Medianeras

Gustavo Taretto : 2011
Sidewalls

The identity of a big city lies mostly in its buildings. Buenos Aires has a chaotic variety of architectural styles coexisting with each other, some well connected, some in conflict. The film starts with the observation and classification of these buildings. Then it focuses on two people that inhabit them. Martín is a phobic in recovery process. Little by little he manages to step out of the isolation of his one-room apartment and his virtual reality. He is a web designer. Mariana just broke up after a long relationship. Her head is a mess, just like the apartment where she takes refuge. Martín and Mariana live in the same street, in opposite buildings, but they never meet. The city brings them together, and at the same time, keeps them apart. They walk through the same places, without noticing the other's presence. But what separates them might be the very thing that brings them together.

Ostende

Laura Citarella : 2011

In a radio contest, a young woman wins a four-day vacation at a hotel in Ostende, a sea resort in the Buenos Aires province. It's the low season, and she gets to the place alone. Her boyfriend will join her a few days later. On the beach there's plenty of sun but also too much wind, and a not very sophisticated bar with a waiter who talks too much. In this place with no obligations or big attractions, apart from a windy beach nearby and the not-so-tempting ocean, the girl starts to pay attention to some strange attitudes by an old man who's accompanied by two young women. When her boyfriend arrives, he interrupts like a representative of the outside world, that same world she has been slowly distancing herself from in just a couple of days, to enter with pleasure and curiosity into this intriguing micro-cosmos that might be filled with stories she doesn't know.

Tout est pardonné

Mia Hansen-Løve : 2007
All is Forgiven

Victor lives in Vienna with Annette, his beautiful Austrian wife and their daughter Pamela. Fleeing his work, Victor spends his days outside. He plays with Pamela, pays a visit to Annette's parents, loiters in the park with drug dealers. Very much in love, Annette is confident that he will get a hold of himself as soon as they return to Paris. But back in France, Victor relapses into his bad habits. After a violent dispute, he moves in with Gisèle, the drug user he has fallen in love with, but fails to commit himself to their relationship too. Following Gisèle's death from an overdose, Victor suffers a mental and physical breakdown and ends up in a sanatorium. Annette leaves him and disappears with Pamela. Eleven years pass. Pamela is seventeen and lives in Paris with her mother who has remarried. One day, she learns that her father lives in the same city and decides to see him again. At first all goes well, with sincere feelings on both sides. For Victor the meeting is hugely important but also a terrible reminder of all he might have done and might have been. Mia Hansen-Løve's remarkable debut feature premiered at the Quinzaine des Réalisateurs 2007 at Cannes.

Certified Copy

Abbas Kiarostami : 2010
Copie conforme

The story of a couple's apparent chance meeting in beautiful Tuscany. He, James Miller, is a British author in town to talk about his new book dealing with the nature of reproduced artworks and their originals. She is a French gallery owner in search of originality and has brought six copies of his book to a lecture which she intends asking him to sign. Together they tour the local galleries, cafés and museums and discover that nothing is quite what it seems and truth, like art, is always open to interpretation. This intricate and captivating romantic tale playfully and provocatively blurs the lines between reality and imagination.

Lipstikka

Jonathan Sagall : 2011

Lara is Palestinian. She left Ramallah thirteen years ago to begin a new life in London where she married Michael and had a child. She, her husband and her seven-year-old son James lead a pleasant, albeit somewhat dispassionate life in one of the city's better districts. But then, one day, Inam turns up at Lara's front door. She is a childhood friend from Ramallah. Inam surges into the apartment, asks Lara about her husband and showers attention on her little boy. It's not long before Lara realises that everything she has created for herself is endangered by Inam's brusque intrusion. The two women share a secret, a life-changing event which occured when they were teenagers in Jerusalem. Something that began as a youthful prank but took an unexpected turn. What really happened depends on the way each individual perceives those events. Your memory can play tricks on you – especially when it concerns your deepest fears.

Just the Wind

Bence Fliegauf : 2012
Csak a szél

News quickly spreads of the murder of a Romani family in a Hungarian village. The perpetrators have escaped and nobody claims to know who might have committed the crime. For another Romani family living close by, the murder only serves to confirm their latent, carefully repressed fears. Far away in Canada the head of the family decides that his wife, children and their grandfather must join him as soon as possible. Living in fear of the racist terror that surrounds them and feeling abandoned by the silent majority, the family tries to get through the day after the attack. By nightfall when darkness descends on the village the family pushes the beds closer together than usual. Yet their hope of escaping the madness proves illusory. Winner of the Peace Film Award, the Amnesty International Film Prize and the Jury Grand Prix Silver Bear at Berlin International Film Festival 2012.

Polisse

Maïwenn : 2011

The daily grind for the members of the Police Department's Juvenile Protection Unit – taking in child molesters, busting underage pickpockets and chewing over relationship issues at lunch; interrogating abusive parents, taking statements from children, confronting the excesses of teen sexuality, enjoying solidarity with colleagues and laughing uncontrollably at the most unthinkable moments. Knowing the worst exists and living with it. How do these men and women balance their private lives and the reality they confront every working day? Fred, the group's hypersensitive wild card, is going to have a hard time facing the scrutiny of Mélissa, a photographer on a Ministry of the Interior assignment to document the unit. This poignant, authentic and confrontational police drama was winner of the Prix de Jury at Cannes 2011.

Un homme qui crie

Mahamat-Saleh Haroun : 2010
A Screaming Man

Present-day Chad. Adam, sixty something, a former swimming champion, is pool attendant at a smart N'Djamena hotel. When the hotel gets taken over by new Chinese owners, he is forced to give up his job to his son Abdel. Terribly resentful, he feels socially humiliated. The country is in the throes of a civil war. Rebel forces are attacking the government. The authorities demand that the population contribute to the "war effort", giving money or volunteers old enough to fight off the assailants. The District Chief constantly harasses Adam for his contribution. But Adam is penniless; he only has his son. Mahamat-Saleh Haroun's beautifully shot, powerful drama was the winner of the Jury Prize at Cannes 2010.

En ville

Valérie Mréjen & Bertrand Schefer : 2011
Iris in Bloom

Iris is 16 years old, goes to school and lives in a small provincial town. She is a young woman in search of herself. No longer able to endure a life at home, she decides to move in with Alexandre, her ex-boyfriend, with the hope that they can be together again. But as the days pass, Iris becomes frequently bored and unsettled, until Jean enters her life. The 40-year-old photographer from Paris specialises in capturing images of industrial wastelands and urban ruins. He seeks the soul of his desolate landscapes. Over the course of their meetings, the relationship between Iris and Jean evolves into an amorous friendship that will turn their lives upside down. Valérie Mréjen and Bertrand Schefer's debut feature premiered at the Quinzaine des Réalisateurs 2011 at Cannes.

Ausente

Marco Berger : 2011
Absent

A schoolboy tests the boundaries of his relationship to the teacher he admires. Martín finds a whole series of excuses to subtly invade his sport teacher Sebastián's privacy, ending up spending a night in his apartment. But when Martín's intentions dawn on him, the teacher has already been compromised. It takes a tragic accident for Sebastián to become aware of his own feelings for Martín. The film analyses the confusions of adolescence, the nature of desire, and the way an adult should behave when faced with such unexpected and confusing situations. Using elements of a psychological thriller to examine the danger inherent in the relationship between the pupil and his teacher, director Marco Berger's highly original and deeply moving second feature is about the abuse of an adult by a minor, who is fully aware of his teacher's delicate position and all too willing to exploit it. Ausente was the recipient of the Teddy award for best feature film at Berlin International Film Festival 2011.

Un amour de jeunesse

Mia Hansen-Løve : 2011
Goodbye First Love

When 15-year-old Camille meets 19-year-old Sullivan, their feelings create an almost unbearable intensity in Camille's life. Though he professes his devotion, Sullivan also longs to travel and chafes at the intensity of Camille's affection and need. When he takes off with his friends for a ten month backpacking trip to South America, his parting seems like the end of the world to Camille, but it's just the beginning of more complicated and tenacious emotions that will stretch through the years. Though she moves on, an unexpected encounter many years later pulls her unwillingly into the past, bringing the old, confusing feelings back to the surface. Mia Hansen-Løve's third feature explores with thoughtful insight and a delicate touch, first love's intoxicating, overwhelming and often cruel effects.

Weekend

Andrew Haigh : 2011

A one-night stand that becomes something more – an unconventional love story between two young men trying to make sense of their lives. On a Friday night after a drunken house party with his straight mates, Russell heads out to a gay club, alone and on the pull. Just before closing time he picks up Glen but what's expected to be just a one-night stand becomes something else, something special. That weekend, in bars and in bedrooms, getting drunk and taking drugs, telling stories and having sex, the two men get to know each other. It is a brief encounter that will resonate throughout their lives. Andrew Haigh's second feature is both an honest and unapologetic love story between two guys and a film about the universal struggle for an authentic life in all its forms. It is about the search for identity and the importance of making a passionate commitment to your life.

Aux yeux de tous

Cédric Jimenez & Arnaud Duprey : 2012
Paris Under Watch

The eve of the French presidential elections. 673,000 surveillance cameras and millions of webcams in France. An anonymous hacker has full access to all cameras in Paris and observes the city without anyone's knowledge. Petty crime and stolen moments of intimacy, he sees everything. A bomb devastates the crowded Gare d'Austerlitz, causing many fatalities and injuries. The government accuses Islamist militants. But the hacker carefully studies the pictures of the explosion, and running away, the young couple responsible for the crime. Using the city's surveillance cameras, he spies on the couple and manipulates them. In the process, unaware of what exactly he has put his finger on, he discovers that the truth can have many faces.

Elles

Małgorzata Szumowska : 2011

Anne, a successful, well-off Paris-based mother of two and investigative journalist for Elle, is writing an article about young female students who resort to prostitution to finance their studies. In the media, the subject is treated, on the one hand, with moral disapproval and, on the other, with voyeuristic curiosity. Anne's meetings with two fiercely independent young women, Alicja and Charlotte, are profound and unsettling, moving her to question her most intimate convictions about freedom, money, family and sex. The investigation will completely change the journalist's view of her own fetters and desires. Director Małgorzata Szumowska explores these desires on both sides, non-judgmentally, through an intimate exchange of women's views.

Carancho

Pablo Trapero : 2010
The Vulture

Every year more than 8,000 deaths and 120,000 injuries are caused by road accidents in Argentina. The millions of pesos that are needed by the victims and their families to cope with medical and legal costs represent a huge market, and each of these unfortunate incidents could bring with it a business opportunity. Sosa is a lawyer who specialises in road accidents. He is about to recover his practising licence. He scours the accident and emergency wings of hospitals, the emergency services and the police stations, seeking clients. He now works for a foundation that supposedly aids the victims but, in fact, is the front for a shady law firm. Sosa procures the clients, the witnesses, the adjusters' reports. He deals with the police, the judges and the insurers. Luján is a young doctor, a newcomer to the city. She works all hours, in several places, ambulances, accident and emergency wings, emergency services. She works alone, tirelessly, she hardly has time to sleep. She finds herself in a world that is alien to her. This love story begins the night Luján and Sosa meet, on the street. She is fighting to save the victim's life. He wants the victim to be his client. Together they will try to change the course of their lives, but Sosa's turbulent past will come up against them.

Gun Hill Road

Rashaad Ernesto Green : 2011

The story of a family in transition – a young man exploring his sexuality in an intolerant and judgmental world, and his exploration's impact on his relationship with his parents and himself. After three years in prison, Enrique returns home to the Bronx to find the world he knew has changed. His wife, Angela, struggles to hide an emotional affair, and his teenage son, Michael, explores a gender transformation well beyond Enrique's grasp and understanding. While Angela attempts to hold the family together by protecting Michael, Enrique clings to his masculine ideals, unable to accept his child who also calls herself Vanessa. Still under the watchful eye of his parole officer, Enrique must become the father he needs to be or, once again, risk losing his family and freedom. Writer/director Rashaad Ernesto Green's debut feature is an intricate portrait of a family divided, told with sensitivity, gentle humour, and a deep understanding of the environment that shapes its people.

Poongsan

Juhn Jai-hong : 2011

Poongsan has a very dangerous job. He risks his life by crossing the North and South Korean border every day, retrieving family members from the North to the South. Even though he could be killed at any moment he faces the danger head on. Government agents contract Poongsan to sneak out a girl, In-ok, the lover of a high-ranking North Korean defector. He quickly accomplishes the task, kidnapping the girl but on their way over the border they fall in love. As their romance is jeopardised by the many obstacles they encounter, Poongsan must decide whether to fulfil his contract or turn against the powerful people who hired him for the girl he loves.