Camion

Rafaël Ouellet : 2012

Widower Germain has been a truck driver all his life. After being involved in a road accident that causes the death of a woman, Germain's world collapses. He feels an overwhelming sense of guilt and remorse that keeps him away from the wheel. His state of mind soon starts to worry his younger son Samuel, who puts his own janitor job in Montréal on hold to track down his older brother, drifter Alain, in New Brunswick, hoping to head back together to their hometown to give some support to their father. By turning their family's dynamics upside down, Germain and his sons struggle to retrieve the ties that bound them earlier in their lives and to find hope for the future. With its captivating camerawork and formal and narrative purity, the film addresses, unsentimentally, life's most basic issues. Winner of Best Director and Ecumenical Jury Awards at Karlovy Vary International Film Festival 2012.

Kebun binatang

Edwin : 2012
Postcards from the Zoo

The zoo – a place of yearning. The zoo animals are yearning for freedom and many of the visitors long for adventure and the call of the wild. It is in these surroundings, where imagining yourself into other worlds is easy, that Lana grows up. When she was a little girl, her father left her behind in the colourful Jakarta zoo to be raised by zoo keepers. What dreams and longings does a young woman have who has grown up among giraffes, elephants and hippos? Is the cowboy who appears one day and is able to do magic merely a wish summoned into solid form, or is he real? Lana will assist him, and take her first steps outside her familiar world. But as suddenly as he appeared, the cowboy will disappear again by magic. On her own now, Lana begins to work as a masseuse at a spa. But the memory of the cowboy and nostalgia for the seemingly enchanted zoo will not leave her alone. The film premiered in competition at Berlin International Film Festival 2012.

Le sac de farine

Khadija Leclère : 2012
The Bag of Flour

Alsemberg, December 1975. Eight-year-old Sarah lives in a Catholic foster home. One day, her biological father, whom she has never met, comes to take her for a weekend in Paris. But it is in Morocco that Sarah wakes up to the call to prayer, in a little town lost in the foothills of the Atlas. Very soon, her father leaves, abandoning her without any discussion or explanation. She does not even know the language of the country, nor those people who present themselves as her family. Resigned, she slips into the life of a little girl where the only schooling she is offered is that of knitting. Time passes and Sarah, now 17, has became a Moroccan girl like any other, or nearly so. She has learned Arabic and appears to be fully assimilated. But her one desire is to leave, to find her lost Belgian childhood, her school and her books, and what she imagines is a life of freedom. Now she will fight for the right to choose her own life and not suffer one that has been chosen for her.

Sekret

Przemysław Wojcieszek : 2012
Secret

Ksawery and Karolina are visiting Jan in the country. Ksawery is a dancer who performs as a drag queen and Karolina is his agent. Jan is Ksawery's grandfather. Ksawery is gay, Karolina Jewish. Jan, over 80, is a former resistance soldier but guards a dark secret from the time of the Holocaust. Karolina knows that the house witnessed a murder which has gone unpunished for seventy years and she wants answers. Ksawery's love for his grandfather is in conflict with his urge to find out what happened back then. Identity here is composed of different layers that do not always harmonise according to background and allegiance. The film taps into the seam of our identity that is passed on by preceding generations, a process that can hurt but also heal. In experimental form, it immerses us in a questioning of individual and collective identities which goes far beyond the historical aspect – there may be no answers, but the questions resonate long after. The film premiered at Berlin International Film Festival 2012.

Un mundo secreto

Gabriel Mariño : 2012
A Secret World

María's last day of class marks the start of a journey. She'll cross Mexico but doesn't really know why. What she does know is that it isn't a fun trip. She knows it's not something to write home about, it's something else, it's a journey that began in the depths of her dreams and in her broken heart. Eighteen-year-old María is a solitary and promiscuous dreamer, struggling to make sense of her life in a harsh and vibrant Mexico City. Leaving her world behind, she embarks on an epic road trip, a secret and mysterious journey of self-discovery, from the city's urban chaos to the deserts of Sinaloa and the vast oceans of La Paz. Within these immense and shifting landscapes, María comes of age. She has one intimate, secret dream that only she knows about, and then she meets a young man who is different from all the rest. In a spectacular and spiritual conclusion, the natural world embraces María with pure poetic force. The film premiered at Berlin International Film Festival 2012.

Back to Your Arms

Kristijonas Vildžiūnas : 2010
Kai apkabinsiu tave

It's 1961. A father and his daughter are trying to meet in Berlin seventeen years after they were separated by fate during World War II. The father is from Soviet Lithuania and the daughter an émigré living in the United States. Despite the fact that there is a "thawing" period in the Soviet Union and the wall has not yet been erected in Berlin, the Cold War is approaching its culmination. As soon as the father arrives in Berlin, undercover employees of the KGB begin taking care of him. They try to entice the daughter to come to the East. However, the atmosphere of the city seeped with mistrust has affected her, and she is afraid to step across the boundary line of West Berlin. The few kilometres that now separate them have become an immeasurable distance. In order to help each other escape any potential KGB entrapments, both father and daughter are prepared to renounce the meeting they've been yearning for for so long. Winner of the Silver Crane at the Lithuanian Film Awards 2011.

Hara

Elias Yannakakis : 2012
Joy

Hara leaves the maternity ward with a baby in her arms. She spends her days looking after her newborn. Daily scenes of affection, familiarisation, devotion, but also acquaintance with the infant, to the melody of a lullaby. Everything seems cosy and warm, and the days spent with her baby, whom she cherishes, bring Hara much happiness. But the recurring news report about a baby that has been kidnapped from the maternity ward brings us back to reality with a jolt. We feel torn as we watch Hara go to extremes to protect her baby. Like any mother would. When Hara ends up in police custody, locked up in a cell, face to face with her own truth, she chooses silence. Regardless of an impending life sentence, she shows no interest in defending herself. And when the hearing begins, she remains silent during proceedings. Besides the abduction of the baby, she is accused of murdering a man (allegedly her accessory) and for having planned the kidnapping with the aforementioned victim. It is only ourselves who know that nothing of all this, is true. The film premiered at Thessaloniki International Film Festival 2012.

La clé des champs

Claude Nuridsany & Marie Pérennou : 2011
The Field of Enchantment

A deserted pond. Two lonely children fall under the spell of this wild place that, little by little, draws them closer to each other and gives them the strength to cope with life. The pond, a place they have chosen as a sort of virgin paradise, a refuge far from the world of grown-ups, becomes a magical mirror through which they discover unknown beings that will return them anew to their own lives. Seen through their eyes, and through their imaginations, the pond becomes a secret kingdom, both marvellous and frightening, thronging with creatures born from dreams or nightmares. The children experience an initiation, brief and intense, from which they will emerge transformed. Both in love with the same kingdom, they break free from their solitude and little by little discover friendship. The film premiered at La Biennale di Venezia 2011.

Nocturnos

Edgardo Cozarinsky : 2011

A man drives around Buenos Aires by night after waiting in vain for the return of a woman who has left him. During his aimless wandering, his inner thoughts take the form of poetry, illuminating chance encounters and what his imagination makes of the situations he witnesses. He meets all kind of night creatures, either real or fictional – loners, thieves, fugitives, homeless, suicides, lovers, and the ghost of the woman he shall not see again. In the early hours of the morning, an old poet reminisces about memory and its use of the past. There are people of the day and people of the night. The night ones recognise each other. Their city is theirs only. When the others seek refuge in the dubious safety of home, they go out to confront ourselves with that truth hidden by light and revealed by darkness. The film premiered in the Orizzonti selection at La Biennale di Venezia 2011.

Lung Neaw Visits His Neighbours

Rirkrit Tiravanija : 2011

A contemplative look at one man's humble dialogue with his surroundings. At the age of sixty, Lung Neaw finds himself retired from his life as a rice farmer in a small village in the northern Thai province of Chiang Mai. Away from the chatter and noise of recent political upheaval in the capital Bangkok and the demand for democratic reforms, we follow Lung Neaw in his daily life. We see Lung Neaw living off the land that he has known since he was born, fishing, hunting and foraging for herbs and vegetation in the open fields and forest nearby his home. He goes about the chores of living and fills up his idle time with the practicalities of a rural existence. In between, he finds time to spend with neighbours, from the local sage, to the ailing and aged elephant king deep in the valley, to children who play in his front yard and the youngsters at the local watering hole. Lung Neaw is known in the surrounding villages and his own as the man without enemies, a fair man without judgement and humble with his humility. The documentary premiered in the Orizzonti selection at La Biennale di Venezia 2011.

O le tulafale

Tusi Tamasese : 2011
The Orator

Saili, an unassuming villager and taro farmer, lives happily with his beautiful wife Vaaiga and her teenage daughter Litia. Their existence, whilst happy and peaceful, is unconventional. Vaaiga has been banished from her ancestral village for many years. Saili faces serious threats to his plantation as well as his family and has been denied his father's chiefly title that would offer some protection. Life is further complicated by Litia's blossoming beauty that is attracting the attention of the young men in the village. Matters ultimately come to a head, requiring Saili to face his fears, seek the right to speak out for those he loves, and to defend all that he holds precious. A contemporary drama about courage, forgiveness and the love of two people for each other in an increasingly hostile world. Tusi Tamasese's debut feature premiered and was awarded a Special Mention in the Orizzonti selection at La Biennale di Venezia 2011.

Xiao He

Liu Shu : 2012
Lotus

Xiao He is a free-spirited teacher working in a village in northern China. To her, learning is possible only if one experiences the pleasure of discovering something new, and it does not mean abiding by the same old rules. Her students love her teachings, but her colleagues do not like her rebellious attitude. When they discover that her lover, Li Weifeng, is a married man, she is forced to leave the school. Xiao He decides to move to Beijing, where she thinks she can use her creativity working as a journalist. However, her innate sense of freedom brings her into trouble again, and she is forced to work as a waitress to make a living. To find some security in her life, she begins dating a well-off businessman, Liu Xiangdong, who has a Beijing residency permit, but his love is not returned by Xiao He. When she decides to accept him anyway, a young policeman who she had previously turned down, will try to hamper her dreams. It is time for Xiao He to make a choice either to carry on suffering, or to betray her ideals in order to change her life. Liu Shu's debut feature premiered in competition at Venice International Film Critics' Week 2012.

Nana

Valérie Massadian : 2011

Nana is four years old and lives in a stone house, beyond the forest in the French countryside. Living apart from other children, she interacts on a daily basis only with her mother, her reserved grandfather and the natural world itself, its beauty and its violence. One day, back from school in the late afternoon, all she finds is silence in the empty house. Unperturbed, Nana embarks alone upon a journey into the night of her childhood, the world from her height. She walks with a childlike purity through a world that is partly paradise, partly hard and realistic. Shot from the perspective of a child, it is a film that touches life, death and resistance more through primal sensations than explicit narrative, more through a feminine understanding of the world than an intellectual one. Intimate and sensitive, and completely devoid of sentimentality, Valérie Massadian's debut feature is about the basic questions of life as experienced directly in the middle of the process of awakening. A remarkable collaboration between director and performer, the film won the award for Best First Feature at Locarno Film Festival 2011.

The Daughter

Alexander Kasatkin & Natalya Nazarova : 2012
Doch

Teenager Inna lives with her father and brother in a small provincial town. Her quiet life changes when a new girl, Masha, comes to the school. Very soon the girls become friends. However, Masha falls victim to a serial killer who murders teenage girls. At her friend's funeral Inna meets the priest's son whose sister has also been murdered. A drama about people whose faith, hope, and love are put to the toughest test. A film about being able to choose when no choice is possible, about the courage to accept events, about the strength to withstand circumstances that destroy the world around you, your character, and your life. Winner of the award for Best Debut at Kinotavr Film Festival 2012, and the FIPRESCI Prize for Best Debut from Eastern Europe at Warsaw Film Festival 2012.

Hija

María Paz González : 2011
Daughter

The story of a mother and daughter who cross Chile in search of a relative they both don't know. The mother hopes to find her sister, while the daughter expects to find her real father. Along a 2000 kilometre road, they will be forced to confront their childhood expectations with a present which may prove to be even more uncertain and hostile than the fantasies involved in building their identities. Presented as a personal quest, it is a journey where lies become reality and where the reality takes the shape of a film: that of a documentary road movie based on imaginary facts; a story that gives meaning to the fantasies that built up their identity. The loss, the lack, the loneliness and the need of knowing their origins, the truth and the lies, the complicity and dialogues all mingle through an original yet harmonic voice into an intimate portrait of a family's origin. If telling a family's history reflects the country's one, Hija stages the origin and mythology of Chilean society.

7 Cajas

Juan Carlos Maneglia & Tana Schémbori : 2012
7 Boxes

It's Friday night in Asunción and the temperature is a sweltering forty degrees. Víctor, a 17-year-old wheelbarrow delivery boy, dreams of becoming famous and covets a fancy TV set in the infamous Mercado 4. Then he receives an unusual proposal, to carry seven boxes of unknown content in exchange for a torn half of a US $100 bill. He'll get the other half when he finishes the job. Víctor, who has never seen a banknote of this value, cannot even guess at how many guaraníes this represents. Given instructions towards an unknown destination along the way through a borrowed cellphone, Víctor embarks on the journey. Crossing the eight blocks that constitute the market seemed easy but the task proves to be more complicated than expected. Something in the boxes is highly coveted and without realising, Víctor and his pursuers quickly find themselves caught up in something they know nothing about. As night falls Víctor discovers that he is now an accomplice in a dangerous crime.

Chocó

Jhonny Hendrix Hinestroza : 2012

Chocó is twenty-seven years old, she has two children, a tiny riverside wooden hut on the edge of a Colombian village, and an underpaid job in a gold mine. Her husband Everlides gambles away the little money they have and forces himself onto Chocó at night when he's had too much to drink. Nonetheless she truly believes that things will get better. But then she loses her job, while her daughter wants her birthday cake and Everlides spends the last of their savings. Chocó finds herself standing in the village shop, looking at the colourful cakes on the counter. You won't get anything for nothing here, the shopkeeper reminds her. If you want a cake, I want you. Stifled by her husband and a tradition based on male domination, Chocó's story exemplifies the lives of many women who suffer mistreatment and domestic violence, where such behaviour and abuse is seen by society as normal. Producer and screenwriter Jhonny Hendrix Hinestroza's directorial debut premiered at Berlin International Film Festival 2012.

Imagine

Andrzej Jakimowski : 2012

Arriving in a prestigious clinic for the visually impaired in Lisbon, Ian, a new instructor, starts to teach spatial orientation to his international group of young blind patients. For him, the key to getting around and living a fulfilling life are the mind and the imagination, and not sensory perception. Whilst he is fully alert to the sounds and smells around him at all times, he also "imagines" the landscape through which he walks. This allows him to navigate his way around solid objects and to locate things. Self-confident and charismatic, Ian attempts to transfer his skill of walking without a cane to other patients and in particular Eva. Away from the cloistered institute, as they venture into the chaos and clamour of the streets of Lisbon, Ian reveals his ability to see more with his imagination than most people can see with their eyes. However, his unusual teaching methods, although successful, are not only challenging, but also dangerous. Captivating and mesmerising, the film captures in the most extraordinary manner its characters' experience and the very sense of what it feels like to walk unassisted. Winner of the prize for Best Director at Warsaw Film Festival 2012.

Forgotten

Alex Schmidt : 2012
Du hast es versprochen

During their childhood, Hanna and Clarissa were best friends. They spent every vacation together with their parents in an old summer house on a small island. Shortly after Hanna's ninth birthday they suddenly lost touch and only meet again unexpectedly now, 25 years later. The two women pick up their friendship where they left off and spontaneously decide to spend a few days on the island. Accompanied by Hanna's 7-year-old daughter Lea, they return to the place where they spent their childhood. When Hanna learns that Maria, a playmate of hers from the island's village, disappeared as a child and was never seen or heard from again, she begins to search the past. Something horrible must have happened on the island back then. But the closer Hanna gets to the dark secret, the more threatening life becomes for her and her daughter, and the greater the menace. The truth that comes to light is more terrible and horrifying than Hanna could ever have imagined. Alex Schmidt's sophisticated mystery thriller, her debut feature, premiered at La Biennale di Venezia 2012.

Three Sisters

Wang Bing : 2012
San zimei

Three sisters, between four and ten years old, live alone in a small village family house in the high mountains of Yunnan Province. Their parents are nowhere to be seen. The mother has been missing for a long time, the father works in a city several hundred kilometres away. The three little girls spend their days working in the fields or wandering in the village. When their aunt finds it difficult to provide food for the sisters, the father returns to the village. He has come to take them with him to the city but he then agrees to leave the eldest, Ying, under the supervision of her grandfather. She alone remains in the open fields and in the darkness of her adobe house. Around her the beauty of the landscape is in stark contrast to the hard life of the child: the poverty, the monotonous daily routine, the harsh climate and the lack of human warmth. The film also tells of a village left behind by industrialisation. Now a place where only the very old and the very young live in isolation, while everyone else seeks their fortune in the city. Amidst China's economic rise, the film presents the reality of the forgotten lives of those who remain. Wang Bing's documentary won the Orizzonti award for Best Film at La Biennale di Venezia 2012.