Il Mare

Lee Hyun-seung : 2000
Siworae

Kim Eun-ju moves out of her beautiful seaside home named Il Mare. She leaves a card in the mailbox, asking the next occupant to forward any mail to her new address in the city. Han Sung-hyun, an architecture student, receives her card but is puzzled since he is the first and only person to live in the house, and the card is dated two years in the future. Believing it to be a joke or a wrong delivery, Sung-hyun leaves a letter in reply, telling her so and reminding her that it is 1997 not 1999. After an exchange of correspondence, Eun-ju and Sung-hyun, realising that they are separated by two years of time but can somehow communicate through the mailbox, begin to form a friendship through their letters. Gradually they are attracted to each other and decide that they should try to meet in person. However, they are about to discover that many things can happen to one's life during the course of two years.

J'attends quelqu'un

Jérôme Bonnell : 2007
Waiting for Someone

Louis is a divorced café proprietor living in a town in Ile de France. He flirts with every woman he bumps into, but doesn't develop any deeper relationship with them, except a growing affection for Sabine, the prostitute he sees regularly at a local hotel. His sister Agnès is a teacher, and is apparently happily married to Jean-Philippe, but he works very hard and doesn't seem to have been giving her all the affection she needs recently. She bumps into Stéphane, a young man recently returned to the town whom she knew as a child. He is obsessively interested in a young family who live nearby. The three story-lines running in parallel observe and gradually explore the hidden feelings and desires of each of these characters. Will any of them find happiness?

Le chignon d'Olga

Jérôme Bonnell : 2002
Olga's Chignon

Julien and his sister Emma lost their mother nearly a year ago. They're still living in Beauce with their father, Gilles, in the house where they were born. The emptiness left by death is painful to bear, yet they can't manage to speak openly about it with each other. Each deals with the shared tragedy in a very different way in order to find a new balance in their life. The younger son, still a child, is confused and uncertain; the working daughter takes some of the responsibilities of her mother, whilst coping with her own problems growing up; and the widowed father, adrift and tormented by memories, is looking for new relationships. The small town, emptied of its inhabitants who have gone on vacation, seems abandoned. As the summer draws to a close, Julien aimlessly wanders the streets until one day he encounters Olga, a beautiful young woman who works in a bookshop. Secretly, without confiding even in his close childhood friend Alice, he tries everything he can to get closer to the object of his affection.

Lal Gece

Reis Çelik : 2012
Night of Silence

A convoy of cars, decorated horsemen and the sound of drums and shawms. Men dance, illuminated by the flames from torches. Women dance apart from the men. This is a traditional wedding in a remote part of Turkey. It's an arranged marriage, neither the bride nor the groom were given a choice. What happens when a much older man is married to a young girl? This quiet, intimate film tells the tragic story of an unusual wedding night. The groom has recently been released from prison, having spent most of his life behind bars on account of two honour killings. This marriage is meant to put an end to a blood feud that has lasted many years. After the ceremony, he finds himself alone with his bride, lifting her veil he looks into the frightened face of a fourteen-year-old girl. He tries to be nice to her, and gentle, but he is a desperate, broken man. She hesitates and tries to use other distractions to get through the night. Night passes and dawn arrives, bringing the relatives with it, all of whom are waiting for the stained bed sheet that will prove that everything is as it should be. Winner of a Crystal Bear award at Berlin International Film Festival 2012.

Bizalom

István Szabó : 1980
Confidence

In World War II Hungary, hard-bitten resistance fighter János Biró and naive young mother Katalin are thrown together in an attempt to escape the Nazis. Compelled to pose as husband and wife under false names to hide their connections to the anti-Nazi resistance, they are forced into a strange intimacy. Terrified of discovery, the couple are wary of all those around them, even of each other, and must regard everyone as a potential informant. As their individual loyalties are challenged, their relationship begins to change, calling into question the emotional certainties of their normal lives, and forcing them to reassess who they really trust. This profoundly moving, award-winning film delicately, yet powerfully, explores the nature of our trust and faith in others under exceptional circumstances.

The Other Side of Sleep

Rebecca Daly : 2011

Arlene, a sleepwalker since childhood, wakes one morning surrounded by sinister woods. But something is different this time, because she lies next to a dead girl. Or was this awakening from the sleepwalking maybe just another dream? A few hours later Arlene is at work in the local factory of the small Irish rural town she grew up in. When news reaches the factory staff that the body of a 17-year-old girl named Gina has been found in the woods, Arlene immediately channels her own mother's mysterious disappearance, twenty years ago. Increasingly drawn to the girl's family, the accused boyfriend and grieving sister, Arlene barricades herself in at night, depriving herself of sleep. Deep in emotional turmoil, her sleeping and waking realities soon blur, as the community searches to find the killer. Drawing from haunting recollections of her own teenage years in Sussex, Rebecca Daly's dark thriller debut feature premiered at the Quinzaine des Réalisateurs at Festival de Cannes 2011.

De jueves a domingo

Dominga Sotomayor : 2012
Thursday till Sunday

It all begins on a Thursday when nine-year-old Lucía and five-year-old Manuel go on vacation with their parents to the north of Chile. It all ends on a Sunday. It's the children's distant and fragmented outlook on this possible last family trip. This Chilean road movie is set entirely in and around the car belonging to a middle-class family on a four-day trip to the north of Chile. It will be their last journey as a family. We occasionally catch a glimpse of marital problems, but the crisis is largely implicit. For instance, we often only see the backs of the silent parents' heads, seen from the perspective of the children in the back seat, who only have a partial idea of what is going on. The journey that starts so cheerfully with all kinds of games in the car quickly acquires melancholy undertones. The children only want to go to the beach, while the father is heading for a new life in another apartment and the mother primarily yearns for a place which no longer exists, where everything remains the same as it was.

Captive

Brillante Mendoza : 2012

A group of armed and masked men belonging to the Muslim Abu Sayyaf group burst into a hotel on an island resort and kidnap twelve foreign guests. The attack was intended to target employees of the World Bank, but they have already left the resort. The abductees are tourists and Christian missionaries who are now forced on a gruelling foot march through the Philippine jungle. Together, the hostages and the kidnappers find themselves having to cope with the trials of nature. Gradually, the climate of fear, prejudice and hatred evolves into a strange, symbiotic relationship. The contours begin to blur, certainties are called into question. Nothing seems to be the same any more.

Io sono Li

Andrea Segre : 2011
Li and the Poet

Shun Li works in a textile factory in the outskirts of Rome in order to get her papers and enable her eight-year-old son to come to Italy. She is suddenly transferred to Chioggia, a small city-island in the Veneto lagoon, to work as a bartender in a pub. Bepi, a Slavic fisherman, nicknamed "the Poet" by his friends, has been a regular at that little pub for years. Their encounter is a poetic escape from solitude, a silent dialogue between cultures that are different, yet not more distant. It is an odyssey into the deep heart of a lagoon, which can be both the mother and cradle of identities, which never keep still. But the friendship between Shun Li and Bepi upsets both the Chinese and local communities, who interfere with this new voyage, which they are perhaps simply too afraid of. The moving story of an impossible friendship between two poetic souls that cultures oppose. Winner of the LUX Prize 2012.

El campo

Hernán Belón : 2011
In the Open

A young urban couple, Elisa and Santiago, buy a house in the country and settle there with their two-year-old daughter, Mathilda, to spend a few days surrounded by nature. Santiago plans to make home improvements, go hunting and explore the countryside. But soon after they settle in, strange disturbances begin striking a discord, and Elisa and Santiago's solid relationship starts to unravel without anyone being at cause. Elisa feels uneasy, nervous, and a strange feeling takes hold of her, a stinging feeling that kills all her certainties. Things are not going well between them, the tension increases and their arguments become stronger and more violent. The child cries and is a burden, and the country becomes increasingly hostile. Undoubtedly, nothing goes the way they expected when they planned this journey. In their search, Santiago and Elisa will encounter more than they have bargained for.

Infancia clandestina

Benjamín Ávila : 2012
Clandestine Childhood

Argentina 1979. After years of exile, 12-year-old Juan and his family come back to Argentina under fake identities. Juan's parents and his uncle Beto are members of the Montoneros Organisation, which is fighting against the military junta that rules the country. Because of their political activities they are being tracked down relentlessly. His friends at school and the girl he loves, María, know him as Ernesto, a name he must not forget, his family's survival being at stake. It is a story about militancy, undercover life and love. The story of a clandestine childhood. Benjamín Ávila's first feature premiered at the Quinzaine des Réalisateurs 2012 at Cannes.

Ćaća

Dalibor Matanić : 2011
Daddy

A girl persuades her boyfriend and her sister to join her on a journey to a secluded house in the mountains of Lika, an isolated area of Croatia. There she meets her father who abandoned the family many years ago. Her father is now seriously ill, so this is her last chance to talk to him about everything that happened in the past. In the remote landscape of Lika, a family's dark secrets that have been hidden for a lifetime are about to be revealed. But this encounter leaves them with a few surprises. Wildness, an oppressing atmosphere, long silences and a family secret that should not have been told. Dalibor Matanić's psychological drama won the Golden Arena awards for Best Director, Best Actress and Best Cinematography at Pula Film Festival 2011.

Les yeux clairs

Jérôme Bonnell : 2005
Pale Eyes

Fanny acts like a normal child, plays in the park, learns the piano, has fights with her brother and occasionally sulks in her room. But Fanny is in her mid-thirties and suffers from a psychological illness. At her teacher brother Gabriel's house, where she lives, she has a very tense relationship with her sister-in-law, Cécile. After discovering that the latter is having an affair with a local antiques dealer, Fanny steals the family car and embarks on a pilgrimage to her father's grave in Germany. On the way she punctures a tyre in the middle of a dark forest where a lonely woodsman, Oskar, comes to her aid. With neither speaking the other's language, they create their own with their hands and eyes, and very soon a relationship develops between them. Depicting events in a realistic fashion, but with an almost folk-tale quality, this simple yet exquisite, wordless romance is slow-paced and beautifully shot, with a refreshingly ambiguous ending.

Les invisibles

Sébastien Lifshitz : 2012

Men and women, born between the wars, with nothing in common except their homosexuality, and their decision to live openly at a time when society rejected them. They've loved, struggled, desired, made love. They tell us about their pioneering lives, and how they navigated the desire to remain ordinary with the need to liberate themselves in order to thrive. An insightful and engaging reflection by a cross-section of older French gay men and lesbians on their youth in the shadows, their path to living openly, and the serenity they have achieved over the course of their lives. Sébastien Lifshitz's documentary was included in the Séances Spéciales selection at Festival de Cannes 2012.

Kuma

Umut Dağ : 2012

When Ayşe celebrates her wedding almost everyone in her Turkish village believes her to have married Hasan who is just a few years her senior. But in fact, she is sent to Vienna as Hasan's father Mustafa's second wife. She arrives in Austria and receives a mixed welcome from her new family. At first, Mustafa's children, some of whom are older than Ayşe, turn their back on the girl. Only Fatma, Mustafa's wife of many years who is now dying of cancer, seems genuinely pleased. Now she can be assured of a good successor to tend to her husband, to whom she has been a loyal and obedient Muslim wife. A special friendship evolves between the two different women but this relationship is soon put to the test when the family has to face a stroke of fate. Umut Dağ's debut feature, which screened at the Berlinale 2012, explores the relationship between the old and the new, loyalty and friendship, within the complex microcosm of a Turkish family living in Vienna.

Höhenfeuer

Fredi M Murer : 1985
Alpine Fire

On a remote Swiss mountainside, a family live almost entirely disconnected from the modern world. An implacable, untamed environment of austere beauty, yet one which can also be constrictive and claustrophobic. The older couple have two children, a daughter Belli, who aspires to become a teacher, and a younger son Franzi, a child-like deaf-mute who helps his father on the farm. Belli, a loving elder sister, is the only one who understands the boy. She teaches her brother to read and write, and comforts him when he's angry. But Franzi's inability to communicate leads him to often violent frustration in his work. When he wrecks an expensive mower in a fit of anger, he is banished to the outskirts of the farm. In the deserted cabin which Franzi now occupies, Belli visits and brings him food. Alone together, the emotional and physical closeness they share is intensified and before long they become lovers. By winter, the boy is back in the house and Belli is pregnant. Soon she must confront her parents. This tragic and hauntingly beautiful film won the Golden Leopard at Locarno Film Festival 1985.

Mystery

Lou Ye : 2012

Lu Jie has no idea her husband Yongzhao is leading a double life, until the day she sees him entering a hotel with a young woman. Her world crumbles – and it's just the beginning. A few hours later, the young woman dies beneath the wheels of a car. The police officer in charge of the case refuses to believe her death was accidental. A dark, intense and intimate drama exploring notions of fidelity, family and identity in a society that has lost its moral bearings. The film premiered in the Un Certain Regard selection at Festival de Cannes 2012.

Tres dies amb la família

Mar Coll : 2009
Three days with the family

Léa has to go to Girona unexpectedly as her grandfather has recently passed away. There, she will meet up with her family, whom she hasn't seen since she left to go abroad. The death of the patriarch of the Vich i Carbó family is the perfect catalyst to force his descendents to get along. The three days of the wake, the mass and the funeral are full of nostalgia and the grief brought about by death. It is also a good time to put an end to the show of appearances put on by this bourgeoisie in their decline. Léa rebels against this world of hypocrisy, although it clings to her skin like a tailor-made suit. Mar Coll's debut feature won her the Best New Director award at the Premios Goya 2010.

In Another Country

Hong Sang-soo : 2012
Da-reun na-ra-e-suh

A young film student and her mother run away to the coastal town of Mohang to escape their mounting debt. The young woman begins writing a script for a short film in order to calm her nerves. Three women named Anne appear, and each woman consecutively visits the seaside town of Mohang. The first Anne is a successful film director. The second Anne is a married woman secretly in an affair with a Korean man. The third Anne is a divorcée whose husband left her for a Korean woman. A young woman tends to the small hotel by the Mohang foreshore owned by her parents. A certain lifeguard can always be seen wandering up and down the beach that lies nearby. Each Anne stays at this small hotel, receives some assistance from the owner's daughter, and ventures onto the beach where they meet the lifeguard. This three-tiered story, centred on a trio of French tourists visiting the same South Korean seaside resort, premiered at Festival de Cannes 2012.