Doubles vies

Olivier Assayas : 2018
Non-Fiction

Set in the French publishing world, an editor and an author find themselves in over their heads, as they cope with a middle-age crisis, the changing industry and their wives. Alain, a successful Parisian publisher struggling to adapt to the digital revolution, has major doubts about the new manuscript of Léonard, one of his long-time authors – another work of auto-fiction recycling his love affair with a minor celebrity. Selena, Alain's wife, a famous stage actress, is of the opposite opinion. Overwhelmed by the new practices of the publishing world, the two men struggle to find their place in a society whose code they can no longer crack. Olivier Assayas's feature premiered in competition at Venice International Film Festival 2018.

Long Day's Journey into Night

Bi Gan : 2018
Di qiu zui hou de ye wan

After his father's death Luo Hongwu has returned to Kaili, the town of his birth from which he fled twelve years ago, triggering an avalanche of reminiscences. He begins the search for the woman he loved, and has never been able to forget. She told him her name was Wan Quiwen. Memories of the enigmatic and beautiful woman for whom he killed resurface, confronting him with unbearable revelations. Bi Gan's second feature premiered in competition in the Un Certain Regard section at Festival de Cannes 2018.

L'amour flou

Romane Bohringer & Philippe Rebbot : 2018

Romane and Philippe separate. After 10 years together, two children and a dog, they do not love each other anymore. Finally ... they are no longer in love. But they love each other anyway. A lot. Too much to really separate? In short ... it's vague. Then, under the watchful eye of those around them, they give birth to a "separation": two separate apartments, communicating through the room of their children! Can we separate together? Can one redo one's life without undoing it? A courageous, resonating and very moving dramatisation of the real-life separation by actors Romane Bohringer and Philippe Rebbot. Their directorial debut was winner of the Valois du public when it premiered in competition at Festival du Film Francophone d'Angoulême 2018.

Yara

Abbas Fahdel : 2018

Young Yara lives with her grandmother in a valley in northern Lebanon, where most of the inhabitants have either died or moved abroad. One day Elias, a young hiker, passes by the two women's farm. With him, Yara will experience the joys and pains of first love. An in-depth study of the everyday life of inhabitants cut off by the towering mountains, the coexistence of different religions in one and the same country, and the emigration of young Lebanese people far away from the Middle East, for political or economic reasons. A summertime romance between a country girl and a stranger who stumbles across the village after getting lost while out hiking. Abbas Fahdel's feature premiered in competition in the Concorso internazionale section at Locarno Film Festival 2018.

Easy Lessons

Dorrotya Zurbó : 2018
Könnyű Leckék

Kafia is 17 years old. Two years ago, she fled alone to Europe, to Hungary, in an attempt to escape a forced child marriage in Somalia. She has been living in a state children's home in Budapest ever since. She learns the language, goes to high school, prepares for the Hungarian graduation exam, and starts a modelling career. On the surface, everything seems fine. However, behind a beautiful and confident appearance lies a heavy heart. Kafia's repetitive daily routine revolves around constant dilemmas and self-doubt about leaving behind her Muslim culture and everything else she grew up with. As she allows the camera to get closer to her, the film slowly becomes an intimate confession. What does it mean, on the brink of adulthood, to break with your past and fully give yourself up to a new self in order to live in Europe? Dorrotya Zurbó's second documentary feature premiered at the Semaine de la Critique at Locarno Film Festival 2018, and screened in competition at Sarajevo Film Festival 2018.

Ága

Milko Lazarov : 2018

In the icy tundra of the Northern wilderness, reindeer hunter Nanook and his wife Sedna dream of reuniting with their daughter Ága, who left the slowly eroding traditional way of life a long time ago. In a yurt on the snow-covered fields, Nanook and Sedna live following the traditions of their ancestors. Their daily life is arduous, but they never complain. Instead, they tell each other the old legends, and their dreams. No matter whether they are describing imaginary encounters with animals, humans, the living or the dead, everything has its meaning. Alone in the wilderness, they look like the last people on Earth. Nanook and Sedna's traditional way of life starts changing – slowly, but inevitably. Hunting becomes more and more difficult, the animals around them die from inexplicable deaths and the ice has been melting earlier every year. Chena, who visits them regularly, is their only connection with the outside world and to their daughter Ága. When Sedna's health deteriorates, Nanook decides to fulfil her wish. He embarks on a long journey in order to find Ága. Milko Lazarov's second feature premiered out of competition at Berlin International Film Festival 2018, and was winner of the Heart of Sarajevo for Best Feature Film when it screened in competition at Sarajevo Film Festival 2018.

Mes provinciales

Jean-Paul Civeyrac : 2018
A Paris Education

Filled with expectations, Étienne moves to Paris from Lyon to study film directing at the Sorbonne. He leaves behind his girlfriend Lucie, promising to call her regularly via Skype. On his course he meets Jean-Noël and Mathias, they too have come to the metropolis from smaller cities and share his passion for cinema. Together they discuss the cinematic canon, read texts by Flaubert and Pasolini, and listen to Bach and Mahler. Jean-Noël proves to be an agreeable friend who tries to strengthen Étienne's fragile self-confidence; Mathias, on the other hand, often comes across as stern, aloof and mysterious. Fond of arguing, he has a habit of disappearing for weeks on end without the others knowing where he is. Nobody gets to see his student film, either. Étienne is particularly crestfallen when he discovers by chance that Mathias shares a secret with Annabelle, an idealistic young woman who lives in Étienne's shared flat and with whom he is secretly in love. A tenderly melancholic study of these young people's encounter with art and life, and a declaration of love for classic cinema and the city of Paris. Jean-Paul Civeyrac's feature premiered in the Panorama section at Berlin International Film Festival 2018.

Woman at War

Benedikt Erlingsson : 2018
Kona fer í stríð

Halla is a 50-year-old independent woman. But behind the scenes of a quiet routine, she leads a double life as a passionate environmental activist. Known to others only by her alias – "The Woman of the Mountain" – Halla secretly wages a one-woman-war on the local aluminium industry. As Halla's actions grow bolder, going from petty vandalism to outright industrial sabotage, she succeeds in pausing negotiations between the Icelandic government and the corporation building a new aluminium smelter. But just as she begins planning her biggest and boldest operation yet, she receives an unexpected letter that changes everything. Her application to adopt a child has finally been accepted, and there is a little girl waiting for her in Ukraine. As Halla prepares to abandon her role as saboteur and saviour of the Highlands to fulfil her dream of becoming a mother, she decides to plot one final attack to deal the aluminium industry a crippling blow. Benedikt Erlingsson's feature premiered in competition at the Semaine de la Critique at Festival de Cannes 2018, and screened in the Kinoscope section at Sarajevo Film Festival 2018.

L'après-midi de Clémence

Lénaïg le Moigne : 2018
The Afternoon of Clémence

When Clémence travels out to the country to attend a garden party with her parents, she's excited about meeting the other kids. Upon arriving late, Clémence joins the other children who are already playing away from the adults, but they don't seem to notice her. They even mock her and leave her behind in the woods. And the grown-ups? Too absorbed in their oh-so-important conversations. Clémence's afternoon doesn't turn out to be as much fun as she expected. With charcoal and coloured pencils, the director sensitively traces how it feels to be pushed away by others. Lénaïg le Moigne's short premiered in the Generation Kplus section at Berlin International Film Festival 2018, and featured in the Children's programme at Sarajevo Film Festival 2018.

Glaubenberg

Thomas Imbach : 2018

Lena is an intelligent and very pretty 16-year-old. She lives with her older brother Noah and her parents in an old house in Oerlikon, Northern Zürich. Noah, a likeable young man of 19, has just successfully completed his baccalaureate and is eager to get on with his life but Lena does not want to let him go. When the family sees Noah off at the airport – he is going to İzmir as an archaeological intern – Lena is practically heartbroken. The love Lena feels for Noah is more than sisterly love – and is a love so intense that it is experienced as a form of madness. She tries to cope, but plagued by her dreams, the nights become a constant conflict with forbidden feelings, so much so that she decides to stop sleeping. To distract herself, she encourages Noah's friend Enis. But she is so obsessed with her brother that she cannot curb her feelings. Lena starts daydreaming, living more in a fantasy world than in real life. When she finally brings herself to confess to Noah, he is shocked and repels her. Lena then embarks on a journey into the unknown. Thomas Imbach's feature premiered in competition in the Concorso internazionale section at Locarno Film Festival 2018.

Le vent tourne

Bettina Oberli : 2018
With the Wind

A farm in the Jura mountains, far away from the nearest village. This is where Pauline and Alex's dream of a self-sufficient life in harmony with nature has come true. Their love, ideals and work unite them. Now the couple wishes to become totally independent by producing their own power. The pragmatic and easy-going engineer Samuel visits them to oversee the construction of a wind turbine. Pauline feels immediately attracted to him and suddenly becomes aware of how limited her life has been. Her feelings for Samuel are as intense as a storm, throwing her into confusion about her love life and view of the world. Above all she will realise the need to express her personality without following the path taken by others. Bettina Oberli's feature was winner of the Variety Piazza Grande Award when it premiered at Locarno Film Festival 2018.

Tracking Edith

Peter Stephan Jungk : 2016

Based on his non-fiction book Die Dunkelkammern der Edith Tudor-Hart, Peter Stephan Jungk explores the secret life of his great aunt Edith Tudor-Hart (born Edith Suschitzky in 1908, in Vienna, died 1973 in Brighton). She was best known in the art world as an iconic photographer. When she wasn't taking photos of Vienna's and London's workers and street children, of poverty and social deprivation she was working as a Soviet agent. Being a secret agent for the KGB doesn't seem to have come naturally to the photographer. She recruited Kim Philby, and was one of the architects of the Cambridge Five, the Soviet Union's most successful spy ring in Great Britain. Edith was Jungk's great aunt, his mother's cousin; the writer/filmmaker tries to unravel the truth about his aunt's life, in Austria, Great Britain and Russia. A documentary about the renowned photographer, about a spy with a conscience and hidden secrets in a family.

Tracking Edith – trailer (vimeo)

Sibel

Çağla Zencirci & Guillaume Giovanetti : 2018

25-year-old Sibel lives with her father and sister in Kusköy, a secluded village in the mountains of Turkey's Black Sea region. Sibel is a mute, but she communicates by using the ancestral whistled language of the area. Rejected by her fellow villagers who consider her disabled, she relentlessly hunts down a wolf that is said to be prowling in the neighbouring forest, sparking off fears and fantasies among the village women. There she crosses paths with a fugitive, a deserter from the Turkish army. Injured, threatening and vulnerable, he is the first one to take a fresh look at her. A new perspective comes to Sibel: for her this enigmatic character represents a contrast she has long been searching for, a breath of fresh air that whisks her far away from the stifling rules imposed by the patriarchal society in which she lives. Çağla Zencirci and Guillaume Giovanetti's third feature received the FIPRESCI Award and the Ecumenical Award when it premiered in competition in the Concorso internazionale section at Locarno Film Festival 2018.

Tarde para morir joven

Dominga Sotomayor : 2018
Too Late to Die Young

During the summer of 1990 in Chile, a small group of families, living in an isolated community right below the Andes, builds a new world away from the urban excesses, trying to put to good use the emerging freedom that followed the recent end of the country's dictatorship. In this time of change and reckoning, the teenagers Sofía, Lucas and Clara struggle with their parents, their first love, and their fears as they prepare a big party for New Year's Eve. They may live far from the dangers of the city, but not from the ones of nature. Dominga Sotomayor's second full feature, inspired by memories of her own childhood in the Ecological Community of Peñalolén, was winner of the Leopard for Best Director when it premiered in competition in the Concorso internazionale section at Locarno Film Festival 2018.

Sofia

Meryem Benm'Barek : 2018

Sofia, 20, lives with her parents in Casablanca. She is about to give birth out of wedlock, which under Morocco's arcane laws places both partners eligible for a mandatory jail sentence of up to one year. The hospital gives her 24 hours to provide the father's papers before informing the authorities. Sofia, a girl from an upper-class family, finally names a young working-class man with whom she was only briefly acquainted. Despite her parents' horror and disgust, the only solution is to quickly arrange a marriage, to get the law off their backs and save the family reputation, just as a lucrative business deal for Sofia's father is in the offing. Meryem Benm'Barek's feature debut was winner of the Prize for Best Screenplay when it premiered in competition in the Un Certain Regard section at Festival de Cannes 2018.