Festival films

On his 40th birthday, Nikos, a solitary truck driver, arrives on a remote beach. He’s there to meet his former lover, Christos, whom he hasn’t seen since their military days.

A Ballad follows 30-year-old unambitious Meri, a housewife and a mother of an 8-year-old girl Mila, whose 14 years older husband Hasan throws her out of their home in a fit of jealous rage. After returning to her parents’ home without her daughter, whom Hasan decided to keep, Meri realizes she is trapped in a wicked circle of provincial laws and rules, and her family’s needs and ambitions. Trying to find herself, Meri auditions for a film that is to be shot in the neighborhood. Adapted from a famous South Slavic folk ballad, this optimistic exploration of love, freedom, and art, renders in cinema the tumbling pathos of a slow, emotive song. Through the rhythmical transition between realistic sequences and more experimental interludes, and from comical confrontations to moments of contemplation, the film invites us to follow the pace of a beating heart.

A boy-meets-girl-meets-teddy bear story, taking place in Shanghai. Jinxi is a violinist, about to fulfill her dream of moving to Vienna to continue with her music studies. While trying to settle her affairs before departing, her encounter with Panos, a Greek architect newly arrived in Shanghai, will have a disrupting effect on her life.

An actress is mugged in front of a trendy bar in West Berlin. Barging into her, a young man takes her handbag and runs off into the night. A short while later, they meet again. Anna (Sophie Rois) and Adrian (Milan Herms). This time she is his teacher and is supposed to improve his speaking skills. Adrian is an orphan and considered a “difficult case.” Anna is an actress but hasn't been working for a while. Both have strayed from their path and don’t quite fit in. She thought it would never happen to her again. He didn’t even know such a thing existed. A woman, a boy, and another impossible love story.

In this meticulously crafted yet austere story, a modern, urgent dilemma unfolds: Asta tries to find meaning and a sense of place in the coastal town in Western Norway where she works as a journalist. As she attempts to uncover the truth behind the disappearance of an asylum seeker, her personal life and her views on justice are affected. An elegant, beautifully framed drama, which, in the words of the filmmaker, demonstrates “how a quiet pace, static camera, and a subtle story can activate the viewer to engage with the film... Choices in style take the viewer from passive to active, and therefore involve them more deeply into the characters, ideas, values, and the world portrayed,” guiding them to navigate humanity with kindness and sanity.

Vienna, 2019 – the end of an era. The smoking ban in public places means that a part of Kaffeehaus culture has disappeared. Of all moments, this is the one that Angeliki (impersonated by terrific Angeliki Papoulia) chooses to buy an apartment with help from her interior designer friend, Carmen. Angeliki seems to have something against all of them: either the parquet floors creak, the tiles are the wrong color or she is bothered by the proximity to a restaurant. How will she ever find a new home in this environment? Carmen feels like she’s talking to a brick wall. Moreover, she simply cannot understand why Angeliki is refusing to part with her money. Journeying from Vienna to Andalusia, via salt flats overcast by mysterious shadows, Gastón Solnicki’s fifth feature film is a brilliant lesson in generosity. A classic comedy dominated by women, which brings together actors and non-actors in a lively, fragmented story – a subtle and witty homage to one of the most photogenic capitals of Europe, which discovers bygone splendor in ordinary things.

We are comforted by facts, by the familiarity of things we know to be “true.” The sun rises in the east. There are twenty-four hours in one day. I exist. These truisms simplify our lives and enable us to get through the process of living. We are not afraid to leap into the air, because we know we will land on the ground. A meditation on the fluid boundary between dream and reality, fear and desire. It is an invitation to see and be seen.

An essay film about separation, drawing on the director’s experience as a child of divorced parents. We observe them in their workspace, as the director narrates the story of their encounter and separation as a natural progression of life, despite the trauma that inevitably follows her.

Like every summer, little Salomé returns to her family village nestled in the Portuguese mountains for the holidays. As the vacations begin in a carefree atmosphere, her beloved grandmother suddenly dies. While the adults are tearing each other apart over the funeral, Salomé is haunted by the spirit of the one who was considered a witch. Exploring one of the most powerful rising feminist discourses – that of witch hunting – this mesmerizing film with the sun-scorched cinematography deploys the power of magic realism to craft a coming-of-age tale like no other.

Faye, a modern, romantic, ascetic figure, leads an austerely simple life in a trailer parked beside an open lake, south of the Colorado Rockies. She catches shellfish for dinner and listens to the radio, following humble everyday rituals as she eagerly awaits the arrival of an important guest: the man she loved in her days of youth, with whom they share a legacy of pain and weeds. Time has carved a map on her face, which in turn reflects the rough, yet imposing landscape of Americana. A gentle, laconic film about contemplative introspection, the power of feelings, loss and longing, and the depths of melancholy, featuring a tour-de-force performance of the greatest character actors of our time. The heart – this lonely hunter – always invites us to sing along, even if we don't know the words.

A Dickensian story that effortlessly queers the gangland coming-of-age film, takes us to the heart of Bogotá, in a youth shelter where teenage Carlos spends his everyday life. It's Christmas and he longs to spend the day with his family. As he leaves the shelter for the holidays, Carlos is confronted with the brutality of his neighborhood, ruled by the law of the strongest, the alpha male. He must prove he can be one of them, while deep inside, these expressions of masculinity clash with the decisions he must make in order to survive. A rite of passage that reveals the vulnerability, the latent restlessness for that desired masculinity that hides the fear of something much deeper in a man's psyche, ultimately deconstructing the ready-made, toxic stereotypes dominating human existence and social behavior. A film inspired by actual events from the filmmaker’s own personal experiences growing up in a patriarchal society with its machismo and in the company of “real men.“

Five individuals located five different places in the country and living five different and unique lives. Over the course of 24 hours, they will each face one of life’s defining and crucial crossroads. An unfaithful husband, a doctor struggling with her moral character, a newlywed and pregnant woman, a young student searching for an identity, and a seven-year-old daughter – they will all risk the most vulnerable aspect of life: trust. But trust is under attack, and the consequences will be fatal, forbidden and embarrassingly amusing.

A champion runner finds himself torn between winning a race and compulsively amassing any object he finds on his way. The film came about from a workshop run by Balázs Lóth in Budapest called Celluloid Műhely. Each participant was given complete freedom to make anything as long as the production didn’t exceed one roll of 16mm film, which was donated by the workshop.

A romantic encounter. Love. The end of a relationship and the death of a feeling. Alexander Petrović examines the chaos and romance of a couple in an intimate and poetic way. In this work, he revolutionizes the language of cinematography.

In a remote Alpine village isolated from the outside world, young love is put to the test. Anna comes from the village and has a daughter from an earlier relationship, while Marco is an outsider from the flatlands hired by the mountain farmers to work the rugged land. Together they experience the joy of new love and the closeness of family. But when Marco suddenly starts losing control over his impulses and behaving erratically, a new tension rises in the community. Through the changing seasons and the harshness of life, Anna fights to preserve a love she believes can outshine even death.

This bystander story is told through the perspective of a 15-year-old girl, Raquelle, who witnesses her classmate Noah being bullied. When doing the right thing transforms Raquelle from bystander to victim, she finds herself trapped in the same emotional quicksand as her peers. At an age when social acceptance weighs heavy and the stress of social media follows you home, Raquelle and Noah learn that no one can make it through alone. Are You Okay? explores the impact that reaching out can have on someone in crisis.

In the Gardens of Carthage, a district of Tunis initiated by the former Regime which construction stopped at the beginning of the Revolution, two cops, Fatma and Batal, find a burnt body in one of the lots. As construction slowly resumes, they start looking into this mysterious case. When the event repeats itself, the investigation takes a puzzling turn.

“Passersby at Astor Place in New York City speak silent volumes as they move by the mirrored surface of a diner window. I wanted to capture the unscripted choreography of the street, its dance of gazes and riddle of identities. This film is informed by the work of the Lumiere brothers, with an eye to permeating an authority of the static camera and establishing a question as to who is watching whom.” (Eve Heller)

Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner is Zacharias Kunuk’s first feature film, written and directed by an Inuit creator, which is also in the Inuktitut language. The plot is set in the northern-eastern Arctic, long before its people made contact with the Europeans, and inspired by a traditional Inuit tale. Shot in the island of Igloolik in the period of more than six months, Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner was one of the first films shot exclusively on HD video. Using primarily natural light, Kunuk and the cinematographer Norman Cohn conceive images, shades, and tones that introduce us to a new and unexplored world. The film was awarded with the Golden Camera for the Best First Feature Film at Cannes, and is also the most important title in the history of Canadian cinema, as suggested by voting carried out by the Toronto International Film Festival.

An intense and intellectually dizzying drama about the contemporary human condition, centered on Julius, an eloquent and charming young museum attendant loved by his friends and colleagues. However, it takes only the tiniest crack to reveal the psychological abyss that lurks beneath the surface. Axiom presents a fascinating exploration of the disquieting contradiction between the modern ideals of self-reinvention and behavioral patterns in conflict with the rules of society. In the spirit of Luigi Pirandello'σ Right You Are (if you think so), the film questions the very existence of an “identity”; in a success-driven world that values appearances over essence, or, in other words, that asks us to “fake it till you make it.”

Two hundred years after the Greek Revolution, a coup d’état is underway in Greece. A man named Odysseus hides in a theater for three days. On the third night, a woman named Athena finds him in his shelter. As the night passes by, they slowly transform into the mythological characters of the same name.