How to Describe a Cloud

David Verbeek : 2013

The story of Liling who works as a DJ in Taipei. When her mother goes blind, the young musician is suddenly forced to leave her big-city cocoon and return to the small island where she grew up. There, her scientific approach to blindness, in which she presents the world to her mother through words on the advice of the doctor, clashes with her old mother's spiritual approach. She argues that she can't see the world around her any more, but can still sense it. At the same time, the professionally successful daughter takes up a friendship with a retired biologist who's supplementing his pension by making science-fiction drawings that seem somehow connected to everything else that is happening. As Liling becomes increasingly aware of the value of her imagination, the story reflects on the role of spirituality in modern society. David Verbeek's feature premiered at International Film Festival Rotterdam 2013.

Camille Claudel 1915

Bruno Dumont : 2013

In the cold light of winter, 1915 Camille Claudel bends down once again to pick up a stone and examine it. It's almost as if we are watching a sculptor at work. In her mind she appears to be transforming this simple piece of rock into something new. But then she drops the stone, never to create her art again. Camille's obsession with the idea that she is being persecuted by those who envy her – as well as by her former lover, Auguste Rodin – has prompted her family to commit her to a psychiatric clinic in the south of France. A chronicle of her endless vigil, hoping to find understanding and recognition as an artist, but also to receive a visit from her beloved brother, the writer Paul Claudel. The film premiered in competition at Berlin International Film Festival 2013.

Uroki garmonii

Emir Baigazin : 2013
Harmony Lessons

During a medical examination, 13-year-old Aslan is humiliated in front of his fellow pupils. The incident unleashes his latent anankastic personality disorder. Plagued by self-doubt, he strives for cleanliness and perfection and is obsessed with trying to control everything around him. His compulsion draws Aslan, who lives with his grandmother in a village in Kazakhstan, into increasingly difficult situations. He abhors the way most of his fellow pupils are held in the sway of a criminal scheme, in which Bolat, one of Aslan's tormentors, is also involved. Bolat blackmails the younger children into paying him protection money and he has nothing but contempt for ostracised Aslan. Out of good motives to rid his school of crime, Aslan decides to kill Bolat. Emir Baigazin's debut feature delineates the clash between an individual and the mechanisms of marginalisation and violence. Winner of the Silver Bear for Outstanding Artistic Contribution when the film premiered at Berlin International Film Festival 2013.

Avanti popolo

Michael Wahrmann : 2012

With nothing more than a large suitcase, recently divorced André returns to his childhood home in São Paulo. He moves in with his father, a bad-tempered, wayward old man who leads a withdrawn life with no other company than his faithful dog. He is still waiting for the son who left thirty years earlier for the distant Soviet Union and never returned. Super-8 films shot by the brother and old scratched vinyl records, which André has found in a drawer, bring bits of the past back to life. However, the father doesn't want to know. In an attempt to get closer by evoking the past, André thereby undertakes a touching and ironic journey into the memory of a country where the spectre of dictatorship, the lure of communism, the passion for good cinema and music, and the regret for the decline of ideologies, still linger. Michael Wahrmann's first feature was winner of the CinemaXXI Award at Rome Film Festival 2012.

Die Erbin

Ayşe Polat : 2013
The Heiress

In a small Turkish mountain village, Hülya, a young German-Turkish writer, returns from Germany to write a novel about her deceased father, several years after his death. In order to get to know him better, she travels to Damal, the place where he was born and grew up. She meets the people from his youth and reconstructs his life there – at school, at home and in the expansive landscape around the village. Her father's voice is omnipresent, but while she observes, Hülya does not always get an equally positive picture of her father and the dramatic events that shaped his life and hers. Confusing memories fall into place. At the same time, present, past, reality and fantasy increasingly mingle and it becomes more and more clear that memory is a far-from-infallible instrument. A reflection on the value of family bonds, love and honour, Ayşe Polat's feature premiered at International Film Festival Rotterdam 2013.

Watchtower

Pelin Esmer : 2012
Gözetleme Kulesi

A man and a woman seeking refuge from the world. Nihat at a remote forest fire tower, Seher in her basement room at a rural bus station. Both hiding away from others and fighting their battle of conscience alone. Through a series of events their lives collide and are brought together. Nihat is a man with a guilt complex. He lost his wife and daughter in a car crash. Young Seher carries a scandal in her belly, a baby she doesn't want. They have both withdrawn into a hiding place, him in the tower, her in a cellar, but fate decides that their paths will cross. Cautious overtures follow. Far from the inhabited world, in misty forests, they turn out to be able to help each other as no one else can. The film is about two people and the situation they have to learn to deal with. A profound character study that takes a critical point of view towards conservatism and the patriarchal system. Pelin Esmer's second feature premiered at Toronto International Film Festival 2012. Her film's European premiere screened in competition at International Film Festival Rotterdam 2013.

Noche

Leonardo Brzezicki : 2013
Night

The six friends of suicide victim Miguel gather to clear out his things, guess his motives and celebrate his life. Miguel was absolutely obsessed about recording sound. Now that's all that is left of him, plus some clothes, equipment and boxes on a farm where he spent his last days. His six friends stay there to pack everything. In the meantime, Miguel's recordings stream day and night from the loudspeakers that are set up everywhere in and around the house. Miguel's ex, Pedro, is in the worst state. He can't cope with the sorrow and neglects his new friend Juan. Miguel's best girlfriend Violeta has to watch as her former lover Matias seeks solace by the newcomer Laura. And there is the nameless girl who is ignored by everyone. Rudderless twenty-somethings who are really just discovering life already have to discover what mortality is. A psychological drama in which the dividing line between present, past and future becomes increasingly vague. Leonardo Brzezicki's directorial debut is a haunting, sensorial journey through memories, images and sounds. The film premiered in competition at International Film Festival Rotterdam 2013.

Longing for the Rain

Yang Lina : 2013
Chungmeng

In today's China, the middle classes provide a supreme example of materialism, emptiness and yearning. The nouveau riche seem united only in their unstoppable race for more material wealth. Fang Lei only has to care for her daughter. Safely cocooned in a loveless but peaceful marriage, she spends much of her time shopping with girlfriends. Her anxieties about dying, about her husband being unfaithful, only emerge in her dreams. One night, a mysterious young lover appears and makes passionate love to her. Time and again, he allows her to enjoy unprecedented pleasure and soon Fang Lei is no longer able to separate reality from dream and regards the man of her dreams as her real husband. She is happy, carefree and beautiful. Until a jealous rival looms up in her dreams. Yang Lina's fiction feature debut is an Asian ghost story in which documentary scenes show how incongruous today's reality can look in China. Her film premiered in competition at International Film Festival Rotterdam 2013.

Avant que mon coeur bascule

Sébastien Rose : 2012
Before My Heart Falls

Sixteen-year-old Sarah has an unusual life. In a strange, marginal ménage à trois with her contemporary Louis and the older Ji-Guy, she fills her days with petty crime. During the day she hangs around with Louis by motorways, where she deceives and robs innocent people offering a lift. One day things go wrong when a driver dies of a heart attack during a robbery attempt. Sarah can't stop thinking about the dead man and goes looking for the wife he left behind. In her, she finally finds something of the security and friendship she had unconsciously been seeking for so long. But her alternative family doesn't just let her go. Shot in very realistic images, the story of this adolescent girl as she grows up and becomes conscious, is set against the sombre background of grey motorways and decaying industrial sites. A brutal portrait of Québec society, with its almost surreal vision of marginality, the film screened at Québec City Film Festival 2012, and premiered internationally at International Film Festival Rotterdam 2013.

Mördaren ljuger inte ensam

Birger Larsen : 2013
The killer never lies alone

Puck has been invited by her tutor at the university to celebrate midsummer at his secluded cottage on an island together with a group of friends, among them Einar Bure. Puck and Einar are having a secret relationship, and he is the reason she says yes to the invitation. The summer nights are seductively beautiful and erotic tensions are rampant between the guests. Having been out on a romantic spree with Einar, Puck finds one of the female guests murdered. Einar contacts his friend Detective Inspector Christer Wijk, but upon Christer's arrival, the dead body has disappeared. Contact with the outside world is broken entirely when the island's only boat goes missing. All now find themselves trapped on the island and one amongst them is a murderer. Perfectly capturing the zeitgeist of 1950s Sweden, the film is adapted from the first of the classic detective novels by Dagmar Lange.

Tesis sobre un homicidio

Hernán Golfrid : 2013
Thesis on a murder

Roberto Bermúdez is a renowned lawyer who now, at 55, spends his days teaching. His scepticism and pride have grown alongside the chaos in his personal life since separating from his wife. Once again, as every year, Bermúdez is preparing to give one of his prestigious seminars on criminal law. Among the fifteen students participating is Gonzalo, son of Felipe Ruiz Cordera, a Spanish diplomat and former friend of Bermúdez. As the son of a cultural attaché, the boy grew up between ceremonies and protocol, watching his manners, always subject to the approval of the other, is correct, polite and modest ad nauseum – all qualities that irritate the lawyer. However, Gonzalo has, among other virtues, disturbingly acute observational skills with an amazing memory, and Bermúdez cannot help but see him as a competitor. One night, during the seminar, the body of Valeria Di Natale, a young woman brutally murdered, appears in the parking area, near the window of the classroom where Bermúdez lectures. A subtle hint at the crime scene, inconsequential to the police, but essential to Bermúdez, convinces him that Gonzalo is the perpetrator. Determined to prove the guilt of the boy and, especially, to impose a kind of veiled duel between the two, Bermúdez starts an investigation on his own. Evidence of Gonzalo's involvement in the murder of Valeria begins to accumulate, although tinged by the subjectivity of the veteran jurist who only wants to prove his thesis. Is Bermúdez the object of a vicious challenge from Gonzalo, or do one's eyes only see what they want to see?

36

Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit : 2012

36 is the number of shots on an analogue roll of film. This experimental film consists of 36 static camera set-ups that tell a story of how we store memories in the digital era. Sai, a location scout working for a studio, takes pictures whenever she's working. One day, she discovers that she has lost all the files saved on her laptop and sets about trying to restore them with help from an old friend, Kai. She has the feeling that part of her own memory has been deleted and she does everything to get the photos back. In a playful way, the film tackles the issue of changing memory. These days a lot is remembered for us, but what do we still remember ourselves? We cannot guess when stored memories might be lost. The past is important to Sai, and one of the reasons why Sai and Oom, an art director who goes location hunting with her, fail to recognise each other's feelings is, ironically, perhaps their insensitivity to the present. Deeply hidden in the broken hard disk is also the picture of a possible lover. Winner of the FIPRESCI Prize and New Currents Award at Busan International Film Festival 2012. The film's European premiere screened in competition at International Film Festival Rotterdam 2013.

Soongava

Subarna Thapa : 2012
Dance of the Orchids

Independent and strong-willed Diya, now 22 years of age, is training to be a traditional Nepalese dancer. She forms a deep escalating friendship with another dance pupil, Kiran – her feelings for her girlfriend clearly bordering on physical desire. Diya is desolate when her parents find a suitable man for her to marry and arrange her engagement. She goes along with the arrangement to please her family and do what is expected of her, but when her feelings for Kiran deepen and they become lovers, she has to make a choice. Flying in the face of tradition and local morals in a society deeply rooted in family values, Diya breaks off with her fiancé, risking everything to live with Kiran in Kathmandu. However, the open avowal of their relationship will still expose them to ridicule and alienation. A story of two individuals falling in love and having to face all the controversy and restrictions, and the mental, emotional and physical traumas of being a lesbian in Nepal. The film premiered at Montréal World Film Festival 2012.

In the Shadow

David Ondříček : 2012
Ve stínu

Set in Prague in 1953, police captain Hakl is investigating a seemingly mundane robbery at a goldsmith's shop. In a fraught political climate, this incident is seized on by the Communist authorities, who require a smokescreen for their own, far grander, deception. On the orders of State Security, Hakl's investigation is taken over by Major Zenke, an East German police specialist, under whose leadership it is shown that the gold was stolen by the Jewish community to finance Zionist terrorism. But Hakl's experienced instincts as a criminologist are discovering an altogether different story, and he continues in the investigation on his own. Can one just man withstand a struggle with the forces of an increasingly oppressive state? The adversary is powerful, and Hakl soon finds out he can believe nothing and no one. Hanging over everyone is a shadow of their past, of their weaknesses, that can make a culprit of a victim and a hero of a culprit. Somber and atmospheric, this suspenseful crime drama is a moving and compelling study of the Stalinist era.

Eles Voltam

Marcelo Lordello : 2012
They'll Come Back

Cris, aged 12, and her older brother are left at the side of the road by their parents during a family trip. Very quickly the punishment turns into an even greater challenge. The film follows Cris as she attempts to find her way back home. A journey through a series of different realities, guided by the people that inhabit them. Portraying everyday social problems, it is a modern day fable filled with realistic overtones, and the story of a young girl's self-discovery. Winner of the top award for fiction at Brasília Festival of Brazilian Cinema 2012, Marcelo Lordello's first feature premiered internationally in competition at International Film Festival Rotterdam 2013.

Layla Fourie

Pia Marais : 2013

Set in post-apartheid South Africa, the story centres on polygraphist Layla Fourie, who is offered a job in a company specialising in lie-detection and security in a small town. As a single mother, Layla is forced to take her six-year-old son Kane with her. However, as they head into the country for what Layla hopes will be the beginning of a new life, an accident occurs which will change everything. A web of lies and deception becomes firmly wrapped around the young mother and son and, as their trust is put to the test, it's just a matter of time before the truth will tear them apart. Their relationship and how it evolves throughout the story reflects a certain atmosphere that prevails in South Africa, one of hope and yet shadowed by distrust. Pia Marais's thriller, her third feature, received a Special Mention when it premiered in competition at Berlin International Film Festival 2013.

Nobody's Daughter Haewon

Hong Sang-soo : 2013
Nugu-ui Ttal-do Anin

Haewon, a college student, wants to end her secret affair with her professor, Seongjun. Feeling depressed after bidding farewell to her mother who is set to emigrate to Canada the next day, Haewon seeks out Seongjun again after a long time. That day, they run into her classmates at a restaurant and their relationship is revealed. Haewon becomes more agitated and Seongjun makes an extreme suggestion to run away together. Haewon dreams often. Her dreams will be compared to her waking life, but none can be denied as being a part of her life. With its narrative told in diary format chronicling a few days in the life of the young woman, the film premiered in competition at Berlin International Film Festival 2013.

Before Snowfall

Hisham Zaman : 2013
Før snøen faller

A road movie that becomes an odyssey from East to West for young Siyar, a village boy from Iraqi Kurdistan, who has overtaken the responsibility for his siblings after the death of their parents. His journey begins when his older sister, Nermin, flees her wedding. Siyar's father is dead, and as the eldest son, he is obliged to set out to find his sister and kill her to restore his family honour in the local village. In İstanbul he meets a young girl, Evin, and they travel together through Greece, Germany and Norway. During the journey through different cultures, Siyar gradually matures as he is forced to set in question the ethics of his cultural moral of honour-killing. Instead, the search for his sister becomes a search for dignity and love. Hisham Zaman's debut feature received the jury's honourable mention when it premiered at Tromsø Internasjonale Filmfestival 2013.

Silent Ones

Ricky Rijneke : 2013
A csendesek

Csilla, a young Hungarian woman, wakes up inside a crashed car in the middle of nowhere, not knowing where her younger brother Isti is. He has vanished without a trace. Dazed, upset and alone, and without saying a word, Csilla leaves to begin a second life. She'll never return. She boards a cargo ship heading to Western Europe to keep a promise she made to her brother. When Gábor, a self-proclaimed business man assaults her and takes her last souvenir of Isti, Csilla loses grip on her life completely. As she withdraws into a dream-like world of shadows during her bereavement, the journey turns into a surreal trip on the fragile edge of life and death. Writer and director Ricky Rijneke's film, her first feature, with original soundtrack by composer and sound designer Andrey Dergatchev, premiered in competition at International Film Festival Rotterdam 2013.

My Beautiful Country

Michaela Kezele : 2012
Die Brücke am Ibar

Kosovo, 1999. As the civil war between Serbs and Albanians rages, hatred has replaced tolerance, and towns are brutally divided along ethnic lines. Neighbours have become enemies, friends are killing each other. Danica, a young Serbian, lives with her two sons Danilo and Vlado in a small Serbian-Albanian village on the River Ibar. Her husband was killed in the fighting and she is in mourning. When Ramiz, a critically injured UCK soldier, seeks shelter in her home, she is forced to make a decision: turn him over to the Serbian militia or try to save his life? Danica and Ramiz are practically neighbours, since he lives on the Albanian side of the river near the hospital where she gave birth to her children. Now they are enemies. By helping him she is endangering her life and the lives of her children. They fall in love but their fragile happiness is threatened by her jealous neighbour Jelena. Danica slowly realises that there is no way she can escape the effects of war. A moving love story in a time of hatred, Michaela Kezele's debut feature premiered at Filmfest München 2012.

As If I Am Not There

Juanita Wilson : 2010

The story of Samira, a young woman beginning her first teaching assignment in a remote part of Bosnia, far from her home in Sarajevo. Suddenly her life is shattered the day a young soldier walks into her apartment and tells her to pack her things. Rounded up with the other women from the village and imprisoned in a warehouse, she quickly learns the rules of camp life. The day she is picked out to 'entertain' the soldiers, the real nightmare begins. Stripped of everything she ever had and facing the constant threat of death, Samira struggles against all the hatred she sees around her. In a final act of courage or madness, she decides to make one last stand: to dare to be herself. And this simple act saves her life. It's when she realises that surviving means more than staying alive that she has to make a decision that will change her life forever. A modern war story that explores love, identity and the connections between us, Juanita Wilson's award-winning debut feature is a stark and compelling account of the atrocities against women in the Bosnian conflict.

Top of the Lake

Jane Campion & Garth Davis : 2012

A twelve-year-old girl, five months pregnant, stands chest deep in the freezing waters of a lake. Tui Mitcham, the daughter of a local drug lord, refuses to reveal the identity of her child's father and tries to drown herself. Robin Griffin, a tenacious detective specialising in juveniles, is brought in to investigate the case. But when Tui suddenly disappears, Robin embarks on a search that forces her to dissect not only the tangled drama of Lake Top's town folk, but also her own convoluted past. She will find this the case that tests her to her limits and sends her on a journey of self-discovery. In the search for Tui she will first have to find herself. Set in remote, mountainous New Zealand, this powerful and haunting mystery mini-series premiered at Sundance Film Festival 2013.

Magic Magic

Sebastián Silva : 2013

Teenager Alicia arrives in Chile on her first trip out of the United States. Visiting her close friend Sarah, she tries to fit into a different world, but if Alicia could just get some sleep, everything would be all right. As she makes her way through the surreal, unfamiliar countryside with Sarah and her boyfriend Agustín, his sister Barbara, and their strange American friend Brink, Alicia's insomnia slowly takes control. The difference between what is happening in reality and what is happening in her own mind becomes less and less clear to her. And after giving hypnosis a try, to help solve the problem, things only get worse. As her waking nightmare continues, will her friends be her salvation or her downfall? The story of an unstable personality pushed to the edge, Sebastián Silva's unsettling film examines sexual repression and the fear of loss, showing how the smallest choices we make can have significant and insurmountable consequences. The film premiered at Sundance Film Festival 2013.

Fruitvale Station

Ryan Coogler : 2013

Oscar Grant was a 22-year-old San Francisco Bay Area resident who loved his friends, was generous to strangers, and had a hard time telling the truth to the mother of his beautiful daughter. He was scared and courageous and charming and raw, and as human as the community he was part of. That community paid attention to him, shouted on his behalf, and filmed him with their cellphones when transit police officers, who were strong, intimidated, and acting in the way they thought they were supposed to behave around people like Oscar, shot him in cold blood at the Fruitvale subway station on New Year's Day in 2009. As an account of the real-life event that horrified a nation, Ryan Coogler's extraordinary directorial debut offers pointers to the state of humanity in American society today. Winner of the Grand Jury Award and Audience Award at Sundance Film Festival 2013.