Call Me by Your Name

Luca Guadagnino : 2017

It's the hot, sun-drenched summer of 1983 and Elio is at his parents' country seat in northern Italy. The 17-year-old idles away the time listening to music, reading books and swimming until one day his father's new American assistant arrives at their large villa. Oliver is charming and, like Elio, has Jewish roots; he is also young, self-confident and good-looking. At first Elio is somewhat cold and distant towards the young man but before long the two begin going out together on excursions. Elio begins to make tentative overtures towards Oliver that become increasingly intimate – even if, as Oliver says, 'one can't talk about such things'. Amid the sun-drenched splendour of the setting, Elio and Oliver discover the heady beauty of awakening desire over the course of a summer that will alter their lives forever. A sensual and transcendent tale of first love. Luca Guadagnino's feature premiered at Sundance Film Festival 2017.

Berlin Syndrome

Cate Shortland : 2017

Australian backpacker Clare is wandering through Berlin's Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg with her stills camera. She's particularly fascinated by the old GDR buildings. She meets a friendly English teacher named Andi and they hit it off immediately. He shows her the allotments and the neighbourhood, and they end up in bed together. Something that begins as a romance takes an unexpectedly sinister turn when, in the morning – Andi has left for school – Clare tries to leave the otherwise empty old building and realises that she is locked in. At first she thinks this is a mistake, but she soon realises that she is a prisoner. Cut off from the rest of the world, Clare experiences terrifying weeks during which she vacillates between yielding to Andi's obsessions and trying to escape. Cate Shortland's feature premiered at Sundance Film Festival 2017.

The Road to Mandalay

Midi Z : 2016

The people-traffickers have a well-established route: from Burma into Thailand across the Mekong River at Tachileik; along quiet country roads; passing bribed police checkpoints and then into Bangkok, where the illegal migrants are on their own. Lianqing is one of five illegals who travel this route one summer night in 2013; along the way a fellow migrant called Guo is kind to her, and their fates later become entwined. By the standards of illegals, Lianqing does well: she finds 'underground' jobs, saves money and finds out how and where to buy faked identity papers. But Guo does less well. They are two people with contradictory personalities, however they seem to be bound by fate. Midi Z's feature was winner of the Fedeora Award for Best Film when it premiered in competition at Venice Days 2016.

Seed

Naomi Kawase : 2016

The girl was born amid rays of the divine light. Reaching out for a white seed, she begins to walk in the direction of the light shining on the earth. Emotions are transferred from objects to people and from people to the girl. The girl is more like a fairy, a mysterious creature. A boy offers her the gift of an apple, which she in turn gives to a homeless man, who proffers a soft piece of chiffon fabric in return. Moving like a tree that sways in the wind, the girl expresses a spirit that secretly runs through places and living things. Seed is the story of the journey this girl takes from the enchanted nature of Nara to the chaos of Tokyo, and the encounters she has along the way. Seed is also a sentimental portrait of Asian femininity, which Kawase depicts as "primitive, primal and erotic at the same time." The eleventh commission from designer Miu Miu as part of "Women's Tales", a series of short films by women who critically celebrate femininity in the 21st century. Naomi Kawase's film screened at Venice Days 2016.

Heartstone

Guðmundur Arnar Guðmundsson : 2016
Hjartasteinn

A remote fishing village in Iceland. Teenage boys Þór and Kristján experience a turbulent summer as one tries to win the heart of a girl while the other discovers new feelings toward his best friend. When summer ends and the harsh nature of Iceland takes back its rights, it's time to leave the playground and face adulthood. Heartstone is a personal story based on the director's experience growing up in a small fishing village. The core of the film is a strong, beautiful friendship between two boys, and how their environment and inner conflict drive them apart, before the bond they share manages to reunite them again. The village is a place full of contrasts, where kids discover how nature and people can be both amazingly beautiful and incredibly cruel. Guðmundur Arnar Guðmundsson's feature debut was winner of the Queer Lion when it premiered in competition at Venice Days 2016.

Sami Blood

Amanda Kernell : 2016
Sameblod

In 1930s Lapland, the 14-year-old indigenous Sámi girl, Elle Marja, leaves the wild ancestral grounds and the family's reindeer camp to attend a remote draconian boarding school along with her younger sister, Njenna. However, as the bright rural student pursues a denied education and an opportunity, wishing to integrate herself into the modern Swedish society, a painful visit by a team of anthropologists paired by a traumatic experience will be the harsh reminders of an ever-present brutal prejudice and a deep-seated racism. Uppsala promises a bright future in the bustling metropolis, but to pass as a regular Swedish teenager, Elle Marja will have to make a greater sacrifice than just changing her name. But, can an outcast sever ties and renounce her proud lineage so easily? Amanda Kernell's feature was winner of the Fedeora Award for Best Director of a Debut Film when it premiered in competition at Venice Days 2016.

The Idea of a Lake

Milagros Mumenthaler : 2016
La idea de un lago

Inés's father mysteriously disappeared in 1977. Decades later the 35-year old photographer is busy compiling a monograph on her oeuvre, a project that inexplicably leads her back to her youth during Argentinian dictator Jorge Videla's regime. The film opens with her contacting the national forensic lab: can they perhaps help her discover her father's fate? The last photo of him, taken at the lake near La Angostura, comes to her mind. After that she spent her summers without him in this mountainous region at her family's vacation home, far from Buenos Aires' oppressive heat. Cherished memories, such as playing hide and seek, lead to abstract interplays of light in Inés's imagination. Other flashbacks shed new light on her difficult relationship with her mother. Milagros Mumenthaler's second feature premiered in competition at Locarno Film Festival 2016.

La ragazza del mondo

Marco Danieli : 2016
Worldly Girl

Giulia's world is an ancient one, frozen in time, rigorously devoted to its sacred texts – a world that ruthlessly shuts out those who don't belong. Libero's world is that of everyone else, with their mistakes, their strategies for getting by and starting over, their ability to love unconditionally. When she meets Libero, Giulia realises her life can go in a different direction, of her own choosing. It's a pure, inescapable passion, an intense new season in their lives, and a decision that will cost Giulia her inclusion in the Jehovah's Witnesses community, and turn her into an outcast. Yet Libero will give her the greatest gift of love: the freedom to belong to the world outside, a shining new world full of future chances. Marco Danieli's feature debut premiered in competition at Venice Days 2016.

The Levelling

Hope Dickson Leach : 2016

Somerset, October 2014. When trainee veterinary surgeon Clover Catto receives a call telling her that her younger brother Harry is dead, she must return to her family farm and face the man she hasn't spoken to in years: her father Aubrey. She is shocked to discover her home changed forever by the devastating floods that destroyed the area six months earlier, and Aubrey a tormented shadow of his former self. As she learns what has been going on in her long absence she and her father forge a new understanding, but can it withstand the troubles that they face on the ravaged farm as well as the truth of what drove Harry to take his own life? As the funeral approaches, her discoveries send Clover on an emotional journey of reckoning – with her family, her childhood and herself. Hope Dickson Leach's feature debut premiered at Toronto International Film Festival 2016.

House of Others

Rusudan Glurjidze : 2016
Skhvisi sakhli

It's the beginning of the 1990s and Georgia is immersed in a civil war with the newly emerging state of Abkhazia. Those who managed to escape and now find themselves on the winning side are assigned houses previously occupied by the enemy. In the strange environment of other people's homes, with lingering memories of the horrors experienced by the original occupants, many of these new arrivals try to start afresh. But there's no sign of the contentment they had envisaged in their new surroundings; their old demons have come back to torment them. The director's own harrowing experiences, faithfully conveyed onscreen twenty years later, are rendered into a tale of rootlessness, where the loss of identity, of childhood and of the very meaning of life cannot negate the protagonists' awareness that life itself must still go on. Rusudan Glurjidze's film, her feature debut, was winner of the East of West Award when it premiered in competition at Karlovy Vary International Film Festival 2016.

Aloys

Tobias Nölle : 2016

A lonely private investigator is contacted by a mysterious woman who pulls him into a mind game known as 'telephone walking'. Fascinated by her voice, Aloys discovers an imaginary universe that allows him to break out of his isolation. 'We'll be in touch.' Aloys Adorn always speaks of himself in the first person plural. His unhealthily close personal and professional symbiosis with his father has made this taciturn, lone wolf of a private detective the man he is. In spite of his father's very recent death, the son sees fit to carry on as before, secretly observing and staying invisible. 'To film other people is my job', he says. 'To watch the films again is my hobby.' But a painful memory distracts Aloys from his ritualised daily routine of filming, watching the material and ordering 'one portion of rice to go' at the local Chinese, and he is discovered during his surveillance. Bewildered, he gets drunk, falls asleep on a bus and wakes up to discover that his camera and tapes have been stolen. The mysterious woman who calls him shortly afterwards seems to have something to do with this. Or does she simply want to break into his private world? Tobias Nölle's feature debut premiered in the Panorama section at Berlin International Film Festival 2016.

Strangled

Árpád Sopsits : 2016
A martfüi rém

Based on real-life events, the story is set in the provincial Hungary of the 1960s, when a series of atrocious murders shock the small town of Martfü. A psychotic killer is on the prowl, strangling young women. Amidst the media frenzy, an innocent man is accused and sentenced for the crimes he could not possibly have committed. A determined detective becomes obsessed with finding the real killer, whilst under pressure from his superiors who just want to see a man hang. Stuck in the suffocating social, political and psychological world of socialist Hungary, they find themselves entangled in a web of intricate conspiracy. The film premiered at Warsaw Film Festival 2016.

A Taste of Honey

Tony Richardson : 1961

Jo is an awkward, shy 17-year-old girl living with her promiscuous alcoholic mother, Helen. Desperately longing to simply be loved, when her mother's latest "romance" drives Jo out of their apartment, she spends the night with a black sailor on a brief shore leave. But when Jo's mother abandons her to move in with her latest lover, Jo finds a job and a room for herself, meets Geoffrey, a shy and lonely homosexual, and allows him to share her flat. When she discovers that she is pregnant with the sailor's child, Geoffrey, grateful for her friendship, looks after her, even offering marriage. Their brief taste of happiness is short-lived for Jo's fickle and domineering mother, her own romantic hopes dashed, appears on the scene, determined to drive the gentle Geoffrey from the flat and take over the care of her daughter, rearranging everything to suit herself. The film had its international premiere in competition at Festival de Cannes 1962, where it won Best Actor and Best Actress awards for Murray Melvin and Rita Tushingham.

El Sur

Víctor Erice : 1983
The South

Recalling her youth in 1950s northern Spain, Estrella revisits her relationship with her beloved father Agustin, raised in the south, and realises how little she knew of him and his secrets. Víctor Erice's delicate and mysterious film reveals his abiding fascination with memory and loss, missed opportunities and the links between private dreams and political realities. The performances, like the meticulously lit compositions and evocative soundtrack, are superb, exquisitely beautiful and profoundly moving. His second feature premiered in competition at Festival de Cannes 1983.

The Orphanage

Juan Antonio Bayona : 2007
El orfanato

Many years ago, Laura left the orphanage where she had spent her childhood. Now, thirty years later, she returns with her husband Carlos and her young son Simon, with a dream of restoring and reopening the long-abandoned orphanage as a home for disabled children. But the mysterious surroundings awaken Simon's imagination and the boy starts to spin a web of fantastic tales and not-so-innocent games. As events take a sinister turn, Laura slowly becomes convinced that something long-hidden and terrible is lurking in the old house, something waiting to emerge and inflict appalling damage on her family. The film premiered in the Séances Spéciales at the Semaine de la Critique at Festival de Cannes 2007.

Las plantas

Roberto Doveris : 2015
Plants

"Do you think plants could have souls? That we might even be able to talk to them?" For a whole summer, 17-year-old Florencia has to look after her older brother Sebastián, who is trapped in a persistent vegetative state. She feeds him, washes him, changes his diapers, and cuddles up to him in bed. From time to time she reads to him from a comic called Las Plantas, which is about plant souls that take control of human bodies at full moon. In these days of loneliness, she will wonder about her brother. Is he awake despite his condition or is he just a body without a soul? The plants become a metaphor for how Florencia feels at times about her own but perhaps even more so about Sebastián's body, as if it were possessed by another entity, while her brother's consciousness lies dormant. At night, Florencia makes contact with men on the internet. Images of her monotonous daily routine and dreamlike sequences of a vibrant fantasy world merge to create a fascinating tale of a young woman as she self-determines her own sexual awakening. Roberto Doveris' feature premiered at Valdivia International Film Festival 2015, and was awarded the Grand Prix of the Generation 14plus International Jury at Berlin International Film Festival 2016.

Mellow Mud

Renārs Vimba : 2016
Es esmu šeit

Loneliness, disillusionment and the experience of first love reveal the character of Raya, a 17-year-old living in rural Latvia with her grandmother and her little brother Robis. A staggering turn of events shakes up their lives, and the young girl must come to decisions that even a grown woman would find difficult to make. No one shall know that their grandmother has died. To avoid being taken into the care of the authorities, Raya and her brother bury the old woman they grew up with in the garden by the apple orchard. With no one else to depend on, Raya has to organise daily survival for herself and her brother. She's pinning all her hopes on their mother, who has emigrated to England. The film describes the difficult situation of those left behind in a country that many people have already abandoned. It is a portrait of a resourceful and determined young woman who refuses to give up her dreams despite the hardships life has thrown at her. In her constant struggle to evade the authorities, she tries to find her own happiness whilst taking care of her brother. Renārs Vimba's feature debut was winner of the Crystal Bear for Best Film when it premiered in the Generation section at Berlin International Film Festival 2016.

Kings of the Road

Wim Wenders : 1976
Im Lauf der Zeit

Bruno Winter is a travelling projection-equipment mechanic working in West Germany along the East German border, visiting worn-out theatres. He meets the depressed Robert Lander, who has just been through a break-up with his wife, after he drives his car into a river in a half-hearted suicide attempt. Bruno allows Robert to ride with him while his clothes dry. While out on the road, Bruno and Robert encounter several people in various states of despair, including a man whose wife has committed suicide by driving her car into a tree. Robert also drops in on his elderly father to berate him for disrespecting Robert's mother. After Bruno and Robert have a minor brawl after a conversation about Robert and his wife, Robert finally leaves Bruno, though Bruno later spots him riding on a train. Bruno continues his visits to theatres, including one that no longer screens films because the owner regards modern films as exploitative. Wim Wenders' third part of his Road Movie trilogy had its international premiere in competition at Festival de Cannes 1976.

Wrong Move

Wim Wenders : 1975
Falsche Bewegung

Aiming to be a writer, Wilhelm leaves mother and girlfriend in his home town of Glückstadt in the far north of Germany and sets out for Bonn. Changing trains at Hamburg, he is struck by a beautiful actress, Therese, and obtains her phone number. In his compartment are an older man Laertes, who mostly communicates by blowing a mouth organ, and a teenage female acrobat called Mignon, who is mute. The pair have no money, so Wilhelm pays their fare and puts them up in his cheap hotel, where Therese joins them. Bernhard, an awkward Austrian who wants to be a poet, befriends the four. He says he has a rich uncle with a castle on a peak overlooking the Rhine, but when the five turn up it is the wrong place. The owner welcomes them however, because their arrival stopped him shooting himself, and says they can stay as long as they like. But tensions grow, for Wilhelm is not giving Therese the affection she wants, while Mignon signals her availability to him. Laertes, feeling guilt but not repentant, disgusts Wilhelm by revealing some of his role in the Holocaust. Then the owner of the castle hangs himself, upon which the five leave hastily. Bernhard goes off while Therese takes the other three to her small flat in Frankfurt, where the tensions grow worse. Leaving on his own, Wilhelm completes his symbolic journey by reaching one of the most southerly, highest and emptiest points in Germany, the summit of the Zugspitze.

Alice in the Cities

Wim Wenders : 1974
Alice in den Städten

German writer Philip Winter has missed his publisher's deadline for writing an article about the United States. Attempting to book a flight from New York City, he discovers that there is an airline strike in Germany. He meets a German woman, Lisa, and her young daughter, Alice, who are also trying to return home. After Lisa leaves Alice temporarily in Philip's care, she disappears to deal with a relationship she has recently terminated. Philip and Alice take a flight to Amsterdam on the expectation that they will meet Lisa there, only to find she never arrived at the airport. When Alice is unwilling to stay in the Amsterdam airport alone while Philip leaves, the two decide to return to West Germany where Philip can deliver Alice to her grandmother's home. Unfortunately, Alice can't remember her grandmother's name or address, except that she may live in Wuppertal, the only clue being a photograph of her grandmother's front door with no house number and no one in the shot. After searching through Wuppertal, Alice admits her grandmother doesn't live there and that she only wanted them both to stay in Amsterdam. Enraged, Philip turns Alice over to the police, but Alice walks out of the police station and returns to him remembering that her grandmother lives in Ruhr. The two begin to bond as they travel to Ruhr, and the search comes to an end when the police spot them and inform Philip that Lisa has been found. Philip cannot afford to buy a train ticket so as he is saying goodbye to Alice at the railway station she gives him the money so that he can go with her on the train. He accepts Alice's offer and the film ends with the two of them riding a train back to Munich.