Tag: Priority 4

Director: Ming-liang Tsai
Stars: Kang-sheng Lee, Shiang-chyi Chen, Norman Atun
Genre: Drama, Romance
Country: Malaysia | China | Taiwan | France | Austria

A day laborer is badly beaten, and a young man nurses him back to health.

Director: Lars von Trier
Stars: Jens Albinus, Peter Gantzler, Friðrik Þór Friðriksson
Genre: Comedy
Country: Denmark | Sweden | France | Italy | Germany | Iceland

An IT company hires an actor to serve as the company’s president in order to help the business get sold to a cranky Icelander.

Director: Chan-wook Park
Stars: Soo-jung Lim, Rain, Seong-hun Cheon
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance
Country: South Korea

A girl who thinks she is a combat cyborg checks into a mental hospital, where she encounters other psychotics. Eventually, she falls for a man who thinks he can steal people’s souls.

Director: Jasmine Dellal
Stars: Maharaja, Esma Redzepova, Taraf de Haidouks
Genre: Documentary, Music
Country: USA

A brief look into Romani culture and Rom (Gypsies) from around the globe as five famous Romani groups tour the USA. The film visits their families at home in Spain, India, Macedonia and Romania.

Director: Joanna Kos-Krauze, Krzysztof Krauze
Stars: Jowita Budnik, Arkadiusz Janiczek, Ewa Wencel
Genre: Drama
Country: Poland

A story of a married couple with two children, whose housing problems, the man’s infidelity and the woman’s fragility lead the family to destruction.

Director: Luu Huynh
Stars: Thien Tu Tran, Truong Ngoc Anh, Khanh Quoc Nguyen
Genre: Drama
Country: Vietnam

Wartime epic involving a poverty-stricken family who struggle to make ends meet, and the mother who does the unthinkable to provide her daughters with the traditional silk dresses required to attend school.

Director: Radu Muntean
Stars: Paul Ipate, Adi Carauleanu, Dragos Bucur
Genre: Action, Drama
Country: Romania

Out of enthusiasm, a Militia soldier abandons his platoon and decides to fight for the cause of the Revolution. His Lieutenant and the rest of the crew look for him during the confused night of 22-23 December 1989.

Director: Zdravko Sotra
Stars: Dragan Nikolic, Zoran Cvijanovic, Petar Kralj
Genre: Documentary
Country: Serbia

Warriors from Salonica front in the First World War. The narrator tells us how much they struggled to go back to Serbia, but many of them never came back – their remains lie on the Island of Corfu.

Director: Manuel Huerga
Stars: Daniel Brühl, Tristán Ulloa, Leonardo Sbaraglia
Genre: Biography, Drama, History
Country: Spain | UK

A profile of anarchist and bank-robber Salvador Puig Antich, whose 1974 execution under the dictatorship of Francisco Franco ushered in a period of unrest that helped Spain transition to democracy.

Director: Dong-hoon Choi
Stars: Seung-woo Cho, Yun-shik Baek, Hye-su Kim
Genre: Comedy, Crime
Country: South Korea

A guy with a talent for cards makes his way into the dangerous world of underground gambling in this crime thriller from South Korea. Go-ni (Jo Seung-woo) is a small-town guy with a big appetite for gambling. Convinced he?s on a hot streak one evening during a card game, Go-ni bets his life savings on a hand of hwatu, only to lose to a crooked cardsharp. Determined to get revenge, Go-ni sets out to find the guy who cheated him and win back his money.

Director: David Leaf, John Scheinfeld
Stars: John Lennon, Yoko Ono, Stew Albert
Genre: Documentary, Biography, Music
Country: USA

A documentary on the life of John Lennon, with a focus on the time in his life when he transformed from a musician into an antiwar activist.

Director: Robert Altman
Stars: Lily Tomlin, Meryl Streep, Woody Harrelson
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Music
Country: USA

A look at what goes on backstage during the last broadcast of America’s most celebrated radio show, where singing cowboys Dusty and Lefty, a country music siren, and a host of others hold court.

Director: Steven Ascher, Jeanne Jordan
Stars: Jesse Abbott-Dallamora, Robert Bonazoli, Tyler DiVittorio
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA

A man suffering from Lou Gehrig’s disease deals with the woman falling for him and a brother who becomes obsessed with finding a cure.

Director: Jake Clennell
Stars: n/a
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA

Welcome to The Great Happiness Space: Rakkyo Café. The club’s owner, Issei (22), has a staff of twenty boys all under his training to become the top escorts of Osaka’s underground love scene. During their training, they learn how to dress, how to talk, how to walk, and most importantly, how to fake relationships with the girls who become their source of income. Join us as Osaka’s number one host boy takes us on a journey through the complex and heartrenching world of love for sale in the Japanese underground.

Director: Takashi Koizumi
Stars: Akira Terao, Eri Fukatsu, Takanari Saito
Genre: Drama, Family, Romance
Country: Japan

This is the story between a single mother housekeeper and mathematics professor, who has a brain damage.

Director: Rick Ray
Stars: The Dalai Lama, Tenzin Bagdro, Bob Dole
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA

How do you reconcile a commitment to non-violence when faced with violence? Why do the poor often seem happier than the rich? Must a society lose its traditions in order to move into the future? These are some of the questions posed to His Holiness the Dalai Lama by filmmaker and explorer Rick Ray.

Director: Bård Breien
Stars: Fridtjov Såheim, Kirsti Eline Torhaug, Henrik Mestad
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Country: Norway

The local disability support group visits an involuntary member, not realizing that it will bring them to a critical mass.

Director: Yukihiko Tsutsumi
Stars: Ken Watanabe, Kanako Higuchi, Kenji Sakaguchi
Genre: Drama
Country: Japan

A successful businessman’s family life is shattered by an early onset of Alzheimer’s.

Director: Simon Ardizzone, Russell Michaels
Stars: James Naughton, Bev Harris, Deanie Lowe
Genre: Documentary
Country: UK | USA

The film the voting machine corporations don’t want you to see. HACKING DEMOCRACY follows investigator/grandmother, Bev Harris, and her citizen-activists as they set out to uncover how America counts its votes. Proving the votes can be stolen without a trace culminates in a duel between the Diebold corporation’s voting machines and a computer hacker – with America’s democracy at stake.

Director: Jasmila Zbanic
Stars: Mirjana Karanovic, Luna Zimic Mijovic, Leon Lucev
Genre: Drama
Country: Bosnia and Herzegovina | Croatia | Austria | Germany

A woman and her daughter struggle to make their way through the aftermath of the Bosnian War.

Director: Chris Paine
Stars: Martin Sheen, Tom Hanks, Mel Gibson
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA

A documentary that investigates the birth and death of the electric car, as well as the role of renewable energy and sustainable living in the future.

Director: Paolo Sorrentino
Stars: Giacomo Rizzo, Laura Chiatti, Gigi Angelillo
Genre: Drama
Country: Italy | France

Geremia, an aging tailor/money lender, is a repulsive, mean, stingy man who lives alone in his shabby house with his scornful, bedridden mother. He has a morbid, obsessive relationship with money and he uses it to insinuate himself into other people’s affairs, pretending to be the “family friend”. One day he is asked by a man to lend him money for the wedding of Rosalba, his daughter. Geremia falls in love at first sight with the bewitching creature and and soon indulges in a “beauty and the beast” relationship.

Director: Corneliu Porumboiu
Stars: Mircea Andreescu, Teodor Corban, Ion Sapdaru
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Country: Romania

A local talk show host organizes an alcoholic professor and a pensioner known for playing Santa Claus to decide whether there was ever a revolution in their town Vaslui.

Director: Richard Glatzer, Wash Westmoreland
Stars: Emily Rios, Jesse Garcia, Chalo González
Genre: Drama
Country: USA

As Magdalena’s 15th birthday approaches, her simple, blissful life is complicated by the discovery that she’s pregnant. Kicked out of her house, she finds a new family with her great-granduncle and gay cousin.

Director: Marwan Hamed
Stars: Adel Emam, Nour El-Sherif, Youssra
Genre: Drama
Country: Egypt | France

Meditations on corruption, fundamentalism, prostitution, homosexuality, and drugs in central Cairo.

Director: Tetsuya Nakashima
Stars: Miki Nakatani, Eita, Yûsuke Iseya
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Musical
Country: Japan

When Matsuko dies of murder, her nephew Sho gets to progressively unveil many details of her mysterious past, discovering she wasn’t only a forgotten outcast but led a very interesting yet bizarre life.

Director: Davis Guggenheim
Stars: Al Gore, Billy West, George Bush
Genre: Documentary, News
Country: USA

Filmmaker Davis Guggenheim follows Al Gore on the lecture circuit, as the former presidential candidate campaigns to raise public awareness of the dangers of global warming and calls for immediate action to curb its destructive effects on the environment.

Director: Yimou Zhang
Stars: Yun-Fat Chow, Li Gong, Jay Chou
Genre: Action, Drama, History
Country: China | Hong Kong

During China’s Tang dynasty the emperor has taken the princess of a neighboring province as wife. She has borne him two sons and raised his eldest. Now his control over his dominion is complete, including the royal family itself.

Director: Jirí Menzel
Stars: Ivan Barnev, Oldrich Kaiser, Julia Jentsch
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance
Country: Czech Republic | Slovakia

A look at the glamorous life at an old-world Prague hotel.

Director: Changwei Gu
Stars: Jing An, Li Feng, Changwei Gu
Genre: Drama
Country: China

China in the late 1970s and early 1980s: the life of an ordinary working family as seen through its three siblings.

Director: Gavin Hood
Stars: Presley Chweneyagae, Mothusi Magano, Israel Matseke-Zulu
Genre: Crime, Drama
Country: UK | South Africa

Six days in the violent life of a young Johannesburg gang leader.

Director: Deepa Mehta
Stars: Lisa Ray, John Abraham, Seema Biswas
Genre: Drama
Country: Canada | India

Set in colonial India against Gandhi’s rise to power, it’s the story of 8-year-old Chuyia, who is widowed and sent to a home to live in penitence; once there, Chuyia’s feisty presence deeply affects the lives of the other residents.

Director: Carroll Ballard
Stars: Alex Michaeletos, Campbell Scott, Hope Davis
Genre: Adventure, Drama, Family
Country: USA

An orphaned cheetah becomes the best friend and pet of a young boy living in South Africa.

Director: Rian Johnson
Stars: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Lukas Haas, Emilie de Ravin
Genre: Action, Crime, Drama
Country: USA

A teenage loner pushes his way into the underworld of a high school crime ring to investigate the disappearance of his ex-girlfriend.

Director: Luc Dionne
Stars: Marianne Fortier, Serge Postigo, Hélène Bourgeois Leclerc
Genre: Drama
Country: Canada

After the sudden death of her mother, Aurore Gagnon is abused by her disturbed step-mother as her town remains in the silence followed by her death. Based on a true story.

Director: Francisco Vargas
Stars: Ángel Tavira, Gerardo Taracena, Dagoberto Gama
Genre: Drama, Music
Country: Mexico

In an unnamed Latin American country that closely resembles Mexico, the government fights a rural insurgency with torture, assault, rape, and murder. Soldiers descend on a town, cutting off the rebels from their cache of ammunition hidden in a field. A family of grandfather, son, and grandson are among the rebels in the hills. The grandfather, with his violin over his shoulder, tries to pass the checkpoint, ostensibly to tend his corn crop. The commanding officer lets him pass but insists on a daily music lesson. Can the old man ferry out the ammunition in his violin case under the soldiers’ nose?

Director: Nicolas Winding Refn
Stars: Zlatko Buric, Marinela Dekic, Slavko Labovic
Genre: Crime, Drama, Thriller
Country: Denmark

Milo tries to be a family man and run his criminal organization, but a wrong drug shipment endangers everything.

Director: Jan Svankmajer
Stars: Jan Tríska, Pavel Liska, Anna Geislerová
Genre: Animation, Comedy, Drama
Country: Czech Republic | Slovakia

A man takes up residence with a mysterious marquis and is soon persuaded to enter into an asylum for preventative therapy. Things are not what they seem, and the marquis may be even more sinister than what the young man may’ve predicted.

Director: Mohammad Rasoulof
Stars: Ali Nassirian, Hossein Farzi-Zad, Neda Pakdaman
Genre: Drama
Country: Iran

Some poor people in the Southern coasts of Iran do not have any place to live, and thus, they reside on an old, abandoned ship in the sea. Captain Nemat, their chief, tries to persuade the ship-owner and the official authorities not to get the ship back. On the other hand, he is selling the iron parts of the ship piece by piece. ‘Iron Island’ is the story of those whose ignorance makes them simply trust those who are always ready to abuse their trust.

Director: Gary Tarn
Stars: Hugues de Montalembert
Genre: Documentary
Country: UK

Gary Tarn’s remarkable, award-winning documentary, BLACK SUN, investigates this through the story of Hugues de Montalembert, a New York-based artist and filmmaker who was blinded by a vicious attack in 1978.

Director: Klaus Härö
Stars: Topi Majaniemi, Marjaana Maijala, Maria Lundqvist
Genre: Drama, War
Country: Finland | Sweden

During World War II, more than 70,000 Finnish children were evacuated to neutral Sweden to avoid the conflict. From the award-winning Klaus Härö (Elina: As If I Wasn’t There (2002)), “Mother of Mine” tackles that painful patch of history in a tale of 9-year-old Eero, a child who increasingly feels abandoned by his biological Finnish mother and yet not attached to his Swedish surrogate mom. When he is returned to Finland, his confusion intensifies.

Director: Costa-Gavras
Stars: José Garcia, Karin Viard, Geordy Monfils
Genre: Comedy, Crime, Drama
Country: Belgium | France | Spain

A chemist (Garcia) loses his job to outsourcing. Two years later and still jobless, he hits on a solution: to genuinely eliminate his competition.

Director: David Zeiger
Stars: Michael Alaimo, Edward Asner, Joe Bangert
Genre: Documentary, War
Country: USA

This feature-length documentary focuses on the efforts by troops in the U.S. military during the Vietnam War to oppose the war effort by peaceful demonstration and subversion. It speaks mainly to veterans, but serves as a ready reminder to civilians that soldiers may oppose war as stridently as any civilian, and at greater personal peril.

Director: Julian Fellowes
Stars: Tom Wilkinson, Emily Watson, Hermione Norris
Genre: Crime, Drama, Romance
Country: UK

A couple’s marriage is complicated by the introduction of a third party.

Director: Bent Hamer
Stars: Matt Dillon, Lili Taylor, Marisa Tomei
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance
Country: Norway | USA | Germany | France | Italy

This drama centers on Hank Chinaski, the fictional alter-ego of “Factotum” author Charles Bukowski, who wanders around Los Angeles, CA trying to live off jobs which don’t interfere with his primary interest, which is writing. Along the way, he fends off the distractions offered by women, drinking and gambling.

Director: Lars von Trier
Stars: Bryce Dallas Howard, Isaach De Bankolé, Danny Glover
Genre: Drama
Country: Denmark | Sweden | Netherlands | France | Germany | UK | Italy | USA

A story of slavery, set in the southern U.S. in the 1930s.

Director: Valérie Minetto
Stars: Mila Dekker, Aurélia Petit, Malik Zidi
Genre: Drama, Romance
Country: France

Cheyenne, a journalist, decides to leave Paris after being laid off and to settle down in the middle of nowhere, far from the society she hates.The trouble is that she leaves Sonia, her true love, behind. The latter, a teacher who loves her job, refuses to give up everything -including her comfort- to follow her.

Director: Rachel Boynton
Stars: Mauricio Balcazar, James Carville, Tad Devine
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA

A documentary on American political campaign marketing tactics and their consequences.

Director: Paul Wilmshurst
Stars: John Hurt, Shuntaro Hida, George Elsey
Genre: Documentary, Drama, History
Country: UK

Documentary with dramatic reenactments with actors to describe what dropping the bomb on Hiroshima was like.

Director: Henry Alex Rubin, Dana Adam Shapiro
Stars: Joe Soares, Keith Cavill, Mark Zupan
Genre: Documentary, Sport
Country: USA

Quadriplegics, who play full-contact rugby in wheelchairs, overcome unimaginable obstacles to compete in the Paralympic Games in Athens, Greece.

Director: Ryuichi Hiroki
Stars: Shinobu Terajima, Etsushi Toyokawa, Akira Emoto
Genre: Drama
Country: Japan

Yuko is 35 years old, single, out of work, and on medication from her psychiatrist to combat her manic depression. Living in Kamata Town, Yuko divides her time between a variety of men friends, each with his own peculiarities. Her university classmate, Homma, suffers from impotence. “

Director: Daniel Geller, Dayna Goldfine
Stars: Irina Baronova, Kenneth Kynt Bryan, Yvonne Chouteau
Genre: Documentary, History, Music
Country: USA

Ballets Russes is an intimate portrait of a group of pioneering artists — now in their 70s, 80s and 90s — who gave birth to modern ballet.

Director: Cle Sloan
Stars: Daryl Gates, Fred Hampton, Joe Hicks
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA

Surrounded by death and the brutal lifestyle that feeds it, a Los Angeles gangbanger explores the history of Southern California street gangs from the 1950s through the 1990s in an attempt to fully understand his existence. Bastards of the Party humanizes the staggering casualties of the LA gang wars.

Director: Ramin Bahrani
Stars: Ahmad Razvi, Leticia Dolera, Charles Daniel Sandoval
Genre: Drama
Country: USA

A night in the life of a former Pakistani rock star who now sells coffee from his push cart on the streets of Manhattan.

Director: Christian Carion
Stars: Diane Kruger, Benno Fürmann, Guillaume Canet
Genre: Drama, History, Music
Country: France | Germany | UK | Belgium | Romania | Norway | Japan | USA

In December 1914, an unofficial Christmas truce on the Western Front allows soldiers from opposing sides of the First World War to gain insight into each other’s way of life.

Director: Roman Polanski
Stars: Barney Clark, Ben Kingsley, Jeremy Swift
Genre: Crime, Drama
Country: France | UK | Czech Republic

An adaptation of the classic Dickens tale, where an orphan meets a pickpocket on the streets of London. From there, he joins a household of boys who are trained to steal for their master.

Director: Jee-woon Kim
Stars: Byung-hun Lee, Min-a Shin, Yeong-cheol Kim
Genre: Action, Crime, Drama
Country: South Korea

Things go wrong for a high ranking mobster when he doesn’t proceed by his boss’s orders.

Director: Bernard Émond
Stars: Élise Guilbault, Patrick Drolet, Marie-Josée Bastien
Genre: Drama
Country: Canada

The faith of a caring physician and an unquestioningly religious youth is shaken to the core when the pair is inexplicably brought together.

Director: Florence Ayisi, Kim Longinotto
Stars: Vera Ngassa, Beatrice Ntuba
Genre: Documentary
Country: Cameroon | UK

Set in Kumba in South West Cameroon Sisters in Law follows Adultery, Rape and Abuse cases led by a Female Judge.

Director: Ward Serrill
Stars: Darnellia Russell, Bill Resler, Ludacris
Genre: Documentary, Sport
Country: USA

A documentary Roosevelt Roughriders, a girls’ high-school basketball team in Seattle, and one player’s fight to regain her eligibility to play.

Director: Mohsen Makhmalbaf
Stars: Daler Nazarov, Mariam Gaibova, Farzona Beknazarova
Genre: Drama, Romance
Country: France | Iran | Tajikistan

On his fortieth birthday, a man engineers a revolt against himself. He telephones his lovers — all four of them — and arranges to meet them at his dance school that afternoon. The women are shocked to discover that they have been sharing the affections of the same man. He arrives and tries to explain his actions. He has realized that time is limited for each of us. Total honesty is the only answer. One by one we review the beginning of each affair.

Director: Philip Gröning
Stars: n/a
Genre: Documentary
Country: France | Switzerland | Germany

An examination of life inside the Grande Chartreuse, the head monastery of the reclusive Carthusian Order in France.

Director: Majid Majidi
Stars: Parviz Parastui, Roya Taymourian, Soghra Obeisi
Genre: Drama
Country: Iran

Youssef, a blind university professor, is suddenly diagnosed with a fatal disease and must undergo treatment in France. Back home, will he find the life he had before?

Director: Auraeus Solito
Stars: Nathan Lopez, Soliman Cruz, J.R. Valentin
Genre: Drama
Country: Philippines

A young boy falls in love with a handsome policeman who is investigating his family’s criminal activities.

Director: Aku Louhimies
Stars: Jasper Pääkkönen, Mikko Leppilampi, Pamela Tola
Genre: Drama
Country: Finland

When a schoolteacher is sacked he projects his bad mood at his troubled teen son. He in turn buys a CD player from a pawnshop with counterfeit money. This causes a chain-reaction that wreaks havoc on many lives, as everyone transfers their problems to the next victim.

Director: Hany Abu-Assad
Stars: Kais Nashif, Ali Suliman, Lubna Azabal
Genre: Crime, Drama, Thriller
Country: Palestine | France | Germany | Netherlands | Israel

Two childhood friends are recruited for a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv.

Director: Fedor Bondarchuk
Stars: Artur Smolyaninov, Aleksey Chadov, Konstantin Kryukov
Genre: Action, Drama, History
Country: Finland | Russia | Ukraine

Young Soviet Army recruits are stuck in the bloody war in Afghanistan, that was started by politicians.

Director: John Hillcoat
Stars: Ray Winstone, Guy Pearce, Emily Watson
Genre: Crime, Drama, Western
Country: Australia | UK

A lawman apprehends a notorious outlaw and gives him nine days to kill his older brother, or else they’ll execute his younger brother.

Director: Ellen Perry
Stars: Alberto Fujimori
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA

President Alberto Fujimori risked everything to win Peru’s war on terror, but in doing so became an international fugitive, wanted for corruption, kidnapping and murder.

Director: Taggart Siegel
Stars: John Peterson, Anna Nielsen, John Edwards
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA

The epic tale of a maverick Midwestern farmer. Castigated as a pariah in his community, Farmer John bravely transforms his farm amidst a failing economy, vicious rumors, and arson. He succeeds in creating a bastion of free expression and a revolutionary form of agriculture in rural America.

Director: Susan Buice, Arin Crumley
Stars: Susan Buice, Arin Crumley, Julia Ann Ames
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Fantasy
Country: USA

Apathy, technology, paranoia, disease and medication. Meet Arin. Arin is a shy videographer who finds it too much to handle to go out and meet girls, so he sets up an account on meester.net. The flood of responses never comes, save for one email from Susan, a struggling artist who finds her job as a waitress stifling her creativity. Susan is also on the shy side and is seeking an alternative to the classic dating situation. When Arin and Susan finally meet, that alternative dating situation comes to life as the two refuse to communicate verbally with each other, wanting to avoid bullshit small talk. Instead, when they do need to communicate to each other, they pass a pen and pad back and forth.

Director: Edward A. Burger
Stars: n/a
Genre: Documentary
Country: China | Canada

A journey exploring the practices of Chinese hermits living in the Zhongnan Mountains.

Director: Xavier Beauvois
Stars: Nathalie Baye, Jalil Lespert, Roschdy Zem
Genre: Crime, Drama
Country: France

A rookie policeman from provincial Le Havre volunteers for the high pressure Parisian homicide bureau and is assigned to a middle-aged woman detective.

Director: Marilyn Agrelo
Stars: Heather Berman, Emma Therese Biegacki, Eva Carrozza
Genre: Documentary, Family, Music
Country: USA

The students of several New York City elementary schools learn ballroom dancing and compete in a city wide dance competition.

Director: Yimou Zhang
Stars: Ken Takakura, Kiichi Nakai, Shinobu Terajima
Genre: Drama
Country: China | Japan | Hong Kong

A Japanese father travels to China’s Yunnan province in the place of his ailing son to film a folk-opera singer.

Director: Abbas Kiarostami, Ken Loach, Ermanno Olmi
Stars: Carlo Delle Piane, Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, Silvana De Santis
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Country: Italy | UK

A train travels across Italy toward Rome. On board is a professor who daydreams a conversation with a love that never was, a family of Albanian refugees who switch trains and steal a ticket, three brash Scottish soccer fans en route to a match, and a complaining widow traveling to a memorial service for her late husband who’s accompanied by a community-service volunteer who’s assisting her. Interactions among these Europeans turn on class and nationalism, courtesy and rudeness, and opportunities for kindness.

Director: Ira Sachs
Stars: Dina Korzun, Rip Torn, Darren E. Burrows
Genre: Drama, Music, Romance
Country: USA

A Russian woman living in Memphis with a much older rock-‘n’-roll legend experiences a personal awakening when her husband’s estranged son comes to visit.

Director: Penn Jillette, Paul Provenza
Stars: George Carlin, Don Rickles, Chris Rock
Genre: Documentary, Comedy
Country: USA

One hundred superstar comedians tell the same very, VERY dirty, filthy joke–one shared privately by comics since Vaudeville.

Director: Stephen Frears
Stars: Judi Dench, Bob Hoskins, Christopher Guest
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Music
Country: UK | USA

Laura Henderson (Dame Judi Dench) buys an old London theater and opens it up as the Windmill, a performance hall which goes down in history for, amongst other things, its all-nude revues.

Director: Çagan Irmak
Stars: Çetin Tekindor, Fikret Kuskan, Hümeyra
Genre: Drama, Family
Country: Turkey

The family of a left-wing journalist is torn apart after the military coup of Turkey in 1980.

Director: Jason Reitman
Stars: Aaron Eckhart, Cameron Bright, Maria Bello
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Country: USA

Satirical comedy follows the machinations of Big Tobacco’s chief spokesman, Nick Naylor, who spins on behalf of cigarettes while trying to remain a role model for his twelve-year-old son.

Director: Micha X. Peled
Stars: n/a
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA

The sweatshop conditions and the growing importance of China as an exporting country on a global scale are followed through by the life of a young seventeen-year-old worker in a Chinese jeans’ factory.

Director: Hank Rogerson
Stars: n/a
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA

Twenty male inmates in a Kentucky prison form an unlikely Shakespearean acting troupe.

Director: Ewa Ewart, Leslie Woodhead
Stars: n/a
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA | UK

On September 1, 2004, a group of heavily armed rebel extremists stormed into School No. 1 in Beslan, Russia. For three days, more than a thousand children and adults were held hostage in a sweltering gymnasium, denied food and water, and forced to keep their hands over their heads. The harrowing siege ended on September 3 with a series of explosions and a hail of gunfire that killed some 350 people – half of them children. In this film, the youngest survivors of Beslan tell their story.

Director: Aleksandar Manic
Stars: Jasar Destani, Bajram Severdzan
Genre: Documentary
Country: Serbia and Montenegro | Czech Republic

A documentary about bizarre residents of Shutka, a Macedonian village built on the former city dump area.

Director: Erwin Wagenhofer
Stars: Jean Ziegler, Peter Brabeck, Karl Otrok
Genre: Documentary
Country: Austria

A look at how the world’s food is produced and how mass production changes the environment and the lives of people.

Director: Matthew Barney
Stars: Matthew Barney, Björk, Shigeru Akahori
Genre: Fantasy
Country: USA | Japan

The film concerns the theme of self-imposed limitation and continues Matthew Barney’s interest in religious rite, this time focusing on Shinto.

Director: Andrucha Waddington
Stars: Fernanda Montenegro, Fernanda Torres, Ruy Guerra
Genre: Drama
Country: Brazil

A woman is taken along with her mother in 1910 to a far-away desert by her husband, and after his passing, is forced to spend the next 59 years of her life hopelessly trying to escape it.

Director: Fatih Akin
Stars: Alexander Hacke, Ahmed Ulug, Cem Yegul
Genre: Documentary, Music
Country: Germany | Turkey

Award-winning director Fatih Akin takes us on a journey through Istanbul, the city that bridges Europe and Asia, and challenges familiar notions of east and west. He looks at the vibrant musical scene which includes traditional Turkish music plus rock and hip-hop.

Director: Felice Conte, Brent Renaud, Craig Renaud
Stars: Matt, Michelle, Sebastian
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA

When you’re a junkie, the money comes and goes–and so does the high. Do relationships stand a chance among addicts? Meet Matt & Tracy and Sebastian & Michelle–two New York City couples looking for love, and fixes, in all the wrong places. This startlingly candid documentary follows these two drug-addicted couples as they eke out a bare-bones existence on the streets of New York, desperately trying to score cash to pay for their next fix. The result is an unflinching, captivating examination of the human need for love and escape–and the virtual impossibility of finding anything more than temporary solace.

Director: Jay Duplass, Mark Duplass
Stars: Mark Duplass, Katie Aselton, Rhett Wilkins
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance
Country: USA

Josh Sagers drives cross-country on a mission to deliver his father’s birthday gift – a giant purple LazyBoy.

Director: James Cameron, Steven Quale
Stars: James Cameron, Anatoly M. Sagalevitch, Genya Chernaiev
Genre: Documentary, Family
Country: USA

James Cameron teams up with NASA scientists to explore the Mid-Ocean Ridge, a submerged chain of mountains that band the Earth and are home to some of the planet’s most unique life forms.

Director: Richard Linklater
Stars: Billy Bob Thornton, Greg Kinnear, Marcia Gay Harden
Genre: Comedy, Sport
Country: USA

A grizzled little league coach tries to turn his team of misfits into champs.

Director: Zhangke Jia
Stars: Tao Zhao, Taishen Cheng, Jue Jing
Genre: Drama
Country: China | Japan | France

An exploration on the impact of urbanization and globalization on a traditional culture.

Director: Nicolas Winding Refn
Stars: Mads Mikkelsen, Leif Sylvester, Anne Sørensen
Genre: Action, Crime, Drama
Country: Denmark | UK

Tonny is released from prison – again. This time he has his mind set on changing his broken down life, but that is easier said than done.

Director: Nobuhiro Doi
Stars: Yûko Takeuchi, Shidô Nakamura, Akashi Takei
Genre: Drama, Fantasy, Romance
Country: Japan

A young woman returns from the dead to her guilt-ridden husband and son, but she cannot remember them.

Director: Kirby Dick
Stars: Jeff Anderson, Barbara Blaine, David Clohessy
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA

A man confronts the trauma of past sexual abuse as a boy by a Catholic priest only to find his decision shatters his relationships with his family, community and faith.

Director: Danny Boyle
Stars: Alex Etel, James Nesbitt, Daisy Donovan
Genre: Comedy, Crime, Drama
Country: UK

Ethics, being human and the soul come to the fore when a 7-year old finds a bag of Pounds just days before the currency is switched to Euros and learns what we are really made of.

Director: Shola Lynch
Stars: Shirley Chisholm, Walter Cronkite, George Wallace
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA

A documentary on Brooklyn-based Congresswoman Shirley’s Chisholm’s 1972 presidential bid.

Director: Jessica Sharzer
Stars: Kristen Stewart, Elizabeth Perkins, Richard Hagerman
Genre: Drama
Country: USA

After a blurred trauma over the summer, Melinda enters high school a selective mute. Struggling with school, friends, and family, she tells the dark tale of her experiences, and why she has chosen not to speak.

Director: Ilya Khrzhanovskiy
Stars: Yuriy Laguta, Marina Vovchenko, Sergey Shnurov
Genre: Drama, Mystery, Sci-Fi
Country: Russia | Netherlands

Meat merchant Oleg, prostitute Marina, and piano tuner “simply Volodya” drop into an all-night bar in Moscow, where they are served by a narcoleptic bartender (three plus one is four) while each regales the others with made-up biographies. Oleg claims to work in President Putin’s administration, supplying him with bottled water and his wife with liquor; Marina passes herself off as a marketing executive; and Volodya, the infamous lead singer of the rock group Leningrad, as a geneticist who clones twins (two times two makes four, again) in a laboratory that has been engaged in these experiments since the days of Stalin. After they separate, these fantasy realities, especially Volodya’s, begin to dominate their everyday lives.

Director: Anurag Kashyap
Stars: Kay Kay Menon, Pavan Malhotra, Aditya Srivastav
Genre: Action, Crime, Drama
Country: India

A film about the investigations following the 1993 serial Bombay bomb blasts, told through the different stories of the people involved –police, conspirators, victims, middlemen.

Director: István Szabó
Stars: Annette Bening, Michael Gambon, Maury Chaykin
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance
Country: Canada | USA | Hungary | UK

Set in 1930s London, this movie involves stage actors and actresses and their experiences with love and revenge.

Director: Ernie Barbarash
Stars: Zachary Bennett, Stephanie Moore, Martin Roach
Genre: Drama, Mystery, Sci-Fi
Country: Canada

A young programmer whose job is to watch over the reality-warping Cube defies orders to rescue an innocent mother trapped in one of its rooms.

Director: Marzieh Makhmalbaf
Stars: Gol-Ghotai, Zahed, Agheleh Rezaie
Genre: Drama
Country: Iran | France | Afghanistan

The story of survival of 2 children in post-Taliban Afghanistan. Their mother has been imprisoned for “adultery” and their father is in Guantanamo Bay.

Director: Jim Butterworth, Aaron Lubarsky, Lisa Sleeth
Stars: n/a
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA

The gripping documentary exposé into the life and death of North Koreans as they try to escape their homeland and China.

Director: Jehane Noujaim
Stars: Samir Khader, Josh Rushing, George W. Bush
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA

A documentary on perception of the United States’s war with Iraq, with an emphasis on Al Jazeera’s coverage.

Director: Woody Allen
Stars: Will Ferrell, Vinessa Shaw, Chiwetel Ejiofor
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance
Country: USA

Two alternating stories, one comedy and the other tragedy, about Melinda’s attempts to straighten out her life.

Director: Chris Metzler, Jeff Springer
Stars: Sonny Bono, John Waters, Norm Niver
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA

Renowned cult film director John Waters narrates this quirky exploration of the Salton Sea, the massive Southern California lake that was created by accident a century ago, became a popular desert resort and has since developed into a refuge for a community of oddballs.

Director: Deb Ellis, Denis Mueller
Stars: Matt Damon, Daniel Berrigan, Howard Zinn
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA

The life and times of Howard Zinn: the historian, activist, and author of several classics including “A Peoples History of the United States”. Archival footage, and commentary by friend, colleagues and Zinn himself.

Director: Matt Mahurin
Stars: Michael Fishman, John A. Papa, Eve Shopsin
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA

This bitingly funny comedy follows a prickly, profanity-prone man seeking to preserve his dream; it dishes up bites of wisdom along the way, ultimately serving both a hilarious trip and a charming slice of New York history.

Director: Chuan Lu
Stars: Duobujie, Lei Zhang, Dao Qi
Genre: Action, Drama
Country: China | Hong Kong

A moving true story about volunteers protecting antelope against poachers in the severe mountains of Tibet.

Director: Wim Wenders
Stars: Michelle Williams, John Diehl, Wendell Pierce
Genre: Drama, War
Country: USA | Germany | Canada

A drama that investigates anxiety and disillusionment in America.

Director: Yôji Yamada
Stars: Masatoshi Nagase, Takako Matsu, Hidetaka Yoshioka
Genre: Action, Drama, History
Country: Japan

A 19th Century samurai, held in low esteem due to an action by his late father, must resolve his history with a maid and with his close friend.

Director: Paolo Sorrentino
Stars: Toni Servillo, Olivia Magnani, Adriano Giannini
Genre: Crime, Drama, Romance
Country: Italy

An introverted man’s life changes completely when he finds himself attracted to a young bar-maid.

Director: Steven Spielberg
Stars: Tom Hanks, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Chi McBride
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance
Country: USA

An Eastern European tourist unexpectedly finds himself stranded in JFK airport, and must take up temporary residence there.

Director: Katy Chevigny, Kirsten Johnson
Stars: Anthony Amsterdam, Jeanne Bishop, Stephen Bright
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA

A documentary on Illinois Governor George Ryan, who, with 60 days left in office, makes a decision on the fate of death row prisoners.

Director: Hubert Sauper
Stars: Elizabeth ‘Eliza’ Maganga Nsese, Raphael Tukiko Wagara, Dimond Remtulia
Genre: Documentary
Country: Austria | Belgium | France | Germany

A documentary on the effect of fishing the Nile perch in Tanzania’s Lake Victoria. The predatory fish, which has wiped out the native species, is sold in European supermarkets, while starving Tanzanian families have to make do with the leftovers.

Director: Chantal Akerman
Stars: Sylvie Testud, Aurore Clément, Jean-Pierre Marielle
Genre: Comedy
Country: France | Belgium

Charlotte is single. She tries to write erotic books to survive without her mind being in the least absorbed by eroticism or desire.

Director: Michelangelo Antonioni, Steven Soderbergh, Kar-Wai Wong
Stars: Robert Downey Jr., Alan Arkin, Li Gong
Genre: Drama, Romance
Country: USA | Italy | Hong Kong | France | Luxembourg | UK

Three short films, one each from Directors Michelangelo Antonioni, Steven Soderbergh, and Wong Kar Wai, address the themes of love and sex.

Director: Antoine Fuqua
Stars: Clarence ‘Gatemouth’ Brown, Buddy Guy, Solomon Burke
Genre: Documentary, Music
Country: USA

Antoine Fuqua’s documentary on the blues, shot at Radio City Music Hall in New York City.

Director: Yang Li
Stars: Yixiang Li, Baoqiang Wang, Shuangbao Wang
Genre: Crime, Drama
Country: China | Germany | Hong Kong

Two Chinese coal miners have hit upon the perfect scam: murder one of their fellow mine workers, make the death look like an accident, and extort money from the boss to keep the incident hushed up. For their latest “mark,” they choose a naive teenager from a small village, and as they prepare to carry out their newest plan, things start to get complicated…

Director: Nimród Antal
Stars: Sándor Csányi, Eszter Balla, Zoltán Mucsi
Genre: Comedy, Crime, Drama
Country: Hungary

A tale about a strange young man, Bulcsú, the fellow inspectors on his team, all without exception likable characters, a rival ticket inspection team and racing along the tracks – and a tale about love.

Director: Gary Ross
Stars: Tobey Maguire, Jeff Bridges, Elizabeth Banks
Genre: Drama, History, Sport
Country: USA

True story of the undersized Depression-era racehorse whose victories lifted not only the spirits of the team behind it but also those of their nation.

Director: André Téchiné
Stars: Emmanuelle Béart, Gaspard Ulliel, Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet
Genre: Drama, Romance, War
Country: France | UK

Emmanuelle Béart stars as a widowed schoolteacher who flees Nazi-occupied Paris with her children. A teenaged boy comes to their rescue by leading them into the forest — their best shot at survival.

Director: Terry Zwigoff
Stars: Billy Bob Thornton, Bernie Mac, Lauren Graham
Genre: Comedy, Crime, Drama
Country: Germany | USA

A miserable conman and his partner pose as Santa and his Little Helper to rob department stores on Christmas Eve. But they run into problems when the conman befriends a troubled kid.

Director: Hector Babenco
Stars: Enrique Diaz, Wagner Moura, Caio Blat
Genre: Drama, Crime
Country: Brazil | Argentina | Italy

Brazilian MD Drauzio Varella starts AIDS prevention in Brazil’s largest prison, Carandiru, in São Paulo, where the population is nearly double its 4,000 maximum. Doc learns from experience and mainly stories the tragic stories of hideous crimes which landed scum there and passionate dramas adding otherwise decent people. Just when he believes to leave the prisoners happy with a soccer tournament, a silly clothing line argument kick-starts a politically opportune revolt repression.

Director: Bent Hamer
Stars: Tomas Norström, Joachim Calmeyer, Bjørn Floberg
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Country: Norway | Sweden

A scientific observer’s job of observing an old cantankerous single man’s kitchen habits is complicated by his growing friendship with him.

Director: Dong-won Kim
Stars: n/a
Genre: Documentary
Country: North Korea | South Korea

North Korean spies return to their homeland.

Director: Ross McElwee
Stars: Allan Gurganus, Paula Larke, Marilyn Levine
Genre: Documentary, Biography, Comedy
Country: USA | UK

North Carolina produces more tobacco than any other state in America. Bright Leaves describes a journey taken across the social, economic, and psychological tobacco terrain of North Carolina by a native Carolinian, Ross McElwee, whose great-grandfather created the famous brand of tobacco known as Bull Durham. The comedic chronicle is a subjective, autobiographical meditation on the allure of cigarettes and their troubling legacy for the state of North Carolina. It’s also a film about family history, addiction, denial, and filmmaking–as McElwee, noted director of Sherman’s March, grapples with the legacy of an obscure Hollywood melodrama that is purportedly based on this curious man that was his great-grandfather.

Director: Manoel de Oliveira
Stars: Leonor Silveira, Filipa de Almeida, John Malkovich
Genre: Comedy, Drama, History
Country: Portugal | France | Italy

Lisbon, Marseilles, Naples, Athens, Istanbul, Cairo, Aden, and Bombay. Along with a university teacher and her little daughter, we embark on a long journey, experiencing different cultures and civilizations.

Director: Alain Resnais
Stars: Sabine Azéma, Isabelle Nanty, Audrey Tautou
Genre: Comedy, Musical, Romance
Country: Switzerland | France

A romantic musical story having the vibes both France and USA.

Director: Jane Campion
Stars: Meg Ryan, Mark Ruffalo, Jennifer Jason Leigh
Genre: Mystery, Thriller
Country: UK | Australia | France | USA

New York City writing professor, Frannie Avery, has an affair with a police detective, who is investigating the murder of a beautiful young woman in her neighborhood.

Director: Paul Devlin
Stars: Dennis Bakke, Piers Lewis, Butch Mederos
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA | Georgia

Corruption, assassination and street rioting surround the story of the award-winning film, Power Trip, which follows an American multi-national trying to solve the electricity crisis in Tbilisi, capital of the former Soviet Republic of Georgia. Power Trip provides insight into today’s headlines, with a graphic, on-the-ground depiction of the challenges facing globalization in an environment of culture clash, electricity disconnections and blackouts.

Director: Liz Garbus
Stars: Edith Hahn Beer, Julia Ormond, Susan Sarandon
Genre: Documentary, History, War
Country: USA

Edith Han was an outspoken young woman studying law in Vienna when the Gestapo forced Edith and her mother into a Jewish ghetto. Edith was taken away to a labor camp, and when she returned home months later, she found her mother had been deported. Knowing she would become a hunted woman, Edith went underground, scavenging for food and searching each night for a safe place to sleep. Her boyfriend, Pepi, proved too terrified to help her, but a Christian friend was not. Using the woman’s identity papers, Edith fled to Munich. There she met Werner Vetter, a Nazi Party member who fell in love with her. Despite her protests and even her eventual confession that she was Jewish, he married her and kept her identity a secret.

Director: Robert Lepage
Stars: Robert Lepage, Anne-Marie Cadieux, Marco Poulin
Genre: Drama
Country: Canada

After the death of his mother, a man tries to discover a meaning to his life, to the universe and to rebuild a relationship with the only family he has left: his brother.

Director: Alain Corneau
Stars: Sylvie Testud, Kaori Tsuji, Tarô Suwa
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Country: France | Japan

A Belgian woman looks back on her year at a Japanese corporation in Tokyo in 1990. She is Amélie, born in Japan, living there until age 5. After college graduation, she returns with a one-year contract as an interpreter. The vice president and section leader, both men, are boors, but her immediate supervisor, Ms. Mori, is beautiful and trustworthy. Amélie’s downfall begins when she speaks perfect Japanese to clients. She compounds her failure by writing an excellent report for an enterprising colleague. The person she least expects to stab her in the back exposes her work. Thus begins her humiliations. What can become of her and of her relationship with Ms. Mori and with Japan?

Director: Andy Byatt, Alastair Fothergill
Stars: Pierce Brosnan, Michael Gambon, David Attenborough
Genre: Documentary
Country: UK | Germany

Join a voyage through aquatic realms where humans have rarely dared to go. Waddle with playful penguins, dart with lightning speed through schools of sharks, ride over stormy waves with massive whales and view rare alien-like creatures.

Director: Stan Brakhage
Stars: n/a
Genre: Short, Biography
Country: USA

Stan Brakhage’s final film, made shortly before his death by wetting a filmstrip with saliva and using his fingernail to scratch marks into the emulsion.

Director: Abbas Kiarostami
Stars: n/a
Genre: Documentary
Country: Iran | Japan | France

Five sequences : 1) A piece of driftwood on the seashore, carried about by the waves 2) People walking on the seashore. The oldest ones stop by, look at the sea, then go away 3) Blurry shapes on a winter beach. A herd of dogs. A love story 4) A group of loud ducks cross the image, in one direction then the other 5) A pond, at night. Frogs improvising a concert. A storm, then the sunrise.

Director: Robert Altman
Stars: Neve Campbell, James Franco, Malcolm McDowell
Genre: Drama, Music, Romance
Country: Germany | USA

Ensemble drama centered around a group of ballet dancers, with a focus on one young dancer who’s poised to become a principal performer.

Director: Ziad H. Hamzeh
Stars: Ziad H. Hamzeh
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA

In the wake of the 9/11 tragedy a firestorm erupts when 1,100 Somali refugees relocate to predominately white Lewiston, Maine.

Director: Mark Moormann
Stars: Ray Charles, John Coltrane, Aretha Franklin
Genre: Documentary, Music
Country: USA

A documentary about Tom Dowd, who was an innovative recording engineer and producer of noted albums with John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, Otis Redding, Eric Clapton, the Allman Brothers and many others.

Director: Nick Broomfield, Joan Churchill
Stars: Aileen Wuornos, Nick Broomfield, Terry Humphreys-Slay
Genre: Documentary, Crime
Country: UK | USA

Nick Broomfield’s second documentary about serial killer Aileen Wuornos, focusing on her mental state on death row.

Director: Atom Egoyan
Stars: Charles Aznavour, Brent Carver, Eric Bogosian
Genre: Drama, War
Country: Canada | France

Interrogated by a customs officer, a young man recounts how his life was changed during the making of a film about the Armenian genocide.

Director: Claire Denis
Stars: Valérie Lemercier, Vincent Lindon, Hélène de Saint-Père
Genre: Drama, Romance
Country: France

It’s Friday night–she’s moving in with her boyfriend tomorrow–so she goes out, but gets stuck in traffic–where she meets a handsome stranger.

Director: Tareque Masud
Stars: Nurul Islam Bablu, Russell Farazi, Jayanto Chattopadhyay
Genre: Drama, History
Country: Bangladesh

A family must come to grips with its culture, its faith, and the brutal political changes entering its small-town world.

Director: Kirby Dick, Amy Ziering
Stars: Jacques Derrida, Marguerite Derrida, René Major
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA

Documentary about French philosopher (and author of deconstructionism) Jacques Derrida, who sparked fierce debate throughout American academia.

Director: Nae Caranfil
Stars: Mircea Diaconu, Gheorghe Dinica, Mara Nicolescu
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Country: Romania | France

Ovidiu, a high-school teacher looking for an extra buck, finds an unexpected way to earn easy money.

Director: Bill Weber, David Weissman
Stars: Larry Brinkin, Peggy Cass, The Cockettes
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA

Documentary about the gender-bending San Francisco performance group who became a pop culture phenomenon in the early 1970s.

Director: John Sayles
Stars: Angela Bassett, Edie Falco, Alex Lewis
Genre: Drama, Romance
Country: USA

A woman and her new husband returns to her hometown roots in coastal northern Florida, and must deal with family, business, and encroaching real estate development.

Director: Andrzej Sekula
Stars: Kari Matchett, Geraint Wyn Davies, Grace Lynn Kung
Genre: Drama, Mystery, Sci-Fi
Country: Canada

Eight strangers awaken with no memory, in a puzzling cube-shaped room where the laws of physics do not always apply.

Director: Scott Hamilton Kennedy
Stars: Catherine Borek, Karen Greene, Ebony Starr Norwood-Brown
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA

Dominguez High, in the infamous Compton, CA, has not produced a play in over twenty years. With no money and no stage, two teachers and twenty-four students attempt to produce Thornton Wilder’s American Classic OUR TOWN.

Director: David C. Thomas
Stars: Michael Davis, Wayne Kramer, Fred ‘Sonic’ Smith
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA

Documentary on the MC5.

Director: Gail Dolgin, Vicente Franco
Stars: Mai Thi Kim, Heidi Neville-Bub, Gerald Ford
Genre: Documentary, War
Country: USA

Separated at the end of the Vietnam war, an “Americanized” woman and her Vietnamese mother are reunited after 22 years.

Director: Liz Garbus
Stars: Wanda Jean Allen, Jesse Jackson, David Presson
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA

The Execution of Wanda Jean chronicles the life-and-death battle of Wanda Jean Allen, the first black woman to be put to death in the United States in the modern era.

Director: Maureen Muldaur
Stars: Joan Baez, Jack Benny, David Bianculli
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA

The history of the irreverent “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour” and the content battles it fought with its television network.

Director: Lee Hirsch
Stars: Abdullah Ibrahim, Duma Ka Ndlovu, Vusi Mahlasela
Genre: Documentary, History, Music
Country: South Africa | USA

Interviews, archival footage, and filmed performances highlight the role of music in the South African struggle against apartheid.

Director: Christine Jeffs
Stars: Alicia Fulford-Wierzbicki, Sarah Peirse, Marton Csokas
Genre: Drama, Romance
Country: New Zealand

Whilst on a family vacation on the Mahurangi Peninsula in New Zealand, 13-year-old Janey begins to realize that her parents’ marriage is on the rocks.

Director: Petter Næss
Stars: Per Christian Ellefsen, Sven Nordin, Marit Pia Jacobsen
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Country: Norway

When his mother, who has sheltered him his entire 40 years, dies, Elling, a sensitive, would-be poet, is sent to live in a state institution. There he meets Kjell Bjarne, a gentle giant and female-obsessed virgin in his 40s. After two years, the men are released and provided with a state-funded apartment and stipend with the hope they will be able to live on their own.

Director: Frank Oz
Stars: Robert De Niro, Edward Norton, Marlon Brando
Genre: Action, Crime, Drama
Country: Germany | Canada | USA

An aging thief hopes to retire and live off his ill-gotten wealth when a young kid convinces him into doing one last heist.

Director: Doug Pray
Stars: The Allies, A-Trak, Craze
Genre: Documentary, Music
Country: USA

The story of the hip-hop DJ from the birth of hip-hop to the invention of scratching and “beat-juggling” vinyl, to the more recent “turntablism” movement. Underdogs and virtuosos who have radically changed the way we hear and create music.

Director: John Dahl
Stars: Steve Zahn, Paul Walker, Leelee Sobieski
Genre: Action, Mystery, Thriller
Country: USA

Three young people on a road trip from Colorado to New Jersey talk to a trucker on their CB radio, then must escape when he turns out to be a psychotic killer.

Director: Robert Glinski
Stars: Aleksandra Gietner, Karolina Sobczak, Zbigniew Zamachowski
Genre: Drama
Country: Poland

A sensitive teenage girl from a poor family befriends a cynical schoolmate, who shows her how to smoke, drink, have sex and steal. Tereska’s life heads towards a catastrophe.

Director: Walter Salles
Stars: José Dumont, Rodrigo Santoro, Rita Assemany
Genre: Drama
Country: Brazil | France | Switzerland

When ordered by his father to avenge the death of his older brother, a young man questions the tradition of violence between two rival families.

Director: Roland Suso Richter
Stars: Heino Ferch, Nicolette Krebitz, Sebastian Koch
Genre: Drama, History, Thriller
Country: Germany

During the Cold War, Germany was divided into two states – East and West. This epic story tells about their dramatic connections.

Director: Walter Hill
Stars: Keith Carradine, Powers Boothe, Fred Ward
Genre: Action, Thriller
Country: USA

During a routine exercise, a team of National Guards are threatened by angry and violent locals.

Director: Jae-young Kwak
Stars: Tae-Hyun Cha, Ji-Hyun Jun, In-mun Kim
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance
Country: South Korea

A young man sees a drunk, cute woman standing too close to the tracks at a metro station in Seoul and pulls her back. She ends up getting him into trouble repeatedly after that, starting on the train.

Director: Abbas Kiarostami
Stars: Abbas Kiarostami, Seifollah Samadian
Genre: Documentary
Country: Iran

Documentary account of the AIDS crisis in Uganda.

Director: Ferenc Török
Stars: Gábor Karalyos, Erzsi Pápai, Eszter Balla
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance
Country: Hungary

1989 is an important year in the political history of Hungary. However, Petya and his friends couldn’t care less. They are about to graduate high school. The only important things to them are the parties, girls, making some easy cash. And of course, passing the upcoming exam with the leaked questions.

Director: Ken Loach
Stars: Dean Andrews, Thomas Craig, Joe Duttine
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Country: UK | Germany | Spain

Five Yorkshiremen try to survive after the British Rail is bought out by a private company.

Director: Kiyoshi Kurosawa
Stars: Haruhiko Katô, Kumiko Asô, Koyuki
Genre: Horror, Mystery, Sci-Fi
Country: Japan

Two groups of people discover evidence that suggests spirits may be trying to invade the human world through the Internet.

Director: Zabou Breitman
Stars: Isabelle Carré, Bernard Campan, Bernard Le Coq
Genre: Drama, Romance
Country: France

Although barely 30, Claire believes she is showing the first symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease, a condition from which her mother has recently died. Her sister, Nathalie, is certain that her memory loss, caused by a lightning strike, is temporary. In the clinic where she is being treated, Claire is attracted to Philippe, a man who is still traumatized after a car accident in which his wife and child were both killed. In spite of their personal tragedies, Claire and Philippe fall in love. When Philippe recovers, Claire moves into his home. Then Claire’s condition takes a turn for the worse…

Director: Caroline Link
Stars: Juliane Köhler, Merab Ninidze, Matthias Habich
Genre: Biography, Drama, History
Country: Germany

A German Jewish refugee family moves to and adjusts to a farm life in 1930s Kenya.

Director: Artour Aristakisian
Stars: Anna Chernova, Vitaliy Khaev, Nonna Grishaeva
Genre: Drama
Country: Russia

Describes the life of homeless people who form a community in the center of modern-day Moscow. It relates the story of six couples who love each other and try to remain together despite the poverty and despair of their existence.

Director: Bille August
Stars: Sven Wollter, Viveka Seldahl, Reine Brynolfsson
Genre: Drama, Music, Romance
Country: Sweden | Germany | Denmark

Swedish composer/conductor Martin and concertmaster Barbara fall in love. After their divorces, they’re happily married. While composing an opera, Martin is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. It slowly changes him.

Director: Manoel de Oliveira
Stars: Jorge Trêpa, Ricardo Trêpa, Maria de Medeiros
Genre: Biography, Drama
Country: Portugal | France

The city of Porto viewed by the intimate eye of Manoel de Oliveira.

Director: Hans Weingartner, Tobias Amann
Stars: Daniel Brühl, Anabelle Lachatte, Patrick Joswig
Genre: Drama
Country: Germany

Kati, Jochen and Lukas take a trip on magic mushrooms. Lukas is not coming back.

Director: Deborah Dickson, Susan Froemke, Albert Maysles
Stars: LaLee Wallace, Reggie Barnes
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA

This documentary follows a Mississippi Delta school district and a single Delta family as they struggle against the crippling effects of poverty in the wake of more than one hundred years of slavery.

Director: Rakhshan Banietemad
Stars: Golab Adineh, Mohammad Reza Forutan, Baran Kosari
Genre: Drama
Country: Iran

A valuable visual commentary on modern society, ‘Under The Skin Of The City’ follows one Iranian family in their eternal struggle to stay afloat financially and emotionally. Touba works hard at a textile factory to make ends meet during the day, returning in the evening to face the trials and tribulations of her family: her pregnant daughter who frequently suffers at the hands of her abusive husband, a son embroiled in radical politics, and another son who hopes to escape to Japan. In their fight for self-determination and independence, Touba and her family come to represent the plight of the working class in modern day Tehran.

Director: Stacy Peralta
Stars: Sean Penn, Jay Adams, Tony Alva
Genre: Documentary, Sport
Country: USA

Documentary about the pioneering 1970s Zephyr skating team.

Director: Jeong-kwon Kim
Stars: Ji-Tae Yoo, Ha-neul Kim, Ji-Won Ha
Genre: Drama, Romance, Sci-Fi
Country: South Korea

Two students, separated in time, are somehow able to talk to each other using amateur radio, one in 1979 and the other in 2000.

Director: Fatih Akin
Stars: Moritz Bleibtreu, Christiane Paul, Mehmet Kurtulus
Genre: Adventure, Comedy, Romance
Country: Germany

A young, insecure teacher embarks on a journey through Europe to Turkey, where he wants to see a woman again whom he believes to be his fate.

Director: Stephen Frears
Stars: Anthony Borrows, Ian Hart, Claire Hackett
Genre: Drama
Country: UK | Germany | France | Italy

A family falls into poverty during the Depression.

Director: Pat Murphy
Stars: Ewan McGregor, Susan Lynch, Andrew Scott
Genre: Biography, Drama
Country: Ireland | UK | Italy | Germany

In 1904, in Dublin, James Joyce chats up Nora Barnacle, a hotel maid recently come from Galway. She enchants him with her frank, direct and uninhibited manner, and before long, he’s convinced her to come with him to Trieste, where he has a job with Berlitz. Over time, Nora pulls him through phobias, tolerates his drinking, takes in his brother Stan, and bests Joyce at ‘the writin’ game’ to bring him back to Italy from Dublin where he’s gone to open a cinema. But his sexual jealousy threatens the relationship and sends her back to Galway with the children. Is there any way to tame Jim’s green-eyed monster? And, will the lad ever get his stories published?

Director: Per Fly
Stars: Jesper Christensen, Marius Sonne Janischefska, Stine Holm Joensen
Genre: Drama
Country: Denmark | Sweden

Kaj is an alcoholic living on the money the Danish state is providing him. Him and his friends spend their time drinking beer at a public bench. One day Kaj’s life turns upside down when a young lady and her child moves in next to him.

Director: Rob Sitch
Stars: Sam Neill, Billy Mitchell, Roz Hammond
Genre: Comedy, Drama, History
Country: Australia

In the days before the July 19, 1969 space mission that marked humankind’s first steps on the moon, NASA was working with a group of Australian technicians who had agreed to rig up a satellite interface. That the Aussies placed the satellite dish smack dab in the middle of an Australian sheep farm in the boondocks town of Parkes was just one of the reasons that NASA was concerned. Based on a true story, The Dish takes a smart, witty, comical look at the differing cultural attitudes between Australia and the U.S. while revisiting one of the greatest events in history.

Director: Achero Mañas
Stars: Juan José Ballesta, Pablo Galán, Alberto Jiménez
Genre: Drama
Country: Spain

El Bola, a 12 year old boy a.k.a. “Pellet” is a 12 year old boy raised in a violent and sordid environment. Embarrassed by his family life, he avoids becoming close to classmates. The arrival of a new boy at school changes his attitude towards his classmates, and friendship. The heart of the story is the change in El Bola’s life, at almost all levels, after befriending this new classmate.

Director: Mike Figgis
Stars: Jeanne Tripplehorn, Stellan Skarsgård, Salma Hayek
Genre: Drama, Romance
Country: USA

Four frames of simultaneous action that alternately follow a smitten lesbian lover as she obsesses over her partner’s dalliances and the tense goings-on of a Hollywood film production company.

Director: Mark Borchardt
Stars: Mark Borchardt, Tom Schimmels, Miriam Frost
Genre: Short, Drama, Horror
Country: USA

An alcohol/drug abuser re-examines his life until he nearly dies from an overdose. Then a friend convinces him to join a self-help group which turns out to be demonic.

Director: Paul Cox
Stars: Julia Blake, Charles ‘Bud’ Tingwell, Kristine Van Pellicom
Genre: Drama
Country: Australia | Belgium

After more than forty years apart, Andreas and Claire embark on an affair as reckless and intense as when they were young lovers. Widowed musician Andreas decides to get back in touch with his one great love, Claire, who is still married to her first husband, John. Andreas and Claire find that the connection they shared when they were young is still there and they soon become involved in a rekindled love affair. However, this time around, there are more complications, including the possibilities of ill health and death, as well as the impact their relationship might have on John.

Director: Jerzy Stuhr
Stars: Jerzy Stuhr, Anna Dymna, Dominika Bednarczyk
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Country: Poland

Left behind by a circus, a camel wanders to the house of a simple middle-aged couple. Although the wife is initially bewildered by the strange and unexpected animal, her husband immediately adopts it as a pet. As the man and his new companion take their daily walks in the village, neighbors are drawn to the odd sight and approach him about riding the camel or using it for any number of purposes. He declines to exploit or capitalize on the friendly animal, and is met with barely veiled hostility. In time, the camel becomes a burden on both the town and the man, who’s edged out of community affairs and lives on shaky ground with his wife.

Director: Stephen Daldry
Stars: Jamie Bell, Julie Walters, Jean Heywood
Genre: Drama, Music
Country: UK | France

A talented young boy becomes torn between his unexpected love of dance and the disintegration of his family.

Director: Stephen Quay, Timothy Quay
Stars: Marlene Kaminsky
Genre: Short, Animation
Country: UK

A woman sits alone on a chair at a table in a room on one of the top floors of an asylum. Bright spot lights dot the night, sometimes shining on her window. She sharpens pencils and writes on a page in a copy book. The pencil point often breaks under her fingers’ force. She places broken points outside the window on the sill. A satanic figure is somewhere nearby, animated but of straw or clay, not flesh. She finishes her writing, tears the paper from the pad, folds it, places it in an envelope, and slips it through a slot. Is she writing to her husband? “Sweetheart, come.”

Director: Fruit Chan
Stars: Hailu Qin, Wai-Fan Mak, Xiao Ming Biao
Genre: Drama
Country: Hong Kong | France | China

Hong Kong life from the perspective of a young northern mainland Chinese woman working as a prostitute in Hong Kong.

Director: Michael Lindsay-Hogg
Stars: Aidan Quinn, Jared Harris, Ric Reid
Genre: Biography, Drama, Music
Country: USA

In 1976, John Lennon and Paul McCartney have a chat about their lives and discuss whether The Beatles will ever reunite.

Director: Michael Almereyda
Stars: Ethan Hawke, Kyle MacLachlan, Diane Venora
Genre: Drama, Romance, Thriller
Country: USA

Modern-day New York City adaptation of Shakespeare’s immortal story about Hamlet’s plight to avenge his father’s murder.

Director: Carlo Carlei
Stars: Sergio Castellitto, Jürgen Prochnow, Lorenza Indovina
Genre: Biography, Drama
Country: Italy

The poor Italian peasant boy Francesco already has visions of Jesus and Mary as a child, but the Devil visits him too. He, Francesco, is quite certain that he will become a priest. After entering the Capuchin Order it becomes clear that Padre Pio (his new name) has powers which can not be explained rationally: he heals the sick, knows the names, problems and future of complete strangers.

Director: Myles Connell
Stars: Christopher Walken, Peter McDonald, Anne Pitoniak
Genre: Comedy, Crime, Drama
Country: UK | USA

A struggling auto mechanic with a criminal past agrees to one last heist to pay off his debts.

Director: Ulf Malmros
Stars: Kjell Bergqvist, Anastasios Soulis, Rebecca Scheja
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Family
Country: Sweden | Denmark

Two kids move in with a lonely undertaker who is secretly in love with the town’s school teacher.

Director: Fernando Trueba
Stars: Michel Camilo, Tito Puente, Arturo O’Farrill
Genre: Documentary, Music
Country: Spain | France | Italy | Mexico | Belgium

A film featuring performances of several stars of the Latin Jazz music scene.

Director: Raymond De Felitta
Stars: Michael Rispoli, Kelly Macdonald, Kathrine Narducci
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance
Country: USA

A dreamer finds that his wife and friends are binding him to his mediocre existence.

Director: Agnès Jaoui
Stars: Anne Alvaro, Jean-Pierre Bacri, Alain Chabat
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance
Country: France

The lives of 6 people over 35 in Rouen, France, and their relationship to each other.

Director: John Fawcett
Stars: Emily Perkins, Katharine Isabelle, Kris Lemche
Genre: Drama, Fantasy, Horror
Country: Canada

Two death-obsessed sisters, outcasts in their suburban neighborhood, must deal with the tragic consequences when one of them is bitten by a deadly werewolf.

Director: Amos Gitai
Stars: Liron Levo, Tomer Russo, Uri Klauzner
Genre: Drama, War
Country: Israel | France

When the Yom Kippur War breaks out, two Israeli soldiers find themselves unable to locate their unit. Eager to take part in the war effort, they join an airborne medical evacuation unit.

Director: Zhou Sun
Stars: Li Gong, Xin Gao, Jing-ming Shi
Genre: Drama
Country: China

Gong Li stars in this low-key drama about a single mother who will do anything to provide for her son. Sun Liying (Li) struggles to care for her hearing-impaired child Zheng Da (Gao Xin) after her taxi driver husband divorces.

Director: Trent Harris
Stars: Groovin’ Gary, Sean Penn, Crispin Glover
Genre: Documentary, Comedy, Drama
Country: USA

In 1979, filmmaker Trent Harris visits the small town of Beaver, Utah to film a talent show. Impressed by a performer called Groovin’ Gary, he recreates Gary’s act in 1981 with Sean Penn and in 1985 with Crispin Glover.

Director: Krzysztof Zanussi
Stars: Zbigniew Zapasiewicz, Krystyna Janda, Tadeusz Bradecki
Genre: Drama
Country: Poland | France

A cynical doctor, who is dying of cancer, would like to know the meaning of his life. He has to fight for it or just get ready for death.

Director: Jenniphr Goodman
Stars: Donal Logue, Ayelet Kaznelson, John Hines
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance
Country: USA

Underachieving, overweight kindergarten teacher Dex finds a woman who forces him to reexamine his Zen-like system of seduction.

Director: Wen Jiang
Stars: Wen Jiang, Kenya Sawada, Hongbo Jiang
Genre: Comedy, Drama, War
Country: China

During the Japanese occupation of China, two prisoners are dumped in a peasant’s home in a small town. The owner is bullied into keeping the prisoners until the next New Year, at which time they will be collected. The village leaders convene to interrogate the prisoners. The townspeople then struggle to accommodate the prisoners. One is a bellicose Japanese nationalist, the other a nervous translator. Will the townspeople manage to keep the prisoners until the New Year?

Director: Iglika Triffonova
Stars: Phillip Avramov, Ana Papadopulu, Peter Antonov
Genre: Drama
Country: Bulgaria | Netherlands | Hungary

Ivan’s best friend, Kamen, is dying in an American hospital. Since he’s denied a visa to the USA and can’t stay by his side in his last moments, he decides to set off for Bulgaria countryside, taking the camera Kamen has given him. After some time, he writes her a very special letter, telling all about the places and characters he meets on his way, witnesses to a time which is bound to be forgotten.

Director: Katherine Dieckmann
Stars: Henry Thomas, David Strathairn, Cara Seymour
Genre: Drama
Country: USA

A young inbred loner wandering the back roads of North Carolina comes across an abandoned baby. He immediately starts seeking the baby’s parents, but starts developing a bond with the child that explores his own isolated roots. In true bad guy fashion, a traveling salesman appears and truths about the baby’s origin start to unravel. But little did they know it was a trap.

Director: Wolfgang Murnberger
Stars: Josef Hader, Simon Schwarz, Barbara Rudnik
Genre: Comedy, Mystery, Thriller
Country: Austria

Ex-detective Brenner wants to keep himself out of trouble but several murder cases and his ex-girlfriend Klara finally get him involved. But making decisions is not one his strengths.

Director: Steven Okazaki
Stars: Tracey Helton, Alice McMunn
Genre: Documentary, Biography
Country: USA

This documentary follows the lives of a number of heroin addicts in the U.S.A. It shows their heroin life stories.

Director: Apichatpong Weerasethakul
Stars: Djuangjai Hirunsri, Kongkiat Khomsiri, Saisiri Xoomsai
Genre: Documentary, Drama, Fantasy
Country: Thailand | Netherlands

A film crew documents a folk story-exquisite corpse combination by random Thai people; the story is reenacted.

Director: Anh Hung Tran
Stars: Nu Yên-Khê Tran, Nhu Quynh Nguyen, Khanh Le
Genre: Drama
Country: Vietnam | France | Germany

With the brilliant Vietnamese summer as a setting Vertical Ray of the Sun is beautiful from beginning to end. The plot centres around three sisters, two of whom are happily married (or so it appears). The youngest sister is single and living with her cute older brother, whom she is desperately in love with. A second sister is married to a man who has another woman and child elsewhere whom he loves just as much as his wife -with a few conditions, she agrees to carry on with the marriage. The third sister and her husband are overjoyed to discover she is pregnant, and though he is tempted, her husband remains loyal to her. Charming, slow-paced, face value, family saga film.

Director: Friðrik Þór Friðriksson
Stars: Ingvar Sigurdsson, Baltasar Kormákur, Hilmir Snær Guðnason
Genre: Biography, Drama
Country: Iceland | Norway | Germany | Sweden | Denmark

Páll is an artistic and sensitive young man. Getting dumped by his girlfriend, Dagny, triggers his descent into madness. We follow him on his way to what seems like inevitable doom; at home with his parents who finally can’t cope, and in the mental institution, Kleppur.

Director: Nick Doob, Chris Hegedus, D.A. Pennebaker
Stars: Ralph Stanley, Emmylou Harris, Evelyn Cox
Genre: Documentary, Music
Country: USA

This is a documentary about the musical artists who performed the songs in the Coen Brothers’ film O Brother, Where Art Thou?

Director: Barbet Schroeder
Stars: Germán Jaramillo, Anderson Ballesteros, Juan David Restrepo
Genre: Crime, Drama
Country: Spain | France | Colombia

The tempestuous love story between Fernando, an older man who has recently returned to his crime-ridden drug capitol hometown of Medellin, Colombia and the gun-happy 16-year-old assassin Alexis, who murders all too easily. When Alexis himself is fatally gunned down, grief-stricken Fernando hunts for his young lover’s killer in the Medellin slums, but instead encounters Wilmar, who bears an uncanny resemblance to Alexis.

Director: Álex de la Iglesia
Stars: Carmen Maura, Eduardo Antuña, María Asquerino
Genre: Comedy, Crime, Horror
Country: Spain

The accidental discovery of a big fortune hidden in the apartment of a deceased man will fill the heart of a real estate agent with greed and dreams of a luxurious life, but the neighbours think otherwise.

Director: Miroslav Lekic
Stars: Zarko Lausevic, Bojana Maljevic, Aleksandar Bercek
Genre: Drama
Country: Federal Republic of Yugoslavia

In attempt to find out who he is and where his roots lie, Alija Osmanovic discovers something far deeper and more important. He slowly discovers an evil that follows him as his destiny regardless of what his ancestors were called.Trying to find the reasons for this evil, he finds himself in a vicious circle. Running away from an irrational fear within him, he finds the road to his faith.

Director: Nagisa Ôshima
Stars: Takeshi Kitano, Ryûhei Matsuda, Shinji Takeda
Genre: Drama, History, Thriller
Country: Japan | France | UK

The new member of a samurai militia unit causes disruption as several of his colleagues fall in love with him, threatening to disturb the rigid code of their squad.

Director: Philippe Harel
Stars: Philippe Harel, José Garcia, Philippe Bianco
Genre: Drama
Country: France

Story of a man whose misanthropy goes out of control due to a business trip together with a colleague.

Director: Fruit Chan
Stars: Yuet-Ming Yiu, Wai-Fan Mak, Yuet-Man Mak
Genre: Drama
Country: Hong Kong

In 1997, Little Cheung is a street-wise nine-year-old boy living in a bustling neighbourhood of Hong Kong, just before the reunification with China. His parents are always working at their restaurant, so Little Cheung becomes much closer to his grandmother and her Filipino maid Armi. Little Cheung befriends Fan, a girl his age who is an illegal immigrant from China. He splits his tips with her when she helps him deliver take-outs for his father. The pair have some amusing adventures, and delight in peeing in the drinks of a troublesome thug. Against his father’s will, Little Cheung starts searching for his older brother, whom his father disowned because he became a gangster.

Director: István Szabó
Stars: Ralph Fiennes, Rosemary Harris, Rachel Weisz
Genre: Drama, History, Romance
Country: Germany | Austria | Canada | Hungary | France | UK | USA

The fate of a Hungarian Jewish family throughout the 20th century.

Director: Sebastian Schipper
Stars: Frank Giering, Florian Lukas, Antoine Monot Jr.
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Country: Germany

Three friends from Hamburg spend one last night on the town before one of them leaves the city forever.

Director: Jane Campion
Stars: Kate Winslet, Harvey Keitel, Julie Hamilton
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Country: USA | Australia

Ruth’s been brainwashed by a guru in Delhi, India. Her parents in Sydney hire a specialist in reversing this. Ruth is tricked to return to Australia and is isolated in an outback cabin with the specialist. It gets messy.

Director: Michel Deville
Stars: Albert Dupontel, Valérie Dréville, Dominique Reymond
Genre: Drama
Country: France

This is a story about the world of a doctor called Bruno Sachs.He wrote a book called ‘La Maladie DE Sachs’ in which he describes his consultations with different patients.

Director: Tony Bui
Stars: Ngoc Hiep Nguyen, Ngoc Minh, Phat Trieu Hoang
Genre: Drama
Country: Vietnam | USA

An American in Ho Chi Minh City looks for a daughter he fathered during the war. He meets Woody, a child who’s a street vendor, and when Woody’s case of wares disappears, he thinks the soldier took it. Woody hunts for him. A cyclo driver, Hai, gives a ride to Lan, a hotel call girl, and starts waiting for her daily; he falls in love with her and tries to break through her tough veneer. Kien An, a young woman, takes a job harvesting lotuses in the ponds of Teacher Dao, a reclusive man who has leprosy. Her singing awakens him from depression, and he asks her to write down poetry he has composed. The characters’ paths cross in small ways, around flowers and kindnesses.

Director: Damien O’Donnell
Stars: Om Puri, Linda Bassett, Jordan Routledge
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Country: UK

In early 1970s England, a Pakistani father finds the authority he has previously maintained challenged by his increasingly Anglicized children.

Director: Janez Burger
Stars: Jan Cvitkovic, Natasa Burger, Janez Rus
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Country: Slovenia

Dizzy is a perennial student living in a small double room in a hostel. He never seems to study, but spends his time sleeping, watching TV, and drinking. Marko, a studious freshman from the country, is assigned to the other bed in the room, and he is soon joined by his young, very pregnant, girlfriend Ana. Meanwhile, Dizzy’s girlfriend Marina is trying to get Dizzy to make a commitment, but he would prefer to continue his idle ways.

Director: Joe Johnston
Stars: Jake Gyllenhaal, Chris Cooper, Laura Dern
Genre: Biography, Drama, Family
Country: USA

The true story of Homer Hickam, a coal miner’s son who was inspired by the first Sputnik launch to take up rocketry against his father’s wishes.

Director: Stan Brakhage
Stars: n/a
Genre: Short
Country: USA

An experimental short film from the Persian series made by Stan Brakhage.

Director: Benoît Mariage
Stars: Benoît Poelvoorde, Morgane Simon, Bouli Lanners
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Country: France | Belgium | Switzerland

Dreaming of more than his routine life, a father pushes his 15 years old son to break a world record: opening and closing a door 40,000 times in 24 hours.

Director: Stan Brakhage
Stars: n/a
Genre: Short
Country: USA

An experimental short film from the Persian series made by Stan Brakhage.

Director: Giuseppe Piccioni
Stars: Margherita Buy, Silvio Orlando, Carolina Freschi
Genre: Drama
Country: Italy

The rumpled owner of a dry-cleaning firm joins forces with a nun to care for an abandoned baby.

Director: Barry W. Blaustein
Stars: Terry Funk, Mick Foley, Jake Roberts
Genre: Documentary, Biography, Sport
Country: USA

A heartfelt documentary focusing on the day-to-day lives of professional wrestlers, some on the rise, some on the wane, and others fighting for their lives.

Director: Robert Altman
Stars: Glenn Close, Julianne Moore, Liv Tyler
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Country: USA

Conflict arises in the small town of Holly Springs when an old woman’s death causes a variety of reactions among family and friends.

Director: Jasmin Dizdar
Stars: Thomas Goodridge, Faruk Pruti, Tony Peters
Genre: Comedy, Drama, War
Country: UK

In London, during October 1993, England is playing Holland in the preliminaries of the World Cup. The Bosnian War is at its height, and refugees from the ex-Yugoslavia are arriving. Football rivals, and political adversaries from the Balkans all precipitate conflict and amusing situations. Meanwhile, the lives of four English families are affected in different ways by encounter with the refugees; one of the families improbably becomes involved with a Balkan refugee through the England vs. Holland match.

Director: Stan Brakhage
Stars: n/a
Genre: Short
Country: USA

An experimental short film from the Persian series made by Stan Brakhage.

Director: Jon Reiss
Stars: Moby, Lord T. Byron, McGuinnes
Genre: Documentary, Music
Country: USA

This is a documentary film about the history of the U.S. rave scene which includes a fantastic soundtrack. Both the film and soundtrack capture the people and the music that shaped the underground subculture around electronic music in America. Featured soundtrack artists include: Moby, Keoki, The Crystal Method, DJ Spooky, Roni Size, Psychic TV, and a host of others.

Director: Yesim Ustaoglu
Stars: Nazmi Kirik, Newroz Baz, Mizgin Kapazan
Genre: Drama
Country: Turkey | Netherlands | Germany

Mehmet, a young Turkish man newly migrated from the village Tire, takes a job searching for water leaks below the surface of the streets of Istanbul. Due to a strange set of events, he is mistaken for a Kurd, imprisoned, and brutally beaten. Upon his release a week later, he becomes an outcast marked as a Kurd, losing his apartment, his job, and eventually his girl friend, Arzu. When a Kurdish friend, Berzan is killed in a street protest triggered by a hunger strike, Mehmet takes a trek to return the body to Berzan’s home village near the Iraqi border, and learns why so many Kurds are refugees.

Director: Allan Moyle
Stars: Liane Balaban, Tara Spencer-Nairn, Mary Walsh
Genre: Comedy
Country: Canada

A gifted teenager dreaming of life beyond her small town becomes inspired when a 15-year-old girl from New York moves in next door.

Director: Raoul Ruiz
Stars: Catherine Deneuve, Emmanuelle Béart, Vincent Perez
Genre: Drama, Romance, War
Country: France | Italy | Portugal

A lush, elegant epic taking us on a time-swirling trip down the infinitely complex labyrinth that is Marcel Proust’s memory lane.

Director: Patricia Rozema
Stars: Frances O’Connor, Jonny Lee Miller, Alessandro Nivola
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance
Country: UK

At 10, Fanny Price, a poor relation, goes to live at Mansfield Park, the estate of her aunt’s husband, Sir Thomas. Clever, studious, and a writer with an ironic imagination and fine moral compass, she becomes especially close to Edmund, Thomas’s younger son. Fanny is soon possessed of beauty as well as a keen mind and comes to the attention of a neighbor, Henry Crawford. Thomas promotes this match, but to his displeasure, Fanny has a mind of her own, asking Henry to prove himself worthy. As Edmund courts Henry’s sister and as light shines on the link between Thomas’s fortunes and New World slavery, Fanny must assess Henry’s character and assert her heart as well as her wit.

Director: Deepa Mehta
Stars: Aamir Khan, Nandita Das, Rahul Khanna
Genre: Drama, Romance, War
Country: India | Canada

It’s 1947 and the borderlines between India and Pakistan are being drawn. A young girl witnesses tragedy as her ayah (nanny) is caught between the love of two men and the rising tide of political and religious violence.

Director: Darren Aronofsky
Stars: Sean Gullette, Mark Margolis, Ben Shenkman
Genre: Drama, Horror, Mystery
Country: USA

A paranoid mathematician searches for a key number that will unlock the universal patterns found in nature.

Director: Hans-Christian Schmid
Stars: August Diehl, Fabian Busch, Dieter Landuris
Genre: Thriller, Drama
Country: Germany

When the orphaned Karl Koch and his friend David start breaking into government and military computers, an acquaintance senses that there is money in computer cracking – and travels to east Berlin to try to contact the KGB.

Director: Jamil Dehlavi
Stars: Christopher Lee, Shireen Shah, James Curran
Genre: Biography, Drama, War
Country: UK | Pakistan

The story of Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan.

Director: Ettore Scola
Stars: Fanny Ardant, Antonio Catania, Francesca d’Aloja
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Country: Italy | France

A multitude of characters face personal problems while having dinner in a roman restaurant.

Director: Hideaki Anno
Stars: Tadanobu Asano, Mitsuru Fukikoshi, Megumi Hayashibara
Genre: Drama
Country: Japan

A high school girl engages in compensated dating in order to buy an expensive ring before the day ends.

Director: Predrag Antonijevic
Stars: Dennis Quaid, Nastassja Kinski, Pascal Rollin
Genre: Drama, War
Country: USA

A hardened mercenary in the Foreign Legion begins to find his own humanity when confronted with atrocities during the fighting in Bosnia.

Director: Shôhei Imamura
Stars: Akira Emoto, Kumiko Asô, Jacques Gamblin
Genre: Comedy, Drama, History
Country: Japan | France

At the end of WWII, Japanese doctor Akagi searches for the cure for hepatitis in the prisoner-of-war camp.

Director: Roger Michell
Stars: Julie Walters, Ciarán Hinds, Nuala O’Neill
Genre: Drama
Country: UK

A Belfast, Northern Ireland housewife takes up the peace cause, which causes her family trouble with I.R.A. sympathizers.

Director: Ernest R. Dickerson
Stars: Courtney B. Vance, Charles S. Dutton, Kadeem Hardison
Genre: Drama
Country: USA

In 1957, black lawyer John Williams has to defend his nephew Charlie, who is accused of strangling a white boy to death. John doesn’t believe Charlie did it, and although Charlie confesses, John wants to find out the real truth.

Director: Tom Tykwer
Stars: Franka Potente, Moritz Bleibtreu, Herbert Knaup
Genre: Crime, Drama, Thriller
Country: Germany

After a botched money delivery, Lola has 20 minutes to come up with 100,000 Deutschmarks.

Director: Gus Van Sant
Stars: Vince Vaughn, Anne Heche, Julianne Moore
Genre: Horror, Mystery, Thriller
Country: USA

A young female embezzler arrives at the Bates Motel, which has terrible secrets of its own.

Director: Teresa Villaverde
Stars: Ana Moreira, Alexandre Pinto, Nelson Varela
Genre: Drama
Country: Portugal | France

Three homeless teenage rejects struggle to survive together. Of them, Andreia is pregnant, while Pedro and Ricardo hustle, steal and are exploited by a pornographer.

Director: Marilou Diaz-Abaya
Stars: Cesar Montano, Joel Torre, Jaime Fabregas
Genre: Biography, Drama, History
Country: Philippines

Jose Rizal’s life and works are recounted through a series of non-linear flashbacks which reflect on various aspects of his life – as writer, propagandist, lover, friend, brother, doctor, and the man that inspired a revolution.

Director: Mike Nichols
Stars: John Travolta, Emma Thompson, Kathy Bates
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Country: UK | USA | France | Germany | Japan

A man joins the political campaign of a smooth-operator candidate for President of the U.S.

Director: Bille August
Stars: Liam Neeson, Geoffrey Rush, Uma Thurman
Genre: Crime, Drama, History
Country: UK | Germany | USA

Valjean, a former criminal, has atoned for his past and now finds himself in the midst of the French Revolution, avoiding a law-obsessed policeman hell-bent on capturing him.

Director: Alex Proyas
Stars: Rufus Sewell, Kiefer Sutherland, Jennifer Connelly
Genre: Mystery, Sci-Fi, Thriller
Country: Australia

A man struggles with memories of his past, which includes a wife he cannot remember, and a nightmarish world, no one else seems to be waking up from.

Director: Peter Lichtefeld
Stars: Joachim Król, Outi Mäenpää, Peter Lohmeyer
Genre: Comedy, Romance, Crime
Country: Germany | Finland

Hannes is a beer-truck driver in Dortmund. His biggest dream is to win the first prize at the International Time-Table Contest in Inari (Finland). When his new boss cancels his extra holidays to go there, Hans goes mad… On his journey to Finland by train, followed by the police, he meets lot of folks and the love of his life.

Director: David Riker
Stars: Anthony Rivera, Joseph Rigano, Miguel Maldonado
Genre: Drama
Country: USA

The stories of four Hispanic immigrants living in New York City.

Director: Karim Traïdia
Stars: Jaap Spijkers, Monic Hendrickx, Rudi Falkenhagen
Genre: Drama, Romance
Country: Netherlands

Polish deceived woman hides from pimps on a Dutch farm, and shares an intriguing romance with the farmer.

Director: Craig Monahan
Stars: Hugo Weaving, Tony Martin, Aaron Jeffery
Genre: Thriller, Crime, Drama
Country: Australia

A duel between a suspected murderer and a detective pressed by people who want results. But whose skin is really wanted.

Director: Maya Angelou
Stars: Alfre Woodard, Al Freeman Jr., Mary Alice
Genre: Drama
Country: USA

Rosa Lynn sends her druggie daughter Loretta and her children Thomas and Tracy away from the big city to live with their uncle Earl in the ancestral home in rural Mississippi. Earl puts Loretta to work in his restaurant, Just Chicken, while also telling them about the generations of their family, the Sinclairs, dating back to their time in slavery before the the Civil War.

Director: Stefan Ruzowitzky
Stars: Simon Schwarz, Sophie Rois, Lars Rudolph
Genre: Drama, Mystery
Country: Austria | Germany

Austria, a little farming valley. Beginning of the century. When one of the farmers is found murdered one day, his labourers know of nothing, but are relieved, as the tyranny has ended. Then, something new happens for the first time in history: The farm workers inherit the whole farm together, as the farmer himself was childless. Now, conflicts come up, as nobody is the boss and nobody has to obey.

Director: Samira Makhmalbaf
Stars: Massoumeh Naderi, Zahra Naderi, Ghorban Ali Naderi
Genre: Drama
Country: Iran | France | Netherlands

After twelve years of imprisonment by their own parents, two sisters are finally released by social workers to face the outside world for the first time.

Director: Hal Hartley
Stars: Martin Donovan, PJ Harvey, Dave Simonds
Genre: Comedy, Fantasy
Country: France | USA

The end of the millenium has taken on a certain significance in modern day prophecies. What happens if Jesus Christ has second thoughts about the Apocalypse? It is December 31, 1999 and New Year’s Eve takes on new meaning when the Devil, Jesus Christ, and Christ’s assistant Magdelina discuss and debate the end of the world, the opening of the seven seals, and the essence of being human.

Director: Shin’ya Tsukamoto
Stars: Shin’ya Tsukamoto, Kirina Mano, Tatsuya Nakamura
Genre: Crime, Drama, Sci-Fi
Country: Japan

A man sees his life changed forever when his fiancee shoots herself. Baffled, he wants by all means to obtain such a weapon of destruction and he finds himself caught in the middle of a violent group of young vicious punks. They first beat him severely and then he seeks revenge with his fist, then with a gun. Everything from then on is a complete downward spiral.

Director: Ted Demme
Stars: Denis Leary, Ian Hart, Jason Barry
Genre: Crime, Drama, Thriller
Country: Canada | USA

A small-time hoodlum is divided between his conscience and loyalty to his boss when his cousin is murdered.

Director: Jeong-hyang Lee
Stars: Eun-ha Shim, Sung-Jae Lee, Sung-Ki Ahn
Genre: Comedy, Romance
Country: USouth Korea

Two strangers with very little in common, find themselves forced to live together.

Director: Kirk Jones
Stars: Ian Bannen, David Kelly, Fionnula Flanagan
Genre: Comedy
Country: UK | Ireland | France | USA

When a lottery winner dies of shock, his fellow townsfolk attempt to claim the money.

Director: Marshall Herskovitz
Stars: Catherine McCormack, Rufus Sewell, Oliver Platt
Genre: Biography, Drama, Romance
Country: USA

A Venetian courtesan becomes a hero to her city, but later becomes the target of an inquisition by the Church for witchcraft.

Director: Stavros Tsiolis
Stars: Yannis Zouganelis, Argyris Bakirtzis, Sakis Boulas
Genre: Comedy
Country: Greece

End of July, and it’s holiday time. Panos and Michalis are brothers-in-law from Thessaloniki and run a small business together. Brimming over with high spirits, they leave for Thasos to meet their families. In the vicinity of Lake Volvi, their brief encounter with a young bar woman delays them. Panos, who is madly in love with her, attempts to commit suicide, and Michalis is forced to strike camp by the lake. Antonis, the third brother-in-law, who is concerned about their delay, comes around to find out what has happened, only to fall himself for one of the nurses treating Panos. He forgets about everything else and goes with her to the casino, where he wins on the roulette tables. Their relationship, naturally, does not reach fruition. Antonis reunites with Panos and Michalis, and they all start afresh for Thasos, but on the spur of the moment they decide to stop over at a hotel. Since their women can wait for them, they might just never go back.

Director: Barbara Sonneborn
Stars: Xuan Ngoc Nguyen, Barbara Sonneborn
Genre: Documentary, War
Country: USA

In this film made over ten years, filmmaker Barbara Sonneborn goes on a pilgrimage to the Vietnamese countryside where her husband was killed. She and translator (and fellow war widow) Xuan Ngoc Nguyen explore the meaning of war and loss on a human level. The film weaves interviews with Vietnamese and American widows into a vivid testament to the legacy of war.

Director: Robert B. Weide
Stars: Robert De Niro, Steve Allen, Honey Bruce Friedman
Genre: Documentary, Biography, Comedy
Country: USA

Comedian Lenny Bruce struck a subversive chord in an era of change in America. After getting his start as a conventional stand-up comic, Bruce’s increasingly iconoclastic act transformed him into a leading figure of the 1960s counterculture. This is his story.

Director: Joan Chen
Stars: Xiaolu Li, Lopsang, Zheng Qian
Genre: Drama
Country: Hong Kong | USA | Taiwan

Young teen girl Xiu Xiu is sent away to a remote corner of the Sichuan steppes for manual labor in 1975 (sending young people to there was a part of Cultural Revolution in China). A year later, she agrees to go to even more remote spot with a Tibetan saddle tramp Lao Jin to learn horse herding.

Director: Nikita Mikhalkov
Stars: Julia Ormond, Oleg Menshikov, Aleksey Petrenko
Genre: Comedy, Drama, History
Country: Russia | France | Italy | Czech Republic

At the turn of the century, a young Russian cadet falls in love with an American beauty, endangering his career and even their lives.

Director: Olivier Assayas
Stars: Mathieu Amalric, Virginie Ledoyen, François Cluzet
Genre: Drama, Romance
Country: France

A story about the transition from late youth to early maturity, the film follows several friends and lovers as they come to make decisions on how to live their lives–getting a job more in harmony with ones ideals, committing to a lover, giving up a lover that no longer loves you: a film about grown-ups growing up.

Director: Steven Soderbergh
Stars: George Clooney, Jennifer Lopez, Ving Rhames
Genre: Comedy, Crime, Drama
Country: USA

A career bank robber breaks out of jail, and shares a moment of mutual attraction with a U.S. Marshal he has kidnapped.

Director: Sean Mathias
Stars: Lothaire Bluteau, Clive Owen, Mick Jagger
Genre: Drama, History, Romance
Country: UK | Japan

In 1930s Berlin, a gay Jew is sent to a concentration camp under the Nazi regime.

Director: Andrew Niccol
Stars: Ethan Hawke, Uma Thurman, Jude Law
Genre: Drama, Sci-Fi, Thriller
Country: USA

A genetically inferior man assumes the identity of a superior one in order to pursue his lifelong dream of space travel.

Director: Henry Jaglom
Stars: Victoria Foyt, Stephen Dillane, Vanessa Redgrave
Genre: Drama, Romance
Country: USA

L.A. shop owner Dana and Englishman Sean meet and fall in love at first sight, but Sean is married and Dana is to marry her business partner Alex.

Director: Martin Sulík
Stars: Dorota Nvotová, Emília Vásáryová, Frantisek Kovár
Genre: Drama, Fantasy
Country: Slovakia

In Slovakia, the sixteen year-old Terezka is discharged from her school with a letter to her mother. Along her surrealistic journey to find her mother, Terezka entwines reality and fantasy and meets a man that is hired to burn clothes; a woman buried on the ground; a young bride that is marrying the forty and something year-old widow of his brother to support her family as a tradition in their village; her younger brother that is intern in a special school; a decadent TV comedian and his wife; a powerful mobster in the kitchen of a restaurant; one lover of her mother in her former address; and finally her promiscuous mother that advises her to travel through the world.

Director: Chi Leung ‘Jacob’ Cheung
Stars: Carina Lau, Charlie Yeung, Ah-Lei Gua
Genre: Drama, Romance
Country: Hong Kong | Taiwan

Foon escapes an arranged marriage by walking the road of a Ji Sor. After an affair with Shing, she becomes pregnant. An attempted abortion nearly costs Foon her life. Wan, the young owner of a silk factory, rescues her. Wan and Foon share their romances, reflecting the experience of women during the 40’s.

Director: Youssef Chahine, Khairiya A-Mansour
Stars: Nour El-Sherif, Layla Olwi, Mahmoud Hemida
Genre: Comedy, Drama, History
Country: France | Egypt

The story is set in the 12th century in Arab-ruled Spanish province Andalusia, where famed philosopher Averroes is appointed grand judge by the caliph and his liberal court judgements are not liked by everyone. The caliph’s political rivals, centered around the leader of a fanatical Islamic sect, force the caliph to send Averroes into exile, but his ideas keep on living thanks to his students.

Director: Sharunas Bartas
Stars: Francisco Nascimento, Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, Alex Descas
Genre: Drama
Country: Lithuania | Portugal | France

A ramshackle mansion in the woods: individuals of all type, age and condition eat, roam or rest inside. But always in strict silence.

Director: François Ozon
Stars: Sasha Hails, Marina de Van, Samantha
Genre: Thriller
Country: France

While waiting her husband return from a business trip, a young woman with a baby is getting close with a strange woman traveler.

Director: Hal Hartley
Stars: Thomas Jay Ryan, James Urbaniak, Parker Posey
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Country: USA

Socially inept garbage man Simon is befriended by Henry Fool, a witty roguish, but talentless novelist. Henry opens a magical world of literature to Simon who turns his hand to writing the ‘great American poem’. As Simon begins his controversial ascent to the dizzying heights of Nobel Prize winning poet, Henry sinks to a life of drinking in low-life bars. The two friends fall out and lose touch until Henry’s criminal past catches up with him and he needs Simon’s help to flee the country.

Director: Rob Sitch
Stars: Michael Caton, Anne Tenney, Stephen Curry
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Country: Australia

A working-class family from Melbourne, Australia fights city hall after being told they must vacate their beloved family home to allow for infrastructural expansion.

Director: Waris Hussein
Stars: Firdaus Kanga, Souad Faress, Khodus Wadia
Genre: Drama
Country: UK

The unusual story of a boy who will never grow. Born with a disease that makes his bones brittle, Brit, as he is appropriately named by his mom, will be four feet tall for life. But he doesn’t think small. He has his own spirited way of dealing with the world, and the cast of characters that surrounds him helps ensure that life is never dull: an eccentric mom, a dad with movie star looks, a doting sister, and numerous other mentors, lovers (both male and female), and charlatans who come in and out of the picture.

Director: Yimou Zhang
Stars: Rong Chang, Xudong Du, Qingzhuo Fang
Genre: Comedy
Country: Hong Kong | China

A spurned lover seeks a rich man for revenge. A random onlooker — who witnessed the public assault committed by the rich man against the lover — seeks for monetary compensation for his smashed computer. The lover’s and the onlooker’s lives intertwine as two people collaborate. The onlooker’s fate faces an unpredictable turn and mirrors the lover’s life.

Director: Ricardo Franco
Stars: Antonio Resines, Maribel Verdú, Jordi Mollà
Genre: Adventure, Drama, Fantasy
Country: Spain | Italy | France

Rafael witnesses Marina – a woman with a glass eye – being attacked on the street by Daniel; her long-time acquaintance since the orphanage, where they were both raised as kids. He rescues her from Daniel and brings her to his home, where a relationship between them soon develops. Marina is pregnant, but since Daniel does not want the child, Rafael offers to step in as the father, having his own physical problems, preventing him from having kids. He and Marina stays together as a couple, and as a family. But once everything seems to be settled, Daniel – released from prison – shows up again.

Director: William Nicholson
Stars: Sophie Marceau, Stephen Dillane, Dominique Belcourt
Genre: Romance, Drama
Country: UK | USA

In 1838, lovely governess Elisabeth agrees to bear a child of anonymous English landowner, and he will in return pay her father’s debt. At birth she, as agreed, gives up the child. Seven years later she is hired as governess to a girl on a remote Sussex estate. The father of the girl, Charles Godwin, turns out to be that anonymous landowner. So Elisabeth has to be her own daughter’s governess, and she can’t reveal the secret of her tie with little Louisa.

Director: Aleksandr Sokurov
Stars: n/a
Genre: Documentary
Country: Japan | Russia

Examing the daily life of an elderly woman in rural Japan allows Sokurov to evoke how folkways (Japanese and Russian) shape our worldview.

Director: Frederick Wiseman
Stars: n/a
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA

Renowned documentarian Frederick Wiseman takes an intimate and nuanced look at the Ida B. Wells housing project in the south side of Chicago, Illinois.

Director: Wolfgang Becker
Stars: Jürgen Vogel, Christiane Paul, Ricky Tomlinson
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Country: Germany

After he loses his job, his father, and his girlfriend, Jan’s life is a shambles. Then suddenly he meets freakish street musician Vera, and a bittersweet romance unfolds…

Director: Satoshi Kon
Stars: Junko Iwao, Rica Matsumoto, Shinpachi Tsuji
Genre: Animation, Crime, Mystery
Country: Japan

A pop singer gives up her career to become an actress, but she slowly goes insane when she starts being stalked by an obsessed fan and what seems to be a ghost of her past.

Director: Nicolas Philibert
Stars: n/a
Genre: Documentary, Music
Country: France

Documentary. The tranquil woods of the Loire Valley embrace the La Borde psychiatric clinic, an asylum in the truest sense of the word, where patients find sanctuary and repose. Patients and staff work together in rehearsals and preparations for their annual summer play. This year, they perform the modernist, absurdist classic, “Operette,” by Witold Gombrowicz, whose dialogue is more nonsensical than that of the patients themselves.

Director: Bob Gosse
Stars: Robin Tunney, Henry Thomas, Michael Parks
Genre: Drama, Romance
Country: USA | CanadaSA

An outsider and a young woman plagued by Tourette’s syndrome meet and together journey to Canada.

Director: Jim Jarmusch
Stars: Neil Young, Jim Jarmusch, Ralph Molina
Genre: Documentary, Music
Country: USA

This film documents Neil Young and Crazy Horse’s 1996 concert tour. Jim Jarmusch interviews the band about their long history, and we see backstage footage from the 1970s and 1980s.

Director: Montxo Armendáriz
Stars: Carmelo Gómez, Charo López, Silvia Munt
Genre: Drama
Country: France | Portugal | Spain

Javi and his friend Carlos snoop around an old house on the way home from school. According to his brother Juan this is a haunted house and one can hear the voices of the dead. Later he is intrigued with a room which is always closed (the room where his father was found dead). He is so interested in these mysteries that he starts to investigate all the secrets of these dead people and their stories.

Director: Joseph Vilsmaier
Stars: Ben Becker, Heino Ferch, Ulrich Noethen
Genre: Biography, Drama, Music
Country: Germany | Austria

The film chronicles the rise and fall of Germany’s most famous a capella group, the Comedian Harmonists, in 1930s Germany.

Director: Bruno Barreto
Stars: Alan Arkin, Pedro Cardoso, Fernanda Torres
Genre: Action, Drama, History
Country: Brazil | USA

Brazillian urban guerrilla fighters kidnap the American Ambassador. Now, the diplomat’s life hangs in the balance – helplessly caught between a government unwilling to cooperate – and his fear of the captors themselves.

Director: John Madden
Stars: Judi Dench, Billy Connolly, Geoffrey Palmer
Genre: Biography, Drama, History
Country: UK | Ireland | USA

When Queen Victoria’s husband Prince Albert dies, she finds solace in her trusted servant, Mr. John Brown, but their relationship also brings scandal and turmoil.

Director: Stan Brakhage
Stars: n/a
Genre: Short
Country: USA

An experimental short film by Stan Brakhage focusing on flashing light and photographic images.

Director: Xiaogang Feng
Stars: You Ge, Xiaogang Feng, Wei Chen
Genre: Comedy
Country: China

Four friends come up with an unusual idea to make some money and have fun doing it. For a small fee, they will impersonate and act out any character role for their customers. In the course of executing this novel service, they encounter a whole spectrum of people in society, finding ways to genuinely help them boost their morale and overcome their fears, while gaining unusual and new insights into the human condition.

Director: Paul Weiland
Stars: Jean Reno, Mercedes Ruehl, Polly Walker
Genre: Comedy, Romance, Drama
Country: USA | Italy

Roseanna is dying of a heart condition, and all she wants is to be buried next to her daughter, in a cemetery that is getting full fast. The cemetery can’t expand because Capestro, the man who owns the land next to the cemetery, won’t sell. While Marcello is doing good deeds to make sure no one dies, Roseanna thinks of Marcello’s future.

Director: Alan Rickman
Stars: Phyllida Law, Emma Thompson, Sheila Reid
Genre: Drama
Country: UK | USA

A recent widow, who is determined to leave Scotland for Australia with her son, gets an unexpected visit from her aging mother.

Director: Wim Wenders
Stars: Traci Lind, Rosalind Chao, Bill Pullman
Genre: Drama, Thriller
Country: France | Germany | USA

Mike Max is a Hollywood producer who became powerful and rich thanks to brutal and bloody action films. His ignored wife Paige is close to leaving him. Suddenly Mike is kidnapped by two bandits, but escapes and hides out with his Mexican gardener’s family for a while. At the same time, surveillance expert Ray Bering is looking for what happens in the city, but it is not clear what he wants. The police investigation for Max’s disappearance is led by detective Doc Block, who falls in love with actress Cat who is playing in ongoing Max’s production.

Director: Bruno Dumont
Stars: David Douche, Marjorie Cottreel, Kader Chaatouf
Genre: Drama, Romance
Country: France

A social movie about current life in the north of France. Freddy and his friends are all unemployed. They pass away time by wandering around on their motorcycles and by directing their aggressive feelings towards Arab immigrants. Freddy is in love with Marie, a cashier at a local supermarket. When she is proposed to by Kader, a young Arab man, Freddy and his friends have an idea: they decide to punish Kader for what they call “such a provocation.” After they have raped another girl, Marie finally commits to Kader, which seals his fate.

Director: Stan Brakhage
Stars: n/a
Genre: Short
Country: USA

An experimental short by Stan Brakhage which combines and overlaps various lights, colors, and footage.