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.