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.