Leones

Jazmín López : 2012
Lions

Five young people, aged between 18 and 21 years, suffer a car accident on the highway. Four of the young people die. The youngest, Isabel, survives. Nevertheless, the journey has just begun. None of them is aware of their own death. Deep in the forest the group of five friends wander around like a lion herd. They roam the forest without a fixed course, immersed in their puns and surrounded by a halo of mystery that lies somewhere between life and death, between realism and surrealism. One of the group, Niki, obsessively listens to a tape recorder that's captured the sound of them all travelling somewhere in a car, an event no one can remember but which offers vital clues to their existential situation. Lost in their word games, they play and seduce each other whilst going back and forth into adulthood territory, in a desperate search to avoid their already written story. Jazmín López's mysterious and astonishing Borgesian debut feature premiered in the Orizzonti selection at La Biennale di Venezia 2012.

El amigo alemán

Jeanine Meerapfel : 2012
My German Friend

Sulamit Löwenstein, the daughter of German-Jewish emigrants from Germany, grows up in Buenos Aires in the nineteen-fifties. Between her and Friedrich, the German boy living next door whose parents escaped to Argentina after the war, a deep intimacy and kinship develops. When Friedrich discovers that his father was an SS Lieutenant-Colonel in Nazi Germany, he breaks off all contact with his family and goes to Germany to study, full of angry energy to change the world. Sulamit follows him a few years later and they maintain their friendship, though the romantic side of the relationship is challenged. Friedrich takes an active part in the German protest movement of May 1968 and is dedicated to the Cuban cause and the liberation struggles of Latin America. Gradually his whole life centres on his political commitment, but even though Sulamit meets another man, Michael, her love for Friedrich never dies.

Una noche

Lucy Mulloy : 2012
One night

A single night can feel very long sometimes, especially if you're on a tiny raft, can't swim and are surrounded by sharks. With just ninety miles of water between Cuba and Florida, plenty of Cubans who are desperate to leave, choose to make this risky trip across the sea. So too Lila's twin brother Elio, whose commitment is tested as he is torn between protecting his sister and his own desire to get out. Lila always thought he could never leave her – after all, they've been together ever since they were born. But of late he's been distracted and has had less and less time for her; nowadays his world seems to revolve around his new friend Raul. In a ruined building at the beach she discovers a couple of wooden boards and two car tyres, the components for a makeshift raft with which her brother and his friend, who is now wanted by the police, are intending to make their escape. Lila decides she too is ready to take a risk and joins them. On this one night, full of hope and fraught with tensions, they face the biggest challenge of their lives. Lucy Mulloy's debut feature premiered at Berlin International Film Festival 2012.

Sentados frente al fuego

Alejandro Fernández Almendras : 2011
By the Fire

Daniel and Alejandra, a Chilean working-class couple both approaching forty, have been together for a couple of years. Abandoning the promise of the city, they decide to buy a piece of land and move out to the country. But Alejandra suffers from a serious illness that will slowly consume her dreams and put Daniel's love and patience to the test. As their hopes and plans hang in the balance, Daniel must come to terms with the harsh realities of physical labour on the land, and the discovery that his actions have not always been good and noble in his strive for perfection. Following them over the course of a year, this is the story of a couple willing to fight all manner of adversities to make their dream of a new life together a reality. Capturing the texture of everyday life, the story unfolds against the stunning scenery of the Región del Biobío with an unhurried, near-documentary intimacy.

Renoir

Gilles Bourdos : 2012

Côte d'Azur, 1915. In his twilight years, Pierre-Auguste Renoir is tormented by the loss of his wife, the pains of arthritic old age and the terrible news that his son Jean has been wounded in action. But when a young girl miraculously enters his world, the old painter is filled with a new, wholly unexpected energy. Blazing with life, radiantly beautiful, Andrée will become his last model, and the wellspring of a remarkable rejuvenation. Back at the family home to convalesce, Jean too falls under the spell of the new, redheaded star in the Renoir firmament. In their Mediterranean Eden – and in the face of his father's fierce opposition – he falls in love with this wild, untameable spirit. And as he does so, within weak-willed, battle-shaken Jean, a filmmaker begins to grow. The film premiered in the Un Certain Regard selection at Festival de Cannes 2012.

When Day Breaks

Goran Paskaljević : 2012
Kad svane dan

Miša Brankov is a retired music professor. One morning he receives a letter requesting him to contact the Jewish Museum in Belgrade. At the museum, he learns that during an excavation on the sewers at the city's old fairgrounds an iron box was found. The location had previously been the site of an infamous concentration camp where some 48,000 Serbian Jews and Gypsies had perished during the Second World War. The contents of the box, that will change his life, include personal documents pertaining to the professor's identity and an unfinished musical score called "When Day Breaks". The box was buried by a concentration camp inmate, the Jewish musician Isaac Weiss, in the year 1941. Eventually, the professor discovers that when he was an infant, his real parents, the Weisses, entrusted him to their friends, the Brankovs, just before they were taken into the camp. The initial shock of the professor's discovery soon gives way to a determination to fulfil the shattered dreams that he has inherited. It is something that infuses him with new purpose and provides him with a second lease on life.

Arraianos

Eloy Enciso Cachafeiro : 2012

The inhabitants of a small village lost in the woodlands between Galicia and Portugal live and work in a quiet routine. From time to time, brief conversations arise amongst them. Surrounded by an endless forest, incapable of finding a way out, the Arraianos ask themselves about the reasons for their confinement, wondering if such things as sunlight, free will or a horizon really exist. One day, a stranger arrives; the possibility of change, a way out, a means of purification. What is left after the end, when all has been consumed? Somewhere between reality and fable, the Arraianos play out their lives to make a portrait of the rural world and its obstinate resistance to disappear, a picture of life as it is. The fictional elements of the piece come from a play by Marinhas del Valle, The Forest, written in the 1960s as a parable of Franco's dictatorship, but also a great portrait of the Galician soul, their tragic existentialism. The film's documentary elements thus present a more frontal portrait of the soul of these autarkic people. As the seasons change and the signs of apocalypse grow – a fire rages in the forest – one man promises salvation, whilst another proclaims the end of the world is coming. In this moving work, memory floats in space, and a way of life dies before one's eyes.

Breaking Horizons

Pola Beck : 2012
Am Himmel der Tag

Lara can hardly believe it when the doctor tells her that she's pregnant. The 25-year-old ex-student spends her nights hanging around Berlin with best friend Nora, having lost interest in her architectural studies long ago. She has no idea what to do with her life – she does a lot, but nothing properly. She now finds herself pregnant after a night of passion with a charming barman she met at a party. Nora is thrilled by the news though, proclaiming: "we're having a baby!" After some initial doubts, Lara too begins to see her pregnancy as an opportunity. With the feeling that it's the first time she has made the right decision for herself, she throws herself into the adventure. Together with Nora, she sets about painting the nursery and goes in search of the baby's father. But the challenge will be a painful experience for Lara when the gynaecologist tells her, "Your child will not live". Pola Beck's debut feature won the Golden Eye award in competition at Zurich Film Festival 2012.

Song of Silence

Chen Zhuo : 2012
Yang mei zhou

Xiao Jing lives with her mother and grandparents in a small fishing village in Hunan Province. Her only real emotional connection is with her uncle, a mentally handicapped artist whom she occasionally poses for. Instead of going to school, the deaf-mute teenager spends her time on his fishing boat, until one day she gets too close to him. Xiao Mei, a city kid rock musician of the same age, travels from club to club with her guitar, dreaming of an independent life. When Jing goes to live in the city with her hardboiled police officer father Haoyang, the two girls come together. Mei is Haoyang's lover. Despite an initial stand-off, the three manage to open up and create an emotional tie that gives their lives new perspective. In elegantly nested sequences, the film tells of the meeting and separating of these three figures, each of which is isolated in their own way. Winner of the Golden Firebird at Hong Kong International Film Festival 2012.

La traversée

Jérôme Cornuau : 2012
The Crossing

Lola Arendt, a girl of eight years, vanishes whilst on vacation on a wild Scottish island. Their lives shattered by her disappearance, her parents, Sarah and Martin, separate. Two years later, Lola is found at the exact same spot where she had disappeared. She is alive, apparently in good health, but is immersed in a strange silence. Martin returns to the island to bring her home, but his delight at being reunited with his daughter soon gives way to suspicion and fear. Where was Lola? Why won't she talk? Who are these men watching them? What did Sarah know about Lola's disappearance? And who is the beautiful and mysterious Norah Kross? When the weather conspires to stop them leaving, Martin and Lola embark on a journey across the island with Norah, headed for a tragic discovery.

The House

Zuzana Liová : 2011
Dom

Stone by stone, Imrich is building a small house for his daughter Eva almost entirely on his own. But for Eva, who is about to graduate from school, the prospect of moving into the house is about as appealing as being imprisoned in a jail she herself has helped to build. She has very different plans for her future. Money is changing the society, challenging the absolute rule of patriarchy. Her grumpy, stingy, controlling father has already broken with Eva's sister, Jana, after she got herself involved with a scoundrel with whom she now has three children. So the father is twice as vigilant with Eva, but she still manages to indulge in a few little freedoms: skipping school for a couple of days, doing little jobs to save up cash for the trip she longs to make to London, and an affair with an older man who turns out to be her English teacher. Winner of the Audience Award for Best Slovak Film at Bratislava International Film Festival 2011.

Somewhere in Between

Yeşim Ustaoğlu : 2012
Araf

Zehra and Olgun spend most of their young lives working in a service station cafeteria near a lonely highway. Their monotonous work shifts are broken up only by sparks of naive expectations of a brighter future. Everything seems transient about their surroundings. The once important industrial area is now a faceless place of economic waste and unemployment. Most of the area's occupants have all escaped to the big city in search of opportunity. But Zehra, Olgun and their friends still remain, caught somewhere in between the past and an uncertain future. Zehra dreams that love will take her away from her meaningless job and life at home with her strict old-fashioned mother. She becomes fascinated by an older truck driver, Mahur, who spends much of his time on the road. As Zehra's desire for Mahur turns into a tragic first love, her rebellious friend Olgun becomes more and more frustrated, stuck at home, not yet a young man on his own. Zehra and Olgun will experience a bittersweet rite of passage, leading to both suffering and awakening. But as they say goodbye to their childhood innocence, love and hope will help them to move forward. The film premiered at La Biennale di Venezia 2012.

Mona

Ināra Kolmane : 2012

A story about different worlds – about a man and a woman, about city and countryside, about future and past. It is also a story about animals and their killers, about deep and short-lived passion and the ancient mystery of a woman. A businessman from Riga arrives at his uncle's funeral in a small Latvian village, a village whose main landmark and virtually the only source of income is a slaughterhouse. There he meets Mona, a local woman, and abandons the idea of ever returning to Riga. But the small-town environment, daily life, people and their mode of thinking have not yet been fully freed from the legacy of the Soviet times. Unlike the European Riga, everything is more conservative and less apt to change in the remote countryside. The dull life of several villagers is turned upside down, and a fusion of passion, mystery, animal instincts and human fragility emerges. It is a story about love as a misunderstanding and misunderstandings created by passion.

Memories Look at Me

Song Fang : 2012
Ji yi wang zhe wo

Fang travels from Beijing to spend some time with her ageing parents at their home in Nanjing. Perfectly capturing the rhythm of a brief sojourn home, her remarkable debut feature reflects, through encounters with relatives, neighbours and friends, on what it means to grow old; how an adult child's relationship with her parents changes as they grow older; and how to negotiate one's place as a single woman in a world of married couples. Reunions, both joyful and heart-wrenching, reminiscences, and moments of feeling painfully out of place. Around her, as time goes by, memories often come back in the conversations unexpectedly, some she knows, some not. The present is mixed up with the past, and the steps towards the future may walk along the path of eternal loss. Those left behind cope with the loss of someone with whom they've spent much of their lives. A quiet meditation on mortality, the healing powers and limitations of family intimacy, and the inexorable passage of time. Winner of the award for Best First Feature at Locarno Film Festival 2012.

When I Saw You

Annemarie Jacir : 2012
Lamma Shoftak

Jordan, 1967. The world is alive with change: brimming with reawakened energy, new styles, music and an infectious sense of hope. In Jordan, a different kind of change is under way as tens of thousands of refugees pour across the border from Palestine. Having been separated from his father in the chaos of war, Tarek, 11, and his mother Ghaydaa, are amongst this latest wave of refugees. Placed in "temporary" refugee camps made up of tents and prefab houses until they would be able to return, they wait, like the generation before them who arrived in 1948. With difficulties adjusting to life in Harir camp and a longing to be reunited with his father, Tarek searches a way out, and discovers a new hope emerging with the times. Eventually his free spirit and curious nature lead him to a group of people on a journey that will change their lives.

Die Lebenden

Barbara Albert : 2012
The Dead and the Living

The personal journey of 25-year-old Austrian woman Sita, back into the past of the Second World War and into the abyss of contemporary European society to clear the doubts she has about a family secret. The journey leads Sita from Berlin to Vienna, to Warsaw and to Romania. A film about losing your homeland, about self-discovery and identity, and about responsibility and hope. Award-winning director Barbara Albert's fourth feature is an examination of how the personal and political can intersect, as viewed through the prism of one family's experiences. The film premiered in competition at San Sebastián Film Festival 2012.

Wilaya

Pedro Pérez Rosado : 2012
Tears of Sand

Fatimetu was born to a Sahrawi family in a Saharan refugee camp in Algeria but at the age of ten was sent to live with foster parents in Spain. Following the death of her mother she returns to the camp after sixteen years. Her brother, Jatri, now expects her to stay and look after her sister Hayat, who teaches mentally disabled children, and who herself has a physical disability. Though Fatimetu had different plans, namely a boyfriend back home, the relationship seems to not really be working out. Unlike the other women, Fatimetu can drive and finds work transporting animals, meat and bread from one administrative district to another with Hayat in tow. In time, the Sahrawi people become accustomed to the woman who tears about the desert without a hijab in her beaten up jeep. But Fatimetu is torn between life in the desert and her memories of her family and friends in Spain.

The Unspeakable Act

Dan Sallitt : 2012

Jackie Kimball is a likable, normal 17-year-old girl in every way but one: she has been in love all her life with her brother Matthew, one year older than her. The two siblings have been symbiotically close all their lives, but Matthew doesn't share his sister's incestuous inclinations, and Jackie has no choice but to deal with the intrusion of adult life upon their childhood intimacy. Though Jackie makes little effort to hide her love for Matthew, the family prefers to interpret the attraction as a long-standing childhood phase. Jackie has school friends, but no interest in other boys, and Matthew's unexpected breakup with his new girlfriend Yolanda gives Jackie a temporary reprieve from her grief. Always monitoring Matthew for any sign that he might become receptive to her overtures, Jackie is filled with melancholy as summer wanes and Matthew's departure for college approaches. As Jackie struggles to deal with her deep-rooted heartbreak, leading her to examine just why she's so besotted with and emotionally dependent on her brother, she asks herself what, if anything is actually wrong with this contentious attraction.

With You, Without You

Prasanna Vithanage : 2012
Oba nathuwa oba ekka

Selvi is a beautiful and enigmatic Tamil refugee who catches the eye of Sarathsiri, a middle-aged Buddhist pawnbroker when she comes to cash in her last jewellery. Immediately captivated, Sarathsiri follows her back to her temporary home. Discovering she is about to be wed for money to a very old man, he throws caution to the wind and offers to marry her instead. Selvi soon moves into his house and slowly falls in love with her saviour, but neither of them ever talk about their past. A chance visit from an old army friend of the pawnbroker then opens up old wounds and a terrible secret emerges. Will love help them cross the bridge? Or will the past continue to colour the present? Set in the months after the Sri Lankan thirty-year civil war, the film explores the emotional fall-out of such trauma on the lives of ordinary people.

About Elly

Asghar Farhadi : 2009
Darbareye Elly

After having spent many years in Germany, Ahmad returns to his native Iran for a holiday. His friends from his student days organise a three-day break on the Caspian Sea. One of the party, a fun-loving woman named Sepideh, also invites a young woman named Elly, a nursery school teacher at her daughter's kindergarten. Ahmad has just emerged from an unhappy marriage and is now divorced from his German wife. He would very much like to begin a new life with an Iranian woman. His friends are aware of his desire and it gradually dawns on them that this is why Sepideh has asked Elly to accompany them on their trip. They all begin to lavish their attentions on Elly, singing her praises unequivocally. But then, on the second day of their holiday, something happens and Elly disappears. The friends begin to agonise about Elly's disappearance, bringing to an abrupt end the sense of harmony that once pervaded their get-together. Eventually, they blame Sepideh for having invited Elly in the first place and ruining their holiday. During the course of just two days, their opinion of Elly has turned about face. Until, on the last day of their holiday, the truth about Elly emerges.