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.