
Svinalängorna

Leena, 34, has fought all her life to let go of her grief over her dark childhood. One morning just before Christmas, she receives a phone call from a hospital in her childhood hometown telling her that her mother is dying. Her parents, immigrants from Finland who never really felt at home in Sweden, lived their lives of devastating passion amidst alcohol addiction and violent quarrels, whilst Leena and her little brother tried to survive as best they could. For Leena, who has chosen to pursue normality at any cost, lying to herself and to others, this is her last chance to confront the dark world she comes from and belongs to. The news takes her on a journey to face her mother for the first time in her adult life – and a painful inner journey that forces her to recall and deal with her forgotten past to be able to move on. Winner of the International Film Critics' Week award at Venice Film Festival 2010.

Ostrovat

Kamen Kalev : 2011
The Island

Sophie and Daneel, both in their early thirties, are a close and passionate couple living in Paris. Sophie initiates a surprise journey to Bulgaria. Daneel explicitly refuses to go, but Sophie insists and finally convinces him to leave. When they arrive, Sophie discovers, to her astonishment, that Daneel was born there. After a few hours spent on the crowded beaches, Daneel leads Sophie to an almost abandoned island lost in the Black Sea. Once there, Daneel discovers pregnancy tests in Sophie's luggage. The heat and the strange few inhabitants soon alter their own behaviours, and the island slowly reveals hidden fears that question their love. To get through it all, they have to take a leap into the unknown. A challenging and provocative character study examining themes of interpersonal relations and self-discovery. Kamen Kalev's introspective and dream-like second feature premiered at the Quinzaine des Réalisateurs 2011 at Cannes.

Pulce non c'è

Giuseppe Bonito : 2012

Pulce, a nine-year-old non-verbal autistic girl, communicates continually even though she cannot speak. She listens to the tango, drinks only tamarind, loves panda teddy bears and pecorino cheese, and in between happiness and nocturnal meltdowns, lives the serene existence of an ordinary family life. On a day like any other, she is taken away from the family without any explanation, her father the victim of a monstrous accusation. Set in Torino and observed through the wandering, dreamy gaze of her thirteen-year-old sister, Giovanna, we enter the daily life of Pulce's abnormal family with its language devised for someone who can only speak through images; a family whose chaos is full of emergencies and love. Without rhetoric or pathos, we explore the clash between the adult world and that of children, between illness and normality, between the rigidity of institutions and emotional bonds, and the normality of a family facing the absurdities of Kafka-like bureaucracy. The film won the Special Jury Prize in the Alice nella Città section at Rome Film Festival 2012.

Uskyld

Sara Johnsen : 2012
All That Matters is Past

Two brothers in their forties are found dead in the forest. By their side lies a woman, very weak, but still alive. William and Janne grew up together in an isolated rural area and became sweethearts when they were teenagers. They were left mostly to their own devices as kids – Janne's window to the wider world was largely provided by magazines she scavenged from a nearby dump – and their outlook is somewhat skewed, to say the least. Reunited after several years apart, their love seems inextricably bound to the wild landscape where they met and the special bond they have with nature. Janne leaves her family to live with William in a cabin by the river. They recreate the feeling of love and lust that they had as children, playing in the woods. The days they spend together in the countryside seem idyllic, as the wind blows gracefully through the reeds as if to welcome them. Yet this idyll hints at events they refuse to speak about and when William's psychologically damaged, perpetually resentful older brother Ruud resurfaces once again, William and Janne are forced to confront the dark secrets of their past.

Foto

Carlos Saboga : 2012
Photo

The story of Elisa's return to the past, to the turbulent 1970s, in the footsteps of her recently deceased mother Elsa. When, looking at photos and reliving memories of her mother, she starts to suspect that her biological father is in fact not Tom after all, Elisa travels from Paris to Lisbon to meet the group of revolutionaries that accompanied her mother in the period during which she was conceived. Elisa's strong resemblance to her mother provokes a strange effect on this group of comrades, rejection and attraction in equal parts. One is now a respectable university professor, another has been committed to a mental institution, while another still, now a right-wing government minister, tries to avoid her at all costs. Collective and historical memory of a complex and violent political past becomes entwined with Elisa's intimate and personal memory of her mother, as she is startled to discover an episode in the latter's life that she could never have imagined. Carlos Saboga's first feature premiered in competition in the CinemaXXI section at Rome Film Festival 2012.

Operation Zucker

Rainer Kaufmann : 2012
Silent Children

The promise of a better life is pivotal in ten-year-old Fee's decision to travel from her home in Romania to Germany. But she falls victim to child traffickers and is forced to work in a Berlin nightclub fronting for a child prostitution ring. She is freed, however, after a police raid. When commissioner Karin Wegemann takes up this serious case of sexual abuse, there's a shocking discovery: a respected judge is a customer of the crime ring, and the state attorney helping her is a good friend of the judge. Are the police capable of protecting the young girl? Who can be trusted in this web of lies and corruption? Rainer Kaufmann's crime drama addresses the serious flaws in society and their weakest victims: children. The film premiered at Filmfest München 2012.

Vergiss mein nicht

David Sieveking : 2012
Forget Me Not

David Sieveking left home years ago to make films. Now he has returned to help his mother, Gretel, who has Alzheimer's, and relieve her long-time carer and his father Malte for a few weeks. David's parents were active in the student movement of the 1960s and had an open relationship, which the disease is now dramatically putting to the test. His mother's changes force the family to deal with their conflicts and to adopt a cordial approach, which leads to a new bond. The filmmaker takes on the role of carer and documents this encounter with his camera. Gretel no longer knows the people around her, but her puns and charm have not faded. The time spent with his mother becomes a journey into David's unexpected family history. Presented with openness and a sense of humour, David's family chronicle is characterised by unaffected sympathy and loving affection, with a constant focus on the people rather than on the disease. Winner of the Semaine de la Critique award at Locarno Film Festival 2012.

W sypialni

Tomasz Wasilewski : 2012
In a Bedroom

Edyta is forty and in the midst of a crisis. She has left her family, her husband and son and their house on the Baltic Sea behind her. She spends her nights in a Warsaw hotel room and her days driving around the unfamiliar city. When she runs out of cash, she places an ad in the newspaper and arranges meetings online with strange men with implied sexual intentions. Edyta never lets things get that far though, as she drugs her clients and uses their apartments as a refuge for the night. Then she meets an artist, Patryk, and Edyta can no longer maintain her dismissive attitude. This enthralling character study, using filmic minimalism to ensure that glances and gestures say more than words, portrays a lonely woman in both fragility and strength. Tomasz Wasilewski's debut feature screened in competition at Mannheim-Heidelberg International Film Festival 2012.

Lovable

Park Chul-soon : 2011
Da-seul-i

Nine-year-old Da-seul lives in a seaside town with her grandmother who works at a factory and her uncle who is a waiter at a nightclub. Whilst they think she is merely a mentally challenged child, Da-seul has actually inherited a special talent for art along with her autism. She draws pictures everywhere in the village during the day, and watches a snowman cartoon over and over again on video at night. When the long-awaited snow falls in the village, Da-seul makes a snowman and looks after it affectionately and starts to cover the town with black paint. Focusing on the young girl, this drama sensitively depicts the life of a child with Savant syndrome, a diagnosis within the autism spectrum, and the particular difficulties she faces every day. Da-seul makes a lot of trouble, but her grandmother and uncle don't get angry with her. Even with her many problems, she is lovable and she is loved. The film highlights how savants often demonstrate profound capacities and abilities far in excess of what would be considered normal, and how these skills improve if they are given a setting where the individual can focus.