Heartstone

Guðmundur Arnar Guðmundsson : 2016
Hjartasteinn

A remote fishing village in Iceland. Teenage boys Þór and Kristján experience a turbulent summer as one tries to win the heart of a girl while the other discovers new feelings toward his best friend. When summer ends and the harsh nature of Iceland takes back its rights, it's time to leave the playground and face adulthood. Heartstone is a personal story based on the director's experience growing up in a small fishing village. The core of the film is a strong, beautiful friendship between two boys, and how their environment and inner conflict drive them apart, before the bond they share manages to reunite them again. The village is a place full of contrasts, where kids discover how nature and people can be both amazingly beautiful and incredibly cruel. Guðmundur Arnar Guðmundsson's feature debut was winner of the Queer Lion when it premiered in competition at Venice Days 2016.

Sami Blood

Amanda Kernell : 2016
Sameblod

In 1930s Lapland, the 14-year-old indigenous Sámi girl, Elle Marja, leaves the wild ancestral grounds and the family's reindeer camp to attend a remote draconian boarding school along with her younger sister, Njenna. However, as the bright rural student pursues a denied education and an opportunity, wishing to integrate herself into the modern Swedish society, a painful visit by a team of anthropologists paired by a traumatic experience will be the harsh reminders of an ever-present brutal prejudice and a deep-seated racism. Uppsala promises a bright future in the bustling metropolis, but to pass as a regular Swedish teenager, Elle Marja will have to make a greater sacrifice than just changing her name. But, can an outcast sever ties and renounce her proud lineage so easily? Amanda Kernell's feature was winner of the Fedeora Award for Best Director of a Debut Film when it premiered in competition at Venice Days 2016.

The Idea of a Lake

Milagros Mumenthaler : 2016
La idea de un lago

Inés's father mysteriously disappeared in 1977. Decades later the 35-year old photographer is busy compiling a monograph on her oeuvre, a project that inexplicably leads her back to her youth during Argentinian dictator Jorge Videla's regime. The film opens with her contacting the national forensic lab: can they perhaps help her discover her father's fate? The last photo of him, taken at the lake near La Angostura, comes to her mind. After that she spent her summers without him in this mountainous region at her family's vacation home, far from Buenos Aires' oppressive heat. Cherished memories, such as playing hide and seek, lead to abstract interplays of light in Inés's imagination. Other flashbacks shed new light on her difficult relationship with her mother. Milagros Mumenthaler's second feature premiered in competition at Locarno Film Festival 2016.

La ragazza del mondo

Marco Danieli : 2016
Worldly Girl

Giulia's world is an ancient one, frozen in time, rigorously devoted to its sacred texts – a world that ruthlessly shuts out those who don't belong. Libero's world is that of everyone else, with their mistakes, their strategies for getting by and starting over, their ability to love unconditionally. When she meets Libero, Giulia realises her life can go in a different direction, of her own choosing. It's a pure, inescapable passion, an intense new season in their lives, and a decision that will cost Giulia her inclusion in the Jehovah's Witnesses community, and turn her into an outcast. Yet Libero will give her the greatest gift of love: the freedom to belong to the world outside, a shining new world full of future chances. Marco Danieli's feature debut premiered in competition at Venice Days 2016.

The Levelling

Hope Dickson Leach : 2016

Somerset, October 2014. When trainee veterinary surgeon Clover Catto receives a call telling her that her younger brother Harry is dead, she must return to her family farm and face the man she hasn't spoken to in years: her father Aubrey. She is shocked to discover her home changed forever by the devastating floods that destroyed the area six months earlier, and Aubrey a tormented shadow of his former self. As she learns what has been going on in her long absence she and her father forge a new understanding, but can it withstand the troubles that they face on the ravaged farm as well as the truth of what drove Harry to take his own life? As the funeral approaches, her discoveries send Clover on an emotional journey of reckoning – with her family, her childhood and herself. Hope Dickson Leach's feature debut premiered at Toronto International Film Festival 2016.

House of Others

Rusudan Glurjidze : 2016
Skhvisi sakhli

It's the beginning of the 1990s and Georgia is immersed in a civil war with the newly emerging state of Abkhazia. Those who managed to escape and now find themselves on the winning side are assigned houses previously occupied by the enemy. In the strange environment of other people's homes, with lingering memories of the horrors experienced by the original occupants, many of these new arrivals try to start afresh. But there's no sign of the contentment they had envisaged in their new surroundings; their old demons have come back to torment them. The director's own harrowing experiences, faithfully conveyed onscreen twenty years later, are rendered into a tale of rootlessness, where the loss of identity, of childhood and of the very meaning of life cannot negate the protagonists' awareness that life itself must still go on. Rusudan Glurjidze's film, her feature debut, was winner of the East of West Award when it premiered in competition at Karlovy Vary International Film Festival 2016.

Aloys

Tobias Nölle : 2016

A lonely private investigator is contacted by a mysterious woman who pulls him into a mind game known as 'telephone walking'. Fascinated by her voice, Aloys discovers an imaginary universe that allows him to break out of his isolation. 'We'll be in touch.' Aloys Adorn always speaks of himself in the first person plural. His unhealthily close personal and professional symbiosis with his father has made this taciturn, lone wolf of a private detective the man he is. In spite of his father's very recent death, the son sees fit to carry on as before, secretly observing and staying invisible. 'To film other people is my job', he says. 'To watch the films again is my hobby.' But a painful memory distracts Aloys from his ritualised daily routine of filming, watching the material and ordering 'one portion of rice to go' at the local Chinese, and he is discovered during his surveillance. Bewildered, he gets drunk, falls asleep on a bus and wakes up to discover that his camera and tapes have been stolen. The mysterious woman who calls him shortly afterwards seems to have something to do with this. Or does she simply want to break into his private world? Tobias Nölle's feature debut premiered in the Panorama section at Berlin International Film Festival 2016.

Strangled

Árpád Sopsits : 2016
A martfüi rém

Based on real-life events, the story is set in the provincial Hungary of the 1960s, when a series of atrocious murders shock the small town of Martfü. A psychotic killer is on the prowl, strangling young women. Amidst the media frenzy, an innocent man is accused and sentenced for the crimes he could not possibly have committed. A determined detective becomes obsessed with finding the real killer, whilst under pressure from his superiors who just want to see a man hang. Stuck in the suffocating social, political and psychological world of socialist Hungary, they find themselves entangled in a web of intricate conspiracy. The film premiered at Warsaw Film Festival 2016.

A Taste of Honey

Tony Richardson : 1961

Jo is an awkward, shy 17-year-old girl living with her promiscuous alcoholic mother, Helen. Desperately longing to simply be loved, when her mother's latest "romance" drives Jo out of their apartment, she spends the night with a black sailor on a brief shore leave. But when Jo's mother abandons her to move in with her latest lover, Jo finds a job and a room for herself, meets Geoffrey, a shy and lonely homosexual, and allows him to share her flat. When she discovers that she is pregnant with the sailor's child, Geoffrey, grateful for her friendship, looks after her, even offering marriage. Their brief taste of happiness is short-lived for Jo's fickle and domineering mother, her own romantic hopes dashed, appears on the scene, determined to drive the gentle Geoffrey from the flat and take over the care of her daughter, rearranging everything to suit herself. The film had its international premiere in competition at Festival de Cannes 1962, where it won Best Actor and Best Actress awards for Murray Melvin and Rita Tushingham.

El Sur

Víctor Erice : 1983
The South

Recalling her youth in 1950s northern Spain, Estrella revisits her relationship with her beloved father Agustin, raised in the south, and realises how little she knew of him and his secrets. Víctor Erice's delicate and mysterious film reveals his abiding fascination with memory and loss, missed opportunities and the links between private dreams and political realities. The performances, like the meticulously lit compositions and evocative soundtrack, are superb, exquisitely beautiful and profoundly moving. His second feature premiered in competition at Festival de Cannes 1983.

The Orphanage

Juan Antonio Bayona : 2007
El orfanato

Many years ago, Laura left the orphanage where she had spent her childhood. Now, thirty years later, she returns with her husband Carlos and her young son Simon, with a dream of restoring and reopening the long-abandoned orphanage as a home for disabled children. But the mysterious surroundings awaken Simon's imagination and the boy starts to spin a web of fantastic tales and not-so-innocent games. As events take a sinister turn, Laura slowly becomes convinced that something long-hidden and terrible is lurking in the old house, something waiting to emerge and inflict appalling damage on her family. The film premiered in the Séances Spéciales at the Semaine de la Critique at Festival de Cannes 2007.

Las plantas

Roberto Doveris : 2015
Plants

"Do you think plants could have souls? That we might even be able to talk to them?" For a whole summer, 17-year-old Florencia has to look after her older brother Sebastián, who is trapped in a persistent vegetative state. She feeds him, washes him, changes his diapers, and cuddles up to him in bed. From time to time she reads to him from a comic called Las Plantas, which is about plant souls that take control of human bodies at full moon. In these days of loneliness, she will wonder about her brother. Is he awake despite his condition or is he just a body without a soul? The plants become a metaphor for how Florencia feels at times about her own but perhaps even more so about Sebastián's body, as if it were possessed by another entity, while her brother's consciousness lies dormant. At night, Florencia makes contact with men on the internet. Images of her monotonous daily routine and dreamlike sequences of a vibrant fantasy world merge to create a fascinating tale of a young woman as she self-determines her own sexual awakening. Roberto Doveris' feature premiered at Valdivia International Film Festival 2015, and was awarded the Grand Prix of the Generation 14plus International Jury at Berlin International Film Festival 2016.

Mellow Mud

Renārs Vimba : 2016
Es esmu šeit

Loneliness, disillusionment and the experience of first love reveal the character of Raya, a 17-year-old living in rural Latvia with her grandmother and her little brother Robis. A staggering turn of events shakes up their lives, and the young girl must come to decisions that even a grown woman would find difficult to make. No one shall know that their grandmother has died. To avoid being taken into the care of the authorities, Raya and her brother bury the old woman they grew up with in the garden by the apple orchard. With no one else to depend on, Raya has to organise daily survival for herself and her brother. She's pinning all her hopes on their mother, who has emigrated to England. The film describes the difficult situation of those left behind in a country that many people have already abandoned. It is a portrait of a resourceful and determined young woman who refuses to give up her dreams despite the hardships life has thrown at her. In her constant struggle to evade the authorities, she tries to find her own happiness whilst taking care of her brother. Renārs Vimba's feature debut was winner of the Crystal Bear for Best Film when it premiered in the Generation section at Berlin International Film Festival 2016.

Kings of the Road

Wim Wenders : 1976
Im Lauf der Zeit

Bruno Winter is a travelling projection-equipment mechanic working in West Germany along the East German border, visiting worn-out theatres. He meets the depressed Robert Lander, who has just been through a break-up with his wife, after he drives his car into a river in a half-hearted suicide attempt. Bruno allows Robert to ride with him while his clothes dry. While out on the road, Bruno and Robert encounter several people in various states of despair, including a man whose wife has committed suicide by driving her car into a tree. Robert also drops in on his elderly father to berate him for disrespecting Robert's mother. After Bruno and Robert have a minor brawl after a conversation about Robert and his wife, Robert finally leaves Bruno, though Bruno later spots him riding on a train. Bruno continues his visits to theatres, including one that no longer screens films because the owner regards modern films as exploitative. Wim Wenders' third part of his Road Movie trilogy had its international premiere in competition at Festival de Cannes 1976.

Wrong Move

Wim Wenders : 1975
Falsche Bewegung

Aiming to be a writer, Wilhelm leaves mother and girlfriend in his home town of Glückstadt in the far north of Germany and sets out for Bonn. Changing trains at Hamburg, he is struck by a beautiful actress, Therese, and obtains her phone number. In his compartment are an older man Laertes, who mostly communicates by blowing a mouth organ, and a teenage female acrobat called Mignon, who is mute. The pair have no money, so Wilhelm pays their fare and puts them up in his cheap hotel, where Therese joins them. Bernhard, an awkward Austrian who wants to be a poet, befriends the four. He says he has a rich uncle with a castle on a peak overlooking the Rhine, but when the five turn up it is the wrong place. The owner welcomes them however, because their arrival stopped him shooting himself, and says they can stay as long as they like. But tensions grow, for Wilhelm is not giving Therese the affection she wants, while Mignon signals her availability to him. Laertes, feeling guilt but not repentant, disgusts Wilhelm by revealing some of his role in the Holocaust. Then the owner of castle hangs himself, upon which the five leave hastily. Bernhard goes off while Therese takes the other three to her small flat in Frankfurt, where the tensions grow worse. Leaving on his own, Wilhelm completes his symbolic journey by reaching one of the most southerly, highest and emptiest points in Germany, the summit of the Zugspitze.

Alice in the Cities

Wim Wenders : 1974
Alice in den Städten

German writer Philip Winter has missed his publisher's deadline for writing an article about the United States. Attempting to book a flight from New York City, he discovers that there is an airline strike in Germany. He meets a German woman, Lisa, and her young daughter, Alice, who are also trying to return home. After Lisa leaves Alice temporarily in Philip's care, she disappears to deal with a relationship she has recently terminated. Philip and Alice take a flight to Amsterdam on the expectation that they will meet Lisa there, only to find she never arrived at the airport. When Alice is unwilling to stay in the Amsterdam airport alone while Philip leaves, the two decide to return to West Germany where Philip can deliver Alice to her grandmother's home. Unfortunately, Alice can't remember her grandmother's name or address, except that she may live in Wuppertal, the only clue being a photograph of her grandmother's front door with no house number and no one in the shot. After searching through Wuppertal, Alice admits her grandmother doesn't live there and that she only wanted them both to stay in Amsterdam. Enraged, Philip turns Alice over to the police, but Alice walks out of the police station and returns to him remembering that her grandmother lives in Ruhr. The two begin to bond as they travel to Ruhr, and the search comes to an end when the police spot them and inform Philip that Lisa has been found. Philip cannot afford to buy a train ticket so as he is saying goodbye to Alice at the railway station she gives him the money so that he can go with her on the train. He accepts Alice's offer and the film ends with the two of them riding a train back to Munich.

Mal de pierres

Nicole Garcia : 2016
From the Land of the Moon

Gabrielle comes from a small village in the South of France, at a time when her dream of true love is considered scandalous, and even a sign of insanity. Her parents marry her to José, an honest and loving Spanish farm worker who they think will make a respectable woman of her. Despite José's devotion to her, Gabrielle vows that she will never love José and lives like a prisoner bound by the constraints of conventional post-World War II society until the day she is sent away to a cure in the Alps to heal her kidney stones. There she meets André Sauvage, a dashing injured veteran of the Indochinese War, who rekindles the passion buried inside her. She promises they will run away together, and André seems to share her desire. Will anyone dare rob her of her right to follow her dreams? Nicole Garcia's feature premiered in competition at Festival de Cannes 2016.

Tramontane

Vatche Boulghourjian : 2016

Rabih, a young blind man, lives in a small village in Lebanon. His life unravels when he applies for a passport and discovers that his identification card is a forgery. Travelling across rural Lebanon in search of a record of his own birth, he meets people on the far fringes of society who tell their own stories, open further questions and give him minor clues about his identity. He encounters a nation incapable of telling his, or its own, history. Vatche Boulghourjian's feature debut premiered in competition at the Semaine de la Critique at Festival de Cannes 2016.

Bacalaureat

Cristian Mungiu : 2016
Graduation

Romeo Aldea, 49, a physician living in a small mountain town in Transylvania, has raised his daughter Eliza with the idea that once she turns 18, she will leave to study and live abroad. His plan is close to succeeding – Eliza has won a scholarship to study psychology in the UK. She just has to pass her final exams – a formality for such a good student. On the day before her first written exam, Eliza is assaulted in an attack that could jeopardise her entire future. Now Romeo has to make a decision. There are ways of solving the situation, but none of them using the principles he, as a father, has taught his daughter. The film premiered in competition at Festival de Cannes 2016, where it won the award for Best Director.

Aquarius

Kleber Mendonça Filho : 2016

Clara, a 65 year old widow and retired music critic, was born into a wealthy and traditional family in Recife, Brazil. She is the last resident of the Aquarius, an original two-storey building, built in the 1940s, in the upper-class, seaside Avenida Boa Viagem, Recife. All the neighbouring apartments have already been acquired by a company which has other plans for that plot. Clara has pledged to only leave her place upon her death, and will engage in a cold war of sorts with the company, a confrontation which is both mysterious, frightening and nerve wracking. This tension both disturbs Clara and gives her that edge on her daily routine. It also gets her thinking about her loved ones, her past and her future. The film premiered in competition at Festival de Cannes 2016.

Mimosas

Oliver Laxe : 2016

A caravan escorts an elderly and dying Sheikh through the Moroccan Atlas. His last wish is to be buried with his close ones. But death does not wait. The caravaneers, fearful of the mountain, refuse to continue transporting the corpse. Saïd and Ahmed, two rogues travelling with the caravan, say they know the way and promise to take the corpse to its destiny. In another world, Shakib is chosen to travel to the mountains with a mission: to help the improvised caravaneers. Oliver Laxe's second feature was winner of the Grand Prix when it premiered in competition at the Semaine de la Critique at Festival de Cannes 2016.

Paterson

Jim Jarmusch : 2016

Paterson is a bus driver in the city of Paterson, New Jersey – they share the name. Every day, Paterson adheres to a simple routine: he drives his daily route, observing the city as it drifts across his windshield and overhearing fragments of conversation swirling around him; he writes poetry into a notebook; he walks his dog; he stops in a bar and drinks exactly one beer; he goes home to his wife, Laura. By contrast, Laura's world is ever changing. New dreams come to her almost daily. Paterson loves Laura and she loves him. He supports her newfound ambitions; she champions his gift for poetry. The film quietly observes the triumphs and defeats of daily life, along with the poetry evident in its smallest details. Jim Jarmusch's feature premiered in competition at Festival de Cannes 2016.

Elle

Paul Verhoeven : 2016

The wealthy entrepreneur Michèle Leblanc is the owner of a successful video-game company that she runs with her best friend Anna. Michèle seems indestructible, she brings the same ruthless attitude to her love life as to business. One day Michèle is attacked and brutally raped in her home by an unknown assailant which changes her life forever. However, when she resolutely tracks the man down, they are both drawn into a curious and thrilling game, one that may, at any moment, spiral out of control. The film premiered in competition at Festival de Cannes 2016.

Personal Shopper

Olivier Assayas : 2016

Maureen Cartwright is a young American living in Paris and working as a personal shopper to a high-fashion celebrity. It has been three months since the sudden death of her 27-year-old twin brother Lewis from a congenital heart malformation, and Maureen, a capable spiritual medium, still hasn't made contact with him. Spending her time between high profile fashion establishments and Lewis's abandoned house in Paris, Maureen is silently battling with grief and sorrow, whilst at the same time, looking for a sign from her deceased brother after an oath taken between the twins. Lewis's partner, Lara, wants to sell the Paris house to a couple of friends of theirs, who need some indication before they buy that Lewis is happy with them moving in. Spending a night in the house to make contact for this purpose, Maureen hopes that Lewis may send her that sign. As Maureen continues with her life, she begins to experience things that she is uncertain are real, which could mean that someone sinister is toying with her, or could be coded signs from Lewis, or a combination of both. The film premiered in competition at Festival de Cannes 2016, where it won the award for Best Director.

La fille inconnue

Jean-Pierre Dardenne & Luc Dardenne : 2016
The Unknown Girl

Jenny Davin is a young doctor who receives a late night call at the door of her practice after hours and decides to ignore it. The next morning she learns that the caller was a girl who has been found dead and that the police have no way to identify her. Shocked and guilt-stricken by the news, Jenny resolves to discover the name of the young girl so that she will not be buried anonymously. Playing intelligently with the traits of traditional detective dramas, an engaging social commentary and morally astute and compelling investigation of personal responsibility, justice and guilt. The Dardenne's feature premiered in competition at Festival de Cannes 2016.

A Serious Game

Pernilla August : 2016
Den allvarsamma leken

Stockholm at the beginning of the twentieth century. Lydia, the daughter of a landscape painter, and Arvid, a young journalist at the beginning of his career, fall in love at first sight. But the time is not ripe for their happiness: after the sudden death of her father, Lydia finds herself without an inheritance. Believing that he has nothing to offer her, penniless Arvid, who comes from a poor background, shies away from the idea of marriage. They part. When they meet again ten years later – both are now married and have children – they embark upon a passionate affair with unforeseeable consequences. A romance about two people who transcend the morals of their time and discover their own, unexpected ways of fulfilling their emotions. Pernilla August's adaptation of Hjalmar Söderberg's classic 1912 novel premiered in the Berlinale Special section at Berlin International Film Festival 2016.

A Lullaby to the Sorrowful Mystery

Lav Diaz : 2016
Hele Sa Hiwagang Hapis

Andrés Bonifacio y de Castro is considered to be one of the most influential proponents in the struggle against Spanish colonial rule in the Philippines during the late nineteenth century. Today, he is still celebrated as the father of the Philippine Revolution. Bonifacio's widow is searching for her husband's missing dead body; as she and her followers stumble deeper into the jungle, they become entangled in the dense thicket of their own guilt and responsibility. The Spanish governor tries to play off the various rebel factions and their utopian visions against each other. At the same time, a badly wounded companion of Bonifacio reflects upon the victims a revolution inevitably creates. The film was winner of the Silver Bear Alfred Bauer Prize when it premiered in competition at Berlin International Film Festival 2016.

Alone in Berlin

Vincent Perez : 2016
Jeder stirbt für sich allein

Berlin in June of 1940. While Nazi propaganda celebrates the regime's victory over France, a kitchen-cum-living room in Prenzlauer Berg is filled with grief. Anna and Otto Quangel's son has been killed at the front. This working class couple had long believed in the 'Führer' and followed him willingly, but now they realise that his promises are nothing but lies and deceit. They begin writing postcards as a form of resistance and in a bid to raise awareness: Stop the war machine! Kill Hitler! Putting their lives at risk, they distribute these cards in the entrances of tenement buildings and in stairwells. But the SS and the Gestapo are soon onto them, and even their neighbours pose a threat. A quietly persuasive eulogy to human courage and dignity in an atmosphere of surveillance and intimidation. Vincent Perez's feature premiered in competition at Berlin International Film Festival 2016.

Fire at Sea

Gianfranco Rosi : 2016
Fuocoammare

Samuele is twelve and lives on an island in the Mediterranean, far away from the mainland. Like all boys of his age he does not always enjoy going to school. He would much rather climb the rocks by the shore, play with his slingshot or mooch about the port. But his home is not like other islands. For years, it has been the destination of men, women and children trying to make the crossing from Africa in boats that are far too small and decrepit. The island is Lampedusa which has become a metaphor for the flight of refugees to Europe, the hopes, hardship and fate of hundreds of thousands of emigrants. These people long for peace, freedom and happiness and yet so often only their dead bodies are pulled out of the water. Thus, every day the inhabitants of Lampedusa are bearing witness to the greatest humanitarian tragedy of our times. Gianfranco Rosi's feature was winner of the Golden Bear when it premiered in competition at Berlin International Film Festival 2016.

The Night Manager

Susanne Bier : 2016

In Cairo at the height of the Arab Spring, hotel night manager Jonathan Pine receives a plea for help from the beautiful Sophie Alekan. As the mistress of the powerful but dangerous hotel owner, Sophie has evidence of an arms deal that could help crush the popular uprising. Compelled to do what he thinks is right, Pine makes contact with his friend at the British Embassy. But his actions unwittingly draw him into the terrifying world of ruthless arms dealer, Richard Roper. When Sophie's information makes its way to Angela Burr, a government anti-corruption agent intent on bringing down Roper's empire, a leak in her network triggers a chain of events that could end in tragedy. A TV mini-series adapted from the novel by John le Carré.

24 Wochen

Anne Zohra Berrached : 2016
24 Weeks

Astrid is a comedian who makes people laugh for a living; her husband Markus is her manager and the two of them work well together. They have a nine-year-old daughter and are expecting their second child. When they learn that their child will not be born healthy, they are at first optimistic that they will be able to meet this challenge – although they have no idea what awaits them. But the closer it gets to the due date, the more Astrid begins to worry about the future of her unborn child as well as that of her family and her career. After many discussions and arguments Astrid realises that the decision that will affect all their lives must be made by her alone. What complicates matters further is the fact that, as a successful entertainer, she is in the eye of the public and the media. Anne Zohra Berrached's second feature explores the way in which women choose to live their lives, delivering a powerful portrait of a woman who finds herself caught up in a major moral dilemma for which there are no easy solutions. Her film premiered in competition at Berlin International Film Festival 2016.

Ida

Paweł Pawlikowski : 2013

1960s Poland. A noviciate nun, about to take her vows in the Catholic Church, is told by her Mother Superior that she will be accepted into the church after she has visited her aunt. The young and prim Anna soon finds herself in the presence of the middle-aged Wanda, her mother's sister, a raven-haired sensualist. It is here that her past - and her real name, Ida - is revealed to her for the first time. This triggers a remarkable journey into the countryside, to the family house to learn what happened to Ida's parents during the war and where they might be buried – a trip that has a profound effect on both of them.

We are the tide

Sebastian Hilger : 2016
Wir sind die Flut

Fifteen years ago the sea disappeared from Windholm's shore. The tide simply retreated and has remained out ever since. There were no recognisable causes, it just happened. From that day this anomaly has lain like a curse on the area, throwing up questions and causing disquiet.
Ambitious physics student Micha has a bold theory and hopes to figure out the phenomenon. But after years of preliminary work, his project is rejected by the rigidly old-style university system. Micha and his colleague Jana secretly set out to test his hypothesis. In the restricted military area, the young researchers meet the piteous remains of the village community. They arrive in Windholm and fall under the spell of the isolated village community where there are no children. For years the people here have been trying to come to terms with the fact that, on the day the tide went out, their children also disappeared. They searched high and low for them until eventually they were declared drowned but their bodies were never found. Gradually, Jana and Micha begin to suspect that it is no coincidence that they of all people have ended up in Windholm. Did they even have a choice? Or was it predestined? And precisely what are they looking for? Little by little the pair not only begin to unravel a great secret, they also discover how they themselves are entangled in Windholm's history. The film premiered in the Perspektive Deutsches Kino section at Berlin International Film Festival 2016.

Augustine

Alice Winocour : 2012

Paris, winter 1885. At the Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital, Professor Jean-Marin Charcot studies a mysterious illness which he calls 'Hysteria'. Home to thousands of seemingly catatonic women and run by only a handful of doctors, the isolated corridors of the hospital perfectly shadow the Professor's hypnotic tests on his patients. Augustine, a 19-year-old girl, is admitted to the hospital and soon becomes the Professor's favourite subject; the star of his demonstrations of hypnosis. But the object of his studies will soon become the object of his desire. Alice Winocour's feature debut premiered in competition in the Séances Spéciales at the Semaine de la Critique at Festival de Cannes 2012.

The Wall

Julian Roman Pölsler : 2012
Die Wand

A woman inexplicably finds herself cut off from all human contact when an invisible, unyielding wall suddenly surrounds the countryside, leaving her isolated in the Austrian Alps. Accompanied by her loyal dog Lynx, she becomes immersed in a world untouched by civilisation and ruled by the laws of nature. Told via the voice-over of the woman as she enters her account of daily events in her journal, all the acting is delivered through expressions or actions. An adaption of the best-selling novel by Marlen Haushofer, this beautiful tale of survival and endurance, ultimately about the meaning of humanity, is a moving masterpiece that leaves a lasting impression.

Alone

Park Hong-min : 2015
Honja

Su-min spies from his balcony on the house of neighbours over the road and happens to photograph a brutal murder. It marks the start for a series of muddy events. Until Su-min wakes up and it seems he has dreamt it all. But there is no avoiding of horrific events, while it becomes less and less clear whether they are real or inside his head. Memories, dream and reality become entangled. Victims and culprits continually swap roles. A nightmare set in a labyrinthine residential area of Seoul. Houses are close together, but there's no one on the street. Su-min can run as far as he likes, but always seems to return to the same spot. Park Hong-min's second feature had its international premiere in competition in the Bright Future section at International Film Festival Rotterdam 2016.

Pacífico

Fernanda Romandía : 2016

On the beach of Puerto Escondido in Mexico, a sleepy community where very little seems to happen, people are working hard on constructing a house designed by the famous Japanese architect Ando Tadao. The tranquil coastline is a strange place for such a huge concrete construction, and it's not clear who commissioned the work, but the villagers and workmen don't seem to mind. Through the construction work, we get to know three people, each with their own problems, dreams and fears. Seven-year-old Coral goes to the building site every day after school to visit her godfather Diego, a bricklayer addicted to his telephone. There she also meets the carpenter Oriente, a poet muttering profundities whom she hopes will become her godfather, but who himself yearns to return to his family. Fernanda Romandía's fictional feature debut premiered in competition in the Bright Future section at International Film Festival Rotterdam 2016.

Endorphine

André Turpin : 2015

Twelve-year-old Simone is a witness to the gruesome murder of her mother, a trauma that causes her increasingly to shut herself off from reality. Together with her cousin, she plays a game in which they suffocate each other until they faint. At the age of twenty, Simone works in a parking garage, where panic attacks and visions make her life unbearable. And in her sixties, as a professor of physics, Simone gives a lecture about how the senses deceive our view of reality. Continuously turning in circles, a beautifully filmed puzzle unfolds, a hypnotic mix of dream, nightmare and mystery, in which the lives of three women going by the name of Simone are linked together through time and space. André Turpin's feature premiered at Toronto Independent Film Festival 2015, and screened in the Voices section at International Film Festival Rotterdam 2016.

Alba

Ana Cristina Barragán : 2016

Alba is eleven years old and terribly shy. She has great difficulty standing up for herself among the precocious girls in her class, who talk like little adults about relationships but keep making fun of Alba with the cruelty of children. The fact that she wears a plastic corset to straighten her crooked spine and gets nosebleeds at inconvenient moments doesn't help. And then she is occasionally dumped off with her eccentric father Igor, who she never knew and of whom she is very ashamed. Very slowly and cautiously, the father and daughter get to know each other. Ana Cristina Barragán's feature debut was winner of the Lions Film Award when it premiered in the Bright Future section at International Film Festival Rotterdam 2016.

Kollektivet

Thomas Vinterberg : 2016
The Commune

Erik and Anna are an academic couple with a dream. Together with their daughter Freja, they set up a commune in Erik's huge villa in an upmarket district of Copenhagen. With the family at the centre of the story, we are invited into their dream of a real commune. We participate in the house meetings, the dinners and parties. There is friendship, love and togetherness under one roof, until an earth-shattering love affair puts the small community to its greatest test yet. A humorous, delicate but also painful and touching portrait of an entire generation, a gentle yet confrontational declaration of love for a group of idealists and dreamers who have long since awakened to reality. Thomas Vinterberg's feature was winner of the Silver Bear for Best Actress at its international premiere in competition at Berlin International Film Festival 2016.

Julieta

Pedro Almodóvar : 2016

Spanning 30 years in Julieta's life from a nostalgic 1985, at a more prosperous time in her life where everything seems hopeful, to 2015 where her life appears to be beyond repair and she is on the verge of madness. 12 years ago Julieta's daughter, Antía, abandoned her without warning and hasn't spoken to Julieta since. When a chance encounter brings news of her daughter, Julieta returns to her former home to revive her search for Antía, whilst also examining the events leading to her daughter's estrangement. The film speaks of inevitable destiny, a guilt complex, the unfathomable mystery which makes us abandon the ones we love, wiping them out of our life as if they had never meant anything to us – and about the pain this abandonment causes in the victim. Pedro Almodóvar's feature had its international premiere in competition at Festival de Cannes 2016.

Quand on a 17 ans

André Téchiné : 2016
Being 17

Damien is the pampered teenage son of a soldier and a doctor. He lives with his mother in Army barracks in the south of France while his father is on a military mission in the Central African Republic. Damien shows a new, defiant side of himself in high school in order to stave off the bullies who taunt him over his effeminate ways: a friend of his father's is teaching him to wrestle. When he meets Tom, the adopted son of local farmers, the hatred between the two boys is immediate and visceral. But when Tom's mother is forced to go to the hospital, Damien's mother quite naturally offers to take Tom into their home for a short while. The tension between the two boys becomes more and more palpable. André Téchiné's feature premiered in competition at Berlin International Film Festival 2016.

L'avenir

Mia Hansen-Løve : 2016
Things to Come

Nathalie teaches philosophy at a high school in Paris. She is passionate about her job and particularly enjoys passing on the pleasure of thinking. Married with two children, she divides her time between her family, former students and her very possessive mother. But when her husband announces he is leaving her for another woman, she finds a newfound freedom suddenly thrust upon her that is simultaneously liberating and disconcerting. An intelligent, poetic and naturalistic exploration of one woman's pursuit of contentment in the face of adversity. Mia Hansen-Løve's fifth feature was winner of the Silver Bear for Best Director when it premiered in competition at Berlin International Film Festival 2016.

Beyond Sleep

Boudewijn Koole : 2016

A mythical quest for a stone that fell from the sky. Alfred Issendorf, a young, ambitious geologist, goes in search of meteorites in the swampy north of Norway, hoping that the journey will cement his academic reputation by uncovering a significant scientific proof. Alfred is also trying to continue where his father left off when he died during a similar research trip of his own. Alfred searches, stumbles and suffers on the pitiless Northern European tundra. He finds redemption only when he has reached the very brink of insanity. Based on the Dutch literary classic Nooit meer slapen by Willem Frederik Hermans. Boudewijn Koole's feature premiered as the opening film at International Film Festival Rotterdam 2016.