Revanche

A film by Götz Spielmann

A nature scene, late summer. A small lake in the woods, no people, silence. Not far away, a newly built house inhabited by a couple, Robert and Susanne. They live an ordinary life like so many other people. Meanwhile in Vienna, nightlife, a red light district, the world of prostitution. Here money rules and most people have jobs that barely allow them to scrape by. Like Alex and Tamara. She is a prostitute from Ukraine; he, the boss's errand boy. They are lovers, but they have to keep it a secret, since employees aren't allowed to get romantically involved.

They want to escape this life, but they need money. Alex devises a plan to rob a bank in a little village out in the countryside. Tamara wants to come along, and he reluctantly agrees. Everything is going exactly as planned until a policeman happens to walk up, Robert. He fires a few shots at the getaway car as it speeds off and accidentally hits the young woman. Overcome with despair, Alex leaves the body behind in a forest clearing. He lies low at his grandfather's desolate farm at the edge of the woods. Silent and withdrawn, Alex begins the task of chopping firewood for the approaching winter. He is consumed with pain, grief, and the hate he harbours for the man responsible for Tamara's death.

A lake in the woods is where Robert finds comfort alone, as he tries to sort out what happened. Alex begins to observe Robert, the policeman, spying on him, and following him as he goes about his daily routine. Then he meets Susanne, the policeman's wife. The lives of all these people will change as a result of Tamara's death, more radically than they suspect. Soon autumn will come, just like every year.

Writer/director Götz Spielmann on the making of the film:
"Revanche is a story – not theory enhanced by images. Maybe what my films are trying to do is to get to the bottom of life by focusing not on a social context but on existential questions. That's my passion, what sparks my curiosity, impels me: tracking down the substance of life, its essence deep down inside. There is, behind all the conflicts and painful things I show in my films, a fundamental spark of optimism – the conviction that life isn't a mistake, that it all somehow makes sense."

A tense and surprising portrait of vengeance and redemption, and a journey into the darkest forests of human nature, in which violence and beauty exist side by side.

Szerelem

Love
a film by Károly Makk

Set in Budapest in 1953, János has been imprisoned on a false charge as a political dissident and sentenced to ten years. His young wife Luca does not even know if he is still alive. She frequently visits his bedridden mother and in an attempt to sustain her in her last few months, tells the elderly woman that her favourite son is in America, pursuing a successful career as a filmmaker. She fabricates letters supposedly from János telling his news and then listens impassively while his mother reads her the details. Luca herself is dismissed from her teaching job because of her and her husband's political beliefs.

During the exchanges between the two women we read the thoughts and memories of the mother, shown in brief flashbacks – photographs, events from her past or her imagined past – repeated sequences of images, details and textures of stunning beauty. As the dying woman's days grow bleaker, Luca struggles to keep her spirits up. She has also to contend with her own desperate loneliness, relying increasingly on the support of the mother's housekeeper, Irén. Finally, János is freed and he travels home almost in dread of what he might find there.

Makk's haunting and atmospheric film from 1971, brilliantly shot by János Tóth, captures exactly the fear and uncertainty of the time and is a treatise on how such times affect fidelity, faith, illusion and love. It explores, unsentimentally, a love composed of fortitude and forbearance, restraint and fear, with the belief that you may meet again, and the acceptance that you may not.

Mirror

Zerkalo
a film by Andrei Tarkovsky

In this, his most autobiographical work, legendary Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky creates a profound and compelling masterpiece in which he reflects upon his own childhood and the destiny of the Russian people. With its unstructured and inconsistent movement back and forth through time, and its extraordinary and mesmerisingly beautiful images, it is cinema in its purest form, experienced as emotion rather than by intellect.

What began as a planned series of interviews with his own mother, evolved into a lyrical and complex circular meditation on love, loyalty, memory, and history. Often, a person's memories are vague, inconsistent and illogical, with little distinction between concrete memories, dream logic, and isolated events experienced as a child. Time shifts, generations merge, and the film's many layers establish the links which connect people – intertwining real life and family relationships with recollections of childhood, dreams and nightmares – images, episodes, and the sense of desperately clinging to something that has lost all meaning.

Tarkovsky's own memories as well as those of his mother are intermingled, as a dark, sumptuous, and dreamlike pre-World War II Russia is evoked, accompanied throughout by the voice of his father, the poet Arseny Tarkovsky, reading his own elegiac poetry. Tarkovsky transmutes the love he felt for his own wife into his father's love for his mother.

The spectacle of nature and its ubiquitous and ever-shifting presence is magically captured by the camera – the family cabin nestled deep in the verdant woods, a barn on fire in the middle of a gentle rainstorm, a gigantic wind enveloping a man as he walks through a field of long grass – all creating indelible images with deep, if mysterious emotional resonance. As time shifts between the narrator's generation and his mother's, archive newsreel footage of Russian wars, triumphs and disasters are juxtaposed with imagined scenes from the past, present and future, crafting a silently lucid cinematic panorama of memory, history, and nature.

Laissez-Passer

Safe Conduct
a film by Bertrand Tavernier

Based on true events, the story depicts one of France's most controversial periods in history – the early 1940s during the Nazi occupation – against the background of the French film industry. It follows two men who struggle to maintain their integrity while working for the German controlled Continental Film Studios. Aurenche is a writer with a complicated love life who injects his scripts with subversive messages, while assistant director Devaivre uses his position as a cover for his increasingly hazardous activities with the Resistance. The film vividly recreates the day-to-day danger, fear and uncertainty of wartime France.

Paris, March 1942, and the victorious German occupying power demands that France pay a colossal financial contribution, 400 million francs a day, to the German war effort. Continental Films, a German controlled production company founded in 1940 in Paris by Albert Greven, is a snare similar to the one into which the French nation has already fallen. Should French technicians agree to work for Continental? Is it a hiding place 'in between the wolf's fangs, where it cannot bite you', or is it equivalent to collaborating with the enemy?

Jean Devaivre is an assistant director who joins Continental as the best possible cover for his Resistance activities. He is a man of action, rash, impulsive and daring. Jean Aurenche, a scriptwriter and poet, uses every possible excuse to turn down any offers of work from the Germans. He is watchful, insatiable, curious and torn between his three mistresses. Above all, he is an observer who resists when he takes up his pen and writes. Their professional and personal circles include dozens of other people, some resigned to their country's fate, others who carry on the struggle. There are fighters and collaborators, but in German-occupied France, they all have to combat hunger, cold and petty restrictions simply to survive. The film is dedicated to those who lived through this time.

Writer/director Bertrand Tavernier on the making of the film:
"Were things as black and white as people subsequently made out? Where do you draw the line between collaboration, survival and resistance? No film has ever dealt with these issues. Laissez-Passer is set during the German occupation but it is not a war film. The dramatic tension comes from the energy, rhythm and multiple contradictory sentiments – comedy, tragedy, emotion – that ricochet off each other within a single scene. The story is full of paradoxes. I really wanted to show the significance of each choice. I wanted to show that there were various forms of resistance during those four years."

Father of my Children

Le père de mes enfants
a film by Mia Hansen-Løve

Grégoire Canvel has everything a man could want. A wife he loves, three delightful children and a stimulating job. He's a film producer. Discovering talented filmmakers and developing films that fit his conception of the cinema, free and true to life, is precisely his reason for living, his vocation. It fulfils him and Grégoire devotes almost all his time and energy to his work. He's hyperactive, he never stops, except at weekends, which he spends in the country with his family – gentle interludes, as precious as they are fragile.

Grégoire is an independent film producer who runs a well-respected, Paris based production company, Moon Films. For Grégoire, his work is his life, and while he loves his wife Sylvia and their three daughters Clémence, Valentine and Billie, during the week he is practically a stranger to them. He makes a point of spending each weekend with his family at their country house, but even then separating Grégoire from his cellphone is all but impossible, and Sylvia and the girls are reaching the end of their patience with him and his obsession with work. Though there's no question that Grégoire is devoted to Moon Films, he has kept a secret from Sylvia and his daughters about the state of the company, and it's not until his sudden, desperate act of suicide which forces Sylvia into leadership of the company that they come to understand the real reasons behind his unrelenting schedule.

This stunning and outstanding film explores the consequences of Grégoire's suicide on his family and his collaborators – examining the deep sorrow experienced by his wife and daughters, the feeling of unacceptable loss, and of the resentment against the deceased who abandoned them. It is loosely based on a real story examining the central aspect of family love. Mia Hansen-Løve took her inspiration from two real-life models, Humbert Balsan, a brilliant film producer who took his life at the age of 51 when he realised he would go bankrupt, and Donna Balsan, his wife, who for all her grief, did her utmost to save Ognon Pictures, her husband's company, after his death.

The director explains that the making of the film stems from her encounter with Humbert Balsan, whom she first met in early 2004, a year before his suicide. "He had an exceptional warmth, elegance and aura. His energy, passion for films and sensitivity, which I took to be an invincible inner beauty, are what made me write the movie. Of course, there is also his suicide. The feelings of failure and despair that it reveals are overwhelming, but that doesn't replace the rest. It doesn't become the only truth. I wanted the film to express the paradox of contradictory movements within the same person, the conflict that can occur between light and darkness, strength and vulnerability, the desire to live and the urge to die."

Cría cuervos...

Raise Ravens
a film by Carlos Saura

In haunting memories, a woman relives the disturbing summer of her father's death. Outside her father's bedroom, the child Ana hears him making love to his best friend's wife, then take his last gasp of breath, apparently dying of a heart attack. When, years earlier, her mother died of cancer, Ana blamed her father; now she believes herself responsible for his demise. In this compelling vision of the child's world, past and present blend imperceptibly. Fantasy and reality become one as dead characters take their place beside the living. Through a series of scenes played out in Ana's imagination and flashbacks to happier times before her mother's illness, we come to realise why Ana believes she has the power over the death of others and why she is becoming increasingly fascinated by death and suicide in general.

Late one night Ana, a melancholic and mostly silent eight-year-old girl, descends the stairs of the darkened house. As she approaches her father's bedroom door she hears a gasping sound followed by a woman's sobs. The door is opened and an attractive middle-aged woman rushes from the bedroom whilst hastily dressing. They exchange glances but do not speak and the woman, who is in a state of great distress, leaves by the front door. Ana then enters her father's room to find him lying dead upon his bed. On the dressing table is a near-empty glass of milk which Ana removes and takes to the kitchen where she calmly washes it and places it on the drainer. In the kitchen, she sees her mother, who chides her for being up so late and sends her off to bed.

Blaming her mother's illness and subsequent death on her father, Ana has dissolved a mysterious powder, which she believes to be a potent poison, in his milk glass as a wilful act of murder. Her belief in the power of the poison is thus confirmed when her father dies. At the wake of Ana's father, she sees again the mysterious woman whom she had previously seen fleeing her father's bedroom on the night of his death. The woman, Amelia, is the wife of her father's close friend and fellow military officer. Ana's satisfaction at having rid herself of her father's presence is short lived however, for her mother's sister, her Aunt Paulina, soon arrives to set the house in order, turning out to be every bit the cold authoritarian Ana's father had been. The all-female household is completed by Ana's two sisters, eleven-year-old Irene and five-year-old Maite; the children's grandmother, mute and immobile in a wheelchair; and the feisty, kindly housekeeper, Rosa.

Ana takes refuge in the basement, where she keeps her 'lethal' powder, and where she is watched by an apparition of herself from twenty years in the future. The adult Ana, looking exactly like her mother, recounts her infancy: "I don't believe in childhood paradise, or in innocence, or the natural goodness of children. I remember my childhood as a long period of time, interminable, sad, full of fear, fear of the unknown". The little rituals of everyday life fill Ana's days during her summer holidays. Tortured by the memories of her mother's illness, Ana rebels against her aunt's authoritarian style, and in bouts of loneliness she variously imagines her mother's continued presence, and even her own suicide. Though diverted by the presence of her two sisters, Ana's only truly close companions are the housekeeper, Rosa, and her pet guinea pig, Roni, whom she discovers dead in his cage one morning.

Ana's mother's painful death from cancer; her father's presumed murder; her guinea pig's death; and her own imagined suicide weigh on the girl's mind. Ana even offers her grandmother the opportunity of dying, and thus a release from loneliness, by providing her with a spoonful of her poison – an offer that is refused. The adult Ana explains the notion of the mysterious powder that the child Ana had so dearly coveted as being nothing more than bicarbonate of soda that her mother once told her was a powerful poison. She further explains her motivation in wanting to kill her philandering father: "The only thing I remember perfectly is that then, my father seemed responsible for the sadness that weighed on my mother in the last years of her life. I was convinced that he, and he alone, had provoked her illness".

Ana, still believing that she has murdered her father, attempts to poison her aunt with the same powder. She repeats the preparation of milk with the mysterious substance, but the next morning awakens for the first day of school to find that Paulina is still alive. Ana and her two sisters leave the house and march into the vibrant and noisy city that has all but been excluded from their world up to this point. A new school year begins and with it the hope, if not the promise, of new possibilities overturning and replacing the oppressive ways of the past.

Seen also as a metaphor of recent Spanish political history, the story captures the loneliness and inner-world perceptions of a young girl as she and her family live through the final years of Spain's Franco regime, with the hope of a new era about to dawn. A darkly haunting, yet beautiful portrayal of the powerlessness often felt in childhood when the significance of external events and the choices made by adults cannot be fully comprehended.

The Beekeeper

O melissokomos
a film by Theo Angelopoulos

Spyros is a schoolmaster of late middle-age who, like his father before him, is also a beekeeper. Disenchanted and unfulfilled by his life, Spyros takes leave of his wife and grown children to embark on a solitary journey in search of the emerging springtime flowers for his cherished beehives. Moving from village to village, he encounters a young girl hitchhiker who awakens in him feelings that start to become an obsession.

After the wedding of his daughter, Spyros retires as a schoolmaster and leaves his wife and home. He embarks on his annual journey with his bees to follow the flowers, to get honey from different areas. As he begins his journey with several other beekeepers, Spyros finds a young girl, abandoned and with no roots, sitting in his truck. He reluctantly gives her a lift and drops her at main road from where she can hitchhike, but seeing the difficulty she is having getting a lift, he agrees to take her back. The girl is willing to go wherever his journey may take her. She makes some advances which he immediately rejects, yet it is clear that he is ambivalent about her.

During his journey, Spyros meets with and pays his respects to the people who have meant something to him in his life – his ex-wife, an old friend, and his daughter. Each time he mysteriously truncates his visit, and the enigma of what lies unsaid deepens after he encounters the hitchhiker again. Both have lost their perspective of the future – he is living in nostalgic reminiscence of the past, while the young girl's life is one of instant gratification, and she seems to be aware of neither past nor future. They meet and part several times in different places, but as they continue to encounter one another, Spyros' resistance to the girl lessens and he becomes quietly obsessed.

An extraordinary and beautifully photographed tale of self-discovery, The Beekeeper is a poetic and moving film about a man's search for existential meaning in his life, and his final struggle to find release from the spectre of the past.

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives

Lung Boonmee Raluek Chat
a film by Apichatpong Weerasethakul

Suffering from acute kidney failure, Uncle Boonmee has chosen to spend his final days surrounded by his loved ones in the countryside. Surprisingly, the ghost of his deceased wife appears to care for him, and his long lost son returns home in a non-human form. Contemplating the reasons for his illness, Boonmee treks through the jungle with his family to a mysterious hilltop cave – the birthplace of his first life.

Writer/director Weerasethakul on the making of the film:
"I believe in the transmigration of souls between humans, plants, animals, and ghosts. Uncle Boonmee's story shows the relationship between man and animal and at the same time destroys the line dividing them. When the events are represented through cinema, they become shared memories of the crew, the cast, and the public. A new layer of (simulated) memory is augmented in the audience's experience. In this regard, filmmaking is not unlike creating synthetic past lives. I am interested in exploring the innards of this time machine. There might be some mysterious forces waiting to be revealed just as certain things that used to be called black magic have been shown to be scientific facts. For me, filmmaking remains a source all of whose energy we haven't properly utilised. In the same way that we have not thoroughly explained the inner workings of the mind."

The film compliments Weerasethakul's Primitive project, which deals with ideas of extinction and the recollection of past lives. "Facing the jungle, the hills and vales, my past lives as an animal and other beings rise up before me. The film reinforces a special association between cinema and reincarnation. Cinema is man's way to create alternate universes, other lives."

Lung Boonmee Raluek Chat won the Palme d'Or at Festival de Cannes 2010.

Treeless Mountain

A film by So Yong Kim

When their mother needs to leave in order to find their estranged father, seven-year-old Jin and her younger sister, Bin, are taken to live with their Big Aunt for the summer. With only a small piggy bank and their mother's promise to return when it is full, the two young girls are forced to acclimatise to changes in their family life. Counting the days, and the coins, the two bright-eyed young girls eagerly anticipate their mother's homecoming. But when the piggy bank fills up, and with their mother still not back, Big Aunt decides that she can no longer tend to the children.

Jin and Bin live in a cramped apartment in Seoul with their single mother. Though their lives are on the edge of disaster, both girls remain completely oblivious to the threats of the outside world. One morning, quite unexpectedly, their mother packs up all their belongings and sends the girls to live with their alcoholic Big Aunt – their absent father's sister, a woman they do not know. Suddenly thrust into a hostile and unfamiliar environment, the sisters are given a piggy bank and told that every time they obey their aunt they will get a coin to go in it, and when the piggy bank is full, their mother will return.

Wrestling with feelings of abandonment despite the fact that she's not mature enough to understand why their mother has left or what may become of her and Bin in the future, Jin is forced to accept an imposed responsibility where there is no guidance or security offered by adults. Left to their own devices and imaginations the girls discover a way to fill the piggy bank, and in the belief that this will bring the return of their mother, they wait on top of their little hill without trees for the arrival of her bus. But when their mother does not return, the girls are sent by their aunt to the country to live with their grandparents on a farm. It is here, as a result of their grandmother's care and interest in them, so desperately needed, that the two girls learn valuable lessons about family bonds.

A beautiful, meditative and thought-provoking film in which So Yong Kim draws outstanding performances of naturalism from her two young actresses. The camera staying close to the girls' faces, allows us to see through their eyes, with their understanding of the world. An unsentimental and delicately observed portrayal of the quiet resilience of children.

The Consequences of Love

Le conseguenze dell'amore
a film by Paolo Sorrentino

Titta di Girolamo is a 50-year-old loner from southern Italy who has lived for eight years in an anonymous Swiss hotel. He spends his days in the lobby of the hotel, impassively observing the guests and staff with cool detachment. He seems to be a man without identity and with little to do. A nullifying routine, he is constantly waiting for something to happen, but what is Titta's dark secret? And what is the story of the mysterious suitcases delivered to his door? He once lost money owned by the Mafia on the stock market and has been punished in a gruesome way – he is to deliver the Mafia's money to the bank once a week and is allowed no life for himself.

Elegantly dressed, he sits each day in the hotel lobby, smoking cigarettes with impeccable poise. He observes the hotel guests and especially the beautiful bartender, Sofia, but never acknowledges her attempts to be friendly. At night, he plays cards with the former hotel owners who lost the hotel to gambling, before he gets ready for another night without sleep. His detachment from the world is complete, until he begins to communicate with Sofia. At this point his neatly organised life turns upside down and the terrible truth about Titta's concealed world begins to unravel.

An unusual, gripping and tightly plotted psychological thriller – the personal journey of a middle-aged man eternally trapped in an enforced existence. With masterly restrained performances, the unfolding story is stylishly executed as the characters' inner selves are gradually revealed to us. A wonderfully slow-paced film with very sophisticated and innovative cinematography, elegant editing, and a highly atmospheric use of music.

Dolls

A film by Takeshi Kitano

Three contemporary, interwoven stories inspired by the everlasting emotions expressed in Bunraku theatre, the Japanese traditional art of stage puppetry, and the works of the 17th century Japanese dramatist Monzaemon Chikamatsu. Three visually stunning and deeply touching stories of undying love in which the 'human puppets' play out a story conceived by the Bunraku dolls. The film begins during their working hours, their performance. And after their day's work is done, they rest alone and start telling stories, manipulating the humans who become the 'living dolls', pulled by the strings of fate. Three tales of love bound to one another with a piece of red cord.

Matsumoto and Sawako were once a happy couple who seemed destined for marriage. But the age-old pressures of meddling parents and success force the young man to make a tragic choice. He is selected by the president of his company to marry his daughter, a match that will ensure him a bright future. During the wedding ceremony he is told by a friend that Sawako, his true love, has attempted suicide, surviving with brain damage, and Matsumoto leaves his wedding to take Sawako from the hospital. She now wanders the countryside in a mindless daze, bound safely to Matsumoto by a long red cord. On a journey that will cover the four seasons passing from cherry blossoms and summer beaches, to autumn foliage and winter snows, their love becomes stronger and more enduring. To curious eyes, they roam aimlessly. But Matsumoto and Sawako are on a journey in search of something they have lost.

Hiro is an ageing yakuza boss in constant fear of assassination. Although surrounded by respect and affluence, Hiro is alone and his health is failing. Thirty years ago, he was a poor factory worker with a loving girlfriend who brought him lunch in the park. But he abandoned her to search for his dreams of making it big. Throughout the years that have passed she has returned every week in the hope of finding him again. Now, thirty years later, Hiro is drawn back to the park where they used to meet.

Haruna Yamaguchi spends a lot of time on an isolated beach, looking at the sea. Her beautiful face is half-covered in bandages. Not long before the car accident, Haruna was a successful pop star who lived alone in a glamorous world of TV shows and autograph sessions. Millions adored her, longed to be close to her. Now Haruna refuses to be seen again in public. But Nukui, who is probably her most devoted fan and wants so desperately to be with her, finds a way to make Haruna agree to see him in order that he can prove his undying love for her.

Chikamatsu's works are distinct for adding human elements to the theme of the conflict between social pressure and personal desire. His dramas often revolve around the tragedy that can arise when one blindy chooses the importance of loyalty (to one's feudal lord, family, etc) over personal feelings. A great many of Chikamatsu's plays are about shinju, or love suicides. 'Making a choice' means that you have two or more options to choose from. But all the protagonists in these stories are possessed with their own selfish idea of which direction they should take and they act accordingly. They aren't really making choices because they can't see the other options. None of the events in the stories would have happened if the characters were well-balanced enough to make real 'choices'.

A stunning and emotional meditation on love, commitment, conscience, and the consequences of choice. Expressed through visual rhyme and startling adjustments of perspective which draw us deep into the characters' inner worlds, the three stories explore themes of regret, sorrow, loss and sacrifice and the idea that one's destiny is inescapable.

Esma's Secret

Grbavica
a film by Jasmila Žbanić

A moving story about life in contemporary Sarajevo and of a mother's struggle to provide for her rebellious teenage daughter in the wake of the civil war. Esma wants to grant her daughter Sara's wish to participate in a school trip. A certificate proving her father is a war martyr would allow her a discount. But Esma continues to avoid Sara's requests for the certificate. She would rather find a way to pay full price for the trip. She believes not telling the truth about Sara's father is a way to protect both her and her daughter.

Single mother Esma lives with her twelve-year-old daughter Sara in Sarajevo's Grbavica neighbourhood, where life is still being reconstructed after the 1990s Yugoslav wars. Unable to make ends meet with the meagre government aid she receives, Esma takes a job as a cocktail waitress in a nightclub. Working all night is difficult for Esma physically and it also forces her to reluctantly spend less time with her daughter. Still haunted by violent events in her past, Esma attends group therapy sessions at the local Women's Centre. In addition to relying on her best friend Sabina, Esma also finds a kindred spirit in Pelda, a compassionate male co-worker from the nightclub.

Feisty tomboy Sara begins to put soccer aside as she develops a close friendship with classmate Samir. The two sensitive young teenagers feel a strong bond because both lost their fathers in the war. But Samir is surprised to hear Sara doesn't know the details of her father's noble death. Sara's father becomes an issue when she requires the certificate proving he died a shaheed, a war martyr, so that she can receive a discount for an upcoming school trip. Esma claims acquiring the certificate is difficult since his body has yet to be found. Meanwhile, Esma searches desperately to borrow money to pay for Sara's trip.

Confused, Sara becomes violently upset when some classmates tease her for not being on the list of martyrs' children. Realising her mother has paid full price for the school trip, Sara aggressively demands the truth. Esma breaks down and brutally explains how the girl was conceived through rape in a POW camp. As painful as their confrontation is, it is Esma's first real step towards overcoming her deep trauma. Despite Sara's hurt, there is still an opening for a renewed relationship between mother and daughter.

Focusing upon the female experience of post-conflict 'ordinary' life, writer/director Jasmila Žbanić describes her award-winning debut feature as being primarily a story about love. About love that is not pure, because it has been mixed with hate, disgust, trauma, despair. It's also about victims who, though they did not commit any crime, are still not entirely innocent in relation to future generations. Grbavica is also about truth, a cosmic power necessary to progress, and very much needed by society in Bosnia and Herzegovina who must strive to reach maturity.

A universal tale of pain and struggle, Grbavica is a heartbreaking story about the violence against women in the recent Balkan War. It explores in a very genuine and delicate way how these victims of war crimes will still be living in a war of their own emotions for the rest of their lives. But it is also a story about hope, as they attempt to pick up the pieces of their shattered psyches and somehow move on with their lives.

Delta

A film by Kornél Mundruczó

After making his fortune in the city, Mihail, a quiet and gentle young man returns after an absence of many years to his isolated Romanian village in the Danube delta. It is a labyrinth of waterways, small islands and over-grown vegetation, where the villagers are cut off from the outside world. He is greeted by a stepfather he has never met before, as well as his mother and adult sister, Fauna. Treated with suspicion by his stepfather and considered by the community to be an outsider who does not belong, his presence is unwelcome in the village. However, for Mihail this is not an issue since he has plans to create a new life alone in the marshes independent of them all. But despite his intentions, Mihail's return will in time fracture the family.

Fauna, a frail, slight and timid young woman decides to abandon her life with her mother and stepfather who run the village bar, to join Mihail in the middle of the marsh. She follows him to their deceased father's abandoned property to help him in the construction of a house on stilts with a long pier over the water. As their lives become increasingly close and intimate, they begin to experience a more deep-seated and harmonious relationship with the natural world around them and a tender love and affection for each other. But their relationship also elicits the disapproval of their family and eventually of the community too, leading to tragic consequences and to a heartbreaking conclusion.

This sensitive, insightful and intensely beautiful film looks at human nature and the dilemma of following one's heart or obeying social conventions. With its outstanding cinematography, it reflects also on man's need to re-bond with his natural habitat. Exploring the phenomenon of genetic sexual attraction, whereby siblings who live apart until they meet in adulthood can feel an overwhelming sexual attraction for one another, the story meditates on the consequences of a fraternal love that drifts into seemingly unacceptable territory.

The White Ribbon

Das weiße Band
a film by Michael Haneke

On the eve of World War I, the quiet order of a small protestant village in northern Germany is disturbed by a series of mysterious and inexplicable incidents. To the mounting concern of the villagers, the events persist, becoming increasingly sinister and assuming the characteristics of a perverse punishment ritual. But who is responsible? The story follows the children and teenagers of a choir run by the village schoolteacher, and their families – the baron, the steward, the pastor, the doctor, the midwife, and the tenant farmers of the estate.

The doctor is severely injured when his horse is brought down by a wire placed at knee height. A farmer's wife dies after falling through rotten floorboards. A window is opened to expose a newborn baby to the intense cold of the winter. A field of cabbages on the baron's land are destroyed with a scythe. One of the baron's sons disappears and is later found with his feet and hands bound, having been lashed with a whip. A barn belonging to the manor is set on fire. A farmer hangs himself. A midwife's handicapped child is found tied to a tree in a forest, seriously beaten, with a threatening message on his chest speaking of divine punishment.

Since the beginning of these events, the strict and severe pastor had tied a white ribbon to the arm of his two eldest children, his daughter Klara and son Martin, to remind them of their duty to purity. As the violent and disturbing events begin to escalate, the schoolteacher observes, investigates and little by little discovers the incredible truth.

This brilliant, chilling masterpiece penetrates the surface of an outwardly peaceful and puritanical society to reveal the malevolence and violence beneath – and the terrible consequences they threaten to unleash. Exploring themes of guilt, denial and violence, this haunting and provocative feature was awarded the Palme d'Or at Festival de Cannes 2009.

Innocence

A film by Lucile Hadžihalilović

At the heart of a densely wooded forest lies a mysterious girls' boarding school. A subterranean rumbling resonates in the heart of the forest. Hidden by foliage, a metal grate reveals underground passageways, which lead to the cellars of five houses scattered throughout a great park. The park is cut off from the outside world by a huge wall with no door. Within one of the houses, a group of youngsters aged between seven and twelve gather round a small coffin, from which emerges a new pupil, six-year-old Iris. Led by the eldest girl, Bianca, Iris is introduced to this strange yet enchanting world of lamp-lit forest paths and eerie underground passageways, where there are no adults save for several elderly servants and two melancholy young teachers, Mlle Edith and Mlle Eva. But this haven is one from which the girls are forbidden to leave, and those that do are never heard from again.

A dark, yet beautiful fable that contrasts the atmosphere of dread and uncertainty with the light of youthful purity. Captivating in its mystery, the further the story progresses without giving any answers, the more the anxiety builds. It is set in a timeless present evocative of the 1960s, and is not, strictly speaking, a fantasy film, but simply a child's eye vision of real life, experienced through its three main characters – Iris, the youngest girl, who arrives at the school; Alice, who has already spent several years there and rebels; and Bianca, who is at the end of the school cycle and represents a young girl shaped by it.

This strikingly unique debut feature explores themes of metamorphosis, maturity, understanding, friendship and loss, as the young girls prepare for their ascent into womanhood. Haunting and bizarre, filmmaker Lucile Hadžihalilović imbues Innocence with a fairytale-like sense of menace and images of surreal beauty, creating a mesmerising and timeless evocation of childhood.

Summer Hours

L'heure d'été
a film by Olivier Assayas

The divergent paths of three adult siblings collide when their mother, heiress to her uncle's exceptional 19th century art collection, dies suddenly. Left to come to terms with themselves and their differences, Adrienne a successful New York designer, Frédéric an economist and university professor in Paris, and Jérémie a dynamic businessman in China, confront the end of childhood, their shared memories, background and unique visions of the future.

Hélène Berthier, the niece of a famous painter, has devoted her life to the preservation of her uncle's legacy. Her house contains a vast collection of his paintings and sketches, antique furniture and fine art objects including several works by Carot. Hélène's family have gathered to celebrate her seventy-fifth birthday and she has decided it is now time to discuss their inheritance after she dies. Whilst Frédéric, her eldest, expects that the family will want to preserve the house and its collection intact, Hélène is under no such illusion. For her it symbolises the most important things in her life – the love she has for her deceased uncle, her memories, her secrets – and she knows that when she dies this very personal significance cannot be preserved.

After Hélène's death her three children return again to the house and following the funeral have to confront the issue of her estate. The sentimental Frédéric, the only sibling still living in France, proposes that he, with his wife Lisa, oversees the preservation of the treasured family heirlooms. Jérémie however explains that his business and family commitments are likely to keep him and his wife Angela in Asia for the foreseeable future. Whilst they would derive no benefit from keeping the house, his own financial share of the inheritance has now become vital to his future. The equally pragmatic Adrienne then announces that she and her partner James are about to marry and that with her life centred entirely in the United States, she too feels no desire to retain the family home in France.

Adrienne no longer thinks in terms of geographical borders and her brother Jérémie is now a part of the modern global economy, the very economy that Frédéric opposes and does not believe in. Frédéric's wish to protect the family's possessions is based entirely upon their symbolic and sentimental value to him, whereas for Adrienne and Jérémie the objects of the past, however beautiful, can hold no personal significance. Clearly shocked and disappointed, Frédéric has to come to terms with this inevitability, completely unforeseen by him despite Hélène's anticipation of, and preparations for, the disposition of her assets. Torn between issues of heritage and modernity, Hélène's children must now question the value of preserving their cultural roots in a world of globalisation, and abandon the remaining material links between each other and their childhood.

An insightful, heartfelt and thought-provoking drama examining the themes of generational change and cultural identity. The film is beautifully photographed and features some extraordinary works of art from the collections of Musée de Louvre and Musée d'Orsay.

A Winter's Tale

Conte d'hiver
a film by Éric Rohmer

On holiday in Bretagne, Parisian hairdresser Félicie has an idyllic romance which results in the birth of her daughter, Elise. Through a mix-up over her address just as he is leaving for the United States, she loses touch with Elise's father, Charles, and becomes obsessed with the lost love of her life. Finding it impossible to settle with another man, she holds onto the dream that Charles may one day return. Five years later we find Félicie attracted to, but not in love with, two different men each of whom she leaves for the other. She divides her time between the handsome and devoted Loïc, and the adoring and dependable Maxence. Offering her different things, she is unable to choose between them, aware that she is still in love with the father of her child.

Maxence, her boss, is moving from Paris to Nevers and wants Félicie to come with him. She loves being with him but is not madly in love with him. After first saying no, she then agrees and leaves Loïc. Once there however, Félicie has another change of heart following an epiphany about her love for Charles during a visit to a cathedral. She returns to her mother in Paris and goes to see Loïc again.

Loïc is a librarian and intellectual who loves to engage her in deeply spiritual conversation about religion, reincarnation and the nature of the soul. Whilst he is very Catholic in his belief and outlook, Félicie is far more of a free spirit. After her return to Paris, during a visit to the theatre with Loïc to see Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale, she realises that she too must "awake her faith" and she experiences the purity of her lost love in contrast to the seemingly mundane choices she has been facing in her daily life. By opening herself to the possibility, the improbable might just happen, but in the most unexpected way.

A treatise on the nature of faith, intuition and love that never dies, this the second of Éric Rohmer's Tales of the Four Seasons, is a charming and superbly acted love story with the compelling quality of a fairytale.

Katalin Varga

A film by Peter Strickland

Banished by her husband and her village, Katalin Varga is left with no other choice than to set out on a quest to find the real father of her son, Orbán. Taking the boy with her, Katalin travels through the Carpathians where she decides to reopen a sinister chapter from her past and take revenge. The hunt leads her to a place, she prayed eleven years prior, she would never set foot in again.

For years, Katalin has been keeping a terrible secret. Hitchhiking with two men, she was brutally raped in the woods. Although she has kept silent about what happened, she has not forgotten, and her son Orbán serves as a living reminder. When her village discovers her secret, Katalin's husband Zsigmond rejects her. Taking Orbán with her, on the pretext of visiting his ailing grandmother, she sets out with horse-drawn wagon on a journey through the beautiful, otherworldly Carpathian mountains of Transylvania to seek revenge on the perpetrators whom she has not seen since the assault.

After their arrival in the village, Katalin encounters Gergely, one of the men involved in the crime, and luring him into a compromising situation, she explodes into a violent rage in which she murders him. Katalin next sets out to find Antal Borlan, the rapist, to mete out similar punishment, but before she can confront him Antal befriends Orbán, and Katalin is taken aback when she realises the man who violated her has not only charmed her son, but also has a wife, Etelka, and others who love him and depend on him.

In a mesmerising sequence when Katalin joins Antal and Etelka in their rowing boat on a lake, she tells them the awful story of the rape. We see Antal's nervous reactions as Katalin describes in great detail both the events and the resulting aftermath of his actions, without identifying him by name. At a certain point in her story her language unexpectedly changes into that of the folk-tale, with an eerie and unnerving effect.

Her choices have far reaching consequences for the people she meets and those she seeks out, but it is those who are innocent and unknowing who suffer the greatest impact from her terrible revenge and she is forced to consider that morality might not be as black and white as she had imagined. As hunter becomes hunted and Katalin's mission becomes ever more precarious, the atmosphere and tension gradually heighten until we realise that Katalin's journey is likely to be strictly one-way, for such is the inexorability of tragedy.

This mysterious, unusual and very beautiful film combines the elements of psychological thriller with social comment on punishment and justice. Set in the present day, yet as timeless and eternal as the mountains, forests and surrounding Transylvanian landscape, Katalin Varga is a captivating story, intricately woven around very traditional themes of revenge and redemption.

The Turin Horse

A Torinói ló
a film by Béla Tarr

Inspired by the story of 19th century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche protecting a horse from abuse, the film details the lives of the coachman, his daughter, and the horse. In Turin on 3 January 1889, Friedrich Nietzsche steps out of the doorway of 6 Via Carlo Alberto. Not far from him, the driver of a hansom-cab is having trouble with a stubborn horse. Despite all his prompting, the horse refuses to move and at this the driver loses his patience and takes his whip to it. As Nietzsche approaches this scene, he suddenly jumps towards the cab and, bursting into tears, throws his arms around the horse's neck. Nietzsche is then taken home where he lies motionless and silent for two days on a divan. He spends the remaining ten years of his life silent and demented, under the care of his mother and sisters.

Ohlsdorfer, the carter, and his daughter live out their lives on their farmstead. They subsist on hard work, their only source of income being the horse and cart. The father takes on carting jobs, his daughter takes care of the household. It's a very meagre life and infinitely monotonous. Their repeating gestures and the changes in seasons and times of day dictate the rhythm and routine which is cruelly inflicted on them. Their horse, now old and in very poor condition, is no longer able to carry out its tasks. Pulling the loaded cart becomes more and more difficult. However, it tries to obey the words of command but even the whip can't force it to achieve beyond its strength.

All that the horse wants now is peace and an untroubled death. The dying of the horse shapes the story of the film which is framed by the gale sweeping all before it, whose function is to bring true order to the world, at the same time giving the final tribute of respect to innocence and defencelessness. The film speaks about death, and the deep pain that comes with it, felt by all of us as a universal law.

Announced as Béla Tarr's last film, The Turin Horse made its world premiere in competition at Berlin Film Festival 2011 where it was awarded the Jury Grand Prix Silver Bear.

It's Winter

Zemestan
a film by Rafi Pitts based on the story Safar by Mahmoud Dowlatabadi.

Mokhtar has just lost his job, the store where he works having been forced to close. His chances of finding employment elsewhere are remote, so feeling he has no other option he decides to search for work abroad. Amid a bleak and bitter Iranian winter, his wife Khatoun and their young daughter accompany him to the railway station where he boards the train, and hoping for greater opportunities and better times, he leaves his family behind in Tehran. Meanwhile Khatoun must somehow support herself, her child and her ageing mother on the meagre wage she receives for working long hours in the clothing factory. She is also forced to sell household belongings and furniture in order to survive. Months pass and Mokhtar's family hear no word from him. One day the police come to the house with news of his death.

A stranger, Marhab, arrives in town in search of work. He is a mechanic, specialising in crane repairs, and is confident that his skills will enable him to secure employment. But when he is repeatedly told there is no work for him he is forced to clean the windscreens of trucks for small change. Sleeping at a café he meets Ali Reza, also a mechanic, who gets him a job at the truck repair yard where he works. When walking along the railway track one day Marhab encounters the beautiful Khatoun as she returns home from work. He hears that she no longer has a husband and as he begins to fall in love with her, he follows her on her journeys across town and then sitting on the railway track observes her at home, awaiting his opportunity. Eventually she confronts him and asks him directly why he is following her. During a very emotional exchange Marhab, shocked and deeply embarrassed, attempts to express his feelings for the woman he loves. Time passes, Marhab wins Khatoun's trust and affection and they marry.

But Marhab is essentially a drifter, needing change in his life and is always searching for something new. He is willing to work hard for a decent wage but also wants a life for himself outside of work. He becomes indifferent to the job he has, arguing with the boss over time taken off and the fact that he has worked for several months but has yet to be paid. The boss is unwilling to accept his attitude to work and eventually fires him. Marhab, now unemployed with little hope of finding work but now shouldering the responsibility of a family, contemplates leaving Tehran to search for work abroad.

Outside on the railway track Mokhtar sits in the darkness watching the house. He has returned alive but broken, penniless and now an amputee on crutches. He sees that there is no longer a place for him with Khatoun and his daughter, life has moved on during his long absence and he does not belong here. But as Mokhtar sits watching the house, Marhab is preparing to leave his home and family and we see that their story has now turned full circle.

Marhab returns to the café once more where in conversation with the proprietor he speaks of the troubles and frustrations in his life. As he does so a man on crutches enters and Marhab is told in some detail of the misfortunes of this individual. The following day, as Marhab stands at the railway station awaiting his train amid a bitter winter blizzard, the destinies of both these men, who in many ways can be seen as the same person, are concluded.

The struggle to survive of a generation torn between wanting to leave its country yet bound by blood to home. This visually very beautiful and emotionally charged film was inspired by Dowlatabadi's book The Trip but is also influenced by the poem Winter by Mehdi Akhavan Saless. The lines of this poem, well-known in Iran, depict the governing power and the cold attitudes of winter and are used at the beginning and end to frame the film, giving form to feelings and sentiments that are otherwise oblique and intangible. Through its characters the film describes the harsh life in which we struggle under pressure, merely to survive day-to-day and it highlights the plight and fate universally, not just in Iran, of the working classes. It is their story.