Beira-Mar

Filipe Matzembacher & Marcio Reolon : 2015
Seashore

Having been good friends for years, Martin and Tomaz now find themselves on the cusp of adulthood. Martin's father sends his son to southern Brazil, where the family is from, to sort out an inheritance matter. Tomaz accompanies him there. For both of them, the brief excursion to the coastal town becomes a journey into themselves. It's not just the sea that nearly reaches the doors of the country house which exerts a slow, yet relentless pull on them – the two friends have the same effect on one other. Wandering through the borderlands between love and friendship, exploring sexual orientation and personal identity, this richly atmospheric, autobiographically inspired film follows its two main characters on a weekend that will change their relationship forever. Filipe Matzembacher and Marcio Reolon's feature debut premiered in the Forum section at Berlin International Film Festival 2015.

45 Years

Andrew Haigh : 2015

Married for 45 years, without children, Kate and Geoff Mercer are poised to celebrate their wedding anniversary with a party, when Geoff receives a letter that shakes both of them. The letter, from Switzerland, informs him of the discovery of the body of Katya, his girlfriend before Kate, who died falling into a fissure in a glacier when the couple were on a walking holiday in 1962. Now, finally, her body has been found, intact, frozen in ice and time. Geoff tells Kate that he was regarded as Katya's next-of-kin, since they had been pretending to be married. Though Kate continues to prepare for the party, and the couple shares some romantic excitement about it, she becomes increasingly disturbed by Geoff's preoccupation with Katya, and with the idea of this woman eternally preserved in youth, in this time before. Geoff reminisces at length about his carefree time with his first love; seeks out photographs of her in the attic; and complains bitterly about the way his contemporaries and ex-colleagues have aged. Under Kate's questioning, he states that he would have married Katya had she lived. While Geoff is at a work lunch, Kate searches the attic and finds slides of Katya, which reveal that she was pregnant at the time of her death. As the celebrations grow closer, Kate feels more and more like a stranger in her own life, as if 45 years of married life pale in comparison to the five years before it. The story of two people who, caught up in unexpected emotions, are forced to bolster themselves against unfamiliar feelings and, in doing so, have the rug pulled out from under their feet. Andrew Haigh's third feature was winner of two Silver Bears for Best Actor and Best Actress when it premiered in competition at Berlin International Film Festival 2015.

14+

Andrei Zaitsev : 2015

Alex glides his mouse tenderly over online images of Vika. He has been smitten ever since he saw her with her friends and cannot get her out of his head. Now he has found Vika's profile online and has learned a lot about her. Vika has no idea about any of this. She is beyond Alex's reach because her school and block of flats are enemy territory for him. Alex nonetheless sneaks into a disco at her school and plucks up the courage to ask her to dance. Incensed by the intruder, the other boys give Alex a beating. As bad as it was, the good thing is that, upset by what has happened, Vika gets in touch with Alex and tentatively reciprocates his feelings. Their secret trysts give them a chance to get close, haltingly at first, for every gesture, sentence and touch is new and exciting to them. They are afraid to do something wrong and yet everything they do is right. A turbulent, moving tale of first love set in a vast suburban conglomeration of tower blocks. Andrei Zaitsev's second feature premiered in the Generation 14plus section at Berlin International Film Festival 2015.

Al-wadi

Ghassan Salhab : 2014
The Valley

Following a car accident on a lone mountain road, a middle-aged man loses his memory. Drenched in blood, he continues to walk along the deserted path. Further down the road, he encounters people with engine trouble and helps them get their car running again. They are reluctant to leave him stranded, so they take him home to their large estate in the Beqaa Valley, where their secret business is the drugs they manufacture in a laboratory on the closely guarded property. The presence of this nameless stranger has consequences for the clandestine community. A latent sense of danger pervades the vast swathes of sublime landscape. A catastrophe looms. Tensions also rise in the cramped quarters of the house. The identity of the man without a past becomes an increasing issue as doubts regarding his amnesia rear their head. Is he a doctor or a mechanic? An angel or a spy? Like a blank page, he lends himself to fantasies of all kinds and ultimately becomes a prisoner. Ghassan Salhab's feature premiered at Toronto International Film Festival 2014, and had its European premiere in the Forum section at Berlin International Film Festival 2015.

Stories of Our Lives

Jim Chuchu : 2014

Members of the multi-disciplinary art collective The NEST spent several months travelling in Kenya collecting stories of young LGBTI people – stories about their experiences and their lives in a country that is still extremely homophobic. Based on countless anonymous interviews, they developed five screenplays for short films which provide an insight into the current situation and the problems of these sexually marginalised young people. The episodes, which address topics such as the search for identity and self-determination, enforced heterosexualisation and the struggle for acceptance, have one thing in common: they all describe the need for love and the fear of fulfilling this love openly. Time and again, their fears prompt the question: is it better to hide away, resign oneself to the situation and leave the country, or to stay and fight openly for sexual diversity? In spite of the film being banned from public screenings in Kenya, the members of The NEST have opted for the latter and are determined to continue their struggle for recognition. Their feature debut premiered at Toronto International Film Festival 2014, and won the Teddy Awards Special Jury Award at its European premiere in the Panorama section at Berlin International Film Festival 2015.

Pepe Mujica – Lessons from the Flowerbed

Heidi Specogna : 2014
Pepe Mujica – Lektionen eines Erdklumpens

Pepe Mujica has become famous for being the "world's poorest president". The former guerrilla fighter and flower grower is currently considered one of the most charismatic politicians of Latin America. Old and young believe in him thanks to his humble lifestyle and his unconventional manners, where political protocol is concerned. His political visions, among them his sensational regulation of the marihuana market, have created international interest. Since the spring of 2010, Uruguay has been led by a president who, as a young man, revolted against the power of the state he now heads with both words and arms. Pepe Mujica was a founding member of the urban guerrilla group Tupamaros, which fought the state in the repressive Uruguay of the 1970s. During the dictatorship he spent many years in prison, during which he was also tortured – a time that formed, but did not break him. Over the course of many years, the filmmakers visited Pepe Mujica, who is now 80, over and over again, documenting his eventful existence with their camera. In private meetings and conversations on his farm, which he still runs with his companion Lucía Topolansky, he grants them an insightful glimpse into his unusual beliefs and visions. Heidi Specogna's documentary premiered at International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam 2014, and screened in the LOLA at Berlinale section at Berlin International Film Festival 2015.

Flocken

Beata Gårdeler : 2015
Flocking

The people who live in this tiny village in northern Sweden still go to church. Days may be cold and grey here but everyone knows everyone and they stick together. That might sound idyllic and comforting, but could also be uncomfortably intimate. 14-year-old Jennifer accuses one of her fellow pupils at school of having raped her. The police and judiciary are handling the case in a sober manner but the locals refuse to believe anything like this could happen in their village. The boy's mother forces Jennifer and her son into a conciliatory embrace, but afterwards unleashes a clamour of outrage online. Before long, the collective fury of the entire village is aimed not at the accused boy but at Jennifer, whose testimony they believe has fouled their nest. Even the vicar, Jennifer's friends and her own sister turn against her. Now the villagers have Jennifer's whole family in their sights – a nightmare for the girl and the few people who still stand by her. Beata Gårdeler's second feature was awarded the Crystal Bear for Best Film by the Youth Jury when it premiered in the Generation 14plus section at Berlin International Film Festival 2015.

Sibylle

Michael Krummenacher : 2015
Like a Cast Shadow

Sibylle Froebisch is a pragmatic architect. At university she met the man who later became her husband, she founded a company with him and they had two sons. And yet – or perhaps therefore – something vague is bothering her. Not even on an Italian holiday with her family does she manage to find some peace and enjoy a lie-in. An ominous foreboding of something bad on the horizon has crept into her neatly ordered world. In Italy, Sibylle witnesses the suicide of a woman of her age. Afterwards, nothing is the same. Something inside of her has been set in motion that seems to endanger everything which she has defined herself by. Back in Munich, she futilely tries to suppress the incident and feels increasingly alienated from her family. More and more parallels emerge between the fate of the dead woman and Sibylle's own life. More and more, her world seems out of joint. When Sibylle finally appears to get to the bottom of the dead woman's secret, it is almost too late to stop the transformation she herself is undergoing. Michael Krummenacher's second feature premiered in the Perspektive Deutsches Kino section at Berlin International Film Festival 2015.

Mar

Dominga Sotomayor : 2014

January 2014 on the Argentine coast. Martín and his girlfriend Eli are on holiday in Villa Gesell, a beach resort south of Buenos Aires. The sun is scorching. They read horoscopes, slurp maté, play guitar, and cool off in the ocean and the resort pool. The conversations on the beach and at dinner revolve around life and how it progresses. Nights are punctuated by dogs barking on the street and the piercing sirens of automobile alarms. This 30-something urban couple's relationship seems troubled and on the verge of falling apart. The sudden appearance of Martín's mother does not ease the tension, but just intensifies the distance between the two of them. Based on the intimate portrait of a relationship and family configuration, the film creates a subtle picture of a society in the elusive grip of unconsciousness. Dominga Sotomayor's second feature premiered at Valdivia International Film Festival 2014, and had its international premiere in the Forum section at Berlin International Film Festival 2015.

The Old Man and the Bird

Dennis Stein-Schomburg : 2015

Snowflakes drift through the forest. An old man, as old as the hills, lives alone in a remote hut. Now in the winter of his life, he has survived his great love. The winter is so cold that he can barely move his limbs. When a robin flies against his window and falls to the ground the old man first has to pause for thought. Then he pushes open the heavy front door and stomps outside to help the bird. Out in the deep snow his strength begins to fail him. But no sooner does he take the tender creature in his hands than a change comes over him. Life radiates in luminous colours and returns to the old man's hut. As it used to. Or is this just one last memory? A rumination on love, on bidding farewell and the cycle of life. Dennis Stein-Schomburg's animated short premiered in the Generation 14plus section at Berlin International Film Festival 2015.

Nefesim kesilene kadar

Emine Emel Balcı : 2015
Until I Lose My Breath

Serap, a young woman whose mother is no longer around, works in a textile factory in İstanbul. She longs for her father, a lorry driver, to finally make good on his promise and rent a flat for the two of them. In the meantime, she lives with her sister and her husband. She does everything she can to make sure her wish comes true, saving her wages for her father and allowing herself nothing. Her stubborn perseverance almost reverses the standard parent-child relationship. The daughter is the one who cares and provides, looking after her father and giving him money. She chooses to ignore the fact that he always comes up with new excuses and lies and rejects the more realistic picture that her sister paints of him. A piercing tale of a father and daughter that is also about the mixed set of feelings of longing, neediness, lies, disappointment, illusion and anger that flow together in existential human relationships. Emine Emel Balcı's feature debut premiered in the Forum section at Berlin International Film Festival 2015.

Mina Walking

Yosef Baraki : 2015

Dying to learn, energetic and rebellious, it is hard to believe just how much young Mina from Kabul manages to achieve in a country where men call all the shots and life is full of challenges. Her father is a useless junkie, her grandfather senile and helpless and her mother was killed by the Taliban. She fetches water and cooks their meals. She sews, washes clothes and sells cheap trinkets on the street for a pittance. Relying on Mina's income to fuel his addiction and her presence to nurse her grandfather, Omar, Mina's father forbids her to attend school. But Mina is an impulsive twelve-year-old and witnessing the country's nascent emancipation inspires her to neglect her father's orders and secretly attend classes in her local school. Over the course of the seven days that lead up to Afghanistan's first democratic transfer of power, Mina's decision to secretly educate herself instead of looking after her grandfather sets in motion a chain of events that change her life forever. Shot on Kabul's turbulent streets in a quasi-documentary style, the film portrays the severity of life in this war-torn country. Yosef Baraki's feature debut premiered in the Generation 14plus section at Berlin International Film Festival 2015.

Mariposa

Marco Berger : 2015
Butterfly

A butterfly, a creature symbolising rebirth and a new beginning, epitomises Romina's and Germán's world, a world that consists of two parallel realities. In one of them they grow up as siblings who desire each other and try to give shape to their love without sexual fulfilment; in the other they are a young man and woman who form an awkward friendship instead of succumbing to their feelings for each other. Germán finds himself in a discordant relationship with Mariela. Mariela's brother is interested in Bruno. Bruno is with Romina, but wants to be with Germán. Playfully alternating between these two realities, the lovers find themselves drawn into ever new couplings in order to explore their intuitive feelings – cautiously, but at the same time prepared to lose everything. Marco Berger's feature premiered in the Panorama section at Berlin International Film Festival 2015.

Gtsngbo

Sonthar Gyal : 2015
River

The day her father drunkenly crashes his motorbike is when young Yangchan begins to realise that something is wrong with him. In her village on the Tibetan steppe people cannot understand why he does not go to visit her sick grandfather. The old man lives in a cave; he went there to meditate, and is regarded as a holy man. Everyone has been on a pilgrimage to see him. Except her dad, who stubbornly refuses. For this reason people consider him a bad person and the boys in the village make sure that Yangchan knows it. Her mum is pregnant with the next child and just wants some peace but her dad has his reasons for his irreconcilable stance. The family moves their tent to pastures further afield, but the conflict pursues them. Yangchan thinks that nobody understands her. And she does not like the way her mum's belly is swelling either. She finds love and affection in the shape of an orphaned lamb that she tenderly takes care of and raises. But their problems remain unsolved. Told entirely from the girl's point of view, a moving story about her father's deep emotional wound that reignites after many years and pushes the whole family to the edge of a precipice. Sonthar Gyal's second feature premiered in the Generation Kplus section at Berlin International Film Festival 2015.

Lo que lleva el río

Mario Crespo : 2014
Gone with the River

For Dauna, life on the Orinoco Delta cultivated a strong curiosity for what lay beyond the river. Her natural talent for language and learning was always nurtured by her family and her mentor, Father Julio. Tarcisio, her childhood sweetheart, also patiently supports her, but doesn't know how to deal with social pressure in the Warao community. Dauna is sure of her love for Tarcisio but fears he will succumb to what tradition dictates, thwarting her ambition for academic development. She has to face the choice between living a frustrated life beside him or devote herself fully to her vocation, even at the risk of facing serious consequences. The ever-present sepia river symbolises the divergence and convergence experienced throughout this sensitive representation of culture as a live organism in need of constant evolution. Mario Crespo's feature had its international premiere in the NATIVe – Indigenous Cinema section at Berlin International Film Festival 2015.

Bube Stur

Moritz Krämer : 2015
Stubborn Boy

Hanna, halfway between a girl and a woman, has just got out of prison. She journeys a long way to Uwe's farm deep in the Black Forest to complete her community service. Uwe is taciturn and more often than not remains silent when he really should say something: to Hanna, this strange temporary helper from the big city; to his wife Michaela; to his few old friends and also to the bank which is seeking to call in the vital loan which, since the milk strike, he can no longer service. Conversely, Hanna makes no secret of how out of place she feels in the village with these stubborn farmers in this wasteland – almost as uncomfortable as she is in her own skin. Time and again she sneaks away from the farm and travels to the neighbouring small town where, with obsessive energy, she tries to get close to a family with a foster child. But when Uwe finally kicks Hanna out of the house, which actually no longer belongs to him, she suddenly does everything she can to stay. Her surroundings have changed her and the original reason which brought her to this godforsaken place slowly fades into the background. Moritz Krämer's feature debut premiered in the Perspektive Deutsches Kino section at Berlin International Film Festival 2015.

Zurich

Sacha Polak : 2015

When Boris, a lorry driver and father of their daughter Pien, is killed in an accident, Nina discovers that he had been leading a double life during their ten-year relationship. He was married to another woman and had three children with her. The shock of both the sudden loss and his betrayal totally derails the young woman, their life together transformed into a lie. Nina goes to ground in the anonymous world of motorways and service stations, and once again, finds herself in a long-distance lorry driver's bed. She spends a couple of days with him, he even introduces her to his children, before she ends up back on the road, restless and constantly on the move to avoid ever having to look back. Sacha Polak's second feature won the CICAE Art Cinema Award when it premiered in the Forum section at Berlin International Film Festival 2015.

Dari Marusan

Takahashi Izumi : 2014

Traditional Japanese wooden Daruma dolls have no ears. At school, hearing-impaired Dari's classmates gave her the nickname 'Dari Marusan' in reference to such dolls. Whilst Dari has now adopted the name as her own, she hasn't got over the hurt. Yoshikawa is a severely traumatised man who keeps his distance from other people and thinks he has severed all links to the past. He secludes himself from the feeling of regret for an act he committed towards a friend. Dari works for an agency that tracks down missing pets, and is given the assignment of finding the parrot that Yoshikawa lost two years previously. When the sensitive Dari and the gruff, inconsiderate Yoshikawa meet, old wounds resurface for the both of them. She will have to figure out what her client has really lost and find her own dignity in the process. Takahashi Izumi's feature premiered at Tokyo FILMeX 2014, and had its European premiere in the Forum section at Berlin International Film Festival 2015.

Chaiki

Ella Manzheeva : 2015
The Gulls

Elza lives in a small town in the Republic of Kalmykia on the Caspian Sea. Another year comes to an end, it's cold and the steppe is covered in a thin layer of snow. When her husband, who makes a living from illegal fishing, asks her one night what she did during the day, she lies. She wasn't at her mother's, but at the bus stop. She thought of leaving – to find out what it might be to escape the infinite expanse of her dreary small world. But she didn't dare; instead she stays and withdraws into herself, unconcerned by who might see. One day, her husband doesn't return from a dangerous boat trip. It is said that a fisherman only returns if he has a woman waiting for him and that seagulls are the souls of the missing. At the start of a somewhat unplanned pregnancy, widowed and alone, Elza wanders ever further through the city, plotting a path between tradition and the contemporary until she's no longer on familiar ground. Ella Manzheeva's feature debut premiered in the Forum section at Berlin International Film Festival 2015.

La casa más grande del mundo

Ana V Bojórquez & Lucía Carreras : 2015
The Greatest House in the World

Every morning the herd has to be taken out to graze in the mountains and then brought home again at night. Every day Rocío, a wistful Mayan girl living in the Guatemalan highlands, accompanies her pregnant mother while she tends the sheep. When her mother goes into premature labour, Rocío has to tend the sheep on her own. She is really too young for the job but there is no other way. As ever, Rocío whiles away the time with a friend, building the largest houses in the world with little stones. And then, all of a sudden it has happened: one sheep – the smallest – is missing. Her friend cannot help in the search for long because she has to take her own animals back home. Left on her own, Rocío guides her flock through the rugged mountains in pursuit of the lost lamb. When she finally finds it, she loses the rest of the herd. Things could not get worse. Night begins to fall. What should she do? As the fog rises she has to make her way over a swaying rope bridge and into unfamiliar territory. Left to fend for herself, Rocío manages to rise above herself and conquer her fears. Poetically, we come full circle, as one girl grows up and another enters the world. Ana V Bojórquez and Lucía Carreras's collaborative feature debut premiered in the Generation Kplus section at Berlin International Film Festival 2015.