For Those Who Can Tell No Tales

Jasmila Žbanić : 2013

On a summer holiday through Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kym, an Australian tourist, is visiting the sites and souvenir shops promoted in her guidebooks and keeping a video diary. She decides to travel to Višegrad, a small town steeped in history on the border between Bosnia and Serbia. But inexplicably, one night spent there at a charming hotel gives way to anxiety and insomnia. Something is wrong, but she is not quite sure what. Once Kym is back in Sydney, she does some background research and discovers that the enchanting hotel she stayed in was a centre for torture, violence and death. Evocations of the region's atrocities begin to haunt her, as does the question of why the guidebook, or the town itself, made no mention of the event. The spectre of trauma is finally so insistent that she is compelled to return to Višegrad and investigate this hidden history for herself. But it is a history that no one wants to remember. Part drama, part essay film, Jasmila Žbanić's third feature premiered at Toronto International Film Festival 2013.

Han Gong-ju

Lee Su-jin : 2013

Involved in a scandalous accident, high school girl Han Gong-ju is forced to change schools. Her parents cannot look after her, so she stays at the home of her new teacher's mother. Her new friend Eunhee discovers that Gong-ju has a beautiful voice and gets her into the cappella club. But the parents of her previous school cause a disturbance after seeing a video in which Gong-ju sings. A mere victim, having done nothing wrong herself, Gong-ju is forced to shun others' attention. As the investigation takes place in her hometown, can Gong-ju escape from her painful past? Lee Su-jin's remarkable feature debut premiered in competition at Busan International Film Festival 2013. The film won the Hivos Tiger Award at International Film Festival Rotterdam 2014.

Abus de faiblesse

Catherine Breillat : 2013
Abuse of Weakness

In 2004, the iconoclastic French filmmaker Catherine Breillat suffered a stroke that paralysed the left side of her body. Three years later, she met the infamous con man Christophe Rocancourt and offered him a lead role in a film she was developing, as well as 25,000 euros to write a script. Over the subsequent eighteen months, she wrote him various cheques totalling a further 678,000 euros, money that she would never see again. In 2009, Breillat wrote a book entitled Abus de faiblesse – abuse of weakness, a term used in the French legal system – that dealt with her experience. Last year, Rocancourt was found guilty under exactly this law of taking Breillat's money, and was sentenced to sixteen months in prison. In her film she settles things with herself through a fictional account that is not biographical, but rather recounts what she went through, allowing the spectator to decide which of the two is in control in this complex relationship. The film premiered at Toronto International Film Festival 2013.

W ukryciu

Jan Kidawa-Błoński : 2013
In Hiding

Radom, central Poland in the summer of 1940. After her mother's tragic death Janina lives alone with her father. To her surprise, her father offers shelter to Ester, a young Jewish woman, who is his friend's daughter. Ester moves into a makeshift hiding place under the floor in their apartment. At first Janina questions her father's decision, but over time she begins to take interest in the eccentric and beautiful new resident. Her curiosity slowly gives way to fascination. When Janina's father gets arrested, she has to take care of Ester herself. The two women live together in nearly complete isolation from the outside world. Loneliness and fear bring them closer and closer together, making their relationship increasingly intimate. But then Ester starts to rebel against her confinement. She dreams of leaving Poland "as soon as the war is over". The film premiered in competition at Warsaw International Film Festival 2013.

The Keeper of Lost Causes

Mikkel Nørgaard : 2013
Kvinden i buret

Following a failed operation, chief detective Carl Mørck is transferred to the new Department Q, a section for old, terminated cases. It consists only of himself and his new assistant Assad and they are given orders to merely read and sort through the cases. Their first assignment is a five-year-old unsolved case concerning the mystery of politician Merete Lynggaard's disappearance. According to police reports she committed suicide by jumping off a ferry on a trip with her younger brain-damaged brother. Mørck finds indications that she didn't, and with Assad starts a search for her. Their inquiry brings them to the institution where her mentally disabled brother lives – he cannot talk, but after Assad's efforts he gives them the lead that first sends them to a lake in Sweden, then to the real assailant, but when it happens, they have both been suspended by their chief inspector. Their journey will take them deep into the undercurrent of abuse and malice that lurks beneath the polished surface of Scandinavia. The film premiered at Locarno Film Festival 2013.

I Am Yours

Iram Haq : 2013
Jeg er din

Mina is a young, single mother living in Oslo with her six-year-old son Felix. She is a Norwegian Pakistani with a troublesome relationship with her family. She wants to be an actress but blows every audition. She seems uninterested in, and incapable of pursuing, any other career. She is looking for love and has several relationships with different men, however none of the relationships bear any hope of lasting very long. A chance meeting with Jesper, a Swedish filmmaker, opens up new possibilities and they fall head over heels in love. Mina takes Felix to Sweden to live with Jesper, but looming over everything is the one constant in Mina's life: her mother's disapproval. Norwegian actor, filmmaker and singer Iram Haq's feature debut is a striking portrait of familial relationships and of a woman who tries to live life on her own terms. Her film had its international premiere in the Discovery section at Toronto International Film Festival 2013.

La jalousie

Philippe Garrel : 2013
Jealousy

A 30-year-old man lives with a woman in a small, furnished, rented apartment. It's a love story. The man has a daughter by a woman he walked out on. He sees the child of course, but the woman lives alone with her and has to work to feed her because the man gives her nothing. The man is very poor and he is an actor. A theatre actor. And now he is madly in love with this other woman, who is also an actress. But she is out of work. She was once a rising star, but offers of parts dried up. He does everything he can to get her a role, using all his contacts in the business. To no avail. And then the woman cheats on him in turn. She comes to see him in the small apartment. And then she says she can't bear it there and leaves. He shoots himself in the chest but the revolver slips and, instead of lodging fatally in his heart, the bullet perforates his left lung. In the hospital, his sister comes to see him and stays at his bedside. She's all he has left. His sister and the theatre. The film premiered in competition at La Biennale di Venezia 2013.

La herida

Fernando Franco : 2013
Wounded

Ana, 28, is an ambulance driver. She feels useful and satisfied in her routine work helping others. Nevertheless, outside of her working day, Ana has serious problems relating to people. She is socially awkward and even aggressive towards those people closest to her and whom she loves. Ana can't control this behaviour or her emotions, so she suffers constantly and feels tormented and guilty. Really she would just like to feel at ease with herself and with others, to be happy. But her self-destructive, self-harming behaviour only isolates her more and more. Ana is unaware that she suffers from what psychiatrists call Borderline Personality Disorder. As the camera follows Ana everywhere we are witness to her insomnias, anger, happiness and the guilt she feels when she self-harms. Despite the harshness of the topic, Fernando Franco does not resort to drama or excess but builds the narration and the directing around the main character with the austerity of documentary filmmaking. Winner of the Special Jury Prize at San Sebastián International Film Festival 2013.

Oktober November

Götz Spielmann : 2013
October November

In a small village in the Austrian Alps there is a hotel, now no longer in use. Two sisters grew up here. Sonja now lives in Berlin. She has become an actress, very successful, a TV star. She made a career for herself very quickly: she is still only in her early 30s. She has achieved a lot in this short time – but something seems to be missing from her life. Her sister Verena, who is a little older, has never left the village. After their mother died in an accident she, her husband and her little boy moved into the former hotel, which is much too big for them. The father of the two sisters also still lives in the former hotel. Still a patriarch, he has grown old and surly. Then a major heart attack brings him close to death. He survives, but from now on he is a sick man. And for Sonja it is high time to visit her family once again, and the scenes of her childhood. A new chapter begins; old relationships are reconfigured. The reunion slowly but relentlessly brings to light old conflicts between the so very different sisters. The film premiered in competition at San Sebastián International Film Festival 2013.

The Garden of Words

Makoto Shinkai : 2013
Kotonoha no niwa

Takao, a 15-year-old high school student, wants to follow his dream of designing and making footwear. By chance, whilst absconding from school, he encounters Yukino, a 27-year-old woman who seems to have withdrawn from the world. Then, without arranging the times, the two start to see each other again and again, but only on rainy days. The story embraces the original Japanese understanding of love, or koi, as something of a solitary sadness. Soon we discover that as their friendship deepens, the consequences will put that friendship to the ultimate test. Visually stunning, with the most realistic cinematic lighting effects and focus shifts, and a rich level of detail almost indistinguishable from live footage. Makoto Shinkai's enchanting anime feature premiered at Australia's Gold Coast Film Festival 2013.

Trap Street

Vivian Qu : 2013
Shuiyin Jie

Li Qiuming is a young trainee at a digital mapping company. His job is to survey the streets of the ever changing city and keep the mapping system up to date. To make ends meet, he installs video cameras at public venues, but hides his side job from his strict father who is a senior editor of a government-run magazine. One day while out surveying, he has a brief encounter with a beautiful young woman who disappears into a secluded alley. He learns that the data he collected of the street will not register in the mapping system. The street has disappeared as if it never existed. Desperate to reconnect with the mysterious woman he continues his investigation of the unmappable street only to discover something that will change his life forever. The stunning, Kafkaesque story of Li Qiuming plunges us into the fascinating world of state surveillance in China. Producer Vivian Qu's directorial debut premiered in competition at the International Film Critics' Week at Venice Film Festival 2013.

Stockholm

Rodrigo Sorogoyen : 2013

The story of the encounter between a boy and a girl. He confesses that he fell in love with her at first sight, but she does not believe him. However, little by little, just as it happens in Before Sunrise, as they walk through the night in Madrid, they share their desires, secrets, and maybe a few little lies. But soon, like a violent blow, the film brings us back to the harsh reality of power struggles, psychological games and conflicts between the sexes, offering an incredible reading of the relations between young people today. Rodrigo Sorogoyen's first solo feature received the Best Direction Biznaga de Plata Award at Festival de Cine Español de Málaga 2013.

Salvo

Fabio Grassadonia & Antonio Piazza : 2013

A hitman for the Sicilian Mafia, Salvo is solitary, cold and ruthless. When he sneaks into a house to eliminate a man, he discovers Rita, a young blind girl who powerlessly stands by while her brother is assassinated. Salvo tries to close those disturbing eyes, staring at him yet unseeing. Something impossible happens. Rita's eyes see for the first time. Salvo decides to spare her life. From then on, these two beings, both haunted by the world they belong to, are linked together forever. Fabio Grassadonia & Antonio Piazza's first feature won the Grand Prix Nespresso and Prix Révélation France 4 awards at Semaine de la Critique du Festival de Cannes 2013.

Wakolda

Lucía Puenzo : 2013
The German Doctor

In 1959, a German immigrant arrives in Bariloche to coincide with the opening of an inn on the shores of Lake Nahuel Huapi, the most desolate region of Patagonia. There his attention is drawn to Lilith, a girl on the verge of adolescence but with a body too small for her age. A perfect specimen, but for this defect impossible to tolerate. The fascination is mutual. He approaches her parents who own the inn, and will be watched closely by a woman who seems to know his true identity. Based on the director's own novel detailing the true story of an Argentine family who lived with the Nazi doctor Josef Mengele without knowing his true identity, and of a girl who fell in love with one of the greatest criminals of all time. Lucía Puenzo's third feature premiered in the Un Certain Regard selection at Festival de Cannes 2013.

Suzanne

Katell Quillévéré : 2013

The story of a family and a love affair through the journey of a young woman. Sisters Suzanne and Maria have an intensely close relationship. They experience a happy childhood even though their mother died when they were still very young. Nicolas, their father, copes as best he can, sometimes loving, sometimes difficult, sacrificing himself for them instead of rebuilding his own life. As a teenager, Suzanne becomes pregnant and when Charlie is born, the family expands. She then meets Julien, a young man who is a bit of a rogue, and they fall deeply in love. Suzanne will flee with him, abandoning her child. There will be years of wandering, prison, waiting, then an accident. It will be a difficult journey, strewn with obstacles, before this family can finally rebuild itself, and the father, daughter and grandson are reunited. Katell Quillévéré's second feature premiered out of competition at Semaine de la Critique du Festival de Cannes 2013.

Le passé

Asghar Farhadi : 2013
The Past

After four years of separation, Ahmad arrives in Paris from Tehran, at the request of Marie, his French wife, to carry out the formalities of their divorce. During his brief stay, Ahmad discovers the adversarial relationship that Marie has with her daughter, Lucie. Ahmad's efforts to try to improve this relationship will unveil a secret past. He will also meet Marie's new partner in his home beside his children. The film won the award for Best Actress at Festival de Cannes 2013.

Heli

Amat Escalante : 2013

Set in a small Mexican city where most of the population work for an automobile assembly plant or the local drug cartel. The story follows Heli, who is looking for answers about the mysterious disappearance of his father. During his search he is confronted with police corruption, drug trafficking, sexual exploitation, love, guilt and revenge. Amat Escalante's third feature won the award for Best Director at Festival de Cannes 2013.

Mother's Soul

Phạm Nhuệ Giang : 2011
Tâm hồn mẹ

Thu is an independent young girl and helps her mother Lan whenever she can. Together they sell fruit at the weekly market but the income hardly makes them a living. Things are different for her class-mate Đăng. His mother has died. His father has remarried and Đăng has been left with his grandparents. He yearns for the maternal love that Lan shows her daughter. But when Lan gets into a fraught relationship with a married man, Thu's emotional needs are also neglected. She places her yearning for affection in Đăng, assuming the role of the "little mother" for him. Through these tender relationships the film follows the life of women and children from underprivileged circles. A difficult life, full of adventure and disillusion in the end, but also filled with great affection and humanity. Phạm Nhuệ Giang's film, her third feature, was winner of the award for Best Leading Actress at Dubai Film Festival 2011.

La grande bellezza

Paolo Sorrentino : 2013
The Great Beauty

It's summer in Rome and the eternal city shines with an elusive and definitive beauty. Indifferent and seductive, it offers itself up to the astonished eyes of tourists. Jep Gamberdella is sixty-five and his character emanates a charm that time has not ravaged. In his youth he was the author of a single novel, "The Human Machine", but has written nothing since. He is a successful journalist who flits between culture and high society in a Rome that never ceases to be a sanctuary of wonder and greatness, and his life is a succession of appointments and eccentric festivals. Behind the decadence and decay of reality, the city continues to preserve a hidden and sometimes desperate beauty. Jep, now cynical, disenchanted and suffering, witnesses the crisis of a society that seems to have turned men into monsters. As he watches the procession of vacuous and dissatisfied humanity, as powerful as it is depressing, he bitterly recollects the passionate, innocent love of his lost youth. Perhaps it is time for him to start writing again? The film premiered in competition at Festival de Cannes 2013.

Miele

Valeria Golino : 2013
Honey

Irene lives an isolated life, alone. She devotes herself to people looking for help and tries to alleviate their suffering even when they make extreme decisions. Her clandestine job is to help terminally-ill people to die with dignity by giving them a drug. One day she supplies a new "client" with a fatal dose, only to find out he's perfectly healthy. Irene is determined not to be responsible for his suicide. From this moment, Irene and Grimaldi are locked unwillingly in a tense and unusual relationship which will change Irene's life forever. Adapted from the novel Vi Perdono by Angela Del Fabbro, actress Valeria Golino's feature directorial debut premiered in the Un Certain Regard selection at Festival de Cannes 2013.

La vie d'Adèle

Abdellatif Kechiche : 2013
Blue is the Warmest Colour

At 15, Adèle doesn't question it: a girl goes out with boys. For the adolescent, questions about identity are ultra-relevent and Adèle, a school-girl from a working-class family in the suburbs of Lille, is of an age when the appetite for love and sexuality awakens. With a fondness for literature in an environment in which culture is virtually non-existent in conversations among girl-friends and at family dinners lulled by TV, she soon feels uncomfortable in an adventure with a boy. Adèle's life changes the night she meets Emma, a girl with blue hair who unexpectedly invites herself into her erotic dreams, and who will allow her to discover desire, to assert herself as a woman and as an adult. In front of others, Adèle grows, seeks herself, loses herself, finds herself. Abdellatif Kechiche's fifth feature was winner of the Palme d'Or at Festival de Cannes 2013.

Sleepless Night

Jang Kun-jae : 2012
Jam mot deuneun bam

A bittersweet and atmospheric love story about a young couple who are considering whether they should have a baby. Just as new feelings can drift to the surface during a stroll on a hot summer night, intangible issues gradually take shape in this intimate study. Hyun-soo and Joo-hee have been happily married for two years, but in their innocent conversations on the sofa and in bed, or in discussions with friends, there are signs of discomfort. Minor irritations about unpaid overtime and of course the question of whether to have a child or not. They generally live a happy and fulfilled life as it is, with time for things like bike trips at night and sharing a glass of beer in their apartment. Although the film is fairly minimalist dramatically, we can feel that a lot is at stake. Whilst their relationship is still tender, a lot remains unanswered. Apart from in dreams. Then a stolen bicycle provides unexpected insights. Built around episodes from his own life, director Jang Kun-jae's feature is a magically evocative, universal story about making one's own choices in life. Winner of the audience award at Jeonju International Film Festival 2012, the film's European premiere screened at International Film Festival Rotterdam 2013.

Ombline

Stéphane Cazes : 2012

A young woman with a baby a little over one year old reads from a Noah and the Ark book. The room she is sitting in is a cell and guards are waiting for the story to finish so that they can take the child away. Ombline is twenty and full of anger. Her mother died when she was too young to remember her, her father has been in prison for years and she was brought up in an institution where she fell in love with a man caught up in the underworld who also ended up dying. Ombline is sentenced to three years in prison for assaulting a police officer who was about to arrest her boyfriend for drug possession. But she has not served her sentence for long before finding out that she is pregnant. When she gives birth to her son Lucas, her life in prison takes on an entirely new dimension. Ombline is able to spend 18 months with him behind prison walls. Moments of tenderness are mixed with fights with guards and the knowledge that she will soon have to decide who to entrust her baby with. As she becomes aware of her situation, Ombline learns to deal with her anger and takes on the responsibility associated with her new role. Stéphane Cazes's debut feature is an intense and unsentimental story, set in the almost docu-realistic tradition.

Jeunesse

Justine Malle : 2012
Youth

Juliette, 20 years old, falls in love with Benjamin. At the same moment, her father starts to show signs of a mysterious illness. Her naive approach to love makes her vulnerable. In spite of the inevitable defeat, she undauntedly continues her quest for love, but when her father is diagnosed with a fatal disease and moves out into the countryside, the summer takes on a more serious twist. She is caught between the feelings that her father's illness and decline give her, and her own burning desire to feel and understand the emerging need for love, which her life at the same time offers her. The story of a young woman who innocently and naively enters into a Paris summer, but comes out the other end a great deal richer in knowledge about life, love and death. By exposing the weaknesses of youth and highlighting its infinite resources, Justine Malle's debut feature is a brutally honest story, largely inspired by her own life during the time up to her father, director Louis Malle's death in 1995. The film premiered in the Alice nella Città section at Rome Film Festival 2012.

Diablo

Ramon Mez de Guzman : 2012

In a small village in the Philippines, an elderly lady called Nana Lusing leads a lonely life. A normal day starts with a meal by herself, continues with prayers at church and ends with her going to bed while listening to a Christian radio station. Her five sons rarely visit: Ruben takes care of his mother's farm but doesn't ever talk to her, and actively avoids her; soldier Fernando drops by once in a while; Ronaldo, a miner, takes the time to call and say hello every so often; and Oscar leads a cult-like existence with his devoted followers, but nonetheless also visits from time to time. However, it is unemployed Alberto who has the most contact with her. Keen to get his hands on a fat inheritance, he disguises his girlfriend as a care worker and has her stay with his mother. Surrounded by corrupt or negligent children, Nana Lusing's repetitive life crumbles into chaos. As she becomes weaker, we are slowly given a look at the sons' individual stories with their mother. The film received its international premiere at Busan International Film Festival 2012.

Le diable dans la peau

Gilles Martinerie : 2012

Brothers Xavier and Jacques, aged eleven and seven, are inseparable, bound closely to one another through a violent family environment. They live in the countryside in a land full of gorges, plateaux and vast expanses that offer the thrill of freedom and the primitive pleasure of a poetic relationship with nature. A place where they may find a semblance of freedom and escape their bleak daily lives. It's the eve of the holidays and summer looks promising. Then they accidentally learn that the next school year will separate them: Jacques will be sent away to a special institute. This is their last summer before everything changes and their world collapses forever. Gilles Martinerie's debut feature premiered in competition in the Alice nella Città section at Rome Film Festival 2011.

Miel de naranjas

Imanol Uribe : 2012
Orange Honey

Andalusía in the 1950s. Enrique and Carmen are a young couple. In a society permeated by fear and held in check by terror, Enrique is doing his military service in the office of Don Eladio, a military judge who orders summary executions of suspected rebels following the farcical trials over which he presides. Eladio is also Carmen's uncle. Discovering the brutal truth of the Franco regime, Enrique realises that he can no longer stand on the sidelines and watch innocent people be sentenced to death. It is the beginning of a dangerous double life, in which love, loyalty and betrayal become matters of life and death. Winner of the Silver Biznaga for Best Director at Málaga Spanish Film Festival 2012, and the Special Grand Prize of the Jury at Montréal World Film Festival 2012.

Control Tower

Takahiro Miki : 2011
Kanseitou

The story of two lonely teenagers, Kakeru and Mii, who cannot find their place in life, but who gradually discover a common empathy through music. Junior high-school boy Kakeru Fujita was born in Wakkanai, Japan's northernmost town on the island of Hokkaido. Very much a loner, he lives an alienated and directionless life, drifting through school. One day he meets Mizuho Takimoto, a female transfer student, who reminds him of the character from the Moomins, Little My. She has nothing in common with her classmates and keeps her feelings firmly locked away. Discovering a guitar in storage at his house, Kakeru enlists the help of piano-playing Mii to help him form a band. Both solitary by nature, they find in each other someone with whom they can connect, and through their music, the two form a friendship which will develop into the timid feelings of first love. Based on the song Kanseitou by the band Galileo Galilei, it is a beautifully shot, tender love story expressing the loneliness of its teen characters and the lack of control that adolescents have over their own lives. The film's European premiere screened at Raindance Film Festival 2011.

Grape Candy

Kim Hee-jung : 2012
Cheong-po-do sa-tang

Sun-joo is an office worker at a bank who is preparing for her upcoming wedding with Ji-hoon, an employee at a publishing company. However, Ji-hoon, who has recently become the liaison to popular female author So-ra, does not attempt to show an enthusiastic interest in married life. One day, Ji-hoon causes a traffic accident, and rushing to the hospital, Sun-joo comes face-to-face with So-ra. In actuality, Sun-joo and So-ra were classmates in school. Sun-joo befriends So-ra, with whom she has had no contact until now, suspecting that Ji-hoon's indifference to getting married might somehow be connected to her. The meeting will reawaken a memory of the tragic accident that happened to a mutual friend. However, they come to realise that their memories of the accident are quite different. What really happened to them? Can they reveal the untold truth? Seventeen years later, both women are still haunted by this event from their past. The film's international premiere screened in competition at Warsaw Film Festival 2012.

Mea Maxima Culpa

Alex Gibney : 2012
Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God

Using personal stories to explore larger systems of corruption, the director follows the five deaf men who led the first known public protest against clerical sex abuse in the United States. At St John's School for the Deaf in St Francis, Wisconsin, Father Lawrence Murphy preyed upon more than 200 of his most vulnerable students beginning in the 1950s. His actions came to the attention of the Vatican in 1963 and he remained at the school until 1974, when he was transferred to another parish. Finally, one of the five deaf survivors of Murphy's abuse launched a lawsuit against the pontiff himself and the ensuing investigation uncovered documents linking the Vatican to a worldwide cover-up of abuse. Alex Gibney's investigation leads from Wisconsin to Washington DC, Ireland, Rome and beyond. He delves into the unsavoury role that Pope John Paul II played in cover-ups and examines the pivotal position occupied by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger – the recently resigned Pope Benedict XVI – a former Vatican overseer of sex abuse cases. The documentary is a damning indictment of how the Vatican consistently failed to protect children and the supreme efforts it made to cover up those failings. The film premiered at Toronto International Film Festival 2012 and was the winner of the Grierson Award at the British Film Institute Awards 2012.

River

Ryuichi Hiroki : 2011

Hikari lost her boyfriend, Kenji, to a massacre that occurred in Akihabara a few years ago, something she has yet to come to terms with within her heart. Still suffering from the shock of her loss and unable to accept this reality, she has cut herself off from the outside world. Hikari eventually manages to muster the courage to visit Akihabara, the scene of the incident. Walking around as if she were searching for the shadow of Kenji, she encounters a variety of people instead. A female photographer, a scout for a maid café, and a girl just as young as Hikari who works at that café. Before long, she meets Yuji, a young man living in an underground tunnel who ran away from home after quarrelling with his parents and ended up in Tokyo. The film poignantly depicts the heartbroken young woman's gradual discovery of her own means of living through her encounters with those also suffering from the after-effects of the incident. Ryuichi Hiroki's feature premiered at Tokyo FILMeX 2011.

Oasis

Lam Sum : 2012

Fish, an aspiring painter, leaves the safe haven of home and moves into a dwelling unit inside an industrial building. Carrying a mixed bag of ambivalence and possibilities, her new independence shares the upsides and downsides of a subsistence living in the enclave of artists and musicians, where the strains of life – dissatisfaction with the government and an ever-looming threat of eviction – are tempered by a healthy dose of optimism and humour. The habitat of Fish and co may not be the land of la dolce vita but it's an oasis of dreams in a desert of reality, however transient and haphazard. Lam Sum's film received a Special Mention in the Fresh Wave Short Film Competition, Hong Kong 2012.

De Menor

Caru Alves de Souza : 2013
Underage

Helena is a recently graduated young lawyer who divides her time between her work as an advocate for young children and adolescents in the city of Santos, and the care of Caio, the teenager with whom she leads a harmonious and honest life. However, their relationship is put to the test when Caio commits an offence and Helena is in charge of defending him. Caru Alves de Souza's first feature was presented in Films in Progress at San Sebastián International Film Festival 2012, and screened at Cinélatino Rencontres de Toulouse 2013.

Miłość

Sławomir Fabicki : 2012
Loving

Maria and Tomek are in their thirties and have been married 10 years. They live in a small town. Both find professional fulfilment in their jobs – he in a design company, she at the town hall. They are working together on the decoration of their apartment and are expecting a baby. It seems that nothing is capable of disturbing their peaceful lives. But one day the mayor, who has long lusted after Maria, rapes her. She decides not to report this to the police. Nor does she tell her husband. From that day forth, their love is put to the test. A story dwelling on very intimate issues, exploring the various aspects of love: responsibility, jealousy, fear, forgiveness, empathy and the absence of love. The film premiered in competition at Warsaw Film Festival 2012, and was winner of the Best Film prize at Vilnius International Film Festival 2013.

Eun-gyo

Jung Ji-woo : 2012
A Muse

A highly respected national poet in his seventies, Jeok-yo, adopts an untalented but eager student, Ji-woo, whose wish is to become a novelist. Ji-woo has recently published his first book, described as a genre novel with psychological insight, and it has shot to the top of the bestseller lists. Only later will it be clear how great his debt is to the poet laureate. The relationship that grows between the two is complicated, with an equal measure of love and hate and their bond is tested further when 17-year-old Eun-gyo seeks out the poet, entrancing both student and teacher immediately. As Jeok-yo spends more time in Eun-gyo's company, long-lost feelings are awakened within him, and her exuberance, lust for life, sense of fun and genuine warmth towards him quickly strip the years away in his mind. A love triangle forms with a growing sense of resentment between Ji-woo and his mentor, forcing them to decide between salvaging their father/son relationship or sacrificing the possible love of their lives for the other's happiness. Winner of the Grand Bell Award for Best New Actress in Seoul in 2012.

Alienation

Milko Lazarov : 2013

A man driving an old-fashioned car is crossing the border. He is Greek and past his fifties. He is coming to Bulgaria to buy a child. The price is 10,000 euros. To smuggle the child Jorgos has prepared a secret compartment in the boot of the car masked as a fuel tank. The baby hasn't been born yet and the Greek needs to wait in a secluded house in the mountains together with the mother, her deaf-mute brother and the midwife. The birth starts during a stormy night. Milko Lazarov's first feature premiered at Sofia International Film Festival 2013, where it won the Award for Best Bulgarian Feature Film.

Honour

Shan Khan : 2013

A story centred on a young woman who is targeted by her family for an honour killing and the bounty hunter who takes the job. Mona, a young British Asian woman, is on the run from her family after they find out about her plans to run away with her boyfriend. In a desperate bid to save face and their family honour, her mother and older brother enlist the help of a bounty hunter to track her down. A thriller set in London, writer/director Shan Khan's debut feature premiered at Sofia International Film Festival 2013.

Le temps de l'aventure

Jérôme Bonnell : 2013
Just a Sigh

One day, on a train, two strangers. Exchanged glances, accelerated heartbeats. Watching him leave, will she lose him forever or allow herself a moment of adventure? The story of Alix, a stage actress, who, between two performances of a play in Calais, meets a mysterious Englishman on the train bringing her back to Paris for the day. Attracted to him, she follows him and for the most fleeting of afternoons, loves him, before confronting what could be a different future. Jérôme Bonnell's fifth feature premiered internationally at Tribeca Film Festival 2013.

The Mirror Never Lies

Kamila Andini : 2011
Laut bercermin

The sea and a mirror are what sustain the life of 12-year-old Pakis, who lives on the small Indonesian island of Kampung Bajo. Pakis sits in the midst of the floating village, waiting for her father who simply doesn't come back from fishing one day. The other children say he's dead, but Pakis refuses to believe this. Instead she searches for the truth in a small mirror her father once gave her. Pakis is full of hope that one day he will return; she cannot forget his stories of the wind and the sea. Her young mother has painted her face white and Pakis chides her for having given up on her father. When her mother breaks the mirror and falls for young Tudo, a dolphin researcher from Jakarta, Pakis despairs. Together with her best friend, Lumo, she continues to seek answers in the sea. Kamila Andini's debut feature paints a wonderfully detailed portrait of the pain and hope experienced by a young girl who must now come to terms with her loss. Its serene images portray the lives of the Bajo people today, sea nomads who have developed a unique way of life that is perfectly attuned to the sea. The film premiered at Busan International Film Festival 2011.

Nuit #1

Anne Émond : 2011
Night #1

Clara and Nikolaï meet at a rave. They return to Nikolaï's apartment and frantically make love. Afterwards, instead of parting, the two lovers divulge their deepest secrets to one another, revealing astonishing insights about their lives as they both venture willingly into the darkest parts of themselves. Nicolaï is a beautiful loner, one with great ambition which he's unable to articulate to his peers. At thirty-one years old, he leads a simple and frugal life. He applies himself to reading the great classics of literature but never finishes a book he has begun. Unable to submit to any schedule, he finds himself unfit for work. He envisions big projects and has expansive ideas but, inevitably and despite himself, loses sight of them before they are realised. Clara, like Nikolaï, seems not to be made for this world. She leads a double life. By day, she works as a third grade teacher; by night, she is a compulsive party-girl, exorcising or forgetting her vaunted hopes. She goes out every night, gets drunk and high, invites high-voltage sexual combinations, all the while desperately trying to fill an emotional void yet never succeeding. Though they are tempted to animas by all-too-common and divisive gender politics, politics they simultaneously fear and embrace, the friction between them is trumped by a common determination to bridge the gap that they realise afflicts the women and men of their lost, but far from hopeless, generation. Anne Émond's award-winning directorial debut premiered at Toronto International Film Festival 2011.

Gf*Bf

Yang Ya-Che : 2012
Girlfriend Boyfriend

In the 1980s, Taiwan is still under martial law and people are locked in the battle to have it lifted. A social revolution is set to take off. Kaohsiung high school students Mabel, Liam and Aaron are best friends and three sides of a love triangle. Spurned by Liam, Mabel has settled for Aaron, but in Taipei during the reform movement, Mabel catches Aaron with another girl. Later still, at a friend's autumn wedding, the three reunite and Liam and Mabel reconcile their complicated feelings, Liam finally urging Mabel to be happy with Aaron if he cannot. After becoming pregnant with Aaron's child, Mabel realises the tremendous barrier before her, and in summer 2012, Liam and Mabel raise Aaron's child together. Unfolding against the backdrop of Taiwan's democratic movement of the 1980s and 1990s, a powerful and moving coming-of-age story exploring the deep and complicated emotional turmoil of three tragic souls growing up during a period of immense social change. The film focuses on the intersection of friendship, love and the internal struggles of the three characters and their misguided emotions, over the course of twenty years. Yang Ya-Che's award-winning second feature premiered at Taipei Film Festival 2012 and screened at Busan International Film Festival 2012.

La richesse du loup

Damien Odoul : 2012
Rich is the Wolf

Olaf is gone. The only thing he left his partner Marie is a box of videotapes with a hundred hours of rushes of the last seven years of his life, together with a notebook. Marie decides to investigate. Day after day she watches the footage, these fragments of a life, and attempts to reconstruct the journey of the man she loves in order to better understand his departure. Marie does not expect her lover to return, nor does she question his sudden unexplained disappearance. She tries to get close to him, to experience him by imagining herself seeing through his eyes. The film premiered in competition at Festival International de Cinéma de Marseille 2012.

Boa sorte, meu amor

Daniel Aragão : 2012
Good luck, sweetheart

Dirceu, 30 years old, has origins that go back to the aristocracy of Northeast Brazilian backlands. Settled in a kind of subjective amnesia, Dirceu tries to bury his family's past. He is a demolition man in Recife, an urban landscape undergoing an uncontrolled process of transformation. Maria shares the same country origins, but she uses the city for a different purpose. She is a carefree and joyful music student. If Dirceu aspires to a world that is stable and present, Maria lives in discord with the present. For her, nothing is as it should be. Maria's presence, almost an apparition, unleashes in Dirceu an urge for being somebody else. On a route of escape through the desert of the backlands, a unique encounter is set to happen. Daniel Aragão's first feature is an anti-romance of the impact between music and silence. The film premiered in competition at Locarno Film Festival 2012, and won the Candango Trophy for Best Director at Brasília Festival of Brazilian Cinema 2012.

Rebelle

Kim Nguyen : 2012
War Witch

Komona, a 14-year-old girl in Sub-Saharan Africa, tells her unborn child the story of how she became a rebel. After her village is burned down by rebels during the civil war and her parents are killed, Komona is kidnapped and forced into the jungle as a child soldier. Her brutal commander not only trains her in the use of arms but also orders her to sleep with him. But Komona is no ordinary soldier. Due to her ability to see gray ghosts in the trees that warn her of approaching enemies, she is deemed a sorceress and bestowed the title of War Witch. Searching for shelter amidst the horror, she turns to a slightly older boy with white hair whom she calls Magicien and falls in love with. After they escape from the camp together, Komona does her utmost to return to her village to make amends with her past. She wants to bury her parents to prevent them having to eternally wander the wasted land as ghosts. Told throughout from the perspective of an adolescent girl, visualising the horrors of civil war and the suffering of children and civilians, it is a powerfully poignant tale of human resilience. A love story between two young souls caught in a violent world, yet one also filled with beauty and magic. Winner of the Silver Bear for Best Actress at Berlin International Film Festival 2012.

The Loneliest Planet

Julia Loktev : 2011

Alex and Nica are young, in love and engaged to be married. The summer before their wedding, they are backpacking in the Caucasus Mountains in Georgia. The couple hire a local guide to lead them on a camping trek, and the three set off into a stunning wilderness, a landscape that is both overwhelmingly open and frighteningly closed. Walking for hours, they trade anecdotes, play games to pass the time of moving through space. And then, a momentary misstep, a gesture that takes only two or three seconds, a gesture that's over almost as soon as it begins. But once it is done, it can't be undone. Once it is done, it threatens to undo everything the couple believed about each other and about themselves. All the while, they are not alone. They are always with the guide, who witnesses their every move. The film explores the relationship between young travellers and the places they travel to, between guide and guided. But it is also a love story, a tale about betrayal, both accidental and deliberate, about gender roles, failure and the ambiguities of forgiveness. The film premiered in competition at Locarno Film Festival 2011.

170 Hz

Joost van Ginkel : 2011

The unconditional love between 16-year-old Evy and 19-year-old Nick has no voice and no sound: they are both deaf-mute. The whispering young lovers communicate in sign language, with their gaze, lips and touch. Evy's upbringing has been sheltered, she attends secondary school, but feels like an outsider. Nick is a non-conformist, a rebel and a thorn in the side of Evy's father. When they sense their parents' opposition to them being together, they develop an audacious plan: they will flee and hide in a special place, where Evy will become pregnant and have a baby. They are convinced that once they have a child together nothing and nobody will be able to keep them apart. Nick takes the initiative and drives off with Evy to the hiding place he has meticulously prepared, the wreck of a former Soviet submarine in a distant part of the harbour. Within that metal casing full of sounds and tremors they cannot hear, but with their strongly developed remaining senses, can feel all the more, they concentrate on their baby project. But as Evy slowly discovers, Nick had another reason to disappear and she begins to realise that their freedom is just an illusion. 170 hertz refers to the topmost bass frequency that Nick can still hear. Sound, and its absence, is an important part of the film. Told from the point of view of the deaf characters, the sound design clearly demonstrates the impact of living without the sense of hearing. Joost van Ginkel's debut feature premiered in competition at Nederlands Film Festival 2011.

Mai Ratima

Yoo Ji-tae : 2012

The story of Soo-young, a Korean man in his thirties living on the bottom rung of society and Mai Ratima, a 22-year-old Thai girl who accepts a mail-order marriage in order to realise her Korean dream. To support her sister and Alzheimer's-afflicted mother back in Thailand, Mai Ratima enters into an arranged marriage with mentally challenged Sang-pil. Stuck in the drab coastal town of Pohang, Mai is physically and emotionally abused by her in-laws. She endures the daily harangues of her mother-in-law and sexual harassment by her brother-in-law, Sang-rim. When her visa renewal comes up she narrowly escapes deportation thanks to the spur-of-the-moment kindness of Soo-young, a social outcast who can't even afford to renew his national ID. Mai and Soo-young fall in love and elope together to Seoul. But their days of happiness are soon shattered when Young-jin, a hostess, enters their relationship, slowly turning it into a love triangle. Eventually, Soo-young decides to leave Mai. One day, when life becomes unbearable for Soo-young, he goes in search of Mai, only to find that she is not who she used to be. Depicting the process by which a couple deviates from the accepted rules of society and then endures a hostile reality as a result of their choices, Yoo Ji-tae's directorial debut premiered at Busan International Film Festival 2012.

Bienvenue parmi nous

Jean Becker : 2012
Welcome Aboard

Despite his fame, Paul Taillandier, an artist in his sixties, abruptly stops painting. Then, aimlessly and without explanation, he decides to leave his home and family. He writes a note for his long-suffering wife Alice, declaring, "I can't take it any more," and drives off. During his journey, he meets Marylou, a runaway 15-year-old hitchhiker rejected by her mother, who has left home to find her own way in life. Although they have nothing in common, together they travel the beautiful landscapes of France's west coast. The two runaways may be separated by decades, but gradually they help one another heal. They rent a small cottage by the beach and as they grow closer, each recognises the other's predicament. As Marylou develops a lovely rapport with Paul, he becomes protective towards the girl. The artist regains his lost inspiration with his unlikely young muse, and a delicate sense of hope emerges with the old learning as much from the young, as the young from the old. Living like a father and daughter, in the quiet of their seaside home, they begin to find a new meaning to their lives.

Fynbos

Harry Patramanis : 2012

Richard, a real estate developer on the brink of bankruptcy, travels with his wife Meryl to a lavish and remote glass house bordering on a sweeping landscape in the Western Cape of South Africa. He is desperate to sell it. The transparent, glass Fynbos mansion blends into the hills with a beauty almost too great for the human eye to take in. The house stands between heaven and earth, like a virtual blind spot in the retina's perception. It is here that Meryl and Richard meet with a couple interested in buying the house, with the two hippie-like house-sitters also forming part of the group. When Meryl goes inexplicably missing, stifled by a sense of looming distrust and financial pressure, Richard is caught in a maze of missteps and uncertainty. The blind spot begins to expand, opening up the increasingly enigmatic story to new interpretations that bring themselves to bear on the occurrences both from without and from within. What transpires within the walls of this glass house then has little to do with money and everything to do with the human condition: souls are left pondering the line between what is real and what is perceived. Focusing more on people's actions and reactions, than on plot development, Harry Patramanis's debut feature is an exercise in minimalism. With its elliptical storytelling and evocative atmospherics, it is a unique and haunting dramatic thriller, allowing seemingly specific events to remain open to multiple interpretations. The film premiered at Durban International Film Festival 2012 and its European premiere screened in the Forum section at Berlin International Film Festival 2013.

Echolot

Athanasios Karanikolas : 2013
Sonar

A sonar is a device for electro-acoustic measurement of water depths. Measured is the time that elapses between the emission of a sound pulse and the arrival through the water of the ground-reflected sound waves. What is measured here is the emotional closeness and distance of a group of people who gather in a house in the country, a year after the suicide of their friend Franz. It's not unusual for extreme situations to lure people out of their shells. In this case, the suicide prompts them to switch off for a while. This weekend at least, these young people are no longer thinking about tomorrow. Instead, they surrender entirely to the moment and give their feelings free reign. They dance, love, argue, drink, go for walks, or take naps. But they also remember their dead friend, who is present in all their thoughts and conversations. The film premiered in the Forum section at Berlin International Film Festival 2013.