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.