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.

Where the Fire Burns

İsmail Güneş : 2012
Ateşin Düştüğü Yer

Sixteen-year-old Ayşe lives with her family on a Turkish farm and is her father's favourite daughter. One day, unexpectedly taken ill, she is brought to a hospital for emergency heart surgery. During the operation the doctors also discover that Ayşe is pregnant. Once recovered from the successful surgery, she refuses to reveal the identy of her baby's father, and Osman, Ayşe's father, is ordered to kill his daughter by the family council. Supposedly taking her to her uncle's until she gives birth, he embarks instead on an ominous journey with the serenely unsuspecting Ayşe, a pick and shovel in the car boot, beside a bottle of poison. In reality, this should be her last journey, but during their trip along the Turkish coast the father and daughter rediscover their true relationship – his anguish growing as she starts reacting to the poison slipped into her water bottle. Will Osman be able to break through the constraint of the ritual honour killing before it is too late? Winner of the FIPRESCI Prize at Montréal World Film Festival 2012.

Bez wstydu

Filip Marczewski : 2012
Shameless

The story of a love between a brother and sister, their painful growing up, their defiance of cultural taboos and finally, about the freedom of finding their own way in life. Eighteen-year-old Tadek is a boy rebelling against the world. Right before the end of the school year, he runs away from his aunt to his elder sister Anka, who is his only love. He is ashamed of these feelings and tries to fight them, to no avail. Heedless of the moral and social consequences, he wants to prove worthy of this forbidden love. Anka, also emotionally broken, in an unhappy relationship with the leader of a local neo-Nazi group, finds it difficult to reject her brother's adoration. She needs love and warmth as badly as her brother. At first, Tadek, fighting for the love of his sister, ignores Irmina, an uncompromising Romani girl who seeks his attention. In Tadek, Irmina sees the only one who could help her free herself from the taboos of her people – the law requiring the Romani woman to obediently accept an arranged marriage to a man whom she has never met. Filip Marczewski's formidable debut feature fearlessly yet tenderly explores one of society's last taboos. An incendiary story of love, desire and betrayal between siblings, set to the background of growing European extremism and xenophobia.

Fjellet

Ole Giæver : 2011
The Mountain

Two years ago, Nora and Solveig's five-year-old son, Vetle, died on a mountain hike. Their grief over his death has weighed heavily on their relationship ever since. For Nora, the child's biological mother, the pain of her loss has caused her to become increasingly bitter. Although Solveig loved Vetle just as much, Nora begins to question the sincerity of Solveig's grief. The boy's death has changed Solveig and she now finds that she can't imagine a life without a child any more. But how would Nora react? Would it ruin their relationship if Solveig were to have a child? Together, the two women set off on a journey to the mountain where their child died. Solveig hopes their return will be cathartic, helping them to cope with their grief and giving their relationship a chance. But as all the suppressed bitterness, hurt feelings and fears gradually surface the closer the women get to the site of the accident, the more they seem to be drifting towards the end of their relationship.

Chaika

Miguel Ángel Jiménez : 2012
Seagull

Α love story between a prostitute and a loser sailor, rebuilt between two seasons: the eternal winter of Siberia and summer in the dusty steppes of Kazakhstan. It's the story of three ways back home. Aysha's return to the steppes of Baikonur. Asylbek's trip to the innermost mountains of Seit. And Tursyn's way home to face what remains of his family: an old nomad about to die and a shipwrecked father. Both of them will bring back the vague memories that Tursyn has of his mother. It is the adventure of joining those memories that life left scattered in the most distant tundra, almost at the end of the world. The film premiered in competition at San Sebastián Film Festival 2012.

Dear Betrayed Friends

Sára Cserhalmi : 2012
Drága besúgott barátaim

Andor Czettl, in his early sixties, visits the declassified Communist archives one day to read the reports filed about him by the secret police. To his surprise he discovers that even his best friend János Pásztor informed against him, for decades. Focusing on the contradictory relationship of the two protagonists rather than the bare act of the problem, the film reflects on those chapters of Hungary's recent past that are still unclear. How can an informer live with himself? How can the one who was reported on cope with this state? Can a close friendship that began decades ago last if such betrayal comes to light? This disturbing psychological drama confronts a sensitive topic from the not-too-distant past that Hungary has yet to give due attention, bravely asking unpleasant questions but avoiding absolute judgements. Sára Cserhalmi's debut feature was winner of the Competition 1-2 Award at Warsaw International Film Festival 2012.

Noor

Çağla Zencirci & Guillaume Giovanetti : 2012

Shafiq is known as Noor in Pakistan's Khusras transgender community, where he found the kind of love that changed his life. Now, however, he will appear as a man and take on a man's work for a company that ornately decorates transport trucks. He even finds a girl who loves him as he is. And despite objections from Yasmeen's brother, Noor goes ahead with the wedding plans. But a scuffle with a drunken rapist sends him on a journey in a stolen truck that forces him to redefine his own identity and his place in the world. Noor's destination is a mountain lake. According to his wise old boss Babu, the lake is shrouded in legend and will allow Noor to magically bring about a definitive transformation. Inspired by real events in the lead actor's life, the directors' debut feature premiered at Karlovy Vary International Film Festival 2012.

Camion

Rafaël Ouellet : 2012

Widower Germain has been a truck driver all his life. After being involved in a road accident that causes the death of a woman, Germain's world collapses. He feels an overwhelming sense of guilt and remorse that keeps him away from the wheel. His state of mind soon starts to worry his younger son Samuel, who puts his own janitor job in Montréal on hold to track down his older brother, drifter Alain, in New Brunswick, hoping to head back together to their hometown to give some support to their father. By turning their family's dynamics upside down, Germain and his sons struggle to retrieve the ties that bound them earlier in their lives and to find hope for the future. With its captivating camerawork and formal and narrative purity, the film addresses, unsentimentally, life's most basic issues. Winner of Best Director and Ecumenical Jury Awards at Karlovy Vary International Film Festival 2012.

Kebun binatang

Edwin : 2012
Postcards from the Zoo

The zoo – a place of yearning. The zoo animals are yearning for freedom and many of the visitors long for adventure and the call of the wild. It is in these surroundings, where imagining yourself into other worlds is easy, that Lana grows up. When she was a little girl, her father left her behind in the colourful Jakarta zoo to be raised by zoo keepers. What dreams and longings does a young woman have who has grown up among giraffes, elephants and hippos? Is the cowboy who appears one day and is able to do magic merely a wish summoned into solid form, or is he real? Lana will assist him, and take her first steps outside her familiar world. But as suddenly as he appeared, the cowboy will disappear again by magic. On her own now, Lana begins to work as a masseuse at a spa. But the memory of the cowboy and nostalgia for the seemingly enchanted zoo will not leave her alone. The film premiered in competition at Berlin International Film Festival 2012.

Le sac de farine

Khadija Leclère : 2012
The Bag of Flour

Alsemberg, December 1975. Eight-year-old Sarah lives in a Catholic foster home. One day, her biological father, whom she has never met, comes to take her for a weekend in Paris. But it is in Morocco that Sarah wakes up to the call to prayer, in a little town lost in the foothills of the Atlas. Very soon, her father leaves, abandoning her without any discussion or explanation. She does not even know the language of the country, nor those people who present themselves as her family. Resigned, she slips into the life of a little girl where the only schooling she is offered is that of knitting. Time passes and Sarah, now 17, has became a Moroccan girl like any other, or nearly so. She has learned Arabic and appears to be fully assimilated. But her one desire is to leave, to find her lost Belgian childhood, her school and her books, and what she imagines is a life of freedom. Now she will fight for the right to choose her own life and not suffer one that has been chosen for her.

Sekret

Przemysław Wojcieszek : 2012
Secret

Ksawery and Karolina are visiting Jan in the country. Ksawery is a dancer who performs as a drag queen and Karolina is his agent. Jan is Ksawery's grandfather. Ksawery is gay, Karolina Jewish. Jan, over 80, is a former resistance soldier but guards a dark secret from the time of the Holocaust. Karolina knows that the house witnessed a murder which has gone unpunished for seventy years and she wants answers. Ksawery's love for his grandfather is in conflict with his urge to find out what happened back then. Identity here is composed of different layers that do not always harmonise according to background and allegiance. The film taps into the seam of our identity that is passed on by preceding generations, a process that can hurt but also heal. In experimental form, it immerses us in a questioning of individual and collective identities which goes far beyond the historical aspect – there may be no answers, but the questions resonate long after. The film premiered at Berlin International Film Festival 2012.

Un mundo secreto

Gabriel Mariño : 2012
A Secret World

María's last day of class marks the start of a journey. She'll cross Mexico but doesn't really know why. What she does know is that it isn't a fun trip. She knows it's not something to write home about, it's something else, it's a journey that began in the depths of her dreams and in her broken heart. Eighteen-year-old María is a solitary and promiscuous dreamer, struggling to make sense of her life in a harsh and vibrant Mexico City. Leaving her world behind, she embarks on an epic road trip, a secret and mysterious journey of self-discovery, from the city's urban chaos to the deserts of Sinaloa and the vast oceans of La Paz. Within these immense and shifting landscapes, María comes of age. She has one intimate, secret dream that only she knows about, and then she meets a young man who is different from all the rest. In a spectacular and spiritual conclusion, the natural world embraces María with pure poetic force. The film premiered at Berlin International Film Festival 2012.