Verano

José Luis Torres Leiva : 2011
Summertime

During one hot summer day, little things happen to the visitors and workers of an old thermal resort in the mountains of southern Chile. They experience the long vacation hours in nature, sleeping in the sun, learning how to drive, cleaning the house, kissing for the first time, swimming at night or just walking and talking, while the day slowly unravels into small fragments of happiness and discovery. To wander in the forest, the joy of losing oneself, to not belong to any place. The film is a mosaic filled with minor everyday occurrences and moving observations about the certainties and uncertainties of love, family and other relationships. It is a story that walks a thin line between beauty and desperation. A story that lives in the interior of the characters but also on the exterior of what surrounds them. The film premiered in the Orizzonti section at La Biennale di Venezia 2011.

Iceberg

Gabriel Velázquez : 2011

The tip of the iceberg only shows a fraction of a larger picture. The same applies to the emotions of the teenagers in this subdued coming-of-age film. Jean-Jacques Rousseau commented: "Adolescence is like a second birth. In the first a child is born, in the second, a man or a woman. And it's always painful". We follow several teenagers during a cold winter in a small town by the river. 13-year-old Mauri is mourning his father who died in an accident. Rebecca, 12, tries to survive during her first year at boarding school, in the belief that her parents don't care about her. And two boys aged 17 and 18 lead an apparently carefree life in a small hut by the river. Little is said in this fragile, delicate and beautifully filmed drama, but the feelings of these struggling children are revealing. Sometimes their stories brush against each other, but all are bearing a hidden trauma, wrestling with their own demons. The film won a Special Mention at Gijón International Film Festival 2011.

Khalifah

Nurman Hakim : 2011

Khalifah is twenty-three and works at a hair salon in Jakarta. She agrees to an arranged marriage to a successful businessman, Rasyid, since the marriage is beneficial for the financial situation of her family. She soon realises, however, that her husband is strongly religious and expects her to wear the niqāb in public which draws much attention and negative reaction. She cannot work with the niqāb on and cannot be seen by other men with it off. Sometimes she is insulted on the street by passers-by and once is even accused of being a terrorist. However, the veil also has a positive effect and Khalifah enjoys the freedom from the stares of men. Even the teenage boys on the street corner who always whistled after her ignore her now. But when her husband is killed and the police ask her to identify his body, she meets Rasyid's other wife and child, of whom she had no knowledge. With her husband dead and his double life revealed, leaving her alone and pregnant, Khalifah tries to find her own standing towards the veil. A tale of one woman's strength in facing discrimination, love and betrayal.

Wajma (An Afghan Love Story)

Barmak Akram : 2012

A young man in Kabul seduces a girl. She gives him her virginity, convinced that he will marry her. When she tells him that she is pregnant, he hesitates, he moves backwards, he questions having taken her virginity. Is it due to a lack of experience? Is he just a coward? He pretends that he is not certain he can be the father. Then another story begins, unexpected and scaring. It's like a veil that tears. The girl's father arrives and a timeless, archaic violence erupts, old terrors reappear that could lead to a crime, and even to a sacrifice. Barmak Akram's award-winning second feature premiered at Sundance Film Festival 2013.

She Sings

Caroline Sascha Cogez & Dechen Roder : 2012

19-year-old Dechen lives with her mother and little brother in Thimphu. She dreams of becoming a successful singer and is selected to be a contestant in the Bhutan TV singing contest Druk Super Star. As the competition progresses, Dechen explores the story of her beloved late grandmother who was a great singer. But in the search for her own identity, Dechen uncovers the dark history of her family in which blessings and curses stand side by side. The film challenges the limits of documentary language, using a poetic visual approach that leads us into the inner life of a young girl, alienated by her own mythical culture. It is the first experimental documentary ever made in the formerly secluded country in the midst of the Himalaya. Bhutan was the last country in the world to allow television in 1999 and has only in the past decade established its own film industry. Young Dechen's journey from childhood to adulthood reflects the transition of the old world into a new and modern world.

The Sound of Old Rooms

Sandeep Ray : 2012
Kokkho-Poth

Kolkata, 2011. Amidst the restless mood of the family's birthday celebrations, we are thrown back to the student years of the ambitious and promising communist poet Sarthak Roychowdhury. As a young idealist and bon vivant, he works to refine his empathy for the social problems of his nation, his altruistic concern for living beings, and his revolutionary consciousness. The past is woven together from memories, dilemmas, and basic human fears, concerns and joys. The echoes of old rooms resonate with a revolutionary ethos, artistic elitism, and the inability to take care of oneself. Shot over 20 years, this exquisite Bengali documentary shows Sarthak's struggles to keep the poetry in him alive even as he is consumed by the daily business of living – teaching, marrying, raising a son, and dealing with a constantly nagging but affectionate mother. Remarkable for the way in which it celebrates the ordinary, the film evokes an amazing intimacy and empathy with the poet, his family, publisher, students and teacher, as well as the lively addas and dark alleys of Kolkata.

Diaz: Don't Clean Up This Blood

Daniele Vicari : 2012

The G8 summit in July 2001 was drawing to a close. At the Diaz Pascoli School in Genova, which had been set up as a social forum for journalists, the young people were in good spirits, in spite of the violent clashes with the police that had occurred during the previous days. As had been the case in other countries during the same year, here too the anti-globalisation protests had been met with heavy police presence. Yet nothing was to prepare the temporary inhabitants of the Diaz school – most of them young men and women from all over Europe – for what was to happen. Shortly after midnight, the anti-riot police stormed the school and brutally attacked these young people for two hours until almost all of them ended up in hospital and were later taken to a detention centre where they suffered shameless humiliation and abuse following arrests. To justify their actions, the police planted Molotov cocktails in the building. By the end of the G8 summit, one individual had lost his life. Daniele Vicari places young, likable demonstrators, who just wanted a slightly more humane world, in opposition to a horde of brutality-obsessed policemen, who bloodily beat and remorselessly interrogated dozens of innocent people. The film depicts the injustice of one night with maximum transparency.

Mai morire

Enrique Rivero : 2012

Chayo returns to Xochimilco, her hometown, to care for her elderly mother who is on the verge of death. Of native Mexican descent, Chayo is a woman who radiates inner calm but also seems to be hiding some secret sadness. We see her being punted down one of Xochimilco's waterways to the country shack where her ageing and ailing mother lives with two young girls and their father. Chayo is the girls' mother, and the man her husband. But Chayo is a woman of exceptional courage and subtle sensibility who dares to refuse to stay bound in a life that was never hers. Surrounded by love and sublime beauty, she has to give up something that as a woman and mother is inalienable. That will be the price of her freedom. Focusing on the existential crisis of a strong and grounded woman who gives little outward sign of her overwhelming inner turmoil, Enrique Rivero's second feature premiered in competition at Rome Film Festival 2012.

Nosilatiaj. La Belleza

Daniela Seggiaro : 2012
Beauty

Sixteen-year-old Yolanda, who belongs to the Argentinean Wichí ethnic group, lives with a white family, far from her people. She tells her story in her native language, Wichí Lhämtes. From her culture, Yolanda treasures her childhood memories in the native community, and in particular, values her thick black hair that cascades down to her hips, a symbol of her ethnic origin. Now she works as a maid in Sara's house, who is determined to throw an extravagant Quinceañera, one that the entire village will never forget, for her daughter Antonella. The garden, the food and the dress, everything needs to be perfect. If only Antonella had naturally beautiful hair like Yola's. When her long hair is then cut off for the daughter to wear as a decorative braid at her party, Yolanda is sick with sadness. The event destroys her cultural ties with the "criollo" world and will define her destiny forever. Documentary filmmaker Daniela Seggiaro's first feature transforms everyday life into a powerful allegory that shows how the colonisers' descendants totally fail to understand the indigenous peoples, even to the point of denying their existence. Her film premiered at Berlin International Film Festival 2012.

House with a Turret

Eva Neymann : 2012
Dom s bashenkoy

An eight-year-old boy travels with his mother to visit his grandfather during wartime. The mother, who is lying on the floor in a crowded freight car, has typhus and her condition is getting worse. They are forced to abandon the train in a nameless town where she is placed on a stretcher and four men take her to hospital. In this war-torn setting, surrounded by adults preoccupied with their own survival, the boy must shoulder a man's responsibility, take care of his baggage and get a telegram sent to his grandfather, no matter what the cost. Through a child's eyes, we see a country in chaos, a society exhausted by the interminable war and persistent food shortages, grotesque figures on the verge of losing their humanity and families torn apart by the war. Placing his trust in strangers, he is soon aboard a train. The beautiful wintry landscapes glimpsed from the window reflect the steely ice in the souls of people fighting for their survival. Eva Neymann's emotionally charged and captivating feature won the East of the West Award at Karlovy Vary International Film Festival 2012.

The Patience Stone

Atiq Rahimi : 2012
Syngué sabour

A beautiful Afghan woman tends to her fighter husband in their bomb-shelled bedroom. He is comatose, a bullet wound in his neck. She protects her two daughters from the ongoing guerilla fighting that rages outside whilst she clings desperately to the hope that one day he will wake up and recover consciousness. In Persian mythology, Syngué sabour is a magical stone to which one tells one's misfortunes and miseries, everything that one does not tell anyone else. The stone absorbs all these secrets like a sponge until one day it bursts. And then one is freed. Thus, the convalescent husband becomes the silent confidant as the wife starts a monologue about her personal story, the story of men and society's oppression against women. Finally able to speak openly for the first time, she reveals her deepest secrets and desires. Appearances, however, are not what they seem. Gradually, the woman turns the tables on the patriarchal society she has been born into and uses her husband's condition to her advantage, confounding the various hostile men around her.

For Ellen

So Yong Kim : 2012

Joby Taylor plays in a rock band and is totally dedicated to his art. But his musical ambitions, as well as his private life, are on the point of collapse. He's in the midst of divorce proceedings when he learns that his incompetent lawyer has failed to ensure him legal access to his six-year-old daughter Ellen. Whilst he has never had a role in her life, he realises that he is not yet ready to say goodbye to this part of his life. Joby negotiates a visit with his daughter to explore whether he is able to walk away from his child, and whether it might be too late for reconciliation. Again and again Joby finds himself in his car, driving through a vast snow-covered landscape. This boundless white expanse becomes a screen on to which his uncertainty and indecision is projected as he sets off on a journey into a past that never actually happened. Using the stark beauty and vast farmlands of an American winter as its backdrop, the film charts Joby's emotional journey as he realises what he has lost – and what, if anything, can still be saved. The film premiered at Berlin International Film Festival 2012.

La scoperta dell'alba

Susanna Nicchiarelli : 2012
Discovery at Dawn

Rome, 1981. With seven shots from a revolver, two members of the Red Brigade gun down Professor Mario Tessandori in the university courtyard, in plain sight. He dies in the arms of his friend and colleague Lucio Astengo. A few weeks later, Lucio Astengo himself disappears. It is now 2011. Caterina and Barbara Astengo, who were six and twelve years old when their father vanished, have put their family's beach home – now abandoned for some time – up for sale. The house is full of memories of a childhood interrupted by their father's disappearance, of a family broken and never put back together. In one corner, a 1970s rotary dial telephone is still plugged in to the wall, though the line has been disconnected for years. Caterina feeling nostalgic at the sight of the old phone, lifts the receiver and inexplicably hears a dial tone. She tries dialling a few numbers, but the phone remains silent. Then, almost as a game, she tries the number of their home in the city thirty years earlier. This time, she hears ringing and a child's voice unexpectedly answers. It is herself, twelve years old, one week before her father's disappearance. The film premiered in the Prospettive Italia section at Rome Film Festival 2012.

Ginger & Rosa

Sally Potter : 2012

London in 1962 and two teenage girls, Ginger and Rosa, are inseparable. They play truant together, discuss religion, politics and hairstyles, and dream of lives bigger than their mothers' frustrated domesticity. Ginger fears annihilation and is preoccupied with the Cold War and the mounting threat of nuclear devastation. Rosa is defiant and her revolution is sexual, a form of protest that will irrevocably impact on their families. The left-leaning adults, Ginger's carefree bohemian father, her frustrated mother and her mother's politically active friends all give lessons on freedom and responsibility that prove flawed and hypocritical when turbulent reality encroaches on idealism. But as the Cold War meets the sexual revolution, and the threat of nuclear holocaust escalates, the lifelong friendship of the two girls is shattered by the clash of desire and the determination to survive. Drawn from her own memories, Sally Potter's drama of teenage friendship overshadowed by the Cuban missile crisis is an evocative and beautifully shot portrait of post-war Britain.

Pénélope

Claire Doyon : 2012

Mother of an autistic little girl, director Claire Doyon decides to try to find a way to make her child feel better by undertaking a long journey. They leave Paris to reach the Mongolian steppes in their journey to find a shaman with healing powers. The city which only emphasised the child's suffocating feeling gives way to a huge space in which her movements, although still with signs of pain, or apnoea, suddenly take another dimension. Going up high and beyond, they journey towards another concept of disease and medicine, towards a different way of travelling and meeting the unknown. Pénélope is a great adventuress, a positive heroine who faces obstacles, overcoming her own limitations for the pleasure of having adventures and meeting people. The immense open spaces finally give the girl a chance to find her dimension in the landscape, even with the uncertainty of her movements and the crises typical of her condition. The trip therefore becomes a way to disperse bits of malaise in those unfamiliar skies, and to imagine a nomadic life that never lets you stop. This prize-winning documentary premiered at Marseille International Film Festival 2012.

Hemel

Sacha Polak : 2012

Hemel changes her sexual partners at an even quicker pace than her father Gijs changes his girlfriends. Since the death of the mother, the father and daughter have had an unusually close, at times even overly intimate relationship which tolerates no real commitment in their respective affairs. When Gijs dumps his girlfriend Emma at a party, Hemel's "secret" triumph is written all over her face. She is thus all the more shaken when her father falls in love with Sophie for real, whom Hemel snidely refers to as "her new mother" and who is now to move in with them. Tinged with empathy and sadness, the film takes a painfully precise look at the life of a troubled young woman who uses her sexuality to provoke in a scathingly aggressive manner but ends up doing the most damage to herself. Sacha Polak's debut feature won the FIPRESCI Prize at Berlin International Film Festival 2012.

Cosimo e Nicole

Francesco Amato : 2012
Cosimo and Nicole

Cosimo is Italian, Nicole is French. They meet in Genova, during the G8 protests. It takes one look for them to fall in love and they have never been apart since. Wanderers by nature, their home is Europe and music is their passion. They decide to return to Genova where they begin working for Paul, a concert promoter whom Cosimo knew back in the bloody demonstrations of July 2001. Everything seems to be going well until an illegal immigrant, working on the assembly of a stage, is involved in a tragic accident which threatens to disrupt the couple's love and forces a decision that will determine their future, changing their lives forever. A contemporary and authentic love story of two people who refuse to compromise with the cynicism and harshness of reality. Winner of the Prospettive Italia Award for Best Feature Film at Rome Film Festival 2012.

Beyond

Pernilla August : 2010
Svinalängorna

Leena, 34, has fought all her life to let go of her grief over her dark childhood. One morning just before Christmas, she receives a phone call from a hospital in her childhood hometown telling her that her mother is dying. Her parents, immigrants from Finland who never really felt at home in Sweden, lived their lives of devastating passion amidst alcohol addiction and violent quarrels, whilst Leena and her little brother tried to survive as best they could. For Leena, who has chosen to pursue normality at any cost, lying to herself and to others, this is her last chance to confront the dark world she comes from and belongs to. The news takes her on a journey to face her mother for the first time in her adult life – and a painful inner journey that forces her to recall and deal with her forgotten past to be able to move on. Winner of the International Film Critics' Week award at Venice Film Festival 2010.

Ostrovat

Kamen Kalev : 2011
The Island

Sophie and Daneel, both in their early thirties, are a close and passionate couple living in Paris. Sophie initiates a surprise journey to Bulgaria. Daneel explicitly refuses to go, but Sophie insists and finally convinces him to leave. When they arrive, Sophie discovers, to her astonishment, that Daneel was born there. After a few hours spent on the crowded beaches, Daneel leads Sophie to an almost abandoned island lost in the Black Sea. Once there, Daneel discovers pregnancy tests in Sophie's luggage. The heat and the strange few inhabitants soon alter their own behaviours, and the island slowly reveals hidden fears that question their love. To get through it all, they have to take a leap into the unknown. A challenging and provocative character study examining themes of interpersonal relations and self-discovery. Kamen Kalev's introspective and dream-like second feature premiered at the Quinzaine des Réalisateurs 2011 at Cannes.

Pulce non c'è

Giuseppe Bonito : 2012

Pulce, a nine-year-old non-verbal autistic girl, communicates continually even though she cannot speak. She listens to the tango, drinks only tamarind, loves panda teddy bears and pecorino cheese, and in between happiness and nocturnal meltdowns, lives the serene existence of an ordinary family life. On a day like any other, she is taken away from the family without any explanation, her father the victim of a monstrous accusation. Set in Torino and observed through the wandering, dreamy gaze of her thirteen-year-old sister, Giovanna, we enter the daily life of Pulce's abnormal family with its language devised for someone who can only speak through images; a family whose chaos is full of emergencies and love. Without rhetoric or pathos, we explore the clash between the adult world and that of children, between illness and normality, between the rigidity of institutions and emotional bonds, and the normality of a family facing the absurdities of Kafka-like bureaucracy. The film won the Special Jury Prize in the Alice nella Città section at Rome Film Festival 2012.