Back to Your Arms

Kristijonas Vildžiūnas : 2010
Kai apkabinsiu tave

It's 1961. A father and his daughter are trying to meet in Berlin seventeen years after they were separated by fate during World War II. The father is from Soviet Lithuania and the daughter an émigré living in the United States. Despite the fact that there is a "thawing" period in the Soviet Union and the wall has not yet been erected in Berlin, the Cold War is approaching its culmination. As soon as the father arrives in Berlin, undercover employees of the KGB begin taking care of him. They try to entice the daughter to come to the East. However, the atmosphere of the city seeped with mistrust has affected her, and she is afraid to step across the boundary line of West Berlin. The few kilometres that now separate them have become an immeasurable distance. In order to help each other escape any potential KGB entrapments, both father and daughter are prepared to renounce the meeting they've been yearning for for so long. Winner of the Silver Crane at the Lithuanian Film Awards 2011.

Hara

Elias Yannakakis : 2012
Joy

Hara leaves the maternity ward with a baby in her arms. She spends her days looking after her newborn. Daily scenes of affection, familiarisation, devotion, but also acquaintance with the infant, to the melody of a lullaby. Everything seems cosy and warm, and the days spent with her baby, whom she cherishes, bring Hara much happiness. But the recurring news report about a baby that has been kidnapped from the maternity ward brings us back to reality with a jolt. We feel torn as we watch Hara go to extremes to protect her baby. Like any mother would. When Hara ends up in police custody, locked up in a cell, face to face with her own truth, she chooses silence. Regardless of an impending life sentence, she shows no interest in defending herself. And when the hearing begins, she remains silent during proceedings. Besides the abduction of the baby, she is accused of murdering a man (allegedly her accessory) and for having planned the kidnapping with the aforementioned victim. It is only ourselves who know that nothing of all this, is true. The film premiered at Thessaloniki International Film Festival 2012.

La clé des champs

Claude Nuridsany & Marie Pérennou : 2011
The Field of Enchantment

A deserted pond. Two lonely children fall under the spell of this wild place that, little by little, draws them closer to each other and gives them the strength to cope with life. The pond, a place they have chosen as a sort of virgin paradise, a refuge far from the world of grown-ups, becomes a magical mirror through which they discover unknown beings that will return them anew to their own lives. Seen through their eyes, and through their imaginations, the pond becomes a secret kingdom, both marvellous and frightening, thronging with creatures born from dreams or nightmares. The children experience an initiation, brief and intense, from which they will emerge transformed. Both in love with the same kingdom, they break free from their solitude and little by little discover friendship. The film premiered at La Biennale di Venezia 2011.

Nocturnos

Edgardo Cozarinsky : 2011

A man drives around Buenos Aires by night after waiting in vain for the return of a woman who has left him. During his aimless wandering, his inner thoughts take the form of poetry, illuminating chance encounters and what his imagination makes of the situations he witnesses. He meets all kind of night creatures, either real or fictional – loners, thieves, fugitives, homeless, suicides, lovers, and the ghost of the woman he shall not see again. In the early hours of the morning, an old poet reminisces about memory and its use of the past. There are people of the day and people of the night. The night ones recognise each other. Their city is theirs only. When the others seek refuge in the dubious safety of home, they go out to confront ourselves with that truth hidden by light and revealed by darkness. The film premiered in the Orizzonti selection at La Biennale di Venezia 2011.

Lung Neaw Visits His Neighbours

Rirkrit Tiravanija : 2011

A contemplative look at one man's humble dialogue with his surroundings. At the age of sixty, Lung Neaw finds himself retired from his life as a rice farmer in a small village in the northern Thai province of Chiang Mai. Away from the chatter and noise of recent political upheaval in the capital Bangkok and the demand for democratic reforms, we follow Lung Neaw in his daily life. We see Lung Neaw living off the land that he has known since he was born, fishing, hunting and foraging for herbs and vegetation in the open fields and forest nearby his home. He goes about the chores of living and fills up his idle time with the practicalities of a rural existence. In between, he finds time to spend with neighbours, from the local sage, to the ailing and aged elephant king deep in the valley, to children who play in his front yard and the youngsters at the local watering hole. Lung Neaw is known in the surrounding villages and his own as the man without enemies, a fair man without judgement and humble with his humility. The documentary premiered in the Orizzonti selection at La Biennale di Venezia 2011.

O le tulafale

Tusi Tamasese : 2011
The Orator

Saili, an unassuming villager and taro farmer, lives happily with his beautiful wife Vaaiga and her teenage daughter Litia. Their existence, whilst happy and peaceful, is unconventional. Vaaiga has been banished from her ancestral village for many years. Saili faces serious threats to his plantation as well as his family and has been denied his father's chiefly title that would offer some protection. Life is further complicated by Litia's blossoming beauty that is attracting the attention of the young men in the village. Matters ultimately come to a head, requiring Saili to face his fears, seek the right to speak out for those he loves, and to defend all that he holds precious. A contemporary drama about courage, forgiveness and the love of two people for each other in an increasingly hostile world. Tusi Tamasese's debut feature premiered and was awarded a Special Mention in the Orizzonti selection at La Biennale di Venezia 2011.

Xiao He

Liu Shu : 2012
Lotus

Xiao He is a free-spirited teacher working in a village in northern China. To her, learning is possible only if one experiences the pleasure of discovering something new, and it does not mean abiding by the same old rules. Her students love her teachings, but her colleagues do not like her rebellious attitude. When they discover that her lover, Li Weifeng, is a married man, she is forced to leave the school. Xiao He decides to move to Beijing, where she thinks she can use her creativity working as a journalist. However, her innate sense of freedom brings her into trouble again, and she is forced to work as a waitress to make a living. To find some security in her life, she begins dating a well-off businessman, Liu Xiangdong, who has a Beijing residency permit, but his love is not returned by Xiao He. When she decides to accept him anyway, a young policeman who she had previously turned down, will try to hamper her dreams. It is time for Xiao He to make a choice either to carry on suffering, or to betray her ideals in order to change her life. Liu Shu's debut feature premiered in competition at Venice International Film Critics' Week 2012.

Nana

Valérie Massadian : 2011

Nana is four years old and lives in a stone house, beyond the forest in the French countryside. Living apart from other children, she interacts on a daily basis only with her mother, her reserved grandfather and the natural world itself, its beauty and its violence. One day, back from school in the late afternoon, all she finds is silence in the empty house. Unperturbed, Nana embarks alone upon a journey into the night of her childhood, the world from her height. She walks with a childlike purity through a world that is partly paradise, partly hard and realistic. Shot from the perspective of a child, it is a film that touches life, death and resistance more through primal sensations than explicit narrative, more through a feminine understanding of the world than an intellectual one. Intimate and sensitive, and completely devoid of sentimentality, Valérie Massadian's debut feature is about the basic questions of life as experienced directly in the middle of the process of awakening. A remarkable collaboration between director and performer, the film won the award for Best First Feature at Locarno Film Festival 2011.

The Daughter

Alexander Kasatkin & Natalya Nazarova : 2012
Doch

Teenager Inna lives with her father and brother in a small provincial town. Her quiet life changes when a new girl, Masha, comes to the school. Very soon the girls become friends. However, Masha falls victim to a serial killer who murders teenage girls. At her friend's funeral Inna meets the priest's son whose sister has also been murdered. A drama about people whose faith, hope, and love are put to the toughest test. A film about being able to choose when no choice is possible, about the courage to accept events, about the strength to withstand circumstances that destroy the world around you, your character, and your life. Winner of the award for Best Debut at Kinotavr Film Festival 2012, and the FIPRESCI Prize for Best Debut from Eastern Europe at Warsaw Film Festival 2012.

Hija

María Paz González : 2011
Daughter

The story of a mother and daughter who cross Chile in search of a relative they both don't know. The mother hopes to find her sister, while the daughter expects to find her real father. Along a 2000 kilometre road, they will be forced to confront their childhood expectations with a present which may prove to be even more uncertain and hostile than the fantasies involved in building their identities. Presented as a personal quest, it is a journey where lies become reality and where the reality takes the shape of a film: that of a documentary road movie based on imaginary facts; a story that gives meaning to the fantasies that built up their identity. The loss, the lack, the loneliness and the need of knowing their origins, the truth and the lies, the complicity and dialogues all mingle through an original yet harmonic voice into an intimate portrait of a family's origin. If telling a family's history reflects the country's one, Hija stages the origin and mythology of Chilean society.

7 Cajas

Juan Carlos Maneglia & Tana Schémbori : 2012
7 Boxes

It's Friday night in Asunción and the temperature is a sweltering forty degrees. Víctor, a 17-year-old wheelbarrow delivery boy, dreams of becoming famous and covets a fancy TV set in the infamous Mercado 4. Then he receives an unusual proposal, to carry seven boxes of unknown content in exchange for a torn half of a US $100 bill. He'll get the other half when he finishes the job. Víctor, who has never seen a banknote of this value, cannot even guess at how many guaraníes this represents. Given instructions towards an unknown destination along the way through a borrowed cellphone, Víctor embarks on the journey. Crossing the eight blocks that constitute the market seemed easy but the task proves to be more complicated than expected. Something in the boxes is highly coveted and without realising, Víctor and his pursuers quickly find themselves caught up in something they know nothing about. As night falls Víctor discovers that he is now an accomplice in a dangerous crime.

Chocó

Jhonny Hendrix Hinestroza : 2012

Chocó is twenty-seven years old, she has two children, a tiny riverside wooden hut on the edge of a Colombian village, and an underpaid job in a gold mine. Her husband Everlides gambles away the little money they have and forces himself onto Chocó at night when he's had too much to drink. Nonetheless she truly believes that things will get better. But then she loses her job, while her daughter wants her birthday cake and Everlides spends the last of their savings. Chocó finds herself standing in the village shop, looking at the colourful cakes on the counter. You won't get anything for nothing here, the shopkeeper reminds her. If you want a cake, I want you. Stifled by her husband and a tradition based on male domination, Chocó's story exemplifies the lives of many women who suffer mistreatment and domestic violence, where such behaviour and abuse is seen by society as normal. Producer and screenwriter Jhonny Hendrix Hinestroza's directorial debut premiered at Berlin International Film Festival 2012.

Imagine

Andrzej Jakimowski : 2012

Arriving in a prestigious clinic for the visually impaired in Lisbon, Ian, a new instructor, starts to teach spatial orientation to his international group of young blind patients. For him, the key to getting around and living a fulfilling life are the mind and the imagination, and not sensory perception. Whilst he is fully alert to the sounds and smells around him at all times, he also "imagines" the landscape through which he walks. This allows him to navigate his way around solid objects and to locate things. Self-confident and charismatic, Ian attempts to transfer his skill of walking without a cane to other patients and in particular Eva. Away from the cloistered institute, as they venture into the chaos and clamour of the streets of Lisbon, Ian reveals his ability to see more with his imagination than most people can see with their eyes. However, his unusual teaching methods, although successful, are not only challenging, but also dangerous. Captivating and mesmerising, the film captures in the most extraordinary manner its characters' experience and the very sense of what it feels like to walk unassisted. Winner of the prize for Best Director at Warsaw Film Festival 2012.

Forgotten

Alex Schmidt : 2012
Du hast es versprochen

During their childhood, Hanna and Clarissa were best friends. They spent every vacation together with their parents in an old summer house on a small island. Shortly after Hanna's ninth birthday they suddenly lost touch and only meet again unexpectedly now, 25 years later. The two women pick up their friendship where they left off and spontaneously decide to spend a few days on the island. Accompanied by Hanna's 7-year-old daughter Lea, they return to the place where they spent their childhood. When Hanna learns that Maria, a playmate of hers from the island's village, disappeared as a child and was never seen or heard from again, she begins to search the past. Something horrible must have happened on the island back then. But the closer Hanna gets to the dark secret, the more threatening life becomes for her and her daughter, and the greater the menace. The truth that comes to light is more terrible and horrifying than Hanna could ever have imagined. Alex Schmidt's sophisticated mystery thriller, her debut feature, premiered at La Biennale di Venezia 2012.

Three Sisters

Wang Bing : 2012
San zimei

Three sisters, between four and ten years old, live alone in a small village family house in the high mountains of Yunnan Province. Their parents are nowhere to be seen. The mother has been missing for a long time, the father works in a city several hundred kilometres away. The three little girls spend their days working in the fields or wandering in the village. When their aunt finds it difficult to provide food for the sisters, the father returns to the village. He has come to take them with him to the city but he then agrees to leave the eldest, Ying, under the supervision of her grandfather. She alone remains in the open fields and in the darkness of her adobe house. Around her the beauty of the landscape is in stark contrast to the hard life of the child: the poverty, the monotonous daily routine, the harsh climate and the lack of human warmth. The film also tells of a village left behind by industrialisation. Now a place where only the very old and the very young live in isolation, while everyone else seeks their fortune in the city. Amidst China's economic rise, the film presents the reality of the forgotten lives of those who remain. Wang Bing's documentary won the Orizzonti award for Best Film at La Biennale di Venezia 2012.

Leones

Jazmín López : 2012
Lions

Five young people, aged between 18 and 21 years, suffer a car accident on the highway. Four of the young people die. The youngest, Isabel, survives. Nevertheless, the journey has just begun. None of them is aware of their own death. Deep in the forest the group of five friends wander around like a lion herd. They roam the forest without a fixed course, immersed in their puns and surrounded by a halo of mystery that lies somewhere between life and death, between realism and surrealism. One of the group, Niki, obsessively listens to a tape recorder that's captured the sound of them all travelling somewhere in a car, an event no one can remember but which offers vital clues to their existential situation. Lost in their word games, they play and seduce each other whilst going back and forth into adulthood territory, in a desperate search to avoid their already written story. Jazmín López's mysterious and astonishing Borgesian debut feature premiered in the Orizzonti selection at La Biennale di Venezia 2012.

El amigo alemán

Jeanine Meerapfel : 2012
My German Friend

Sulamit Löwenstein, the daughter of German-Jewish emigrants from Germany, grows up in Buenos Aires in the nineteen-fifties. Between her and Friedrich, the German boy living next door whose parents escaped to Argentina after the war, a deep intimacy and kinship develops. When Friedrich discovers that his father was an SS Lieutenant-Colonel in Nazi Germany, he breaks off all contact with his family and goes to Germany to study, full of angry energy to change the world. Sulamit follows him a few years later and they maintain their friendship, though the romantic side of the relationship is challenged. Friedrich takes an active part in the German protest movement of May 1968 and is dedicated to the Cuban cause and the liberation struggles of Latin America. Gradually his whole life centres on his political commitment, but even though Sulamit meets another man, Michael, her love for Friedrich never dies.

Una noche

Lucy Mulloy : 2012
One night

A single night can feel very long sometimes, especially if you're on a tiny raft, can't swim and are surrounded by sharks. With just ninety miles of water between Cuba and Florida, plenty of Cubans who are desperate to leave, choose to make this risky trip across the sea. So too Lila's twin brother Elio, whose commitment is tested as he is torn between protecting his sister and his own desire to get out. Lila always thought he could never leave her – after all, they've been together ever since they were born. But of late he's been distracted and has had less and less time for her; nowadays his world seems to revolve around his new friend Raul. In a ruined building at the beach she discovers a couple of wooden boards and two car tyres, the components for a makeshift raft with which her brother and his friend, who is now wanted by the police, are intending to make their escape. Lila decides she too is ready to take a risk and joins them. On this one night, full of hope and fraught with tensions, they face the biggest challenge of their lives. Lucy Mulloy's debut feature premiered at Berlin International Film Festival 2012.

Sentados frente al fuego

Alejandro Fernández Almendras : 2011
By the Fire

Daniel and Alejandra, a Chilean working-class couple both approaching forty, have been together for a couple of years. Abandoning the promise of the city, they decide to buy a piece of land and move out to the country. But Alejandra suffers from a serious illness that will slowly consume her dreams and put Daniel's love and patience to the test. As their hopes and plans hang in the balance, Daniel must come to terms with the harsh realities of physical labour on the land, and the discovery that his actions have not always been good and noble in his strive for perfection. Following them over the course of a year, this is the story of a couple willing to fight all manner of adversities to make their dream of a new life together a reality. Capturing the texture of everyday life, the story unfolds against the stunning scenery of the Región del Biobío with an unhurried, near-documentary intimacy.

Renoir

Gilles Bourdos : 2012

Côte d'Azur, 1915. In his twilight years, Pierre-Auguste Renoir is tormented by the loss of his wife, the pains of arthritic old age and the terrible news that his son Jean has been wounded in action. But when a young girl miraculously enters his world, the old painter is filled with a new, wholly unexpected energy. Blazing with life, radiantly beautiful, Andrée will become his last model, and the wellspring of a remarkable rejuvenation. Back at the family home to convalesce, Jean too falls under the spell of the new, redheaded star in the Renoir firmament. In their Mediterranean Eden – and in the face of his father's fierce opposition – he falls in love with this wild, untameable spirit. And as he does so, within weak-willed, battle-shaken Jean, a filmmaker begins to grow. The film premiered in the Un Certain Regard selection at Festival de Cannes 2012.

When Day Breaks

Goran Paskaljević : 2012
Kad svane dan

Miša Brankov is a retired music professor. One morning he receives a letter requesting him to contact the Jewish Museum in Belgrade. At the museum, he learns that during an excavation on the sewers at the city's old fairgrounds an iron box was found. The location had previously been the site of an infamous concentration camp where some 48,000 Serbian Jews and Gypsies had perished during the Second World War. The contents of the box, that will change his life, include personal documents pertaining to the professor's identity and an unfinished musical score called "When Day Breaks". The box was buried by a concentration camp inmate, the Jewish musician Isaac Weiss, in the year 1941. Eventually, the professor discovers that when he was an infant, his real parents, the Weisses, entrusted him to their friends, the Brankovs, just before they were taken into the camp. The initial shock of the professor's discovery soon gives way to a determination to fulfil the shattered dreams that he has inherited. It is something that infuses him with new purpose and provides him with a second lease on life.

Arraianos

Eloy Enciso Cachafeiro : 2012

The inhabitants of a small village lost in the woodlands between Galicia and Portugal live and work in a quiet routine. From time to time, brief conversations arise amongst them. Surrounded by an endless forest, incapable of finding a way out, the Arraianos ask themselves about the reasons for their confinement, wondering if such things as sunlight, free will or a horizon really exist. One day, a stranger arrives; the possibility of change, a way out, a means of purification. What is left after the end, when all has been consumed? Somewhere between reality and fable, the Arraianos play out their lives to make a portrait of the rural world and its obstinate resistance to disappear, a picture of life as it is. The fictional elements of the piece come from a play by Marinhas del Valle, The Forest, written in the 1960s as a parable of Franco's dictatorship, but also a great portrait of the Galician soul, their tragic existentialism. The film's documentary elements thus present a more frontal portrait of the soul of these autarkic people. As the seasons change and the signs of apocalypse grow – a fire rages in the forest – one man promises salvation, whilst another proclaims the end of the world is coming. In this moving work, memory floats in space, and a way of life dies before one's eyes.

Breaking Horizons

Pola Beck : 2012
Am Himmel der Tag

Lara can hardly believe it when the doctor tells her that she's pregnant. The 25-year-old ex-student spends her nights hanging around Berlin with best friend Nora, having lost interest in her architectural studies long ago. She has no idea what to do with her life – she does a lot, but nothing properly. She now finds herself pregnant after a night of passion with a charming barman she met at a party. Nora is thrilled by the news though, proclaiming: "we're having a baby!" After some initial doubts, Lara too begins to see her pregnancy as an opportunity. With the feeling that it's the first time she has made the right decision for herself, she throws herself into the adventure. Together with Nora, she sets about painting the nursery and goes in search of the baby's father. But the challenge will be a painful experience for Lara when the gynaecologist tells her, "Your child will not live". Pola Beck's debut feature won the Golden Eye award in competition at Zurich Film Festival 2012.

Song of Silence

Chen Zhuo : 2012
Yang mei zhou

Xiao Jing lives with her mother and grandparents in a small fishing village in Hunan Province. Her only real emotional connection is with her uncle, a mentally handicapped artist whom she occasionally poses for. Instead of going to school, the deaf-mute teenager spends her time on his fishing boat, until one day she gets too close to him. Xiao Mei, a city kid rock musician of the same age, travels from club to club with her guitar, dreaming of an independent life. When Jing goes to live in the city with her hardboiled police officer father Haoyang, the two girls come together. Mei is Haoyang's lover. Despite an initial stand-off, the three manage to open up and create an emotional tie that gives their lives new perspective. In elegantly nested sequences, the film tells of the meeting and separating of these three figures, each of which is isolated in their own way. Winner of the Golden Firebird at Hong Kong International Film Festival 2012.

La traversée

Jérôme Cornuau : 2012
The Crossing

Lola Arendt, a girl of eight years, vanishes whilst on vacation on a wild Scottish island. Their lives shattered by her disappearance, her parents, Sarah and Martin, separate. Two years later, Lola is found at the exact same spot where she had disappeared. She is alive, apparently in good health, but is immersed in a strange silence. Martin returns to the island to bring her home, but his delight at being reunited with his daughter soon gives way to suspicion and fear. Where was Lola? Why won't she talk? Who are these men watching them? What did Sarah know about Lola's disappearance? And who is the beautiful and mysterious Norah Kross? When the weather conspires to stop them leaving, Martin and Lola embark on a journey across the island with Norah, headed for a tragic discovery.

The House

Zuzana Liová : 2011
Dom

Stone by stone, Imrich is building a small house for his daughter Eva almost entirely on his own. But for Eva, who is about to graduate from school, the prospect of moving into the house is about as appealing as being imprisoned in a jail she herself has helped to build. She has very different plans for her future. Money is changing the society, challenging the absolute rule of patriarchy. Her grumpy, stingy, controlling father has already broken with Eva's sister, Jana, after she got herself involved with a scoundrel with whom she now has three children. So the father is twice as vigilant with Eva, but she still manages to indulge in a few little freedoms: skipping school for a couple of days, doing little jobs to save up cash for the trip she longs to make to London, and an affair with an older man who turns out to be her English teacher. Winner of the Audience Award for Best Slovak Film at Bratislava International Film Festival 2011.

Somewhere in Between

Yeşim Ustaoğlu : 2012
Araf

Zehra and Olgun spend most of their young lives working in a service station cafeteria near a lonely highway. Their monotonous work shifts are broken up only by sparks of naive expectations of a brighter future. Everything seems transient about their surroundings. The once important industrial area is now a faceless place of economic waste and unemployment. Most of the area's occupants have all escaped to the big city in search of opportunity. But Zehra, Olgun and their friends still remain, caught somewhere in between the past and an uncertain future. Zehra dreams that love will take her away from her meaningless job and life at home with her strict old-fashioned mother. She becomes fascinated by an older truck driver, Mahur, who spends much of his time on the road. As Zehra's desire for Mahur turns into a tragic first love, her rebellious friend Olgun becomes more and more frustrated, stuck at home, not yet a young man on his own. Zehra and Olgun will experience a bittersweet rite of passage, leading to both suffering and awakening. But as they say goodbye to their childhood innocence, love and hope will help them to move forward. The film premiered at La Biennale di Venezia 2012.

Mona

Ināra Kolmane : 2012

A story about different worlds – about a man and a woman, about city and countryside, about future and past. It is also a story about animals and their killers, about deep and short-lived passion and the ancient mystery of a woman. A businessman from Riga arrives at his uncle's funeral in a small Latvian village, a village whose main landmark and virtually the only source of income is a slaughterhouse. There he meets Mona, a local woman, and abandons the idea of ever returning to Riga. But the small-town environment, daily life, people and their mode of thinking have not yet been fully freed from the legacy of the Soviet times. Unlike the European Riga, everything is more conservative and less apt to change in the remote countryside. The dull life of several villagers is turned upside down, and a fusion of passion, mystery, animal instincts and human fragility emerges. It is a story about love as a misunderstanding and misunderstandings created by passion.

Memories Look at Me

Song Fang : 2012
Ji yi wang zhe wo

Fang travels from Beijing to spend some time with her ageing parents at their home in Nanjing. Perfectly capturing the rhythm of a brief sojourn home, her remarkable debut feature reflects, through encounters with relatives, neighbours and friends, on what it means to grow old; how an adult child's relationship with her parents changes as they grow older; and how to negotiate one's place as a single woman in a world of married couples. Reunions, both joyful and heart-wrenching, reminiscences, and moments of feeling painfully out of place. Around her, as time goes by, memories often come back in the conversations unexpectedly, some she knows, some not. The present is mixed up with the past, and the steps towards the future may walk along the path of eternal loss. Those left behind cope with the loss of someone with whom they've spent much of their lives. A quiet meditation on mortality, the healing powers and limitations of family intimacy, and the inexorable passage of time. Winner of the award for Best First Feature at Locarno Film Festival 2012.