Inflame

Ceylan Özgün Özçelik : 2017
Kaygı

Hasret works for a Turkish television news channel which prides itself on the ambitious maxim: 'What you see is the truth. What you hear is the truth.' But then, suddenly, things begin to change. Editors are told not to comment on politicians' speeches; the news is manipulated and the use of social networks on internal computers is prohibited. Bullied by her overbearing boss, Hasret soon finds herself without her job as an independent film editor. She withdraws into her flat where she begins to experience hallucinations: she hears voices, the walls move and she sees the curtains on fire. Moreover, she begins to realise that her parents were not killed in a traffic accident twenty years ago but must have died in some other, horrific way. What is being kept from her? Ceylan Özgün Özçelik's psychological thriller, her feature debut, premiered in the Panorama section at Berlin International Film Festival 2017.

Ghost in the Mountains

Yang Heng : 2017
Kong shan yi ke

A godforsaken region in highland China. The body of a man who has been beaten to death is found on the mountainside. The police station and a hospital would appear to be the only places still functioning in this impassable wilderness strewn with ruined buildings and forlorn-looking streets. This is the home to which Lao Liu is now returning after an absence of many years. He pays a visit to the grave of a friend who died in an accident, shares with his friend's sister memories of happier times before he left her, and re-encounters A Jie, who is mixed up in criminal activities and dreams of being able to see the sea once in his life. Barely anyone stays here. The younger generation has moved to the big cities in search of a better life either through marriage or by securing a factory job. A Jie has other plans and is in need of Lao Liu's help. But following an encounter with a monk Lao Liu finds himself withdrawing into the spiritual world he once sought to escape. Yang Heng's feature premiered in the Panorama section at Berlin International Film Festival 2017.

Maudie

Aisling Walsh : 2016

Since her childhood Maud has suffered from a severe form of arthritis which has deformed her bones and makes almost every movement agony. When her brother sells their parents' home, the young woman has to move in with her mother in Nova Scotia. Maud is lonely but filled with a desire for life, driven by her great passion for painting. Desperate for more independence, she responds to an advert for a live-in housekeeper placed by fishmonger and social misfit, Everett. From this moment on, the two share everyday life in his little cottage. Gradually, they get to know each other and finally marry. Maud begins to decorate their home with her paintings and soon becomes something of a local celebrity. The colourful motifs on her postcards and small canvasses gain a reputation as far away as in New York and Washington. At some point, they even fill the taciturn Everett with pride. The sensitively told story of folk artist Maud Lewis who rebels against her own physical deterioration and finds happiness in her art. At the same time the film tells the tale of an unusual, understated love that blossoms in the austere landscape of Canada's Atlantic coastline. Aisling Walsh's feature premiered at Telluride Film Festival 2016.

Le jeune Karl Marx

Raoul Peck : 2017
The Young Karl Marx

1844. Karl Marx is 26 years old and living with his wife Jenny in exile in Paris. He is habitually in debt and plagued by existential anxieties. When he first meets the slightly younger factory owner's son Friedrich Engels he dismisses him as a dandy. But Engels, who has just published a study on the miserable impoverishment of the English proletariat, has long since begun to distance himself from his own class. The two like-minded men become friends and soon inspire each other to write texts in which they seek to provide a theoretical foundation for the revolution they believe must come. Their goal is no longer to merely interpret the world, but to change it. Fundamentally. Resistance on the part of conservative forces and internal power struggles within the political Left only serve to spur them on. Raoul Peck's feature premiered in the Berlinale Special Gala at Berlin International Film Festival 2017.