Huang jin shi dai

Ann Hui : 2014
The Golden Era

Xiao Hong, one of the most famous female writers, lived through the most turbulent times in contemporary China. Her estrangement from her father sparked a long quest for an emotionally satisfying life. Drifting from one city to another, she had the life of a 'Romantic artist', was prodigiously talented and suffered through tragic love affairs. Xiao Hong was rescued from poverty by writer Xiao Jun, but their competitive relationship brought her more heartache than joy. While escaping the Japanese invasion, she married novelist Duanmu Hongliang and they fled together to Hong Kong, which fell to the Japanese later. She died of tuberculosis at the age of thirty-one. Ann Hui's biographical feature premiered at Venice International Film Festival 2014.

The Absent One

Mikkel Nørgaard : 2014
Fasandræberne

In 1994 two young twins are found brutally murdered in a summer cottage. A number of clues point in the direction of a group of young upper-class students from a nearby boarding school, but the case is closed as a local outsider pleads guilty and is convicted for the murders. When the case ends up on the desk of Carl Mørck of Copenhagen Police's Department Q, twenty years later, he soon realises that something is terribly wrong. As Mørck and Assad start investigating the case, they are led on to an old emergency call from a desperate girl who seems to know the secrets of the murders. Soon they are plunged into an intense search for the girl, Kimmie, who has been missing since the murders happened. But Mørck and Assad are not the only ones trying to track her down as the girl's testimonial is of great danger to a group of influential men at the top of society who will do all they can to keep her silent. Mikkel Nørgaard's feature, the second Department Q thriller, premiered at Fantastic Fest 2014.

Tsili

Amos Gitai : 2014

World War II. Tsili, a young Jewish woman, is hiding in the forest south of Czernowicz. Her entire family was deported to the camps. Hiding in the war zone, she builds a nest for herself. Escaping the savagery of the valley, she finds refuge in the nature. She is a little retarded and doesn't quite keep up with what is happening around her. Marek discovers her nest. He addresses her in Yiddish and finds out that she belongs to his people. Marek settles in the nest with Tsili. One day he goes down to the village to look for food but he never returns. The war is over. Tsili starts walking. She finds a group of people assembling next to the coast looking for a boat that will take them to another land. Amos Gitai's feature premiered at Venice International Film Festival 2014.

Dukhtar

Afia Nathaniel : 2014

Fleeing with her ten-year-old daughter after the girl is promised in marriage as part of a peace treaty, the wife of a tribal chieftain is pursued through the mountains by both her husband and the intended groom's henchmen. At the age of fifteen, Allah Rakhi was given in marriage to the much older tribal chieftain Daulat Khan, who took her from her family in Lahore to live with him in the mountains. Now, two decades later, Daulat Khan is presented with the opportunity to make peace with rival tribe leader Tor Gul, and he seals the deal by offering his fellow chieftain his and Allah Rakhi's ten-year-old daughter Zainab in marriage. Tormented at the prospect that her daughter's life might be a repetition of her own, Allah Rakhi flees with the oblivious young girl in tow. Pursued by Daulat Khan and Tor Gul's henchmen, and knowing that she is highly conspicuous as an unaccompanied woman on a mountain road, Allah Rakhi manages to get a lift for her and Zainab by lying to a sympathetic truck driver, Sohail. When Sohail learns of the real reason for Allah Rakhi's flight, he is forced to decide whether he will endanger his own life to deliver mother and daughter to safety in Lahore. Afia Nathaniel's thriller, her feature debut, premiered at Toronto International Film Festival 2014.

Good Kill

Andrew Niccol : 2014

Fighter pilot Major Tommy Egan has been flying F16s in Iraq and Afghanistan. He is still flying missions in South East Asia but he is now doing it from the inside of a very different cockpit – 7,000 miles away in the Nevada desert: he is now a drone pilot. This is not a story about the future of war, it is about the present. After fighting with the Taliban for eight hours he goes home to the suburbs to feud with his wife and kids. It's about the new schizophrenia of war. However, the pictures he sees are so graphic – as he says, "once you see it, how do you unsee it?" And he's started to disconnect from real life. There is a voyeuristic element to the missions, since a large part of the job is surveillance. He watches his target interact with his family, eating, sleeping, playing and then he receives the order to kill him. Egan's own family life is falling apart. Worse still, there is an escalation of the drone strikes. Double taps (where a target is struck and then a second strike hits the rescuers), strikes on funerals, "signature strikes" where anyone who fits the description of a terrorist is struck and of course, strikes in countries where no war has been declared. When Egan and his crew are told to start taking orders directly from the CIA – which selects its targets based not on personal profiles but patterns of activity – the notion of a "good" kill becomes even more abstract. A character study of a soldier's life in crisis, but also a cautionary tale with epic implications, raising urgent moral questions concerning the use of this new technology. Andrew Niccol's feature premiered in competition at Venice International Film Festival 2014.

Qin ai de

Peter Ho-sun Chan : 2014
Dearest

When their son goes missing, Tian Wenjun and his ex-wife, Lu Xiaojuan, find their ordinary lives thrown into complete turmoil. Overwhelmed with guilt, they comb through half the country in search of him but to no avail. The waiting is the hardest thing to endure but they persevere, hope is the only thing that gives them a reason to live. One day they encounter Han Dezhong and his wife Fan Yun, another couple who lost their child. Han introduces Tian and Lu to a support group that is dedicated to locating missing children. When Han tracks down a lead, Tian and Lu quietly travel up north to a remote village, where they eventually find their long lost son, Peng. Tian and Lu return home with Peng, but Peng has changed. He sees them as strangers. The child is traumatised after being taken away from his 'family' for a second time. Meanwhile, Li Hongqin, Peng's foster mother from the village arrives in the city in search of her last surviving relative, exposing long buried secrets. Peter Ho-sun Chan's feature premiered at Venice International Film Festival 2014.

Eden

Mia Hansen-Løve : 2014

Paul is a teenager in the underground dance music scene of early-nineties Paris. When he is 17 he discovers rave parties, but he's drawn to the more soulful rhythms of Chicago's garage house scene, as yet only in its infancy. This attraction will become the great passion of his life. A few years have gone by and Paul makes his first steps into the Parisian nightlife. He creates with his best friend, Stan, the DJ duo Cheers, and then their own label. Finding their audience rapidly, these young artists plunge into the life, building their following one set at a time, dropping out of daytime society to form a community based on the high of the ceaseless beats and bass. For Paul and his band, this is the beginning of a dazzling but also risky ascension into the world of electronic music. Mia Hansen-Løve's fourth feature premiered in the Special Presentations section at Toronto International Film Festival 2014.

The Postman's White Nights

Andrei Konchalovsky : 2014
Belye nochi pochtalona Alekseya Tryapitsyna

A story focusing on the lives of the inhabitants of a remote Russian village. The only way the villagers can reach the mainland is by crossing the lake by boat. Only a few people live there, and they all know each other well. Although a space port using the most advanced technologies is located nearby, the villagers live just the way their ancestors did for centuries. They only produce those things they need for their survival. A postman, a man loosely representing the local authorities and social services, is their only link to the outside world. A woman in the village, whom the postman is in love with, decides to run away from this life and move to the city. At the same time, the postman's outboard engine is stolen. He can no longer deliver the mail, and his life and those of all the villagers are turned upside down. Following an inner struggle, he decides to leave for the city too, but he soon returns, even if he cannot explain why. Andrei Konchalovsky's feature was winner of the Silver Lion for Best Director when it premiered in competition at Venice International Film Festival 2014.

SkaNdal

Elton Baxhaku & Eriona Cami : 2014
Scandal

The first ever long documentary about the LGBT movement in Albania. It shows an amazing history of how a social and political movement in Albania can start, can move on and get to the heart of the society. The experience of smart and courageous people who started the LGBT movement and of those who found and dedicated their lives to it. A tribute to those LGBT people who were persecuted, destroyed and never lived a life under communism, and an open call for those who are still afraid. It took only five years to empower an entire society, through media and communications tools, to establish a movement that is changing a country. SKA (non) NDAL (stop) – two words in Albanian for the documentary that challenges two different worlds. Elton Baxhaku and Eriona Cami's film premiered in competition at Sarajevo Film Festival 2014.

A Blast

Syllas Tzoumerkas : 2014

Maria is running away on the highway. She is alone in her roaring SUV. Behind her, fire and a suitcase full of money. In front of her, the hopeless vastness of the motorway. Her crazy, accelerating course will stop at nothing. Only a day before she was a caring mother, a loving wife, a responsible daughter. Today she has gone rogue: she is determined to sweep away everything she has ever cared for. Maria's tragic tale of ascent to redemption is narrated through bits of the present that become tangibly interwoven with fragments of the past, creating a dazzling and devastating mural of contemporary Greece. Syllas Tzoumerkas's second feature premiered in competition at Locarno Film Festival 2014.

Three Windows and a Hanging

Isa Qosja : 2014
Tri dritare dhe një varje

In a traditional village in Kosovo, a year after the war when people are rebuilding their lives, the female school teacher Lushe is driven by her inner conscience to give an interview to an international journalist, telling her that she and three other women from the village were raped by Serbian forces. As soon as the village men realise that it was her who spoke to the journalist, they start a hate campaign against Lushe and her little boy, asking her to leave the village. An insightful portrait of a Balkan village, of a patriarchal microcosm, and of its mayor who desperately wants to control the village life. A reflection of rituals which not only show gender inequality, but also the absence of freedom of expression within the male community. Isa Qosja's feature was winner of the Cineuropa Prize when it premiered in competition at Sarajevo Film Festival 2014.

Frère et sœur

Daniel Touati : 2014
Brother and Sister

A documentary which depicts the close relationship between five-year-old Cyril and his elder sister Marie, who is eight years old, exploring their imaginative worlds, jealousies and passion for music. Day by day, their shared world is tested but enriched as they grow and develop. Daniel Touati's film was winner of the Youth Jury Award for Best Film in the Concorso Cineasti del presente section at Locarno Film Festival 2014.

Song of My Mother

Erol Mintaş : 2014
Klama Dayika Min

Young teacher Ali lives with his ageing mother Nigar in İstanbul's Tarlabaşı district, home to many Kurdish refugees since the 1990s. When the ongoing gentrification of the old city forces them to move for a second time, they end up in the soulless concrete desert of the city's farthest outskirts. Nigar is convinced that her old neighbours have all moved back to their Kurdish village. Every morning she packs her belongings and sets out to return to her village. She roams the city, in search of her village and in search of the song that keeps returning in her dreams. All Ali can do is be kind to her: he buys her gifts, feeds her sweets, takes her on motorcycle rides and tries to help his mother find the song in her dreams. Meanwhile Ali discovers that his girlfriend is pregnant and that he is not ready to become a father. Torn between the two women in his life, Ali has to choose his own path. Erol Mintaş's feature debut was winner of the Heart of Sarajevo awards for Best Film and Best Actor when it premiered in competition at Sarajevo Film Festival 2014.

From What is Before

Lav Diaz : 2014
Mula sa kung ano ang noon

The Philippines, 1972. Mysterious things are happening in a remote barrio. Wails are heard from the forest, cows are hacked, a man is found bleeding to death at a crossroads and houses are burned. Military operations are becoming common. Brutal militias rule the countryside. Ferdinand E Marcos announces Proclamation No 1081, putting the entire country under martial law. The story revolves around the lives of poor villagers in one of the remotest regions of the Philippines before martial law was declared. Loosely based on real events and characters, the film examines how an individual and collective psyche responds to extreme and mysterious changes in social and physical environment. Lav Diaz's feature received the Grand Festival Prize at the World Premieres Film Festival 2014, and was winner of the Pardo d'oro at Locarno Film Festival 2014.

Marie Heurtin

Jean-Pierre Améris : 2014

Based on real-life events that took place in the late nineteenth century, the story of Marie Heurtin, a deaf and blind fourteen-year-old girl who can't communicate with the outside world. Despite the advice of a doctor who believes she is "dumb", Marie's father, a humble artisan, cannot bring himself to commit her to an asylum. Out of despair, he takes her to the Larnay Institute near Poitiers where nuns take care of young deaf women. Her Mother Superior's scepticism not withstanding, Sister Marguerite, a young nun, takes Marie under her wing and does everything she can to bring her out of her darkness. Jean-Pierre Améris's feature was winner of the Variety Piazza Grande Award when it premiered at Locarno Film Festival 2014.

Sae-chul-bal

Jang Woo-jin : 2014
A Fresh Start

After finishing his military service, Ji-hyeon returns to his studies, only to face difficult family issues and rumours of his college department being abolished. At a literary club meeting, Ji-hyeon meets Hye-rin, who shares his concerns, and they have an impulsive one night stand after the meeting. During the following days they stay at an awkward distance from each other until Hye-rin finds out she is pregnant. They both agree to have an illegal abortion and travel together to a remote clinic in the countryside. Unfortunately, they don't have enough money for the surgery and they get kicked out, spending the rest of the day desperate and lost in an unknown place. The next morning, they give up their plan and decide to head to the east coast of Korea, where Ji-hyeon served in the army. Jang Woo-jin's feature debut was winner of the Grand Prize for Korean Competition when it premiered at Jeonju International Film Festival 2014.

Keeping House

Ian Fenton & Jacob Polley : 2014

An evocative documentary exploring the beguiling atmospheres of the William Cowe & Sons cockle shop premises in Berwick, a family business dating back to 1801. Behind the shuttered doors, amongst the ledgers, the stuffed cupboards, the tea chests, and the family memorabilia, filmmaker Ian Fenton and poet Jacob Polley discovered a decaying world caught between the near and distant past, where obsolete floppy discs rubbed shoulders with cheques from the 1870s and everything – right down to the dirt itself – seemed imbued with historical significance. The directors were invited to document the maze of shops and living spaces as part of conservation work in the town of Berwick, Northumberland, commissioned by Northumberland County Council's Berwick upon Tweed townscape heritage initiative.

Tussen 10 en 12

Peter Hoogendoorn : 2014
Between 10 and 12

A piece of news, delivered by two officers in a police car, changes the lives of a family forever. As the journey to track down the next of kin progresses, the vehicle becomes more and more crowded with family members, picked up from home, work, the hairdressers. As they sit in the back seat, alone with their thoughts, what they thought they knew about life, about relationships, has been violently altered. Peter Hoogendoorn's feature debut premiered at Venice Days 2014.

La sapienza

Eugène Green : 2014
The Sapience

At 50, Swiss architect Alexandre Schmidt has had a brilliant career, but is starting to have doubts about the meaning of his work. For her part, his wife Aliénor has similar issues about her own profession as a behavioural specialist with the under-privileged. Yet a wall of silence exists between the two of them. Wanting to pursue a long-cherished desire to write about Francesco Borromini, the Baroque architect, Alexandre decides to go to Ticino then Rome and Aliénor chooses to accompany him. In Stresa, where they plan to spend a few days, the couple meets two adolescents, a brother and sister named Goffredo and Lavinia. The boy is about to begin studying architecture, and the girl is suffering from a strange nervous illness. Aliénor decides to stay to look after the girl and offers to pay for the boy to take a research trip, which means that Alexandre is obliged to take him with him to Rome. Eugène Green's feature premiered in competition at Locarno Film Festival 2014.

Nuits blanches sur la jetée

Paul Vecchiali : 2014
White Nights on the Pier

A man on a year's sabbatical in a port town goes out for a walk every night along the jetty. There he meets a young woman who is waiting for the man of her life. Over four nights, as real as they are fantasised, they discuss life and he gradually falls in love with her. But then the man she's been yearning for arrives. Paul Vecchiali's feature premiered at Locarno Film Festival 2014.

The Stranger

Neasa Ní Chianáin : 2014

When we are gone, what do people remember of us? Neal MacGregor, an English artist, died alone, prematurely, aged 44, in a stone hen-house that he couldn't stand up in, where he lived without water, electricity or heating on a remote Irish island. The Gaelic-speaking islanders on the rapidly depopulating island, knew little of Neal during the eight years he lived there. Who was this Stranger? Was he a British spy recording IRA gun-running routes, as some islanders thought? Was he trying to take control of the island? Was he crazy, as others thought? Or was he just seeking solitude? Neal left behind three animal carvings, volumes of beautifully illustrated notebooks and secret diaries. This beautiful enigmatic film about memory and perception, pulls together the jigsaw of missing pieces, and sensitively paints a portrait of a man, living on the edge, physically and mentally, and the insular island community he lived amongst. Neasa Ní Chianáin's documentary had its international premiere at the Semaine de la Critique at Locarno Film Festival 2014.

Phoenix

Christian Petzold : 2014

Nelly Lenz, is an Auschwitz survivor who has been disfigured while in the concentration camp. After a surgical intervention, she starts looking for her husband Johnny, who is convinced that she is dead. When Nelly finally finds him, he does not recognise her, but finds an unsettling similarity between her and the wife he remembers, and therefore asks that she pretends to be her so he can claim the inheritance which was left behind by Nelly's family after they were murdered in the Holocaust. Nelly agrees and becomes her own doppelgänger. What she wants to know is if Johnny ever loved her, or if he betrayed her to the Nazis. What she wants is to have her life back. Christian Petzold's feature premiered at Toronto International Film Festival 2014, and was winner of the FIPRESCI Award at San Sebastián International Film Festival 2014.

Antigona despierta

Lupe Pérez García : 2014
Antigone Awake

What does it mean, nowadays, to have Antigone emerge from her millenary lethargy? The amorphous woman follows an older, chaotic law, both animal and tribal at once. Now that war is over, the birds call for her from the edge of depths. "Tonight you will bury your brother," they say. "Since we have already covered him in kisses." Her rebelliousness is a threat to the rationality of a nation, a proof of love that drags her to the land of the dead: her brother's land, her father's too. Only when there is a vibration between the spirit and the world, Antigone awakes. Lupe Pérez García's second feature premiered at Locarno Film Festival 2014.

Amori e metamorfosi

Yanira Yariv : 2014
Love and Metamorphoses

Just a few kilometres from Rome, the sand dunes of Sabaudia, marsh and woods of the Circeo and the Arpino waterfall become the backdrop to mythical transformations: Callisto metamorphoses into a bear, Jupiter changes into Diana, Glaucus transforms into a sea monster and the nymph Salamachis merges forever with the body of the young Hermaphrodite. But each of these transformations also plays on those of their performers, thus giving a new twist to Ovid's Metamorphoses and questioning the role of gender and identity in our society. Yanira Yariv's feature debut premiered at Locarno Film Festival 2014.

Avant l'hiver

Philippe Claudel : 2013
Before the Winter Chill

Paul has never questioned his choices. Married right out of medical school to the stunning Lucie, who set aside her own career to accommodate his brilliant one as a neurosurgeon, he has been faithful, has earned the respect of his peers, raised a son and built a lovely home. But now, in the autumn of his life, something might threaten all that. It starts after a chance meeting with the young and mysterious Lou, whom he had treated once when she was a young child and who keeps turning up in his life. When roses are delivered daily at his office and home, Paul presumes Lou is stalking him, yet he can't resist the lure of an ambiguous and dangerous relationship with her. Fascinated by her emotional frailty, her mystery and grace, Paul fails to see that he might be the target of a sinister plot, something dark and twisted that could threaten everything he's built and everyone he loves.

— —

Comme un p'tit coquelicot (YouTube)
interprétée par Leïla Bekhti

Le myosotis, et puis la rose ~ The forget-me-not and then the rose
Ce sont des fleurs qui disent quelque chose ~ Are flowers which really say something
Mais pour aimer les coquelicots ~ But to love poppies
Et n'aimer que ça, faut être idiot ~ And nothing else, you have to be an idiot

T'as peut-être raison, oui mais voilà ~ Maybe you're right, yes but you see
Quand je t'aurai dit, tu comprendras ~ When I tell you, you'll understand
La première fois que je l'ai vue ~ The first time I saw her
Elle dormait, à moitié nue ~ She was sleeping, half-naked
Dans la lumière de l'été ~ In the light of summer
Au beau milieu d'un champ de blé ~ In the middle of a field of wheat
Et sous le corsage blanc ~ And under her white bodice
Là où battait son coeur ~ Where her heart was beating
Le soleil, gentiment ~ The sun kindly
Faisait vivre une fleur ~ Helped a flower grow
Comme un p'tit coquelicot, mon âme ~ Like a little poppy, my dear
Comme un p'tit coquelicot ~ Like a little poppy

C'est très curieux comme tes yeux brillent ~ It's very strange how your eyes shine
En te rappelant la jolie fille ~ Reminding you of the pretty girl
Ils brillent si fort que c'est un peu trop ~ They shine so brightly, it's a bit too much
Pour expliquer les coquelicots ~ To explain the poppies

T'as peut-être raison, seulement voilà ~ Maybe you're right, only you see
Quand je l'ai prise dans mes bras ~ When I took her in my arms
Elle m'a donné son beau sourire ~ She gave me a beautiful smile
Et puis après sans rien nous dire ~ Then, without saying a word
Dans la lumière de l'été ~ In the light of summer
On s'est aimé, on s'est aimé ~ We loved each other, we loved each other
Et j'ai tant appuyé ~ And I pressed so hard
Mes lèvres sur son coeur ~ My lips on her heart
Qu'à la place du baiser ~ That where the kiss was
Y'avait comme une fleur ~ There was a sort of flower
Comme un p'tit coquelicot, mon âme ~ Like a little poppy, my dear
Comme un p'tit coquelicot ~ Like a little poppy

Ce n'est rien d'autre qu'une aventure ~ It's nothing but an affair
Ta petite histoire, et je te jure ~ Your little love story, and I swear
Qu'elle ne mérite pas un sanglot ~ It doesn't deserve even a sob
Ni cette passion des coquelicots ~ Nor this passion for poppies

Attends la fin, tu comprendras ~ Wait for the end, you'll understand
Un autre l'aimait, qu'elle n'aimait pas ~ Someone else loved her, she didn't love him
Et le lendemain, quand je l'ai revue ~ And the next day, when I saw her
Elle dormait à moitié nue ~ She was sleeping, half-naked
Dans la lumière de l'été ~ In the light of summer
Au beau milieu du champ de blé ~ In the middle of the field of wheat
Mais, sur le corsage blanc ~ But on her white bodice
Juste à la place du coeur ~ Where her heart was
Y'avait trois gouttes de sang ~ There were three drops of blood
Qui faisaient comme une fleur ~ Which looked like a flower
Comme un p'tit coquelicot, mon âme ~ Like a little poppy, my dear
Un tout p'tit coquelicot ~ A tiny little poppy
Comme un p'tit coquelicot, mon âme ~ Like a little poppy, my dear
Un tout p'tit coquelicot ~ A tiny little poppy

Le dernier coup de marteau

Alix Delaporte : 2014
The Last Hammer Blow

Victor, a 14-year-old boy, lives with his mother on a beach in the south of France. He never knew his father and pretends that he doesn't need him. But when he finds out his father, a symphony conductor, is nearby rehearsing with an orchestra, Victor is determined to meet him and create a relationship. Alix Delaporte's second feature was winner of the Lanterna Magica (CGS) Award when it premiered in competition at Venice International Film Festival 2014.

Maintenant ou jamais

Serge Frydman : 2014
Now or Never

Housewives and mothers don't generally rob banks. Unless there is an economic crisis, your husband has lost his job and the bank is about to foreclose on your home. Unless one evening destiny puts a thief right in your path, and you use him to learn how to go astray, where there is no turning back. Robbing a bank may be a solution to ensuring the family's future without giving up on one's dreams. Juliette Lesage will discover that playing at bank robbers can quickly become dangerous, and risky encounters may transform into love affairs.

Dancing with Maria

Ivan Gergolet : 2014

Maria Fux is an elderly Argentinean dancer. In her studio in the centre of Buenos Aires, she welcomes dancers from all walks of life, including women and men with physical and mental impairments, and arranges integrated dance groups. After having experimented and taught her method throughout her entire life – based on the perception of inner rhythms and the symbiosis with music – Maria Fux is now dealing with one last student, possibly the most difficult one: herself. We all have limits that we can acknowledge and finally overcome. At the age of 90, Maria fights her ultimate battle against the limits of her own body. Ivan Gergolet's first full-length documentary was winner of the "Civitas Vitae prossima" Award when it premiered in competition at Venice International Film Critics' Week 2014.

3 Coeurs

Benoît Jacquot : 2014
3 Hearts

One night in a French provincial city, Marc meets Sylvie after missing his train back to Paris. They wander through the streets until morning, talking about everything except themselves, in rare, almost choreographed, harmony. Marc takes the first train back, and sets a date with Sylvie in Paris, a few days later. They know nothing about each other, but this is much more than a game. It's the way it has to be. Sylvie keeps the date. Misfortune befalls Marc, and he cannot. He searches for her and ends up finding someone else. Sophie. He does not know that she is Sylvie's sister. Marc and Sylvie meet again. Their unparalleled harmony still exists, but it is too late. Benoît Jacquot's feature premiered in competition at Venice International Film Festival 2014.

El árbol magnético

Isabel Ayguavives : 2013
The Magnetic Tree

Bruno is returning to the country of his birth after a long absence. The house in the countryside where he lived with his family is up for sale and they all gather to bid the place farewell. Nela and her parents, are finalising the preparations for the arrival of Bruno, one of the girl's cousins, who has been living in Europe for some time. Soon after, the rest of the clan start arriving in order to celebrate the family reunion. Through the eyes of each of the characters we gain an insight into their thoughts, whilst not knowing for certain what is going on. We begin to observe their expressions, movements, codes, behaviour and games, which are all just as routine as they are, but brimming with nostalgia because their memories determine their way of connecting with one another and also enable them to continue being a close-knit family. A visit to the "magnetic tree", a local curiosity with strange properties, will awaken in Bruno almost forgotten feelings and affections for his past. Isabel Ayguavives's feature debut premiered at San Sebastián International Film Festival 2013, and was winner of the Award for Best Chilean Film at Valdivia International Film Festival 2013.

Wołanie

Marcin Dudziak : 2014
Calling

A father-and-son rafting expedition down a mountain river is the backdrop to an almost wordless story about the unique moment in a boy's life when something intangible yet somehow anticipated reveals its meaning. The boy's curiosity and desire for new experiences grow stronger than his fear of a world he does not fully grasp. The feeling of solitude and vulnerability he experiences despite his father's presence foreshadows his transformation. What appears as mundane holiday activity within the natural world in which the dominant image is that of the flowing river, gives rise to a tension that is as effective as it is unexplainable. When the danger materialises, the boy seems prepared for it but it will not leave him unchanged. Marcin Dudziak's feature debut premiered in competition at New Horizons International Film Festival, Wrocław 2014.