Girl

Lukas Dhont : 2018

Lara, a young teenage girl, is preparing to celebrate a key birthday, one that will mark the start of her transformation. Lara dreams of dancing and opera, and she is willing to put up any kind of fight necessary to make her dream come true. She trains her body, makes it more supple, punishes it and tries her best to make it bend. But her body is her enemy. Lara was born a boy. She puts up a daily struggle – the struggle of a dancer, and the struggle of a young woman in the making, as she is on the cusp of starting her treatment. But learning how to dance on pointe is a long road, just as it's a long and gruelling ordeal to transform one's body. During this transition period, Lara is supported by her loving and attentive father, and is supervised by a medical team that is at her beck and call and that is sincerely concerned about her well-being. But it is primarily her own impatience that she will have to grapple with. Concentrating on the personal journey of a young transgender woman, the film sensitively examines the inner torments haunting Lara. How, in the midst of one's teenage years, can one accept the prospect of a change so gradual that it never seems to be within reach? Lukas Dhont's feature debut was winner of the Award for Best Actor, the FIPRESCI Prize, the Queer Palm, and the Caméra d'Or when it premiered in competition in the Un Certain Regard section at Festival de Cannes 2018.

Les filles du soleil

Eva Husson : 2018
Girls of the Sun

Somewhere in Kurdistan, Bahar, commander of the "Girls of the Sun" battalion, is preparing to liberate her hometown from the hands of extremists, hoping to find her son who is held hostage. A French journalist, Mathilde, comes to cover the attack and bear witness to the story of these exceptional warriors. Since their lives have been turned upside down, they have all been fighting for the same cause: Women, Life, Liberty. Les Filles du soleil is the story of Bahar, a Kurdish Yazidi lawyer kidnapped by the men in black. She manages to escape and forms a commando unit of female fighters to recapture their town in Kurdistan. The film highlights the struggle of women against obscurantism and is directly inspired by recent news events; it echoes the experiences of the Kurdish women fighters engaged in conflict with the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. With their Kalashnikovs in their hands, they were the face of the struggle which took the West by surprise in 2015. A war film which is purely feminine and feminist, with no testosterone-heavy prejudice in sight. Eva Husson's feature premiered in competition at Festival de Cannes 2018.

Shoplifters

Kore-eda Hirokazu : 2018
Manbiki kazoku

After one of their shoplifting sessions, Osamu and his son come across a little girl, Yuri, in the freezing cold. At first reluctant to shelter the girl, Osamu's wife Nobuyo agrees to take care of her after learning of the hardships she faces. Yet they don't contact the authorities, not even when her disappearance becomes a national news story two months later. Instead they cut her hair and treat her as a daughter, with Osamu taking her on his father-son shoplifting trips. Although the family is poor, barely making enough money to survive through petty crime, they seem to live happily together until an unforeseen incident reveals hidden secrets, testing the bonds that unite them. Kore-eda Hirokazu's feature was winner of the Palme d'Or when it premiered in competition at Festival de Cannes 2018.

Everybody Knows

Asghar Farhadi : 2018
Todos lo saben

Laura returns to the village where she was born, on a Spanish vineyard, to attend her sister Ana's wedding. She is back from Argentina for the occasion, single-handedly looking after her two children as her husband couldn't make it. Parents, children, grandchildren, friends – numerous generations mingle in the family home, enjoying a fun-filled reunion. Among them, Paco stands out. He runs a local vineyard with his partner, Bea, and we quickly learn that he once had a passionate affair with Laura many years ago. As the joyful wedding evening gets into full swing, there's a power cut. A storm is brewing, and Laura soon realises that her 16-year-old daughter, Irene, has gone missing after going to bed. Having not long gathered together a search party, the family receives a text message: Irene has been kidnapped and will be killed if they alert the police. The kidnappers are demanding a ransom of €300,000. Anxiety reaches a peak and Alejandro, Irene's father, flies over from South America. As it dawns on the family that the kidnapping must have required the complicity of one or more relatives, suspicion sets in, resentment bubbles to the surface and secrets are revealed. Asghar Farhadi's feature premiered in competition at Festival de Cannes 2018.

Lazzaro felice

Alice Rohrwacher : 2018
Happy as Lazzaro

This is the tale of a meeting between Lazzaro, a young peasant so good that he is often mistaken for simple-minded, and Tancredi, a young nobleman cursed by his imagination. Life in their isolated pastoral village Inviolata is dominated by the terrible Marchesa Alfonsina de Luna, the queen of cigarettes. A loyal bond is sealed when Tancredi asks Lazzaro to help him orchestrate his own kidnapping. This strange and improbable alliance is a revelation for Lazzaro. A friendship so precious that it will travel in time and transport Lazzaro in search of Tancredi. His first time in the big city, Lazzaro is like a fragment of the past lost in the modern world. Lazzaro Felice is the story of a lesser sanctity; the sanctity of living in this world without thinking ill of anyone and simply believing in human beings. Because another way was possible, the way of goodness, which men have always ignored but which always reappears to question them. Like something that might have been but that we've never ever wanted. Alice Rohrwacher's feature was winner of the Award for Best Screenplay when it premiered in competition at Festival de Cannes 2018.

The Wild Pear Tree

Nuri Bilge Ceylan : 2018
Ahlat Ağacı

For some, the countryside is a boundless place of exile where all hopes and dreams merge with despair like the coinciding destinies of fathers and sons. Sinan is passionate about literature and has always wanted to be a writer. Returning to the village where he was born, he pours his heart and soul into scraping together the money he needs to be published, but his father's debts catch up with him. The story of a young man who senses with a feeling of guilt that he is different in a way that he cannot come to accept, that he is being dragged towards a destiny that he cannot embrace, as well as the rich mosaic of people surrounding him, without favouring or being unfair to anybody. As the saying goes, "what a father keeps hidden is revealed in the son". One cannot help but inherit certain traits from one's father: weaknesses, habits, tics, among other things. The film tells the story of a boy being inevitably dragged into the same destiny as his father, in a plot loaded with painful experiences. Nuri Bilge Ceylan's feature premiered in competition at Festival de Cannes 2018.

303

Hans Weingartner : 2018

'You know, the thought that everything is ephemeral is comforting, even though it's sad. I think that's one of the most important lessons in a relationship. You're part of me, but you don't belong to me.' Jan believes that people are selfish by nature, so he's not surprised when the person who was supposed to give him a lift leaves him stranded in Berlin. Jule, however, thinks that people are fundamentally kind and sociable, and she offers Jan a lift in her camper van. They are both heading towards the Atlantic: Jan to Spain, and Jule to her boyfriend in Portugal. They only plan to travel as far as Cologne together, but with every passing mile, they discover more about each other's lives. Does capitalism turn people into Neanderthals? Does monogamy lead to unhappiness, and can you choose who you fall in love with? A road trip across Western Europe, romantic and hungry for life, about two people torn between wanderlust and the longing to finally arrive. Hans Weingartner's feature premiered in the Generation 14plus section at Berlin International Film Festival 2018.

Madeline's Madeline

Josephine Decker : 2018

Sometimes Madeline is a cat, sometimes a turtle. But even when she's Madeline, it's hard to tell if she's just playing the role of Madeline. In the eyes of her anxious mother, she is a vulnerable creature whose obvious mental disorder requires care and medical treatment. But on stage, at the theatre workshop run by the extremely demanding, sometimes even reckless Evangeline, Madeline is strong, impressive – a force of nature. The film sounds out both the healing and potentially destructive powers of performance, what happens when you play around with roles and identities. Like Madeline herself, Madeline's Madeline remains ambiguous. Do we really need to define what's a mental illness and what is simply the rebelliousness of a teenager? How do we draw the line between love and overprotectiveness? In a legitimate artistic process in which everyone is giving and taking, where lies the threshold to exploitation? Does creativity even exist without destruction? Josephine Decker's third feature premiered at Sundance Film Festival 2018, and had its international premiere in the Forum section at Berlin International Film Festival 2018.