Society

Nicaragua, today. 11-year-old Maria lives with her mother Lilibeth at the edge of a garbage dump. Their future depends on selling a litter of purebred puppies to a local thug. When the deal falls through, Lilibeth must go to the city and drops Maria off at a recycling center where she must stay and work. But days pass and she doesn’t return. Maria feels lost, bewildered and angry. One night, Maria meets Tadeo, an imaginative new friend who is determined to help her to reunite with her mother.

Aden, Yemen. Isra’a and Ahmed put all their efforts offering a normal life and education to their three young children. When they find out that Isra'a is pregnant again, they have to make difficult decisions guided only by their family's interest.

In the treacherous and swampy forests that make up the so called “green border” between Belarus and Poland, refugees from the Middle East and Africa trying to reach the European Union are trapped in a geopolitical crisis cynically engineered by Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko. In an attempt to provoke Europe, refugees are lured to the border by propaganda promising easy passage to the EU. Pawns in this hidden war, the lives of Julia, a newly minted activist who has given up her comfortable life, Jan, a young border guard, and a Syrian family intertwine. 30 years after EUROPA EUROPA, three-time Oscar Nominee Agnieszka Holland’s poignant new feature GREEN BORDER opens our eyes, speaks to the heart, and challenges us to reflect on the moral choices that fall to ordinary people every day.

The Old Oak is a special place. Not only is it the last pub standing, it is the only remaining public space where people can meet in a once thriving mining community that has now fallen on hard times after 30 years of decline. Landlord TJ Ballantyne (Dave Turner) hangs on to The Old Oak by his fingertips, and his hold is endangered even more when the pub becomes contested territory after the arrival of Syrian refugees who are placed in the village. An unlikely friendship develops when TJ encounters a young Syrian with a camera, Yara (Ebla Mari). Can they find a way for the two communities to understand each other? So unfolds a deeply moving drama about loss, fear and the difficulty of finding hope. On the Piazza Grande in Locarno, 87-year-old Ken Loach received a moving standing ovation for his latest film. He is one of the most committed filmmakers in the world and manages to develop his narratives out of everyday life in a way that is as moving as it is authentic.

After the sudden death of the town's mayor, Pierre, an idealistic young doctor, is appointed to replace him. He intends to continue the policy of his predecessor, who dreamed of rehabilitating this working-class neighbourhood. Haby, a young French woman of Malian origin living in one of the dilapidated tower blocks, refuses to see her family being driven out of the neighbourhood where she grew up. Following his brilliant feature film debut "Les Misérables", which – among other awards – won the Jury Prize at Cannes, Ladj Ly is returning with another thrilling story. "Bâtiment 5" deals with the growing housing crisis and its consequences, prejudices and police assaults in the form of a haunting, multi-faceted story. A movie full of anger - but also full of hope!

Semret lives a modest and quite isolated life in Zurich with her teenage daughter Joe. She works at a hospital and is applying to a midwife training program. When Joe starts to ask about her own roots from Eritrea, Semret can no longer repress her past and has to confront her traumas. With the help of Yemane, a new hospital employee that is also an Eritrean refugee, she is finally able to face the tragic memories of her escape. With her film «Semret», Swiss director Caterina Mona takes a subtle and profoundly humanist look at migration and integration in contemporary Switzerland. With Lula Mebrahtu, Tedros Teddy Teclebrhan, Hermela Tekleab and Manuela Biedermann.

Drawing inspiration from his personal encounter with the Italian refugee child Giovanna during World War II, Markus Imhoof tells how refugees and migrants are treated today: on the Mediterranean Sea, in Italy and in Switzerland.

1984: Searching for an experience beyond modern civilisation, Bruno Manser travels into the jungles of Borneo and finds the nomadic Penan tribe. When the existence of the Penan is threatened by relentless deforestation, Manser takes up the fight against logging with a courage and determination that makes him one of the most renowned and credible environmentalists of his time. Based on a true story.

The Polish woman Wanda, 35, looks after Joseph, 70, in his family villa by the lake. She is there for him around the clock and also helps his wife Elsa, 75. The youngest son Gregi, 28, likes her very much. The work is poorly paid, but Wanda needs the money for her own family in Poland. Since everyone lives under one roof, Wanda gets an intimate view of their family life. So intimate that Wanda unexpectedly becomes pregnant.

A traffic accident in which Camilla, a lawyer, is involved results in the death of a young man; this forces her to investigate and face unfamiliar places and situations. While on this journey, she will meet Bruno and rediscover herself.

Heshmat, an exemplary husband and father, gets up very early every day. Where does he go? Pouya cannot imagine killing another man, yet he is told he must do so. Javad doesn’t know that proposing to his beloved won’t be the only surprise on her birthday. Bahram is a physician but is unable to practice medicine. He has decided to explain to his visiting niece the reason for his life as an outcast. The four stories that comprise Sheytan vojud nadarad (There Is No Evil) offer variations on the crucial themes of moral strength and the death penalty, asking to what extent individual freedom can be expressed under a despotic regime and its seemingly inescapable threats. Mohammad Rasoulof only creates a loose narrative link between these stories, and yet they are all tragically and inexorably connected. In the context of structural oppression, choice seems to be limited to either resisting or surviving. But with each abruptly interrupted story, we are urged to consider how men and women can assert their freedom even in such situations.

Fraudsters and their victims, wage dumping and illegal employment – we follow employment market inspectors Frédy, Regula, Marcos, Stefan and Chrümu and share their frustration as they try to carry out the often almost impossible task of enforcing Switzerland’s mandatory minimum standards in the work market. A political road movie that provides insights into the complex situation and is as exciting as a thriller.

Two men make the dangerous journey from Africa to Italy for a better life, but then face hostility and violence in this shocking look at the life-and-death struggle of refugees.

Between 1947 and 1950, more than 80 000 Greek citizens were imprisoned on the isle of Makronisos (Greece) in reeducation camps created to ‘fight the spread of communism’. Among these exiles were a number of writers and poets, including Yannis Ritsos and Tassos Livaditis. Despite the deprivation and torture, these prisoners succeeded in composing poems, which describe their struggle for survival in this world of internment. These texts, some of them buried in the camps, were later found. «Like Lions of stone at the gateway of night» blends these poetic writings with the reeducation propaganda constantly piped through the camps’ loudspeakers. Long tracking shots take us on a trance-like journey through the camp ruins, interrupted along the way by segments from photographic archives. A cinematic essay, which revives the memory of forgotten ruins and a battle lost.

The war in Congo has caused more than six million deaths over the last twenty years. The population is suffering, but the offenders stay with impunity. Many people see this conflict as one of globalisation's crucial econimic distribution battles because the country has major deposits of many high-tech raw materials. Milo Rau, one of Europe's most acclaimed theatre directors, succeeds in gathering victims, perpetrators, observes and analysts of the conflict for a unique civil tribunal in eastern Congo. The documentary film brings these spectacular court trials to life on the big screen and creates an unvarnished portrait of the largest and bloodiest economic wars in human history.

Lesya has committed a crime of passion which brings her a seven-year sentence in one of Odessa’s women’s correctional facilities. She has just given birth to her first child, and now she is entering a world populated only by women: inmates, nurses and wardens, women of all ages, wives and widows, daughters, sisters, pregnant women, and women with children too. If not for the color of the uniform, it would sometimes be hard to tell who is who.

Winter in rural Switzerland. Marina, a teacher in her mid-forties, leads a quiet life with her husband and daughter. But appearances are deceptive; she is having a secret affair with Artem, the father of one of her students, Ulyana. Although both Artem and his daughter have lived in Switzerland for years, neither has a residence permit. When Ulyana is caught stealing it exposes their game of hide-and-seek and threatens the existences of everyone involved.

Recounted mostly through animation to protect his identity, Amin looks back over his past as a child refugee from Afghanistan as he grapples with a secret he’s kept hidden for 20 years. A thrilling documentary made with a blend of animation and archive footage tells an immensely powerful tale of a gay Afghan survivor and his need to confront his past in order to truly have a future. Amin arrived as an unaccompanied minor in Denmark from Afghanistan. Today, at 36, he is a successful academic and is getting married to his long-time boyfriend. A secret he has been hiding for over 20 years threatens to ruin the life he has built for himself. For the first time he is sharing his story with his close friend. FLEE weaves together a stunning tapestry of images and memories to tell the deeply affecting and original story of a young man grappling with his traumatic past in order to find his true self and the meaning of home.

A poker-playing restaurateur and former traveling salesman befriends a group of refugees newly arrived to Finland.

Chile, 1976. Carmen heads off to her beach house to supervise its renovation. Her husband, children and grandchildren come back and forth during the winter vacation. When the family priest asks her to take care of a young man he is sheltering in secret, Carmen steps onto unexplored territories, away from the quiet life she is used to.

When Herra, a young Czech woman, falls in love with Nazir, an Afghan, she has no idea what kind of life awaits her in post-Taliban Afghanistan, nor of the family she is about to integrate into. A liberal grandfather, an adopted child who is highly intelligent and Freshta, who would do anything to escape her husband's violent grip.

Pensioner Roli comes to Fareed’s assistance when the Syrian refugee is faced with the burial of his Muslim wife. Together they stumble into a bewildering forest of Swiss bureaucracy to which Roli finds a beautifully simple answer.

Along the Atlantic coast, a soon-to-be-inaugurated futuristic tower looms over a suburb of Dakar. Ada, 17, is in love with Souleiman, a young construction worker. But she has been promised to another man. One night, Souleiman and his co-workers leave the country by sea, in hope of a better future. Several days later, a fire ruins Ada’s wedding and a mysterious fever starts to spread. Little does Ada know that Souleiman has returned.

Set wholly in a secondary school in a working-class district of Paris, where many inhabitants are foreign-born, the film follows a year in the life of a young teacher, François Marin, and the 25 teenage pupils to whom he teaches French for an hour each day. Teacher and novelist François Bégaudeau plays a version of himself as he spends a year with his racially mixed students walking the narrow line between maintaining discipline and gaining co-operation. Winner of the Palme d'Or at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival, master French director Laurent Cantet's The Class is a "fresh piece of humanist, realist, optimist cinema" (The Guardian).

Jacques Audiard (A Prophet, Rust and Bone) won the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 2015 for this daring, genre-bending portrait of three Sri Lankan refugees—Dheepan (Antonythasan Jesuthasan), Yalini (Kalieaswari Srinivasan), and Illayaal (Claudine Vinasithamby)— who form a fake family unit to emigrate. When they find themselves living together in a violent, gang-dominated housing project outside Paris, they start to reevaluate the terms of their intimacy. Like his character, the actor and novelist Jesuthasan was a member of the militant nationalist army LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) before fleeing the country and settling into a series of odd jobs in Paris, while eventually renouncing all ties to the Tigers. When, in its bloody last act, his character has to fall back on his military training, Dheepan becomes something darker: a harrowing reckoning with the past.

FOR SAMA is both an intimate and epic journey into the female experience of war. A love letter from a young mother to her daughter, the film tells the story of Waad al-Kateab’s life through five years of the uprising in Aleppo, Syria as she falls in love, gets married and gives birth to Sama, all while cataclysmic conflict rises around her. Her camera captures incredible stories of loss, laughter and survival as Waad wrestles with an impossible choice – whether or not to flee the city to protect her daughter’s life, when leaving means abandoning the struggle for freedom for which she has already sacrificed so much. The Times noted: «One of the most important films you will ever see in your life.»

Nanni Moretti's new film covers the months that followed the coup d'état in Chile on 11 September 1973, which overthrew the democratic government of Salvador Allende. The film focuses on the role of the Italian embassy in Santiago de Chile, which became a refuge from General Pinochet's regime for hundreds of opposition members. From here, many opponents of the regime were able to flee to Italy.

In 2015, after Hassan Fazili’s documentary Peace aired on Afghan national television, the Taliban assassinated the film’s main subject and put a price on Hassan’s head. Hassan looked at his wife and his daughters, and he knew they had to flee their home. Over the course of their multi-year saga in search of safety, the family grasped onto the only means they had to assert control over their situation: their camera-phones. Midnight Traveler is a gripping vérité story made by a family on the run. Their unique access and artistic vision provide an intimate portrait of a loving family and the myriad fellow travelers they meet on their odyssey.

VOLUNTEER is a film about the grassroots movement of ordinary Swiss citizens who set out to help thousands of refugees stranded in Greece. In rich and safe Switzerland, citizens from different backgrounds leave their orderly lives behind to support people in need. There is a Swiss farmer and his wife who raise cows in the Alps, a captain in the Swiss army, a pensioner who resides on the lakeside, and a successful comedian and entertainer. These volunteers embark on an adventure that will change their lives forever.

Magdalena hasn’t heard from her son in months — not since he left their town to cross the border into the United States. The authorities want her to sign her son’s death certificate, but an encounter with a bereaved parent makes Magdalena realize that she cannot live without knowing his fate. She begins an odyssey across Mexico, though areas of violence and desolation, chasing any available lead despite being warned not to publicly ask such questions. Along the way, she meets and travels with recently deported Miguel, who finds himself journeying home through a changed country. Grappling with the painful issue of migrants disappearing on their way to the U.S., writer/director Fernanda Valadez’s ambitious feature debut employs a tremendous economy of film language as it traverses across a varied contemporary Mexican landscape, expanding as our emotional experience of Magdalena’s journey swells to meet her own. The solemn Sin Señas Particulares punctuates its contemplation of family and loss with fleeting moments of human connection, allowing one woman’s aching personal story to encapsulate the weight of a tremendous real-world humanitarian crisis.

Esmail, a young and charming Iranian lives in Denmark where he works as a mover. However, in the evening, he frequents the posh places in the city to seduce women, hoping to get married and obtain a residence permit. When he meets Sara, everything changes. On the verge of achieving his goal, he is hunted down by a mysterious man...

Young brothers Max and Leo dream of going to Disneyland, but having just emigrated from Mexico to the USA they first have to settle in their new homeland. And they have to stick to the seven rules their mother has set down for them.

Inspired by the 2005 riots in Paris, Stéphane, a recent transplant to the impoverished suburb of Montfermeil, joins the local anti-crime squad. Working alongside his unscrupulous colleagues Chris and Gwada, Stéphane struggles to maintain order amidst the mounting tensions between local gangs. When an arrest turns unexpectedly violent, the three officers must reckon with the aftermath and keep the neighbourhood from spiralling out of control.

The hope of a better life in Europe comes at a high price. Nigeria is separated from the gateway to Europe on the Moroccan coast by more than 3'000 kilometres. During a journey organised by smugglers through the Sahara, Hope, a young Nigerian, meets Cameroonian refugee Léonard. Although snubbed by him, Hope remains at his heels. She knows that Léonard is the only chance she has of surviving this journey. Director Boris Lojkine shot this award-winning drama on location along the world’s most frequented migration route, and uses the story of its two protagonists to make tangible the tragic fate of many refugees.

They have traveled far - by plane, train, bus or boat. Now they find themselves in the integration class of teacher Christian Zingg in Basel, where young people from all over the world get to know the language and culture of our country within two years. Anna Thommen's documentary film, which has won numerous awards at numerous festivals, opens up a view into a world that is hardly known. The director skilfully interweaves various stories, observed with great sensitivity.

The German troops are just outside Paris. Georg escapes to Marseille at the last moment. His luggage contains the legacy of a writer named Weidel, who took his own life out of fear of persecution. This legacy comprises a manuscript, some letters and the Mexican Embassy’s assurance of a visa. Only those who can prove that they will leave are allowed in this port town, and this means you need an entry permit from a potential host country. Assuming the identity of Weidel, Georg tries to obtain one of the few scarce passages on a ship. Talks between refugees take place in the corridors of his small hotel, the waiting rooms of consulates, and the cafés and bars down at the harbour. Georg befriends Driss, the son of his late comrade Heinz, who died whilst trying to flee. But when he meets the mysterious Marie, his plans change. Transit is based on Anna Seghers’ eponymous novel which she wrote in exile. The film is set in contemporary Marseille where these characters from the past move around. And so, refugees from back then meet refugees from today, history meets the present, and all of their stories combine to create one eternal transit space.

In this docudrama, the real star is a railroad tunnel. First built, at the instigation of a banker and an engineer, in 1872 under appalling conditions, it was widened to accommodate automobiles in 1972. The tunnel links the Rhineland in Germany with Italy and goes through the Swiss mountains. The many lives lost in the building of the first tunnel were considered to be one of the costs for economic progress. In one re-enactment, a strike for better conditions is severely dealt with by the military. Even in 1972, though working conditions were better, most of the men working on the tunnel were poor immigrant workers, with almost no power to negotiate better treatment.

A Roma boy living in Sweden dreams of building a spaceship to escape the reality of his family's pending asylum request, and the mysterious coma-like illness that has befallen his siblings.

Mired in the nervous desperation of Havana, Raul dreams of escaping to Miami. When accused of assault, his only option is to flee Cuba. He begs his best friend, Elio, to abandon everything and help him reach the forbidden world 90 miles across the ocean. Elio’s commitment is tested when he is torn between protecting his twin sister and his own desire to get out. Brimming with the nervous energy of Havana’s restless youth and the evocative cinematography of the sun-bleached capital, UNA NOCHE follows one sweltering day, full of hope and fraught with tension, that burns to a shocking climax.

Peter travels from Germany to Buenos Aires to find the woman he fell head over heels in love with some time ago and who wants to live with. But he doesn't know much more about her than her name, an address that is no longer true, and the memory of enchanting moments. He meets Olinda, who runs a local restaurant and was herself stranded in Argentina half a century ago in search of her great love.

Mahmoud and Fawzi have been living in the Zaatari Refugee Camp in Jordan. Though they both have no sense of what the future holds for them, they focus their energy together on their first love: soccer. Despite the dire circumstances in the camp, they practice day in and day out, believing firmly that playing professionally is their ticket to freedom. When Aspire Academy, one of the world’s leading sports academies, arrives to pick players for an international tournament in Doha, they quickly identify Mahmoud as a talent and fly him there, while Fawzi is left behind due to a technicality. Mahmoud is boarding a plane for the first time and is taking in the experience, while Fawzi is facing the difficult reality in Zaatari. Unexpectedly, the Aspire coaches decide to fly Fawzi in to join his team. The two best friends train and compete in the most important soccer matches of their lives, while their families in Zaatari watch via satellite. After the final match, they speak at a press conference. On behalf of the displaced people of Syria, they make clear that people need an opportunity, not pity. Three years later they grew to young men. They are still stuck in Zaatari, still troubled by fears of an insecure future.

While working on a story in the border area, a young journalist discovers a divided town bisected by a river which is also the national frontier. He observes a surreal wedding in which the bride and her family stand on one shore and the groom and his relatives on the other, lost under a cold sky: figure in a landscape who only delude themselves that they are masters of the earth and their destiny The town, a remote ghost town, almost forgotten at the end of the world, has been named «waiting room» by the locals because most of its inhabitants are refugees from different countries many of whom have crossed the border illegally at some time or other and are now waiting for their turn to leave and start life anew «somewhere else.» In the course of his investigation he also comes upon an aging, reclusive refugee, who lives there cultivating a field. But the young journalist believes he is a famous Greek politician who disappeared years before, leaving behind him many unanswered questions. The man's identity is never resolved but the hapless refugees and divided village allow the reporter to understand his despair over the human condition. Theo Angelopoulos weaves yet another poetical allegory on the great open questions of our turbulent age. The film is very contemporary in its treatment of borders, refugees and a changing world since the fall of communism in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. «Being a refugee is an internal condition more than an external one, says one of the characters in the film. And later on he also says, «We've passed the borders but we're still here. How many frontiers do we have to pass to get home?» Do politicians really care? Does anyone? Finally, there is the image of the stranger standing on the bridge poised over the dividing line between the two countries. He has one leg suspended in mid air, like a stork. «If I take one more step I am... somewhere else, or... I die.»

Eternity And A Day traces the final days of Alexandre (Bruno Ganz), a celebrated Greek writer as he prepares to leave his seaside home forever. While packing, he finds a letter from his long-dead wife, Anna (Isabelle Renauld), who wrote about an enchanted summer day they spent thirty years ago. From that point, Alexandre embarks on a mystical journey through his past and present. Realizing that after spending his entire life chasing after the words of poems and novels, Alexandre wants one final chance to capture the lost precious moments of true happiness, even if only for one day.

A few hours after the Iraq war started in March 2003, Antonio Gutierrez’ photo was sent around the world: the first fallen soldier on the American side, and he wasn’t even an American! In death Antonio’s dream finally came true: like 38,000 other non-American soldiers he had enlisted in the US army because of the promise of American citizenship. Now he received it posthumously. Heidi Specogna’s film tells the moving story of a former street kid from the slums of Guatemala, who made the long journey to the North. An idealistic young man who wasn’t an adventurer, but full of hope and longing for a better future, and who died an American hero.

In 2001, Fahed arrived in the UK, his head full of dreams. In 2018, facing a mid-life crisis, he now has a decision to make. Will he continue to buckle down, working 50 hours between the kebab shop and the factory, or will he return to Algeria, a country he fled in the hope of making a better life for himself?

Anberber has studied in Germany and returns post-graduate to Ethiopia. He is full of hope that he can support his country with his newly acquired knowledge. It's a story about hope and disillusionment, about foreignness and homeland.

A story of friendship, courage and a politically naive man’s transformation into someone painfully aware of the social realities in contemporary Turkey ... Mehmet and Berzan, two young men from different regions of Turkey bond together as lower - class citizens in Istanbul. When Mehmet is unjustly arrested, his frightened roomates evict him and he loses his job. Mehmet’s loyalty to Berzan will eventually force him to disregard an uncompassionate bureaucracy and embark on a journey eastward across Turkey.

Twenty-two-year-old Koli is studying at Tirana university. When he hears of his father’s death, he returns to his native mountain village in the north to attend the funeral. During a walk through the countryside of his childhood, someone takes a shot at him. In a state of shock, the young man discovers that he is part of a blood feud sparked by his grandfather sixty years earlier. He goes to see the family to whom, according to custom, he owes his life - and, in doing so, he makes the acquaintance of the murderer whom fate has determined will take it. Away from his modern urban environment, Koli suddenly finds himself in a world of ancient, inexorable rituals, from which he is unable to extricate himself even after his return to Tirana. How deeply entrenched in people are the traditions of their forebears? And to what extent are they able to accept them as part of their modern, superficial lifestyle? How far-reaching is the perception of one’s own destiny and affinity with one’s roots? Director Artan Minarolli dedicated his film drama to the eighty-six illegal immigrants who drowned off the coast of Italy during an attempt to flee their native country in March 1997.

An african student in Paris needs to work by night to finance the rest of his studies. By coincidence he gets a lot of money and turns back home to Burkina Faso with his french friend - but life is not that easy anywhere. Still watching how it is to be a stranger here or there can be quite funny.

April 2006. 13000 members of the Dajo ethnic group have taken refuge on the plain of Gouroukoun in eastern Chad. They are all survivors of the Darfur conflict. Secluded in the camp they have constructed, they create their own way of life and means of survival. The filmmaker joins the refugees in this prison without walls, capturing everyday life as it is gradually reembraced.

The film deals with an imigrant woman from southern Italy, who lives in Frankfurt in the 1970s. Unusual about this film is the way of the storytelling. The original plan was to make a documentary, but none of the female protagonists were willing to be seen in front of the camera. The fear to expose their own family was too big. The law of “omerta” exists in the diaspora as well. A southern italian proverb states: “The girls greatest value is her beauty - the womans greatest value is her silence”. For this reason, in the film only the sound of Maria M. from Basilicata, can be heard. She remains anonemous. In the movie, southern italian emigrants act in Maria's story. In fact, they end up playing themselves, which gives the film several layers and adds a refreshing sense of humor.

Rike is forty, she is a successful doctor whose job demands everything of her. She intends to use her much-needed annual holiday to fulfil her long-cherished dream of sailing single-handedly from Gibraltar to Ascension, a small tropical island in the middle of the Atlantic. Her desire for a carefree holiday seems to be coming to pass but then, after a storm, her beautiful adventure suddenly turns into an unprecedented challenge when she spots a badly damaged, hopelessly overloaded refugee boat nearby. More than a hundred people face drowning. Rike tries to organise help, but she increasingly feels that humanitarianism has deteriorated into mere wishful thinking. Wolfgang Fischer’s film depicts a struggle for survival at sea which makes palpable the cruelty of the situation for people in dire straits whose fate is determined by others. The ocean becomes the scene of an allegorical, existential drama.

Sam Ali, a young sensitive and impulsive Syrian, left his country for Lebanon to escape the war. To be able to travel to Europe and live with the love of his life, he accepts to have his back tattooed by one of by the World’s most sulfurous contemporary artist. Turning his own body into a prestigious piece of art, Sam will however come to realize that his decision might actually mean anything but freedom.

Told entirely in the words of James Baldwin, through both personal appearances and the text of his final unfinished book project, I AM NOT YOUR NEGRO touches on the lives and assassinations of Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., and Medgar Evers to bring powerful clarity to how the image and reality of Blacks in America today is fabricated and enforced.

During a student party, Mariam, a young Tunisian woman, meets the mysterious Youssef and leaves with him. A long night will begin, during which she’ll have to fight for her rights and her dignity. But how can Justice be made when it lies on the side of the tormentors?

Summer 1998 - Kabul under Taliban rule. Zunaira and Mohsen are young and in love. Despite the daily violence and misery, they hope for a better future. One day, a foolish gesture causes life to take an irrevocable turn.

An incendiary critique of the Iranian regime, Manuscripts Don't Burn is a challenging gaze into the nature of evil and history as its eternal witness. Director Mohammad Rasoulof's latest tackles head-on the violent machinations of censorship in Iran — of which he himself has been victim. Based on true events, the story revolves around a manuscript detailing a 1995 failed assassination plot by the Iranian regime against twenty-one writers and journalists. Almost twenty years later, the existence of this document remains a threat and the head of the censorship board has hired two killers, Morteza and Khosrow, to collect the remaining copies and silence the participants. A masterful storyteller, Rasoulof slowly reveals the relevant details, splitting the narrative between the henchmen and their isolated, state-oppressed victims. Shifting tone from suspense to art-house drama, and moving between past and present with seamless fluidity, we follow Morteza and Khosrow on their mission while silently observing the suffocating existence of three surviving writers.

Timbuktu is silent, the doors closed, the streets empty. No more music, no tea, no cigarettes, no bright colors, no laughs. The women have become shadows. The religious fundamentalists are spreading terror in the region. In the dunes, away from the chaos, Kidane enjoys a quiet life with his wife Satima, his daughter Toya and Issan, his little shepherd. But his peace is short-lived. After accidentally killing Amadou, a fisherman who stroke down his favorite cow, Kidane must face the law of the new foreign rulers determined to defeat an open and tolerant Islam. Against the humiliations and acts of brutality performed by these complex men, Timbuktu tells the story of the silent struggle of the people, the fight for life of little Issan, and the uncertain future of the children.

In a world of one-way traffic, where the northern countries are exporting their economic and political model worldwide, one country in Latin America has undertaken a profound reform of these models to invent a new type of governance, both pragmatic and humanistic. The country in question is Ecuador. Rafael Correa, an established economist, who came to politics as a man on a mission, was elected President in 2006. Since coming to power, he has transformed a country with archaic structures into a social, independent, ecological and participative democracy. He has given Ecuadorians genuine reason to believe that the rigid structures of the past were no longer inevitable, that ordinary citizens had their word to say, and that, at long last, their voices would be heard. This film is intended for everyone, from rich and emerging countries alike. It suggests concrete perspectives to a new way of living the phenomenon of globalization. It shows that political, ecological and economic alternatives do exist. This film is not a film about Ecuador; rather, is about a political project, where utopia became reality. It is a film of ideas and reflections, suggesting solutions to the current crises besetting the globe. It proposes a real debate on the future of our society

1973. Uruguay is governed by a military dictatorship. One autumn night, three Tupamaro prisoners are taken from their jail cells in a secret military operation. The order is precise: "As we can’t kill them, let’s drive them mad." The three men will remain in solitary confinement for twelve years. Among them is Pepe Mujica - later to become president of Uruguay.

Vlada works as a truck driver during the NATO bombing of Serbia in 1999. Tasked with transporting a mysterious load from Kosovo to Belgrade, he drives through unfamiliar territory, surrounded by the consequences of the war. When his job is over, Vlada needs to return home and face the consequences of his actions.

Reza (35), having distanced himself from the urban quagmire, leads a simple life along with his wife and sole child, somewhere in a remote village in Northern Iran. He spends his days working in his gold fish farm. Nearby, a private company with close links to the government and local authorities, has taken control of nearly every aspect of the regional life. Its shareholders, accumulating wealth, power and economic rents, have been pushing local farmers and small owners to dilapidate their belongings, farms and estates, to the benefit of the Company's in influential network and its monopoly. It is under their pressure that many villagers have themselves become local rings of the larger network of corruption. Meanwhile, Reza strives to resist coercion and preserve his farm. Soon though, he will realize that he can no longer stand up to this powerful, yet hidden, coercive web of corruption. Giving up, he decides to sell his property and move away. The Company however, decides to raise the stakes.

"Good Kenyan girls become good Kenyan wives," but Kena and Ziki long for something more. Despite the political rivalry between their families, the girls resist and remain close friends, supporting each other to pursue their dreams in a conservative society. When love blossoms between them, the two girls will be forced to choose between happiness and safety.

The ocean contains the history of all humanity. The sea holds all the voices of the earth and those that come from outer space. Water receives impetus from the stars and transmits it to living creatures. Water, the longest border in Chile, also holds the secret of two mysterious buttons which were found on its ocean floor. Chile, with its 2,670 miles of coastline and the largest archipelago in the world, presents a supernatural landscape. In it are volcanoes, mountains and glaciers. In it are the voices of the Patagonian Indigenous people, the first English sailors and also those of its political prisoners. Some say that water has memory. This film shows that it also has a voice.

Maryam accidentally killed her husband Nasser and is sentenced to death. The only person who can save her is Mona, Nasser's daughter. All Mona has to do is appear on a TV show and forgive Maryam. But forgiveness proves difficult when they are forced to relive the past.

Amal is 14 years old when she ends up on Tahrir Square during the Egyptian revolution, after the death of her boyfriend in the Port Said Stadium riot. During the protests, she is beaten by police and dragged across the square by her hair. This coming-of-age film follows her over the years after the revolution. As the film cuts between the unfolding current events and Amal’s rapidly changing life and appearance, we see her searching for her own identity in a country in transition. Amal is fiery and fearless, sinking her teeth into the protests and constantly lecturing her mother, who works as a judge. A girl among men, she also has to fight for respect and the right to take part, both in the street and in the rest of her life. In Egypt, even for a young woman like Amal-her name means "hope"-the choices open to her for her future are limited.

After Patricio Guzmán had travelled to the Atacama Desert in the north of Chile for «Nostalgia de la luz» and to the deepest south for «El botón de nácar» in Patagonia, he deals in the last part of the trilogy on his homeland with the central chain of Andes and the memory of the moving images. All his films are personal, but in some respects he is the most intimate, leading the artist back to the ruins of the house of his childhood.

No Man Is an Island travels across Europe, from the farmers working together in the Galline Felici cooperative in Sicily to the architects, craftspersons and elected representatives who collaborate in the Swiss Alps and in Austria. All are engaged in politics through their work and all believe in a common destiny. Is the local level the last possible place for a viable utopia?

Lea Tsemel, a Jewish-Israeli lawyer, defends Palestinians: from feminists to fundamentalists, from nonviolent demonstrators to armed militants. As far as most Israelis are concerned, she defends the indefensible. As far as Palestinians are concerned, she’s more than an attorney, she’s an ally. «Advocate» follows Tsemel in real time, including the trial of a 13-year-old boy — her youngest client to date.

Peru, at the height of the political crisis of the 1980’s. Georgina is a young woman from the Andes whose newborn daughter is stolen at a fake health clinic. Her desperate search for the child leads her to the headquarters of a major newspaper, where she meets Pedro Campos, a lonely journalist who takes on the investigation. Based on a true story.

The border fence between Mexico and the United States is part of their lives; Mexican youths use it as a volleyball net on the beach, holding their own kind of international matches with their opposite numbers on the other side. When Nero scales the metres-high metal bars we suspect that he has done this often before: because nothing is going to divert him from his dream of becoming a US citizen. He follows the traces of his older brother which lead him to Los Angeles and the mansions of the rich and famous where he gazes incredulously at this very different lifestyle with its pools and double garages that he soon hopes will be his. His only chance of quickly acquiring a green card, however, is by volunteering for military service. Before he knows it, Nero finds himself in the desert landscape of the war zones of the Middle East, fighting for his citizenship with a machine gun in his hand. For his new drama, Rafi Pitts has chosen to accompany another wanderer on his existential journey.

A former resistance fighter who is elected president of Uruguay and donates almost 90 percent of his salary to social projects: Pepe Mujica, one of Latin America's most charismatic personalities, has become known as "the poorest president in the world". He has always remained true to his ideals, having spent many years in prison for political reasons. His modest lifestyle - he lives in a small finca instead of a government palace - and his unconventional appearance underpin his credibility with young and old. Pepe Mujica represents his concerns with humour, intellect and passion, and his political commitment to a more just society attracts international attention and encouragement. Filmmaker Heidi Specogna and her cameraman Rainer Hoffmann often visited Pepe Mujica and his wife Lucía Topolansky and accompanied them with their cameras. This is how the portrait of an extraordinary person was created, who, at almost 80 years of age, has retained his courage, his wit, his humanity and his strong hope for change. "Pepe Mujica - el presidente" is an optimistic and moving film that inspires courage.

Nuria, 12, Fabio, 9, and their mother Amparo arrive in a small island in the middle of Amazonia, at the border of Brazil, Colombia and Peru. They ran away from the Colombian armed conflict in which their father disappeared. One day, he reappears in their new house. The family is haunted by this strange secret and discovers the island is peopled with ghosts.

Guatemala, 2018. The whole country is immersed in the trial of the soldiers who sparked the civil war. Victim statements come one after another. Ernesto is a young anthropologist working for the Forensic Foundation; his job is to identify the missing. One day, while hearing the account of an old woman, he thinks he has found a lead that might guide him to his father, a guerrillero who went missing during the war. Against his mother’s wishes, he flings himself body and soul into the case, looking for truth and resilience.

Struggling with his profession as a teacher, Ugyen is sent to Lunana in northern Bhutan for his final year of training. With a warm welcome, the local children try to win him over but they do not have much time...

The beautiful woman Melé is a bar singer, her husband Chaka is out of work. The couple that lives in Bamako, the capital of Mali, is on the verge of breaking up... In the courtyard of the house, where they live together with other families, a trial court has been set up. African civil society spokesmen have taken proceedings against the World Bank and the IMF, whom they blame for Africa's woes... Amidst the pleas and the testimonies, life goes on in the courtyard. Chaka does not seem to be concerned by this novel Africa's desire to fight for its rights.

No Apologies describes the state of physical and mental siege of black people living in precarious conditions in Lausanne. Confronted with the need to protect anonymity and the impossibility of filming in the street, No Apologies was conceived in a way that allows its characters to express themselves freely. Masked or barefaced, they bear witness to their personal journey, their struggle for everyday survival and police brutality. Thus questioning their place in a Swiss society that considers them as pariahs. The film is a collective project resulting from an alliance between the people directly affected by these issues and movie professionals. Given the urgency of the situation, the documentary was produced in very little time, in guerrilla mode without the constraints of institutional funding.

Bethlehem is a neighbourhood in the city of Bern where immigrants from over 30 nations have settled. At the centre of this film is the junior team of the Bethlehem Football Club. In this team, the majority are immigrants between 15 and 16 years old. The film also portrays - along with football - their everyday lives at school, vocational training and leisure time. It questions the protagonists about their self-image, their dreams, worries and fears, asks them about what connects them and what divides them, about what it’s like to be a foreigner in their former homeland and how they get along in another foreign environment.

Drawing inspiration from the death-squad murders of several Gypsy families in Hungary in 2008, director Bence Fliegauf's chilling and unforgettable real-life horror story follows a family whose dreams of emigration and escape are suddenly, horribly destroyed.

After most of her family is murdered in a terrorist bombing, a young woman is unknowingly lured into joining the very group that killed them.

Kingdom of Bhutan, 2006. Modernization has finally arrived. Bhutan becomes the last country in the world to connect to the internet and television, and now the biggest change of all: democracy. To teach the people how to vote, the authorities organize a mock election, but the locals seem unconvinced. Traveling to rural Bhutan where religion is more popular than politics, the election supervisor discovers that a monk is planning a mysterious ceremony for the election day.

Nicolás Guillén Landrián was an original, a stupendous documentary filmmaker and painter whose name and work – for a long time – were only remembered by insiders in Cuba. Successful Cuban director Ernesto Daranas ("Conducta") has now dedicated a film to the talented, long-forgotten first black filmmaker in Cuba: an approach to the artist, his work and his life, as well as a documentary about the search for and rescue of film material that had almost been lost. At the same time, Landrián shows in exemplary fashion how the Cuba of the Castros treats people who step out of line. Ernesto Daranas not only created the documentary film "Landrián", but also found and painstakingly restored ten short films. The restoration of Nicolás Guillén Landrián’s documentaries unearths the lost legacy of Cuba’s first black filmmaker and the dark truths surrounding the censorship of his work by the Cuban Revolution.

The commandant of Auschwitz, Rudolf Höss, and his wife Hedwig, strive to build a dream life for their family in a house and garden next to the camp. Without showing it explicitly, Jonathan Glazer conveys the horror of the Auschwitz concentration camp. His film, inspired by Martin Amis' novel "Zone of Interest", was awarded the Grand Jury Prize and the Critics' Prize (FIPRESCI) at the Cannes Festival.

This time, Jafar Panahi is making a film about a pair of lovers who want to flee to France with forged passports - from Turkey. But how does the Iranian director, who is banned from working and not allowed to leave the country, manage this? "No Bears" portrays two parallel love stories. In both, the lovers are troubled by hidden, inevitable obstacles, the force of superstition and the mechanics of power. Like in some of his earlier work, Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi plays a version of himself.

In the wake of Princess Diana's death, the very private and tradition-bound Queen Elizabeth II and her family remain stoic and hidden behind the castle walls. While the heartbroken public becomes disillusioned with the Queen's absence, the increasingly popular new Prime Minister, Tony Blair battles to convince the monarchy that its desire for privacy could lead to its ultimate downfall. Director Stephen Frears focuses on the British royal family and shows the life of the royals at the time when the British throne was at its most shaky. For her spellbinding performance, Helen Mirren won the Academy Award for Best Actress.

During their struggle against the U.S. military bases, the Okinawan people have found the ability to peacefully resist. They have been able to maintain an inexplicable identity, which is fascinating even to the Japanese. "Katabui, in the heart of Okinawa" is Daniel Lopez's first feature-length film. This documentary evokes this island straddling Japan and China, on which 20% of the territory is occupied by an American base.

November 22, 1963: John F. Kennedy, the 35th President of the United States, is assassinated in Dallas. His widow, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy (Natalie Portman), a First Lady admired for her elegance and culture, struggles to overcome the trauma, determined to shed light on the president's political legacy and celebrate the man he was. Director Pablo Larraín portrays of one of the most important and tragic moments in American history, seen through the eyes of the iconic First Lady. "Jackie" celebrated its premiere at the 73rd Venice Film Festival.

Terrestrial Verses follows everyday people from all walks of life as they navigate the cultural, religious, and institutional constraints imposed on them by various social authorities, from school teachers to bureaucrats. These stirring vignettes, humorous and affecting, capture the spirit and determination of people amidst adversity, offering a nuanced portrait of a complex society. Iranian directing duo Alireza Khatami and Ali Asgari tell the story of nine people who find themselves confronted with nerve-wracking governmental zeal. Set in Iran and having premiered at Cannes, the film is thematically universal: it revolves around the desire to regain control over one's own life in the face of interference from bureaucrats or other authorities of all kinds. "Terrestrial Verses" is a moving feature film with a radical formal aesthetic simplicity, sharp-tongued, pervaded by sarcastic wit and refreshing situational comedy.

Soldier Ernst S. was one of 17 Swiss men executed by the army for treason during the Second World War. Ernst S. was more of a thief than a traitor. Unfortunately, he had no money to afford a lawyer, which cost him his life. The documentary, based on the book by Niklaus Meienberg, is told from the perspective of contemporary witnesses who met Ernst S. during his short life. The reconstruction of the case of Ernst S. fueled a controversy about collective guilt, double standards and the role of Switzerland in the war.

Set against the landscape of the Polish transformation from communism to capitalism, "Woman of..." spans 45 years of the life of Aniela Wesoły, who lives more than half of her adult life in a provincial Polish town as a man. Aniela’s journey to find personal liberty as a trans woman reveals hardships in marriage and parenthood, strained family relations and complicated attitudes in her environment, which constantly place her in impossible situations. What choices will Aniela have to make? Will she be ready to sacrifice all to become who she truly is?

During the Second World War, Anne Frank wrote in her diary to her imaginary friend Kitty. 75 years later, Kitty magically comes to life. Confused, and with the diary in her hand, the 13-year-old girl goes in search of Anne in modern-day Amsterdam, but is only laughed at for her research. The only one willing to help is the pickpocket Peter. Through him, Kitty learns how migrants to the country are marginalised or have to wait in camps for deportation. Horrified, she hatches a plan to help them. In this original and magnificently animated film, director Ari Folman brings the story of Anne Frank back to life, and reminds us that her message has not lost its relevance in today's refugee crisis.

An allegorical tale of female emancipation set amidst the Syrian conflict in Damascus, about a family who decides to stay behind in the besieged area. When a shell rips a giant hole in the roof of the building where 14-year-old Zeina and her family live, they are suddenly exposed to the outside world. One day a young boy living nearby lowers a rope through the opening in the family’s roof and Zeina discovers her first taste of freedom. Whilst her father is determined to stay in his home and not become a refugee, this new window opens up an unimaginable world of possibilities to her and her mother who now face a dilemma of whether to stay or leave.

«October 2019: an unexpected revolution, a social turmoil. A million and a half persons demonstrated in the streets of Santiago demanding more democracy, a better life, a better education and health system and a new Constitution. Chile had recovered its memory. What I had been waiting for since my student struggles in 1973 had finally become reality.» Patricio Guzmán

At the end of the Second World War, the Pestalozzi Children's Village in Trogen brings together orphans from many different nations. When the order arrives from Poland that the Polish children must return to their country, it comes as a shock to 13-year-old Andrzey: he does not want to leave Anja, for whom he has developed a strong affection. The two children decide to flee and go into hiding... Longer Swiss version with more Swiss German passages than the international version, as it was shown in Swiss cinemas.

1980, Abadan. The capital of the Iranian oil industry is resisting an Iraqi siege. Fourteen-year-old Omid has braved the siege and stayed in the city with his grandfather, waiting for his elder brother to return from the front line. Along with Omid, a gallery of unusual characters have all remained in the city for their own reasons, and each resists in his or her own way. But the noose is tightening as Omid tries to save his loved ones, by embarking them on an abandoned boat he finds in Abadan’s port, that will become his ark. Sepideh Farsi has used the abstract and healing power of animation to create an adventure tale brimming with optimism, which places women and the socially marginalized as silent actors in a war that had already begun before the Iraqi attacks with the Islamic Revolution in Iran.

The news of the death of their son Jonathan, who was doing his military service, throws the life, psyche and marriage of Michael and Dafna off track. Driven by deep sadness and lack of understanding, a storm of raging anger develops in Michael, marked by uncertainties and traumas.

Northern Italy, 1943: A British and an American soldier escape from a German prisoner transport. In a mountain village, they meet a priest who is hiding Jewish refugees and persuades them to accompany these desperate people on a dangerous journey over the mountains to neutral Switzerland. It is their last chance. Restored version of a Swiss cinema classic. This award-winning drama is one of the most important productions in Swiss film history.

1942. Gilles, a young Belgian man, is arrested by the SS alongside other Jews and sent to a concentration camp in Germany. He narrowly avoids execution by swearing to the guards that he is not Jewish, but Persian. This lie temporarily saves him, but then Gilles is assigned a seemingly untenable mission: to teach Persian to Koch, the officer in charge of the camp's kitchen, who dreams of opening a restaurant in Iran once the war is over. Gilles finds himself having to invent a language he doesn't know, word by word. As the unusual relationship between the two men begins to incite jealousy and suspicion, Gilles becomes acutely aware that one false move could expose his swindle.

In the spring of 1945 as Nazi Germany collapses, Swiss ambassador Heinrich Zwygart flees bombed-out Berlin after serving eight years in the capital of the Reich. This is the end of a dreadful mandate, during which he had to make fatal compromises to preserve the neutrality and security of his country. While he tries to reunite with his estranged family in his unscathed home country, the arrival of peace puts Zwygart in a delicate position. How could the Swiss policy, which was more than favorable to Germany, be justified at a time when the Allies and the Russians are liberating Europe and question the behavior of the Swiss Government during the war? For Switzerland to end on the winning side after the war, someone will have to pay. Haunted by his past, struggling to secure a future, but driven by his ambition Zwygart feels the trap closing in on him. He made it through the war, but will he survive peace? Lead Michael Neuenschwander was nominated for Best Actor at the 2023 Swiss Film Awards.

Algeria, 1516. The pirate Aroudj Barbarossa, together with King Salim Toumi, drives the Spanish occupiers out of Algiers. But the peace is short-lived: rumour has it that Barbarossa has murdered the king and declared himself ruler. When everyone from the royal court flees, only Queen Zaphira stands up to him. Between history and legend, her rebellion tells of the personal and political turmoil she endures for the sake of Algiers. The cinema spectacle from Algeria is the first of its kind and reproduces the multilingual and diverse world of the Maghreb at historical sites. Told for the first time from a female perspective, "The Last Queen - El Akhira" breaks with tradition and creates space for a woman who becomes a heroine in adversity.

Barbara Hug (Marie Leuenberger) is a young radical lawyer fighting Switzerland’s antiquated prison system in the 1980s. Walter Stürm (Joel Basman) is a charmer and chancer. Taunting the establishment with his outrageous thefts and media savvy he’s in and often escaping out of jail and becomes known as the Jailbreak King. When the two meet an unlikely alliance is formed.

The story of Dick Cheney, an unassuming bureaucratic Washington insider, who quietly wielded immense power as Vice President to George W. Bush, reshaping the country and the globe in ways that are still felt today.

971: Nora is a young housewife and mother, living in a quaint little village with her husband and their two sons. The Swiss countryside is untouched by the major social upheavals the movement of 1968 has brought about. Nora’s life is not affected either; she is a quiet person who is liked by everybody – until she starts to publicly fight for women’s suffrage, which the men are due to vote on in a ballot on February 7, 1971.

Two women, Janis (Penélope Cruz) and Ana (Milena Smit), coincide in a hospital room where they are going to give birth. Both are single and became pregnant by accident. Janis, middle-aged, doesn't regret it and she is exultant. The other, Ana, an adolescent, is scared, repentant and traumatized. Janis tries to encourage her while they move like sleepwalkers along the hospital corridors. The few words they exchange in these hours will create a very close link between the two, which by chance develops and complicates, and changes their lives in a decisive way

Italian bricklayer Giuseppe works as a seasonal worker in Switzerland. After the death of his wife, he brings his 6-year-old son to live with him. This brings him into conflict with Saisonnier statute of Switzerland: Children of immigrant workers are not permitted to stay in Switzerland. The boy has to hide in the apartment and lives in constant fear of being discovered and having to leave the country. The film by Alvaro Bizzarri, who himself emigrated to Switzerland fro Italy as a seasonal worker, has become a symbol of the fight against the Saisonnier statute, which was in force until 2002.

A few days before Christmas, having quit his job in Germany, Matthias returns to his multi-ethnic Transylvanian village. He wishes to involve himself more in the education of his son, Rudi, left for too long in the care of his mother, Ana, and to rid the boy of the unresolved fears that have taken hold of him. He’s preoccupied with his old father, Otto and also eager to see his ex-lover, Csilla. When a few new workers are hired at the small factory that Csilla manages, the peace of the community is disturbed, underlying fears grip the adults, and frustrations, conflicts and passions erupt through the thin veneer of apparent understanding and calm. With «R.M.N.» Cristian Mungiu (winner of the Golden Palm in Cannes for «4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days») succeeded in creating a biting allegory about a peripheral region where people feel forgotten by the rest of the world.

At the end of the Second World War, the Pestalozzi Children's Village in Trogen brings together orphans from many different nations. When the order arrives from Poland that the Polish children must return to their country, it comes as a shock to 13-year-old Andrzey: he does not want to leave Anja, for whom he has developed a strong affection. The two children decide to flee and go into hiding... English international version as it was shown in cinemas worldwide.

Emre, a young and dedicated prosecutor, is newly appointed to a small town hit by a water crisis and political scandals. After an initial welcome, he experiences an increasing number of tense interactions and is reluctantly dragged into local politics. When Emre forms a bond with the owner of the local newspaper pressure escalates under heated rumours.

A small village on the Syrian-Turkish border in the early 1980s: The six-year-old Kurdish boy Sero experiences his first school year in an Arab school and has to watch his small world being radically changed in the course of an absurd nationalism. Humorous yet serious, the film tells of a childhood that also finds its light moments between dictatorship and dark drama.

Asja, a 40-year-old single woman, lives in Sarajevo. In order to meet new people, she ends up spending her Saturday in a speed dating event. She’s matched with Zoran, a 43-year-old banker. However, Zoran is not looking for love but forgiveness.

Mainland master Jia Zhangke scales new heights with Mountains May Depart. At once an intimate drama and a decades-spanning epic that leaps from the recent past to the present to the speculative near-future, Jia's new film is an intensely moving study of how China's economic boom and the culture of materialism it has spawned has affected the bonds of family, tradition, and love.

Exiled in Switzerland, Olga, 15, is a talented Ukrainian gymnast. Like all athletes at the top of their game, she dreams of Olympic gold. She tries her best to fit into her new national team but, as the European Championship draws near, the revolution in Kiev shakes her world and tests her will.

Yvan De Wiel, a private banker from Geneva, is going to Argentina in the midst of a dictatorship to replace his partner, the object of the most worrying rumors, who disappeared overnight. Between hushed lounges, swimming pools, and gardens under surveillance, a remote duel takes place between two bankers who, despite different methods, are the accomplices of a discreet and merciless form of colonization.

Rahim is in prison because of a debt he was unable to repay. During a two-day leave, he tries to convince his creditor to withdraw his complaint against the payment of part of the sum. But things don't go as planned.

Daniele von Arb was 16 years old in 1970 when he and his friends founded the revolutionary cell in Zurich later listed by the U.S. secret service CIA in its chart on international terrorism under the code name “Annebäbi”. Today he is a fortune-teller and future consultant. A hurtling journey through the armed struggle of the 1970s, entry into the cosmos of spirituality and finally, in 1989, a first class ticket to freedom.

After four years of Donald Trump's reign, Jonathan Katz, a Jewish activist from New York, travels across the American Midwest trying to get Bernie Sanders elected president of the United States. Committed body and soul to a revolution through the ballot box, he will find his deepest convictions shaken. During what is, for him as for Bernie, the last campaign, he meets a new generation of activists for whom this is only the first.

While managers of Swiss banks in the USA ruefully apologise for their tax evasions practices and customer data is disclosed to the American authorities, Rudolf Elmer, former auditor at bank Julius Bär, is indicted for violating the Swiss banking secrecy law on the Cayman Islands. Rudolf Elmer: from insider to critic.

In the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake, a middle-aged Port-au-Prince couple come face to face with the stark contradictions of Haitian society when they are forced to rent out their villa to a foreign aid worker and his enterprising local girlfriend.

In 1988 Cynthia Beatt and the young Tilda Swinton embarked on a filmic journey along the Berlin Wall into little-known territory. The film CYCLING THE FRAME is now an unusual document. 21 years later, in June 2009, Beatt & Swinton re-traced the line of the Wall that once isolated West Berlin. THE INVISIBLE FRAME depicts this poetic passage through varied landscapes, this time on both sides of the former Wall.

It is New Year's Eve. 1976. On a Greek island a party of bourgeois hunters comes upon a body, buried in the snow and miraculously preserved by the cold. By his uniform, he appears to be one of the thousands of partisans killed during the civil war and the hunting party, a group of the ruling elite, must now decide what to do with the body. When they disinter it, blood begins to flow from the wounds in the partisan's body and they carry it back to the lodge where the inquest begins. The film becomes a biting commentary, an extraordinary allegory for the persistence of guilt in which Greece's post-war Right is placed symbolically on trial in a series of tableaux in which the hunters are faced with their re-created sins. Merging poetic metaphor and historic reconstruction each member of the hunting party views the body on the makeshift bier: the colonel and his wife, the businessman, the ex-prefect of police, now a publisher, the ex-partisan who is now a wealthy contractor, the politician, the film actress who collaborated with the Nazis, the royalist noblewoman - all are forced to give an account of their actions since the civil war. Finally, they dream their own execution by partisans but awake to find it was but a collective nightmare provoked by the dead body of the partisan. In the gray dawn they rebury the corpse and with it, hopefully, their own guilt.

Rosa, a Mozambican peasant, is accused by the family of her husband of having caused his suicide by refusing to obey him. She is suspected of having a "spirit-husband". In order to prove her innocence, Rosa submits herself to two trials: one by a traditional healer, the other in court. She is absolved twice. Nevertheless, the dead man relatives continue to persecute her and she is punished in a cruel way. The film is interpreted by the real players of this story, the dead man by his twin brother. During the shooting, the director decided to install a second camera to follow the never ending plot of revenge. Such a complex editing has no parallel in African cinema.

Between 1947 and 1950, more than 80 000 Greek citizens were imprisoned on the isle of Makronisos (Greece) in reeducation camps created to ‘fight the spread of communism’. Among these exiles were a number of writers and poets, including Yannis Ritsos and Tassos Livaditis. Despite the deprivation and torture, these prisoners succeeded in composing poems, which describe their struggle for survival in this world of internment. These texts, some of them buried in the camps, were later found. «Like Lions of stone at the gateway of night» blends these poetic writings with the reeducation propaganda constantly piped through the camps’ loudspeakers. Long tracking shots take us on a trance-like journey through the camp ruins, interrupted along the way by segments from photographic archives. A cinematic essay, which revives the memory of forgotten ruins and a battle lost.

Italy 1610. Caravaggio is both one of the most brilliant painters of his time and a rebel against Church rulings that dictate how religious subjects are represented. Having been informed that Caravaggio depicts prostitutes, thieves and vagabonds in his work, Pope Paul V orders the Vatican secret service to investigate, to decide whether to grant the clemency for which the painter has petitioned since being sentenced to death for the murder of a rival in love. The investigator – known as The Shadow - begins the inquiry that will lead him to discover the conflicting vices and virtues of the genius whose life – or death – lies in his hands. Biopic from Michele Placido with Riccardo Scarmarcio, Louis Garrel and Isabelle Huppert.

In his "Swiss Autumn Chronicle 1989", Alexander J. Seiler records the political debate about the Swiss army triggered by the "Group for a Switzerland without an Army" and its popular initiative: from the official commemorations "Diamant" and the unofficial counter-events "Klunker" to public debates throughout the country and the referendum. The film also follows the play "Jonas und sein Veteran" by Max Frisch, directed by Benno Besson, from the first rehearsals to the premieres at the Schauspielhaus Zurich and the Theatre Vidy Lausanne and the reactions of the audience and political celebrities. The result is an exciting dual chronicle of a democratic and an artistic process: politics as theatre and theatre as politics. Above all, however, the result is an impressive picture of Swiss democracy and two opposing "Switzerlands": the other way of thinking, the other way of cohesion, the Switzerland of tomorrow that many hoped for become tangible and visible.

The incredible true story of legendary dancer Rudolf Nureyev, who transformed the world of ballet forever. From his poverty-stricken childhood in a Soviet city, to his blossoming as a student dancer in Leningrad, to his escape from the KGB and defection to the West at the height of the Cold War.

Jonathan Katz strongly believes that candidate Bernie Sanders is the only hope for the United States of America threatened by Donald Trump. Sanders is a voice outside the establishment and has put new values and priorities into his political agenda. Pushed forward by his enthusiasm, Jonathan joins the thousands of women and men that rally around the caucuses supporting Senator Sanders.

The war in Congo has caused more than six million deaths over the last twenty years. The population is suffering, but the offenders stay with impunity. Many people see this conflict as one of globalisation's crucial econimic distribution battles because the country has major deposits of many high-tech raw materials. Milo Rau, one of Europe's most acclaimed theatre directors, succeeds in gathering victims, perpetrators, observes and analysts of the conflict for a unique civil tribunal in eastern Congo. The documentary film brings these spectacular court trials to life on the big screen and creates an unvarnished portrait of the largest and bloodiest economic wars in human history.

Chile, 1976. Carmen heads off to her beach house to supervise its renovation. Her husband, children and grandchildren come back and forth during the winter vacation. When the family priest asks her to take care of a young man he is sheltering in secret, Carmen steps onto unexplored territories, away from the quiet life she is used to.

Simone Veil's life story through the pivotal events of Twentieth Century. Her childhood, her political battles, her tragedies. An intimate and epic portrait of an extraordinary woman who eminently challenged and transformed her era defending a humanist message still keenly relevant today.

Philippe Lemesle and his wife are separating, their love irretrievably damaged by pressures of work. A successful executive in industrial conglomerate, Philippe no longer knows how to respond to the contradictory demands of his bosses. Yesterday they wanted a manager, today an enforcer. Now he must decide what his life really means.

More than 500 000 Italians live and work in Switzerland. They are considered a „problem“. An over-employed economy needs their labour – a small nation of distinct peculiarity perceives them as foreign objects. They live beyond the barrier of a different language. Discussed as a problem, they remain unknown as human beings.

Asli first sets eyes on Saeed in the mid-1990s at a fairground as he is anxiously stepping off a merry-go-round just before the ride begins. They get to know each other while spinning bottles at a party in their student hall of residence. Asli is fascinated by Saeed’s charisma and self-confidence. The two students marry secretly even though Asli’s mother is against the relationship. In a mosque in Hamburg, they promise to stay together and keep each other’s secrets. Caught between asserting herself, conforming to her traditional parental home and her self-sacrificing love, Asli tries to find her own way in life. Then Saeed disappears. His decision changes Asli’s life – before it shakes the whole world. Anne Zohra Berrached’s film comprises several layers that are all of equal importance. It is a love story, but it is also an exploration of cultural differences, truth and faith, trust and delusion. After Two Mothers and 24 Weeks, the director once again demonstrates her particular ability to reveal the private lives that exist behind the politics, as well as her great sensitivity when working with actors

When Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi disappears after entering Saudi Arabia’s consulate in Istanbul, his fiancée and dissidents around the world are left to piece together the clues to a brutal murder and expose a global cover up perpetrated by the very country he loved.

MAIDAN chronicles the civil uprising against the regime of president Yanukovych that took place in Kiev (Ukraine) in the winter of 2013/14. The film follows the progress of the revolution: from peaceful rallies, half a million strong, in the Maidan square, to the bloody street battles between protestors and riot police. MAIDAN is a portrait of an awakening nation, rediscovering its identity.

June 1944. Allied Forces stand on the brink: a massive army is secretly assembled on the south coast of Britain, poised to re-take Nazi-occupied Europe. One man stands in their way: Winston Churchill. Behind the iconic figure and rousing speeches: a man who has faced political ridicule, military failure and a speech impediment. An impulsive, sometimes bullying personality - fearful, obsessive and hurting. Fearful of repeating, on his disastrous command, the mass slaughter of 1915, when hundreds of thousands of young men were cut down on the beaches of Gallipoli. Obsessed with fulfilling historical greatness: his destiny. Exhausted by years of war and plagued by depression, Churchill is a shadow of the hero who has resisted Hitler's Blitzkrieg. Should the D-Day landings fail, he is terrified he'll be remembered as an architect of carnage. Political opponents sharpen their knives. General Eisenhower and Field Marshal Montgomery are increasingly frustrated by Churchill's attempts to stop the invasion. King George VI must intervene. Only the support of Churchill's brilliant, yet exasperated wife Clementine can halt the Prime Minister's physical and mental collapse. The untold story of Britain's most celebrated leader, uncovering the true nature of Churchill's herculean war-time status and his vital relationship with "Clemmie" - his backbone and total confidant...the love that inspired him to greatness.

The film that captivated more than 8,000 people on an unforgettable evening in Locarno's Piazza Grande with its cinematic magic and message of peace. In the summer of 1944, a group of residents from their home village of San Miniato in Tuscany secretly sneaked out to meet the American liberators. According to instructions, those who remain behind seek shelter in the church and fall victim to a retaliatory strike by the Germans. The refugees live through all stages of hope and despair along the way in the Tuscan landscape and are confronted with Italian fascists in a legendary sequence. La notte di San Lorenzo is in itself a historical film in the sense that it tells of a bygone era. Through the fairytale-like-mythical and melodramatic exaggerations, the Tavianis make the story stand out from the merely historical and allow the film through the wonderful figure of the girl to acquire universal expressiveness. This is a peace film of elementary sensuality and power.

Following the revolution, Sergio, an upper middle-class Cuban from Havana finds himself alone when his wife and the rest of his family flee the island to settle down in Miami. Struggling to adjust to the new situation, to the seclusion and the new class relationships, he continues to live his life, goes through a few pathetic love stories, yet is unable to conceal the background that seems so much at odds with the new order.

1973. Uruguay is governed by a military dictatorship. One autumn night, three Tupamaro prisoners are taken from their jail cells in a secret military operation. The order is precise: "As we can’t kill them, let’s drive them mad." The three men will remain in solitary confinement for twelve years. Among them is Pepe Mujica - later to become president of Uruguay.

Zama, an officer of the Spanish Crown born in South America, waits for a letter from the King granting him a transfer from the town in which he is stagnating, to a better place. His situation is delicate. He must ensure that nothing overshadows his transfer. He is forced to accept submissively every task entrusted to him by successive Governors who come and go as he stays behind. The years go by and the letter from the King never arrives. When Zama notices everything is lost, he joins a party of soldiers that go after a dangerous bandit. Adapted from Antonio di Benedetto's 1956 classic of Argentinean literature.

Recently released from prison, Ali makes the most of his return, amidst much talk of the upcoming elections and promises of change. Despite working nights, he tries to spend the most time possible with his beautiful wife and young daughter. To escape the stress of urban living, Ali retreats to his favorite pastime of hunting in the secluded forest north of town. Tragedy strikes and Ali's wife Sara is accidentally killed in a police shoot-out with demonstrators. After a long and frustrating experience at the police station, Ali's own search for his missing six-year-old daughter ends in horror and pushes him over the edge. In broad daylight, overlooking the busy city's surrounding highways, Ali randomly shoots and kills two policemen. After a high-speed car chase outside of town, Ali flees into the northern forest where he is captured by two police officers. Ali is resigned to his fate and watches quietly as the arguing policemen lose their way in the woods. Situations complicate and the line between hunter and hunted becomes difficult to define...

The Sparrow fascinates with its parallel strands of action. The various ways of encountering a criminal trader, namely by a police officer and a journalist, are ultimately only traces that lead to the tip of an iceberg: the corruption of Egyptian society on the eve of the Six-Day War.

Mira, a young woman from Russia, comes to Dushanbe, the capital of Tajikistan, to visit her father, a player who often loses and finally even has to give away Mira to an old man. But Daler, a young player, falls in love with Mira and simply abducts her into his rather weird world. Daler is the boss of the local, thoroughly rotten aerial cableway. Its faded yellow cabins are suitable for every cargo: tourists as well as for hay, beer crates, stolen goods and even as a love-home for a clandestine rendez-vous. For Mira, Daler arranges a romantic picnic, floating between heaven and earth. And so begins the love story of Mira and Daler. When the movie ends (but not the love), Mira will have got to know a strange, sometimes exotic world. She will have seen a civil war. She will have accompanied her father to his death and Daler on the way to a new life.

A successful screen adaptation of a novel by renown Chinese writer, Xiaolu Guo, UFO in her Eyes is a hyper-vivid portrait of chaotic contemporary Chinese society. Has a flying saucer come to disrupt life in a village or is it simply the fantasy of an illiterate, attractive single lady? Starring Udo Kier.

Twenty-two-year-old Koli is studying at Tirana university. When he hears of his father’s death, he returns to his native mountain village in the north to attend the funeral. During a walk through the countryside of his childhood, someone takes a shot at him. In a state of shock, the young man discovers that he is part of a blood feud sparked by his grandfather sixty years earlier. He goes to see the family to whom, according to custom, he owes his life - and, in doing so, he makes the acquaintance of the murderer whom fate has determined will take it. Away from his modern urban environment, Koli suddenly finds himself in a world of ancient, inexorable rituals, from which he is unable to extricate himself even after his return to Tirana. How deeply entrenched in people are the traditions of their forebears? And to what extent are they able to accept them as part of their modern, superficial lifestyle? How far-reaching is the perception of one’s own destiny and affinity with one’s roots? Director Artan Minarolli dedicated his film drama to the eighty-six illegal immigrants who drowned off the coast of Italy during an attempt to flee their native country in March 1997.

Anberber has studied in Germany and returns post-graduate to Ethiopia. He is full of hope that he can support his country with his newly acquired knowledge. It's a story about hope and disillusionment, about foreignness and homeland.

The background of Andrei Tarkowski's first feature film is the Second World War, with the 12-year-old boy Iwan at the centre. As part of the official programme of films, it is still astonishing today how the Russian managed to shoot a film that stood across the system and showed the war from the perspective of a boy. Iwan seems totally hardened after losing his family and escaping a camp, he sees little prospects and quite simply wants to avenge the death of his loved ones. Tarkowski shows his masterly skills in cinematography in this early oeuvre. Using simple means, he tells the story in incredibly strong black-and-white tableaux.

PEQUEÑAS VOCES is a unique and powerful hybrid documentary with computer animation which tells the real life stories and experiences of displaced children in Colombia. PEQUEÑAS VOCES is an animated documentary based on interviews and drawing workshops with a new generation of children (8 to 13 years old) who have grown up in middle of violence and chaos in Colombia; the interviews show how they perceive their reality. Those stories are illustrated and animated using the original drawings by the children.

Inspired by the famous story “The Abduction of Sita” from the great classic of ancient Indian and South East-Asian literature the Ramayana, OPERA JAWA is a musical like no other in cinema. It tells of a passionate love triangle that leads inexorably to conflict, violence and death. Setio and his wife Siti, run a pottery business in a small village where Ludiro, a powerful and ruthless butcher, controls all the trading activities. When the couple’s business collapses, Ludiro, who has always been in love with Siti, seizes his chance, abducts and tries to seduce her. Inevitably the two men begin to fight over Siti...

Bahram Beyzaie’s debut feature about a well-meaning schoolteacher in Tehran who's embattled by changes of fortune, was enormously successful in its time, but had fallen out of view in post-revolutionary Iran. This version presents the film as restored in 2011 by the World Cinema Foundation at Fondazione Cineteca di Bologna/L’immagine Ritrovata laboratory, with the involvement of Bahram Beyzaie himself.

A story of friendship, courage and a politically naive man’s transformation into someone painfully aware of the social realities in contemporary Turkey ... Mehmet and Berzan, two young men from different regions of Turkey bond together as lower - class citizens in Istanbul. When Mehmet is unjustly arrested, his frightened roomates evict him and he loses his job. Mehmet’s loyalty to Berzan will eventually force him to disregard an uncompassionate bureaucracy and embark on a journey eastward across Turkey.

An inspector hunts down Nobel Prize-winning Chilean poet, Pablo Neruda, who becomes a fugitive in his home country in the late 1940s for joining the Communist Party.

The German troops are just outside Paris. Georg escapes to Marseille at the last moment. His luggage contains the legacy of a writer named Weidel, who took his own life out of fear of persecution. This legacy comprises a manuscript, some letters and the Mexican Embassy’s assurance of a visa. Only those who can prove that they will leave are allowed in this port town, and this means you need an entry permit from a potential host country. Assuming the identity of Weidel, Georg tries to obtain one of the few scarce passages on a ship. Talks between refugees take place in the corridors of his small hotel, the waiting rooms of consulates, and the cafés and bars down at the harbour. Georg befriends Driss, the son of his late comrade Heinz, who died whilst trying to flee. But when he meets the mysterious Marie, his plans change. Transit is based on Anna Seghers’ eponymous novel which she wrote in exile. The film is set in contemporary Marseille where these characters from the past move around. And so, refugees from back then meet refugees from today, history meets the present, and all of their stories combine to create one eternal transit space.

1956. During a visit to a cinema in West Berlin, East German high school pupils Theo and Kurt see disturbing newsreel footage of the uprising in Budapest. Back in Stalinstadt, one of the GDR’s flagship workers’ settlements, they have the idea of holding a minute’s silence in class for the victims of the Hungarian struggle for freedom. Neither the boys, nor their parents, nor the school’s administration are prepared for the minor and major reactions that their expression of solidarity unleashes. The school principal tries to dismiss the incident as juvenile mischief and deal with it internally, but the pupils find themselves snared in the political machinery of a state determined to make an example of them. Condemning their act as counter-revolutionary, the education minister demands that the pupils name their ringleader. They are faced with a decision that has dramatic consequences for their future. Director and screenwriter Lars Kraume has cast up-and-coming actors in the leading roles and established actors in supporting roles for his adaptation of Dietrich Garstka’s eponymous book in which Garstka recounts his own personal experiences and those of his 18 classmates. A moving chapter in German post-war history.

Set in post-colonial India, QISSA tells the story of Umber Singh, a Sikh, who is forced to flee his village due to ethnic cleansing at the time of partition in 1947. Umber decides to fight fate and builds a new home for his family. When Umber marries his youngest child Kanwar to Neeli, a girl of lower caste, the family is faced with the truth of their identities; where individual ambition and destinies collide in a struggle with eternity.

Takua Pa is a small town in the south of Thailand. Ever since the tsunami, people here have no jobs. Young people ride motorcycles around in circles; old people remember better times in the past. One day a stranger comes to town. Ton is an architect. He rents a room in a small hotel owned by Na. They begin to have a secret love affair but soon people start to whisper. The town has found its enemy. This film is about a love that grows where there is no more love, like a flower that grows in the dirt; and about a town that tries to destroy the beauty it cannot have for itself.

Nuria, 12, Fabio, 9, and their mother Amparo arrive in a small island in the middle of Amazonia, at the border of Brazil, Colombia and Peru. They ran away from the Colombian armed conflict in which their father disappeared. One day, he reappears in their new house. The family is haunted by this strange secret and discovers the island is peopled with ghosts.

LIYANA is a story born in the imaginations of five orphaned children in the Kingdom of Swaziland. The film follows the children, Zweli, Sibusiso, Phumlani, Mkhuleko, and Nomcebo, as they collaborate to tell the original tale of Liyana, a fictional character whose early life bears remarkable similarities to their own. The world that the children imagine for Liyana is brought to life in an innovative style of animated artwork. This hybrid film weaves documentary scenes together with the animated adventure. LIYANA is executive produced by British-Zimbabwean actress, Thandie Newton, with artwork from rising Nigerian talent, Shofela Coker. Under the guidance of acclaimed South African storyteller, Gcina Mhlophe, the children transform their darkest memories and brightest dreams into fuel for their fairytale. After an idyllic early childhood, Liyana’s world is shattered when her father contracts HIV and both of her parents die. Inspired by a recent real-life robbery, the children decide that there will be a frightening attack at Liyana’s family homestead. In the aftermath of this terrible night, the girl and her trusty sidekick, the family bull, embark on a dangerous, beautiful, and often humorous quest into the wilderness. Hunger, wild animals, and treacherous terrain stand between Liyana and an uncertain fate. As our young storytellers move their fictional character forward through trial and temptation, we periodically return to intimate documentary scenes of the children’s lives in Swaziland - nightly rituals, herding cattle, and a trip to a local clinic for an HIV test. The children’s creative journey is echoed throughout the film by allegorical scenes of the group hiking down a steep ravine in search of a mysterious river. These intertwining narrative strands work together to draw connections between Liyana and the children. As the real and imagined worlds begin to converge the children must choose what kind of story they will tell - in fiction, and in their own lives.

Shy and loveable Palestinian Salam is already in his thirties without, however, having quite found his way in life. That is why he eagerly takes on an internship with the successful TV soap «Tel Aviv on Fire». In order to reach the television studio, Salam has to pass through the check-point between his home in Jerusalem and Ramallah on a daily basis. This is where he meets Assi, chief of the Israeli border crossing, who is excited to meet one of the "makers" of his wife's favourite series. To impress his sweetheart, Assi puts increasing pressure on Salam to design the series according to his preferences. Meanwhile, Salam realises that Assi’s creative ideas are his big chance to become a screenwriter. When Assi’s demands are no longer compatible with those of the Arab creator’s, Salam is faced with a dilemma... Director Sameh Zoabi uses Tel Aviv on Fire to approach the conflict in the Middle East from a completely different, original and heartfelt comedic angle.

Notes and Testimonies on Neocolonialism, Violence and Liberation" is one of the symbols of cultural and political resistence in the 60-70s generation. The film is a reflection essay on the socio-political situation of Argentina between 1945 and 1968. It was filmed clandestinely in Cold War times in a Latin America rules by pro-American oligarchies and military dictatorships. The work is a four-hours-long trilogy divided in chapters and united by the themes of dependence and liberation. The first part, Neocolonialism and Violence, was conceived to be broadcasted in all kinds of circuits. The second and third parts, "Act for Liberation" and "Violence and Liberation", make up the first historical chronicle of Peronismo and the workers’ resistentes that followed. His proposal is an open cinema to promote debate and incorporate new sequences of future fights. The Hour of the Furnaces is one of the most awarded films in Argentine cinema: It was forbidden by all dictatorships, gave rise to a parallel circuit of political cinema and it was disseminated in over 70 countries.

A Greek-American filmmaker, known simply as «A», returns to his hometown in northern Greece for a screening of his latest controversial film. His real reason for coming back, however, is to track down three long-missing reels of film by Greece's pioneering Manakia brothers who in the early years of cinema traveled through the Balkans, ignoring national and ethnic strife and recording ordinary people, especially craftsmen, on film. Their images, he believes, hold the key to lost innocence and essential truth, to an understanding of Balkan history Thus he embarks on a search that takes him across the war-torn Balkans, a landscape of spectral figures and broken dreams, right to the heart of darkness: a damaged film archive in Sarajevo where his quest ends. Like a latter-day Ulysses he finds his «Ithaca», the missing, undeveloped film and is at last united with the work of the Manakia brothers... his gaze communes with theirs and another journey begins.

The origins of the Colombian drug trade, through the epic story of an indigenous Wayúu family that becomes involved in the booming business of selling marijuana to American youth in the 1970s. When greed, passion and honour collide, a fratricidal war breaks out that will put their lives, their culture and their ancestral traditions at stake. «A film of both gangsters and spirits. A family film, an ensemble story of strong, intuitive, resilient and powerful women, who wait at home for unconscious, impulsive, fearful men, as they talk, they negotiate, they run around. Intuition vs reason, innocence vs vengeance, word vs honour. All in telling the great tragedy that would curse us forever. The great taboo that we are not allowed to discuss. Told, for once, in an intimate, personal way. Our own way. That soft breeze that seemed to come to refresh, and became the ravaging storm that showed us the true face of capitalism, its purest form. Our Jayeechi, our birdsong.» Cristina Gallego/Ciro Guerra

Vlada works as a truck driver during the NATO bombing of Serbia in 1999. Tasked with transporting a mysterious load from Kosovo to Belgrade, he drives through unfamiliar territory, surrounded by the consequences of the war. When his job is over, Vlada needs to return home and face the consequences of his actions.

Director Shawkat Amin Korki uses a new method to tell the story of the tragedy of war. Inside a beat up stadium in Kirkuk, Iraq, lives many refugees trying to escape Sadam Hussein’s administration. Asu lives with his younger brother who has lost his legs from a landmine. Next door lives Hilin, who has not been able to express her feelings. One of the only sources of happiness for these people who live amid fear of poverty and bombings is soccer. Asu gathers together the Kurdish, Arabs and Turkish in order to hold a soccer match. Although they are of different races, they become close neighbors. The beat up stadium in the film plays just as important a role as the plot itself. It is a living space, a playing space, and also a place to teach children. It is literally a small society. In addition, this sad and peculiar image of space plays a large role in creating a more dramatic tragedy.

Set on the eve of Tunisia’s Jasmine Revolution, the first feature from director Leyla Bouzid follows an up-and-coming underground band as they are pulled in all directions by creative energy, authoritarian oppression, and rebellion. As I Open My Eyes (À peine j'ouvre les yeux) gives us a look at Tunisian youth on the eve of the Jasmine Revolution as they are pulled in all directions by conflicting forces: disenchantment, fear, creativity, rebellion against dictatorship, rejection of conservatism, and the courage to pursue their desires. Farah (Baya Medhaffer) is a young woman at a crossroads. Her medical-school application has just been accepted, and nothing could please her mother, Hayet (Ghalia Benali), more - but Farah's passion is for music, and her underground band is just beginning to get noticed. Their music blends rock with daring lyrics that have the raw poetry of spoken word. Soon enough, the police are alerted to the band's subversive performances and begin to harass them, and when Farah is detained and interrogated, she realizes that one of her friends is a snitch. (tiff)

Let’s imagine that there is a new craft, and that it is called "replacing". Let’s imagine an unemployed man who would practice such craft every day. So much so, that he would actually work beyond measure, and that he would be, in his own way, a happy man. All he does is take on, for a few hours, the role of absentees who duck - for more or less serious reasons, their official occupation. He makes do with just enough, our hero, because money isn’t everything in life: one needs to keep in shape, and not letting oneself go in times of, how to say, dark crises. Let’s imagine, also, that there is a twenty years old young man (his son) who plays the sax like a God, and is therefore lucky, as he is an artist. Let’s then imagine Lucia, restless and wary, that hides a secret behind her desire to get ahead. Will they get to the next episode safe and sound?

Movie director Hussein would like to shoot a film in his homeland of Iraqi Kurdistan about the Anfal military operation of the 1980s that led to the murder of more than 182,000 Kurds. The viewer follows the entire crew’s efforts to achieve the goal of making the film despite the numerous problems that accompany the shoot. They are forced to struggle with inadequate financing, the mistrust of the local inhabitants, the exaggerated and inappropriate demands of a nationally-adored movie star, and to fight the disapproval of Sinur’s father, even though the young woman would love to take on the starring role.... Memories On Stone is a visually sophisticated movie in which the director gently and effortlessly brings together the Kurdish past and present, while investigating with sincerity and gracious humor the traumatizing events suffered by his nation. Korki entirely avoids sentimentality, offering instead a personal and vigorous look at Kurdish history and mentality.

Jaffa’s Ajami neighborhood is a melting pot of cultures and conflicting views among jews, muslims and christians. Back and forth in time, and through the eyes of various characters, we witness how impossible the situation actually is …

Luna and Amar are a couple. Their relationship is under great strain. First of all, Amar loses his job for being drunk at work. Luna is very worried and has little hope of realising her fragile dream of having a child with Amar. But her fears for their future increase when Amar takes on a well-paid job in a Muslim community hours away from where they live.Only after quite some time has elapsed during which they have had no contact with each other, is Luna allowed to visit Amar in this community of conservative Wahhabis in its idyllic lakeside location. She notices that the men and veiled women live in strict segregation and are closely watched. Luna asks Amar to return home with her but Amar insists that life in this isolated community of faithful followers has brought him peace and also keeps him from drinking. When he returns home a few weeks later, Luna realises that Amar’s attitude to religion has fundamentally changed. Amar claims that his only interest is to become a better person, but Luna finds it extremely difficult to follow his line of thinking. She begins to question everything that she has believed in, even her desire to have a child. As the wounds of a tragic war-filled past continue to haunt her, Luna tears herself apart searching if love is truly enough to keep her and Amar together on the path to a lifetime of happiness.

Timbuktu is silent, the doors closed, the streets empty. No more music, no tea, no cigarettes, no bright colors, no laughs. The women have become shadows. The religious fundamentalists are spreading terror in the region. In the dunes, away from the chaos, Kidane enjoys a quiet life with his wife Satima, his daughter Toya and Issan, his little shepherd. But his peace is short-lived. After accidentally killing Amadou, a fisherman who stroke down his favorite cow, Kidane must face the law of the new foreign rulers determined to defeat an open and tolerant Islam. Against the humiliations and acts of brutality performed by these complex men, Timbuktu tells the story of the silent struggle of the people, the fight for life of little Issan, and the uncertain future of the children.

Bab El-Oued, a popular district of Algier, in 1989, a few months after the riots. Young Boualem works six nights a week in a French bakery. On the rooftop of his apartment building the fundamentalists have installed a loudspeaker which is now broadcasting the Imam's word and the fundamentalist's hateful propaganda and therefore preventing Boualem from sleeping. Unable to stand the noise any longer, in a fit of madness, he destroys the loudspeaker and throws it into the sea. But he's quickly filled with guilt and apprehension for what he has done. Desecrating the property of the mosque is a sin, and now he finds himself in a relentless pursuit. The blunder is taken as a pretext by the Islamists to put the district under their control...

In the Ottoman province of Hijaz during World War I, a young Bedouin boy experiences a greatly hastened coming of age as he embarks on a perilous desert journey to guide a British officer to his secret destination. In 1916, in the Hejaz Province of the Ottoman Empire, the young Bedouin Theeb (Jacir Eid) is learning from his elder brother Hussein (Hussein Salameh) the skills for everyday survival in their harsh environment. Immersed in a way of life that has endured for centuries, the brothers are unaware of the tremendous upheavals taking place at the fringes of their world: the First World War is raging in Europe, the Ottoman Empire is coming undone, the Great Arab Revolt is brewing, and the British officer T.E. Lawrence is plotting with the Arab Prince Faisal to establish an Arab kingdom. When British officer Edward (Jack Fox) and his Bedouin guide Marji (Marji Audeh) stumble wayward into their tribe's camp, the two brothers' destiny is forever changed. Abiding by the Bedouin custom that guests cannot be refused aid, Hussein is assigned to accompany the two strangers to their destination - with the uninvited Theeb, eager for adventure, following close behind. The ensuing journey, filled with danger and hardship, will result in Theeb's greatly hastened maturation in a culture where a man's honour and righteousness determines his inclusion or expulsion from the community.

Dima Nikitin is a simple and honest plumber who works in a small Russian town. Except for his unusual integrity, nothing makes him stand out of the crowd, until one night in a dorm mainly occupied by drunkards and outcasts, the pipes burst, endangering the occupants. Everybody needs to be immediately evacuated but nobody cares, so Nikitin sets off on a night-long odyssey to fight an entire system of corrupt bureaucrats.

Istanbul is in political chaos. Armed groups have taken control of the shantytowns. The police response is brutal. In the midst of this, two brothers are drawn into the violence. Kadir is released after a 15-year prison term and goes in search of his younger brother Ahmet. Meanwhile, Istanbul is in the grip of political violence. Hamza, a high-ranking police officer helps Kadir find a job as an informer. He collects garbage, checking to see whether it contains material related to bomb-making. Ahmet works at the municipality as part of a team responsible for destroying stray dogs. When Ahmet shuts himself up in his house to care for a wounded dog, Kadir thinks he is being threatened by terrorists. Kadir relays his concern to Hamza, who sends the police to investigate.

In the valley of Kashmir, a lakeside city convulses with riots and curfews. A young man tries to escape, when he meets a beautiful environmentalist in an abandoned houseboat. Trapped together in his floating village, their blossoming romance threatens to derail his dreams.

The border fence between Mexico and the United States is part of their lives; Mexican youths use it as a volleyball net on the beach, holding their own kind of international matches with their opposite numbers on the other side. When Nero scales the metres-high metal bars we suspect that he has done this often before: because nothing is going to divert him from his dream of becoming a US citizen. He follows the traces of his older brother which lead him to Los Angeles and the mansions of the rich and famous where he gazes incredulously at this very different lifestyle with its pools and double garages that he soon hopes will be his. His only chance of quickly acquiring a green card, however, is by volunteering for military service. Before he knows it, Nero finds himself in the desert landscape of the war zones of the Middle East, fighting for his citizenship with a machine gun in his hand. For his new drama, Rafi Pitts has chosen to accompany another wanderer on his existential journey.

Powerful, moving and highly acclaimed, director Haile Gerima’s Sankofa is a masterpiece of cinema that has had a transformative impact on audiences since its release in 1993. This empowering film tells a story of slavery and of the African Diaspora from the perspective of the enslaved, challenging the romanticizing of slavery prevalent in American culture. Sankofa was developed from 20 years of research into the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the experiences of African slaves in the New World. The film represents complex characters and empowering moments of resilience that assert humanity in the face of subjugation. Unlike Hollywood’s depiction of slavery, Gerima presents the often suppressed history of slave resistance and rebellion and represents the enslaved as agents of their own liberation. The story begins with Mona (Oyafunmike Ogunlano), an African American model on a fashion shoot at the former slave castles in Cape Coast, Ghana. Mona undergoes a journey back in time and place to a slave plantation in North America where she becomes Shola, a house slave, and experiences the suffering of slavery firsthand. In becoming Shola and returning to her past culture and heritage, Mona is able to recover her lost slave identity and confront her ancestral experience. Shola’s interactions with her fellow slaves are marked with humanity and dignity, most notably with Shango (Mutabaruka), a rebellious field slave, and Nunu (Alexandra Duah), one of the few slaves to remember her life in Africa before being stolen by Europeans. The film’s narrative structure follows the concept of "Sankofa," an Akan word that signifies the recuperation of one’s past in order to comprehend the present and find one’s future. Allyson Nadia Field, ucla

Life in a small town is akin to journeying in the middle of the steppes: the sense that "something new and different" will spring up behind every hill, but always unerringly similar, tapering, vanishing or lingering monotonous roads...

Dziga Wertow, who rejects the old "cinema drama" as literary coquetry, has for the first time clearly formulated the essence of film, which is detached from all other arts. In contrast to the feature film, which forces the camera to copy the human eye, one has to consider that the cinema eye sees differently and more precisely than the "unarmed eye". Wertow's downright mystical belief in the creative power of film language tolerates no obstacles, no walls of distance and boundaries of time. Thus Entusiazm combines images from the European and Asian parts of the USSR into a "song of the world" that confronts socialism with capitalism. The extraordinary magic of his films lies in Vertov's ability to unite the two origins of the medium - the reproduced reality and its re-creation through montage - in the highest tension. (Vienna Film Museum, H.T.)

In a world of one-way traffic, where the northern countries are exporting their economic and political model worldwide, one country in Latin America has undertaken a profound reform of these models to invent a new type of governance, both pragmatic and humanistic. The country in question is Ecuador. Rafael Correa, an established economist, who came to politics as a man on a mission, was elected President in 2006. Since coming to power, he has transformed a country with archaic structures into a social, independent, ecological and participative democracy. He has given Ecuadorians genuine reason to believe that the rigid structures of the past were no longer inevitable, that ordinary citizens had their word to say, and that, at long last, their voices would be heard. This film is intended for everyone, from rich and emerging countries alike. It suggests concrete perspectives to a new way of living the phenomenon of globalization. It shows that political, ecological and economic alternatives do exist. This film is not a film about Ecuador; rather, is about a political project, where utopia became reality. It is a film of ideas and reflections, suggesting solutions to the current crises besetting the globe. It proposes a real debate on the future of our society

In 1979, in a China undergoing rapid changes, it is still forbidden to listen to pop music. Platform is a record young people listen to in secret. Minliang and his friends, an official theatre company, present a play in praise of Mao Zedong. With the 1980s, the theatrical troupe’s life changes: pop music, permed hair, cigarettes... This feature film follows the artistic and emotional tribulations of the young artistes over a ten-year period against a backdrop of revolutionary disappointment, a bygone past and privatisation.

Rahima (23) and Nedim (14) are orphans of the Bosnian war. They live in Sarajevo, a transitional society that has lost its moral compass, including in the way it treats children of the people who were killed fighting for the freedom of their city. After crime-prone adolescent years, Rahima has found comfort in Islam and she hopes her brother will follow in her footsteps. Their life of bare survival becomes even more difficult after Nedim gets into a fistfight with the son of a local strongman and breaks his expensive mobile phone. This incident triggers a chain of events leading Rahima to the discovery that her brother leads a double life.

Ken Bugul is a Senegalese writer who lives in Africa, where her soul is anchored. She has had an exceptional life. Silvia Voser’s film shows her as an iconic figure of the female condition and of relationships between Africa and the West. Ken Bugul is considered one of the most brilliant writers in Senegalese and French of these past decades. Over the years, thanks to her great command of the French language and the uncompromising care she takes with the wording of the meaning of Wolof vocabulary, her mother tongue, her novels have become absolute references in the realm of linguistic studies. "What you read in French in my novels is how we think and speak in Wolof in my village". Ken Bugul’s personal story is overshadowed by Africa’s turbulent history. She was born in 1947 in an isolated village in Senegal, at that time a French colony. Her father was 85 years old and her mother left them before Ken turned five. This was a fundamental event in Ken Bugul’s life. In spite of lacking a mother’s love, she was full of energy and a yearning for freedom, and she received an exceptional education for a village girl of that time. In 1971, she left for Europe to go to university and there she met people from the upper middle class and discovered new ideologies and liberties, modern art, drugs, alcohol, loneliness, incomprehension and disdain, and prostitution to relieve her need for affection. As she says in "The Abandoned Baobab": "For twenty years all I had learned was their thoughts and their emotions. I thought I’d have fun with them, but I ended up even more frustrated. I identified with them, but they didn’t identify with me." She came back to Senegal, a broken, lonely and penniless young woman. People thought she was crazy and she was rejected by her family and society. For two years, she slept in the streets of Dakar, hanging out with outcasts, beggars, prostitutes and artists. Dirty, hungry, almost naked, she started writing her first novel, "The Abandoned Baobab". Worn out, she decided to go back to her family. And there, in her mother’s village, she found refuge with the Serigne (marabout), a wise and much respected man. He took her as his 28th wife, enabling her to re-enter society, and he supported her in her desire to write and to be free. He died in 1981, a year before the publication of her first novel, "The Abandoned Baobab", which was an immediate success. Ken Bugul was invited to present her book all over the world. She met a doctor from Benin, married him and moved to that country, where she gave birth to their daughter Yasmina. Her husband passed away four years later. For the past thirty years, novel after novel, Ken Bugul has painted a picture of her life as a woman, of her loves, of the relationship between her continent and the West. "To write", she says, "is to dazzle the senses, and the senses are colourless." Silvia Voser leads us gently into the secret, tormented world of an artist whose writings show an understanding of the world that is rarely achieved.

The ocean contains the history of all humanity. The sea holds all the voices of the earth and those that come from outer space. Water receives impetus from the stars and transmits it to living creatures. Water, the longest border in Chile, also holds the secret of two mysterious buttons which were found on its ocean floor. Chile, with its 2,670 miles of coastline and the largest archipelago in the world, presents a supernatural landscape. In it are volcanoes, mountains and glaciers. In it are the voices of the Patagonian Indigenous people, the first English sailors and also those of its political prisoners. Some say that water has memory. This film shows that it also has a voice.

"Snow does not fall to cover the hill, but for every beast to leave its trail." Eastern Bosnia, 1997. Six women, a grandfather, four girls and a young boy live in war ravaged and isolated village of Slavno. Their families and friends had been killed and their bodies had never been found. The first snow brings full isolation and risk for life in the village. It gets closer as villagers headed by Alma, a young stubborn woman who believes they can survive, tries to find their way out of poverty by selling plum jam and other fruits and vegetables their village is famous for on a deserted road. Two businessmen visit Slavno demanding residents to leave the village offering money in return. Villagers face a dilemma: should they accept the offer that could save their lives, but destroy their souls. A sudden storm traps the businessmen in Slavno, forcing t"hem to face a problem bigger than anything they expected - the truth!

The revolution film par excellence, here in the German needle-tone version of 1930: The film presents a dramatized version of the mutiny that occurred in 1905 when the crew of the Russian battleship Potemkin rebelled against their officers. Battleship Potemkin was named the greatest film of all time at the Brussels World's Fair in 1958. In 2012, the British Film Institute named it the eleventh greatest film of all time.

1983. Alicia, the mother of an adopted 5-year-old girl, teaches history in a Buenos Aires high school. Both in her profession and in her private life she has always accepted the "official version," until one day when the regime's façade and that of it surroundings begin to fall to pieces around her. In the crevices of this enormous lie Alicia suspects that Gabi, the girl she has adopted, might be the daughter of a "desaparecido." It is then that she begins a painful and inexorable journey towards truth - a journey in which she might lose everything. All of these individual adventures are part of a dramatic larger one: Argentina itself, a society which, bordering the abyss, tries to reconstruct its future, examining its wounds, recognizing itself in its victims and their executioners.

The young Jewish woman Sulamit Löwenstein grows up with her parents in Argentina in the 1950s and falls in love with her German neighbor Friedrich, whose father was a Nazi henchman. In the 1950s, Argentina is the most popular refuge for old Nazis fleeing responsibility for their horrific crimes. There the young Jew Sulamit Löwenstein grows up, whose parents don't like their daughter spending time with her German neighbour Friedrich Burg. After all, it is rumored that his strict father was a submerged Nazi. Sulamit and Friedrich fall in love and move to Germany to study. In the meantime Friedrich is able to find out the tragic truth about his father and breaks with him. In order to move as far as possible away from his father's guilt, Friedrich fiercely opposes any form of fascism and supports the German student movement. A short time later he returns to Argentina to fight against the military dictatorship there. It is not until much later and after many aberrations that Sulamit and Friedrich finally found themselves in faraway Patagonia.

Soraya, 28, born and raised in Brooklyn, decides to return to live in Palestine, a country that her family was exiled from in 1948. On arriving in Ramallah, Soraya tries to recover the money left in an account by her grandparents but meets with refusal from the bank. Her path then crosses that of Emad, a young Palestinian whose ambition, unlike hers, is to leave the country for good. To escape the constraints linked to the situation in Palestine but also to earn their freedom, Soraya and Emad take things into their own hands, even if this means breaking the law. In this quest for life, we follow their trail through the History of a lost Palestine. Annemarie Jacir is telling not only or simply the story of a woman that comes to visit a region where her grandparents lived («here!»), no, the palestinian filmmaker is taking us as viewers deep into that, what facts and figures could never describe. It is this strong atmosphere, she has been creating, that touches us, it's the images of a well known situation, but again, not only the images in the photografic sense, she reaches in the way she's telling this little journey a level of inside view, that has in it's silent, feverish and constantly instabile way breathtaking and heartstopping moments. SALT OF THIS SEA is one of those movies, that give us an inner view of a situation that we all know somehow and where we run out of words to discribe. And this seems to me today much more important then to repeat what we know. Annemarie Jacirs movie is touching, because it goes under the surface even by simply showing surfaces, it goes under the surface by having a wonderful actress who is able to speak not only in words. And it goes there because she did put together so many little visible and invisible elements, without pointing them out: They are simply there, from the first moment, and they speak for themselves each of them and all together. The filmmaker created a kind of soft explosive that is not blessing but touching.

Summer 1943, Piedmont, Italy. Milton loves Fulvia who plays with his love: she only likes the depth of his thought and the letters he writes to her. One year later, Milton has joined the Resistance and fights beside other partisans. He learns during a conversation that Fulvia was secretly in love with his best friend Giorgio, a partisan like him. Milton decides to go find Giorgio in the Langhe region of Italy with all its misty hills...But Giorgio has just been arrested by the Fascists. "O, NOW FOREVER FAREWELL THE TRANQUIL MIND, FAREWELL THE PLUMED TROOPS AND THE BIG WARS. THOU HADST BEEN BETTER HAVE BEEN BORN A DOG THAN ANSWER MY WAKED WRATH." SHAKESPEARE

Xiaoli, a 16 year old Shanghainese boy, has recently turned 16, in the summer of 1988. His life revolves around his one-room apartment in a beautiful brick house in the picturesque Shikumen neighborhood of Da Zhongli which he shares with his grandfather. Xiaoli's grandfather was brought up in this neighborhood, and was one of original owners of the houses, built in the 1930s by British architects. The houses were confiscated from their original owners by the government during the Cultural Revolution and made to share with lower-income families. Xiaoli's father died in prison during the Cultural Revolution and his mother immigrated to the United States in the hope of obtaining a green card for her and her son. Xiaoli yearns to graduate from high school and open a photo shop as he is numbed by the routine of his life: his boring political education classes, his English study, the sternness of his grandfather and the lack of comforting parental figure. At the same time, he is wary of the idea of following in his mother's footsteps to America. His interest lies in his blossoming next door neighbor, a girl of twenty named Lanmi. Lanmi failed her college entrance exams and works in the Shanghai no. 2 Toothbrush Factory. She lives in the adjacent apartment with her mother and step-father. She comes from a lower class income family and was relocated in Da Zhongli with her father and mother, before her father was sent off to labor prison were he also eventually died. Lanmi does not get along with her mother and stepfather and new born sibling, and yearns to get out of Da Zhongli, if only she could afford it. She turns to Xiaoli for comfort, albeit of a different kind than Xiaoli is looking for. While Xiaoli looks at her for a mix of motherly figure and teenage lust, Lanmi plays with him. She flirts with him, arouses his senses, and yet has no interest in pursuing their relationship any further, thus giving false hopes to Xiaoli. She starts leading a double life, one which Xiaoli does not even know exists. One day, as she is delivering toothbrushes to a hotel, she is hired to work there for one of the 'sisters'. To Xiaoli, her job oddly consists of going to dances or accompanying foreign businessmen, as Shanghai progressively opens up to foreigners, foreign exchange notes and coca-cola. Xiaoli slowly becomes suspicious of Lanmi's new job yet gives her the benefit of the doubt. Until one day when Lanmi dispappears down south in search of a better life. In Lanmi's absence, Xiaoli turns to Lili who is more of his age but never looses interest in his deviant neighbor. When Lanmi comes back two weeks later, the student demonstrations start monopolizing everyone's life in the spring of 1989. They offer new opportunities to Xiaoli and Lanmi, depending on how each one looks at the events. Xiaoli becomes absorbed by the new developments and slowly looses his naivesness about the country he is living in and his interest in his next door neighbour's Lanmi turns to drugs and alcohol as an escape to her everyday life. When the situation gets so bad that Xiaoli's grandfather urges Xiaoli to leave for America, Xiaoli agrees to and flees.

Mozambique is in the midst of civil war. A single train connects Nampula to Malawi. No civilians are allowed and yet hundreds risk their lives through 700km of sabotaged tracks. Salomão and Taiar are two soldiers who don’t get along. Rosa is a young nurse on her way to her first job, who soon becomes an object of desire. Mariamu, her close friend, only hopes to trade salt for sugar. Amongst bullets and laughter, life goes on and stories unfold as the train advances under attack, ever so slowly, towards the next stop. Lead by a Shaman Commander, The Train of Salt and Sugar is a magical journey aboard an African train that carries hundreds of unknown heroes

Veronika and Boris come together in Moscow shortly before World War II. Walking along the river, they watch cranes fly overhead, and promise to rendezvous before Boris leaves to fight. Boris misses the meeting and is off to the front lines, while Veronika waits patiently, sending letters faithfully. After her house is bombed, Veronika moves in with Boris’ family, into the company of a cousin with his own intentions.

While working on a story in the border area, a young journalist discovers a divided town bisected by a river which is also the national frontier. He observes a surreal wedding in which the bride and her family stand on one shore and the groom and his relatives on the other, lost under a cold sky: figure in a landscape who only delude themselves that they are masters of the earth and their destiny The town, a remote ghost town, almost forgotten at the end of the world, has been named «waiting room» by the locals because most of its inhabitants are refugees from different countries many of whom have crossed the border illegally at some time or other and are now waiting for their turn to leave and start life anew «somewhere else.» In the course of his investigation he also comes upon an aging, reclusive refugee, who lives there cultivating a field. But the young journalist believes he is a famous Greek politician who disappeared years before, leaving behind him many unanswered questions. The man's identity is never resolved but the hapless refugees and divided village allow the reporter to understand his despair over the human condition. Theo Angelopoulos weaves yet another poetical allegory on the great open questions of our turbulent age. The film is very contemporary in its treatment of borders, refugees and a changing world since the fall of communism in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. «Being a refugee is an internal condition more than an external one, says one of the characters in the film. And later on he also says, «We've passed the borders but we're still here. How many frontiers do we have to pass to get home?» Do politicians really care? Does anyone? Finally, there is the image of the stranger standing on the bridge poised over the dividing line between the two countries. He has one leg suspended in mid air, like a stork. «If I take one more step I am... somewhere else, or... I die.»

The mountain massif of Cutucú in the south of the Amazon region in Ecuador was a kind of defense against the environmental destruction for the native population but in the same time an obstacle. The people had no access to the modern world outside. The road through the Cutucú now allows mobility in order to exploit the fossil resurces but it grants the natives a way to reach the so called civilized world. The process happens in an unspectacular way. Where progress starts it cannot be stopped anymore: Escavating, digging, shovelling, grubbing, selling and buying: everyday madness. Excerpts from the film «Shuar, People of the Sacred Waterfalls» (1986) recall us, how in the traditional culture of the Shuar nature was an integrated part of life and mobility was achieved in the hallucinogenic ecstasy with no bounds. Today the natives are transporting wooden boards with horses to civilization. Wood is the fastest business, other products must first be created. Now the jungle disappears in everyday madness.

The young Miloš Hrma, who speaks with misplaced pride of his family of misfits and malingerers, is engaged as a newly trained station guard in a small railway station during the Second World War and the German occupation of Czechoslovakia. He admires himself in his new uniform, and looks forward, like his prematurely-retired railwayman father, to avoiding real work. The sometimes pompous stationmaster is an enthusiastic pigeon-breeder with a kind wife, but is envious of the train dispatcher Hubička's success with women. Miloš holds an as-yet platonic love for the pretty, young conductor Máša. The experienced Hubička presses for details of their relationship and realizes that Miloš is still a virgin. The idyll of the railway station is periodically disturbed by the arrival of the councillor, Zednicek, a Nazi collaborator, who spouts propaganda at the staff without success. At her initiative, Máša spends the night with Miloš, but in his youthful excitability he ejaculates prematurely before achieving penetration and then is unable to perform sexually; and the next day, despairing, he attempts suicide. He is saved, and a young doctor explains to him that ejaculatio praecox is normal at Miloš's age. The doctor recommends Miloš to "think of something else" (at which point Miloš volunteers an interest in football), and to seek the assistance of an experienced woman. During the nightshift, Hubička flirts with the young telegraphist, Zdenička, and imprints her thighs and buttocks with the office's rubber stamps. Her mother sees the stamps and complains to Hubička's superiors, and the ensuing scandal helps to frustrate the stationmaster's ambition of being promoted to inspector. The Germans and their collaborators are on edge, since their trains are being attacked by the partisans. A glamorous Resistance agent (a circus artist in peacetime), code-named Viktoria Freie, delivers a time bomb to Hubička for use in blowing up a large ammunition train. At Hubička's request, the "experienced" Viktoria also helps Miloš to resolve his sexual problem. The next day, at the crucial moment when the ammunition train is approaching, Hubička is caught up in a farcical disciplinary hearing, overseen by Zednicek, over his rubber stamping of Zdenička's backside. In Hubička's place, Miloš, liberated by his experience with Viktoria from his former passivity, takes the time bomb and drops it from a semaphore gantry, that extends transversely above the tracks, onto the train. A machine-gunner on the train, spotting Miloš, sprays him with bullets, and his body falls onto the train. With the Nazi collaborator Zednicek, winding up the disciplinary hearing, dismissing the Czech people as "nothing but laughing hyenas" (a phrase actually employed by the senior Nazi official Reinhard Heydrich, the implicit retort to his jibe comes in the form of a huge series of explosions that destroys the train. Now Hubička and the other railwaymen are indeed laughing - to express their joy at the blow to the Nazi occupiers - and it is left to a wistful Máša to pick up Miloš's uniform cap, hurled across the station by the power of the blast. (wp)

Twelve-year-old Tedo lives with his young mother in Keto in an isolated hut on the outskirts of Tiflis. Tedo and Keto are refugees from Abchasia. The civil war has claimed everything they ever owned, including Tedo’s and Keto’s hopes for a bright future as an intact family unit. Tedo was just four years of age when they were obliged to flee from Abchasia. At the time, they had to leave behind Tedo’s father - his weak heart made it impossible for him to take on such a strenuous journey. Tedo is now an apprentice at a car repair shop and Keto is working as a sales assistant. Tedo gives the few pennies that he earns to his mother so that she no longer has to be nice to strange, unfriendly men. It pains the young boy agreat deal that he cannot earn more of a living for them; moreover, his mother’s moral conduct begins to weigh heavily on him. One day, when he discovers that she has a lover it becomes all too much for him and he decides to return to his father in Abchasia. Perhaps he will find the solution to all his problems there. Tedo meets many people on his journey - and suffers many a blow. He is by no means welcome everywhere. As his journey comes to an end he has acquired many an insight - such as the realisation that the grass is not necessarily greener on the other side.

Birdwatchers (La terra degli uomini rossi) is a film set in Brazil, in the Matto Grosso do Sul. It depicts the breakdown of a community of Guarani-Kaiowa native Indians whilst attempting to reclaim their ancestral land from a local farmer.

Western frontiers of the USSR, 1942. The region is under German occupation, and local partisans are fighting a brutal resistance campaign. A train is derailed not far from the village, where Sushenya, a rail worker, lives with his family. Innocent Sushenya is arrested with a group of saboteurs, but the German officer makes a decision not to hang him with the others and sets him free. Rumours of Sushenya’s treason spread quickly, and partisans Burov and Voitik arrive from the forest to get revenge. As the partisans lead their victim through the forest, they are ambushed, and Sushenya finds himself one-to-one with his wounded enemy. Deep in an ancient forest, where there are neither friends nor enemies, and where the line between treason and heroism disappears, Sushenya is forced to make a moral choice under immoral circumstances.

Arash is an Iranian academic who lives in the West. He returns to teach classes in Shiraz, where his mother lives, far from Tehran. Trapped in a whirlwind of family and financial intrigues, he plunges back into the difficult hours of his childhood at the beginning of the Iraq-Iran war in 1981. Following the death of his father and discovering what has become of his "respectable family", he is forced to make choices.

Nabat and her husband Iskender, an old and sick ex-forestry worker, live in a small isolated house far from the village. War has been raging for some time and their son has been killed at the front. Their sole means of survival is the sale of milk from their only cow that Nabat takes to the village every couple of days. As the shadow of war envelopes the region the village is slowly deserted by its inhabitants. Following Iskender’s death Nabat has to survive in a now abandoned village under the regard of a she-wolf.

Vicente is a young, reckless loner who comes back to his parents’ beach house after a year studying in LA. One of those random nights of downing shots and chasing girls changes his life forever when Vicente becomes the prime suspect in a hit-and-run that kills a local fisherman. Vicente was wasted. His memories are a blur. Yes, he was in the car, but he swears he wasn’t driving. And what’s worse, the guy he remembers being behind the wheel is the son of a powerful politician. A tangled web of lies engulfs the truth, crushing out a social scandal before it can begin.

A former resistance fighter who is elected president of Uruguay and donates almost 90 percent of his salary to social projects: Pepe Mujica, one of Latin America's most charismatic personalities, has become known as "the poorest president in the world". He has always remained true to his ideals, having spent many years in prison for political reasons. His modest lifestyle - he lives in a small finca instead of a government palace - and his unconventional appearance underpin his credibility with young and old. Pepe Mujica represents his concerns with humour, intellect and passion, and his political commitment to a more just society attracts international attention and encouragement. Filmmaker Heidi Specogna and her cameraman Rainer Hoffmann often visited Pepe Mujica and his wife Lucía Topolansky and accompanied them with their cameras. This is how the portrait of an extraordinary person was created, who, at almost 80 years of age, has retained his courage, his wit, his humanity and his strong hope for change. "Pepe Mujica - el presidente" is an optimistic and moving film that inspires courage.

Ken Loach’s 2013 documentary about social change in Britain in the aftermath of the Second World War, including the nationalisation of industries and the formation of the welfare state. Made almost entirely in black & white, so B&W archive footage from the 1940s blend in with interviews made today.

Sophie is a brilliant student. Encouraged by her maths teacher, she leaves the family farm to attempt a science preparatory course. Between new encounters, mistrust, failures and fierce competition, Sophie realizes that getting into Polytechnique is more than just a competitive examination – it's a real challenge to climb the social ladder. Will she succeed? Director Frédéric Mermoud - with a winning Suzanne Jouannet in the leading role - brings the fight for educational justice in the elitist education system of contemporary France to the screen. Maud Wyler was awarded the Swiss Film Award for Best Supporting Actress.

Some thirty children aged between four and eight spend their days in the woods, come sun, rain or snow. This is where they learn to read, write and count. Above all, the children experience this environment and the cycles of nature to the full, and seek their role in the community. This documentary by Natalie Pfister plunges us into the world of a forest school over the course of a year, giving a voice to its young protagonists.

Benjamin is a PhD student without scholarship support. Under the pressure of his parents, and in need of money, he becomes a substitute teacher in a middle school. Without training nor experience, and facing a declining public educational system, he discovers how tough this job can be. Hopefully, his supportive and committed colleagues will lead him to take a fresh look at the profession. With Vincent Lacoste, Adèle Exarchopoulos und François Cluzet.

They are the world’s next CEOs: students of the Master's programme "Strategy and International Management" at the University of St. Gallen (HSG). Those who succeed here are practically already part of the future business elite – like Feifei, Sara, Tobias, Frederic and David. Over the course of seven years, the documentary accompanies the five young men and women, who come from very different countries, from their studies to the first years of their careers. They have different backgrounds, dreams and values. But they all have the same goal: professional success as quickly as possible. The five, who are disarmingly outspoken, are willing to make sacrifices, to subordinate their personal lives to professional advancement. They experience exhilarating triumphs as well as bitter defeats – and repeatedly question many things. Our economy is closely linked to politics, international corporations influence our consumption and our behavior. Decisions made by CEOs shape our society; they influence how we live, how we work and also which regions of the world benefit economically and which do not. Who makes it to the top? What values do these people represent? And are they aware of their social responsibility? Director Piet Baumgartner starts with these questions and delves deep into the world of CEOs and consultants. His documentary captivates with strong images, is excellently made, insightful and nuanced.

A poor but prideful teenager, Ulzii, lives in the yurt area of Ulaanbaatar with his family. He is a physics genius and is determined to win a science competition to earn a scholarship. When his mother finds a job in the countryside, she leaves him and his younger siblings to face a harsh winter by themselves. Ulzii will have to take a risky job to look after them all and keep his home heated.

Carla Nowak, a dedicated sports and math teacher, starts her first job at a high school. She stands out among the new staff because of her idealism. When a series of thefts occur at the school and one of her students is suspected, she decides to get to the bottom of the matter on her own. Carla tries to mediate between outraged parents, opinionated colleagues and aggressive students, but is relentlessly confronted with the structures of the school system. The more desperately she tries to do everything right, the more the young teacher threatens to break. "The Teachers' Lounge" by award-winning director İlker Çatak shows how quickly a social conflict can escalate. Çatak holds up a mirro to society by critically examining the current culture of debate and values such as truth and justice through the microcosm of school. Leonie Benesch's passionate portrayal of a young teacher who gets caught between the fronts creates a dense atmosphere that captivates from the very beginning.

Bratsch, located in the Leuk mountains, is an Upper Valais village with a magnificent view of the Rhone Valley. Just one hundred people still lived in the village in 2015. Since the municipality merger with Gampel down in the valley, the school building has stood empty. Something was about to change. The film documents the development and changes in the village from the reopening of the school in autumn 2016 to the present.

Rojin, a heartbroken young woman who is suffering from depression after the disappearance of her fiance, is preparing for her university entrance exam. If she fails, her father will force her into marriage. If she succeeds, however, she might lead a more emancipated life and avoid the fate of her older sister Shilan, who is unhappily married to a conservative man who demands her to be a proper housewife. Seeing that her younger sister struggles to achieve that dream, Shilan becomes desperate to make her pass the exam by any means necessary. This decision puts the sisters under immense pressure from their environment both at home and in school, as they become entangled in a huge network of corruption that is connected through all parts of society. Swiss Premiere exclusively on filmingo.

Where does one feel at home? In Stadtallendorf, a German city with a complex history of both excluding and integrating foreigners, genial teacher Dieter Bachmann offers his pupils the key to at least feeling as if they are at home. Aged between twelve and fourteen, these pupils come from twelve different nations; some have not quite mastered the German language. On the brink of retirement, Bachmann is eager to inspire these citizens-in-the-making with a sense of curiosity for a wide range of crafts, subjects, cultures and opinions. Watching this absorbing, sensitive documentary, one is overwhelmed with the realisation that, if only all children were blessed with such emotionally intelligent, ever-patient educators, conflict would be mitigated via discussion and John Lennon’s “Imagine” could be our reality. Those who, like filmmaker Maria Speth and her cinematographer Reinhold Vorschneider, are able to recognise and highlight so beautifully not only the importance of education but also what a quietly spectacular process it can be, are heroes in their own right, too.

She is small, but dangerous. Wherever Benni ends up, she is immediately expelled. The wild 9-year-old girl has already become what child protection services call a “system crasher.” And she is certainly not looking to change her ways. Because Benni has one single goal: to be back at home with her mommy! But Bianca is scared of her own daughter. Mrs. Bafané from child protection services is trying her best to find a permanent placement for Benni. She hires the anger management trainer Micha as Benni's school escort and suddenly there is a seed of hope. Will Micha be able to succeed where all others failed?

A small village on the Syrian-Turkish border in the early 1980s: The six-year-old Kurdish boy Sero experiences his first school year in an Arab school and has to watch his small world being radically changed in the course of an absurd nationalism. Humorous yet serious, the film tells of a childhood that also finds its light moments between dictatorship and dark drama.

In a remote village nestled in the foggy hills of northern Bangladesh, Rupa fights against a predetermined destiny. With only a bike, a camera and her knowledge, she defies traditions and tries to make a place for herself in her community. When a twist of fate hits her family, Rupa’s freedom is threatened. Will she be able to maintain the fragile balance between the expectations of her loved ones and her own dreams?

Romeo Aldea, a physician living in a small mountain town in Transylvania, has raised his daughter Eliza with the idea that once she turns 18, she will leave to study and live abroad. His plan is close to succeeding. Eliza has won a scholarship to study psychology in the UK. She just has to pass her final exams – a formality for such a good student. On the day before her first written exam, Eliza is assaulted in an attack that could jeopardize her entire future. Now Romeo has to make a decision. There are ways of solving the situation, but none of them using the principles he, as a father, has taught his daughter.

They have traveled far - by plane, train, bus or boat. Now they find themselves in the integration class of teacher Christian Zingg in Basel, where young people from all over the world get to know the language and culture of our country within two years. Anna Thommen's documentary film, which has won numerous awards at numerous festivals, opens up a view into a world that is hardly known. The director skilfully interweaves various stories, observed with great sensitivity.

Eleven-year-old Chala (Armando Valdés Freire) lives with his addict mother Sonia (Yuliet Cruz). In order to provide for the two of them, he raises carrier pigeons and trains fighting dogs with a man who may or may not be his biological father. School provides a stabilizing force in Chala's life, thanks to his close relationship with his spirited sixty-something teacher, Carmela (Alina Rodríguez). When the boy is sent off to live in a "re-education facility" and Carmela mounts a campaign to have him released, she becomes the target of a witch hunt spearheaded by a school board administrator who regards Carmela's permissive beliefs as incongruent with the new Cuba. But the idealistic, strong-willed woman remains defiant and manages to recruit allies from amongst her fellow teachers, leading to a conflict in which one boy's future reflects the systemic dynamics of contemporary Cuba.

Set wholly in a secondary school in a working-class district of Paris, where many inhabitants are foreign-born, the film follows a year in the life of a young teacher, François Marin, and the 25 teenage pupils to whom he teaches French for an hour each day. Teacher and novelist François Bégaudeau plays a version of himself as he spends a year with his racially mixed students walking the narrow line between maintaining discipline and gaining co-operation. Winner of the Palme d'Or at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival, master French director Laurent Cantet's The Class is a "fresh piece of humanist, realist, optimist cinema" (The Guardian).

Marita is a supervisor at the Colegio Nacional in Buenos Aires, the establishment that trains the country’s future elite. She is 23 and wants to do things right. Mr Biasutto, the head supervisor, immediately sees in her the zealous employee that he has been waiting for and teaches her to become the vigilant eye attentive to everything but that avoids attracting the attention of others: the invisible eye. Marita then throws herself into the relentless surveillance of this tiny, closed world, imagining, detecting, pursuing...

Struggling with his profession as a teacher, Ugyen is sent to Lunana in northern Bhutan for his final year of training. With a warm welcome, the local children try to win him over but they do not have much time...

Tati and Renet are high school students who share an instant connection over social media that deepens during a class trip. Their nascent relationship screeches to a halt the next day, though, once Tati discovers that her lost phone has resulted in the leaking of an intimate video to the entire school. Desperate for answers and frustrated at the shaming that ensues, Tati tries to hold her head high even as her resolve threatens to crumble. Simultaneously, Renet grapples with instability at home, where his separated parents vie for control over what is best for their children, and their fragmented parenting starts to take its toll.

Rwanda, 1973: high up in the mountains, at the source of the Nile, a black statue of the Virgin Mary watches over a Catholic boarding school for girls. Here, during days filled with classes, mass and practical work, the daughters of politicians, officers and businessmen are educated to one day become productive members of the country’s elite. Whether Hutu or Tutsi, the girls share their curiosity, dreams and joie de vivre. However, the social dynamics and increasing conflicts that characterise the school microcosm mirror the ravages wrought by the colonial order. Deeply symbolic images hint at the genocidal violence that would later engulf the entire country in 1994.

In the deep Sardinia of the 1940s, at the age of five, little Gavino is forced to drop out of school after only two months because he now has to help his father keep the animals. He thus grows up in isolation, far from human society. It is thanks to military service at the age of 21 that he can escape his father's grip. He learns to read, which is for him a revelation (he will become a linguist), and when he leaves the army, he rejects the report of quasi-slavery imposed by his father.

Six-year-old Yusuf has just begun attending primary school where he is learning how to read and write. His father, Yakup, is a beekeeper. He goes about his trade deep inside the woods where he hangs up his bee hives in the treetops of the highest trees. The mountain forest is a place of deep mystery to Yusuf and he derives great pleasure from accompanying his father there. One morning Yusuf tells his father about a dream he had the night before. Yakup turns on him curtly telling him never to share his dreams with others. The same day, Yusuf is asked to read out a text in front of the class. He suddenly begins to stutter and he is laughed at by the rest of the class. One day the bees suddenly disappear, throwing into question the family’s means of earning a living. Yakup decides to set off for the remote mountains. But no sooner has he left, than Yusuf stops speaking. His mother Zehra, who works on a tea plantation, suffers a great deal on ac count of her son’s sudden loss of speech, but is unable to persuade him to speak. The days pass - and still Yakup does not return. Mother and son begin to worry. Yusuf goes to his grandmother’s place in a neighbouring village where he spends the magical night during which the prophet’s arrival is celebrated. When he hears the story of the prophet he is convinced that his father, with whom he identifies the holy man, will come home again. Yusuf and his mother set off on a fruitless search for signs of his father’s whereabouts after which Yusuf decides to continue the search for his father on his own. His is a journey into the unknown. Will the dream he had be - come reality?

1981 - Morocco – The month of Ramadan. With her seven-year-old son, Mehdi, Amina moves in with her father-in-law, Ahmed. Mehdi’s father is in prison but the boy believes that he has gone to work in France: his mother and grandfather maintain this illusion for his sake. At school, Mehdi has the privileged task of looking after the teacher’s chair. His relationship with the village, his friends and the world revolves around this object.

It is in a village lost at the bottom of the desert, a young teacher was named, to teach, but there is no school. Through the yant glance foudro of a girl, our teacher is aspired by another world to the suspended time where côtoient Thousand and One Nights. Coordinate all the hidden force of an underground memory. One of the most beautiful desert movies, in which storyteller and painter Nacer Khemir tells us the journey of a young teacher that arrives in a desert village.

The second part of Satyajit Ray's famous Apu trilogy, this Indian drama focuses on young Apu, who lives with his mother, Sarbajaya (Kanu Bandyopadhyay), and father, Harihar (Pinaki Sengupta), near the Ganges River. When Harihar dies suddenly, Apu and Sarbajaya move to a small village to be near relatives. Eventually, she reluctantly allows her son (now played by Smaran Ghosal) to attend school in Calcutta. As Apu acclimates to life in the city, Sarbajaya struggles with his absence.

Anina Yatay Salas is a pensive redhead who really does not like her name. Each part is a palindrome, which means it reads the same both forwards and backwards. Her schoolmates are always teasing her about this, especially Anina’s arch-enemy Yisel. When these two get into a playground fight one day they are sent to the school head who disciplines them with a nerve-racking punishment: they are both given a sealed black envelope which they are not allowed to open for an entire week. Haunted by nightmares, the days drag by endlessly for Anina. She and her inquisitive best friend try to devise all sorts of ways to discover what is inside the envelope. Gradually, Anina begins to realise that not only does Yisel share her fate: she also has much bigger problems to contend with than Anina. Tentatively, the two rivals begin to get to know each other. Narrated by the voice of the young protagonist, the film is able to follow Anina’s thought processes and provide an insight into her emotional world. Anina’s day-dreams are not always about her troubles and woes - they also reflect her awakening feelings of love.

The movie recalls children who suffered mental and physical harm both during the last century, particularly in religious orphanages, and during the time of early modernperiod witch-hunts. It shows that the mindsets and behavioural patterns of both time periods are more alike than one might think.

The European equivalent of "The Return of the Secaucus 7," this Swiss film looks at the lives of several men and women in their 30s as they confront the slim gains of the "revolutionary" sixties. Max, a dissatisfied copy editor; Myriam, a redhead into tantric sex; and Marie, a supermarket checker who gives unauthorized discounts to the elderly, search for renewed meaning on a communal farm. The title character, a six-year-old child, is the carrier of their hopes for the future.

LIYANA is a story born in the imaginations of five orphaned children in the Kingdom of Swaziland. The film follows the children, Zweli, Sibusiso, Phumlani, Mkhuleko, and Nomcebo, as they collaborate to tell the original tale of Liyana, a fictional character whose early life bears remarkable similarities to their own. The world that the children imagine for Liyana is brought to life in an innovative style of animated artwork. This hybrid film weaves documentary scenes together with the animated adventure. LIYANA is executive produced by British-Zimbabwean actress, Thandie Newton, with artwork from rising Nigerian talent, Shofela Coker. Under the guidance of acclaimed South African storyteller, Gcina Mhlophe, the children transform their darkest memories and brightest dreams into fuel for their fairytale. After an idyllic early childhood, Liyana’s world is shattered when her father contracts HIV and both of her parents die. Inspired by a recent real-life robbery, the children decide that there will be a frightening attack at Liyana’s family homestead. In the aftermath of this terrible night, the girl and her trusty sidekick, the family bull, embark on a dangerous, beautiful, and often humorous quest into the wilderness. Hunger, wild animals, and treacherous terrain stand between Liyana and an uncertain fate. As our young storytellers move their fictional character forward through trial and temptation, we periodically return to intimate documentary scenes of the children’s lives in Swaziland - nightly rituals, herding cattle, and a trip to a local clinic for an HIV test. The children’s creative journey is echoed throughout the film by allegorical scenes of the group hiking down a steep ravine in search of a mysterious river. These intertwining narrative strands work together to draw connections between Liyana and the children. As the real and imagined worlds begin to converge the children must choose what kind of story they will tell - in fiction, and in their own lives.

Sudan, province of Aljazira, nowadays - When Muzamil was born, a prophecy by the holy man of the village predicts that he will die when he is 20 years old. Muzamil’s father cannot stand the doom and travels away from home. Sakina, as a single mother, raises her son with over protection. One day, Muzamil turns 19.

A documentary about how a dominant cultural and demographic institution both sustains their traditional activities and adapts to the digital revolution.

Bethlehem is a neighbourhood in the city of Bern where immigrants from over 30 nations have settled. At the centre of this film is the junior team of the Bethlehem Football Club. In this team, the majority are immigrants between 15 and 16 years old. The film also portrays - along with football - their everyday lives at school, vocational training and leisure time. It questions the protagonists about their self-image, their dreams, worries and fears, asks them about what connects them and what divides them, about what it’s like to be a foreigner in their former homeland and how they get along in another foreign environment.

The movie tells the story of Laerte (Lázaro Ramos), a talented violinist who after failing to be admitted into the OSESP Orchestra is forced to give music classes to teenagers in a public school at Heliopolis. His path is full of difficulties, but the transforming power of music and the friendship arising between the teacher and the students open the door into a new world.

A chronicle of three weeks in the lives of several high school teachers, administrators and students through the eyes of substitute teacher, Henry Barthes. Henry roams from school to school, imparting modes of knowledge, but never staying long enough to form any semblance of sentient attachment.

A spiritual shaman is a crucial member of the community, the one who everyone depends on when in need of moral and spiritual guidance. What happens when that shaman is a 17-year-old high school student who must balance his profound Spiritual responsibilities while also juggling another life - that of a high school student - working hard to success in the cold, callous society of modern Mongolia. Introducing Ze, 17-year-old gentle Mongolian shaman...

Set in the port town of Dover, Mary Hussain suddenly finds herself a widow following the unexpected death of her husband. A day after the burial, she discovers he has a secret just twenty-one miles across the English Channel in Calais.

Within Brooklyn's ultra-orthodox Jewish community, a widower battles for custody of his son. A tender drama performed entirely in Yiddish, the film intimately explores the nature of faith and the price of parenthood.

In 1858, in the Jewish quarter of Bologna, the Pope's soldiers burst into the home of the Mortara family. By order of the cardinal, they have come to take Edgardo, their seven-year-old son. The child had been secretly baptized by his nurse as a baby and the papal law is unquestionable: he must receive a Catholic education. Edgardo's parents, distraught, will do anything to get their son back. Supported by public opinion and the international Jewish community, the Mortaras' struggle quickly take a political dimension. But the Church and the Pope will not agree to return the child, to consolidate an increasingly wavering power...

A single mother's courage is tested when she resorts to desperate measures to hide her illegitimate child from her parents. Until Tomorrow is a study of the millennial generation and how they are reexamining the value system not only in Iran but also in so many other countries. The odyssey of Fereshteh takes us under the skin of the Iranian capital, Tehran, to understand how the youth have gained the courage and confidence to question the traditional ways of life and break away from patriarchy.

For the master of Zen buddhism, Thich Nhat Hanh, mindfulness means a conscious presence in the present moment that allows the soul to find peace and calm and makes a deeper understanding of reality and a starting point for wisdom possible. The spiritual superstar has already touched and moved millions of people all over the world with his teachings. The filmmakers of "Walk with Me" were invited to live in a French monastery for three years and to accompany monks and nuns on missions to the USA. They were granted special access into a peaceful and cheerful community that is dedicated wholeheartedly to the art of mindfulness.

Summer 1900, in a valley in southern Switzerland. Elisabeth is seventeen years old and about to take her vows when the sudden death of her older sister forces her to leave the convent and return to the family farm she had left five years earlier. But Elisabeth is no longer a child. Stifled by the suffocating and strict rules of the village and obsessed by the mysteries surrounding her sister's disappearance, she will fight for her right to experiment. The highly talented French-speaking Swiss director Carmen Jaquier explores female emancipation in the midst of oppressive social norms in impressively composed images. Switzerland's official submission to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Hollywood in the "Best International Film" category for 2023.

A man returns home to Tunisia to bury his mother. After the burial, his father gives him an “amana” to be handed to a certain Sheikh named Muhyiddin. Taken by his father’s request, the man immediately sets out on an epic journey to find the long lost Sheikh and deliver the “amana.”

Italy 1610. Caravaggio is both one of the most brilliant painters of his time and a rebel against Church rulings that dictate how religious subjects are represented. Having been informed that Caravaggio depicts prostitutes, thieves and vagabonds in his work, Pope Paul V orders the Vatican secret service to investigate, to decide whether to grant the clemency for which the painter has petitioned since being sentenced to death for the murder of a rival in love. The investigator – known as The Shadow - begins the inquiry that will lead him to discover the conflicting vices and virtues of the genius whose life – or death – lies in his hands. Biopic from Michele Placido with Riccardo Scarmarcio, Louis Garrel and Isabelle Huppert.

Adam, a simple fisherman's son, joins the prestigious Al-Azhar University in Cairo, the epicenter of power in Sunni Islam. On the first day of classes, the Grand Imam at the head of the institution suddenly dies. Adam finds himself at the heart of a relentless power struggle between the country's religious and political elites.

By day, Mari and her friends broadcast their spiritual devotion through pastel pinks and catchy evangelical songs about purity and perfection, and by night they form a vigilante girl gang, prowling the streets in search of sinners who have deviated from the rightful path. After an attack goes wrong, leaving Mari scarred and unemployed, her views of community, religion, and her peers begin to shift.

A Canadian woman of Arab descent undertakes a trip and hires a guide to help her find a specific place in the Tunisian desert. To encourage her to reveal her secret, the guide tells her Sufi stories inspired by his childhood. Once in the heart of the desert, the woman reveals the reason behind her voyage.

This documentary takes a multi-layered approach to Saint Nicholas of Flüe. Rare witness accounts and quotations from his transmitted mystical texts, in particular the vision of the tower and the fountain, paint a portrait of a multifaceted and historically significant personality. Restored version.

Luna and Amar are a couple. Their relationship is under great strain. First of all, Amar loses his job for being drunk at work. Luna is very worried and has little hope of realising her fragile dream of having a child with Amar. But her fears for their future increase when Amar takes on a well-paid job in a Muslim community hours away from where they live.Only after quite some time has elapsed during which they have had no contact with each other, is Luna allowed to visit Amar in this community of conservative Wahhabis in its idyllic lakeside location. She notices that the men and veiled women live in strict segregation and are closely watched. Luna asks Amar to return home with her but Amar insists that life in this isolated community of faithful followers has brought him peace and also keeps him from drinking. When he returns home a few weeks later, Luna realises that Amar’s attitude to religion has fundamentally changed. Amar claims that his only interest is to become a better person, but Luna finds it extremely difficult to follow his line of thinking. She begins to question everything that she has believed in, even her desire to have a child. As the wounds of a tragic war-filled past continue to haunt her, Luna tears herself apart searching if love is truly enough to keep her and Amar together on the path to a lifetime of happiness.

David, a young filmmaker, follows his idol, David Lynch, into the world of Transcendental Meditation (TM). He traces the footsteps of the founder of the movement, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, to whom even the Beatles at one time had made the pilgrimage. The Indian guru developed TM into one of the largest esoteric organisations in the world that, with their study programs, promises world peace and yogic flying.

Three people live in a remote Buddhist monastery near Mount Chonan: Hyegok, the old master; Yong Nan, a young man who has left his extended family in the city to seek enlightenment, and an orphan lad Haejin, whom Hyegok has brought to the monastery to raise as a monk. The story is mostly Yong Nan's, told in flashbacks: how he came to the monastery, his brief return to the city, his vacillation between the turbulence of the world and his hope to overcome passions and escape the idea of self. We also see Hyegok as a teacher, a protector, and a father figure, and we watch Haejin make his way as a curious and nearly self-sufficient child.

Tell them you’re 24’, advises Petrunya’s mother as her daughter heads off to another interview. But Petrunya is 31; moreover, she has studied history, a subject that no one in Macedonia seems to need. So there she sits in front of her potential employer, a factory owner, who looks down on her floral dress and refuses to take her seriously. On her way home - naturally, she did not get the job - Petrunya decides to take the plunge. It is Epiphany and, like every year, the young men of the city are diving for the holy cross that the priest has thrown into the icy river. This time, Petrunya is quicker than everyone else and ends up holding the trophy aloft for the TV cameras. For one whole day and one night, she will defend the cross, accompanied by much public commotion and against the closed ranks of the male world. Teona Strugar Mitevska delivers an angry yet melancholic satire that questions the status of democratic change in Macedonian society and passes scathing judgement on representatives of the church, the judiciary and the media. The film’s sympathies are all with the determined woman who asserts herself against archaic traditions and paralysing opportunism.

Alexandre lives in Lyon with his wife and children. One day, he discovered by chance that the priest who abused him to scouts always officiates with children. He then starts a fight, quickly joined by François and Emmanuel, also victims of the priest, to "release their word" on what they suffered.

Rwanda, 1973: high up in the mountains, at the source of the Nile, a black statue of the Virgin Mary watches over a Catholic boarding school for girls. Here, during days filled with classes, mass and practical work, the daughters of politicians, officers and businessmen are educated to one day become productive members of the country’s elite. Whether Hutu or Tutsi, the girls share their curiosity, dreams and joie de vivre. However, the social dynamics and increasing conflicts that characterise the school microcosm mirror the ravages wrought by the colonial order. Deeply symbolic images hint at the genocidal violence that would later engulf the entire country in 1994.

Sudan, province of Aljazira, nowadays - When Muzamil was born, a prophecy by the holy man of the village predicts that he will die when he is 20 years old. Muzamil’s father cannot stand the doom and travels away from home. Sakina, as a single mother, raises her son with over protection. One day, Muzamil turns 19.

An expansive Russian drama, this film focuses on the life of revered religious icon painter Andrei Rublev. Drifting from place to place in a tumultuous era, the peace-seeking monk eventually gains a reputation for his art. But after Rublev witnesses a brutal battle and unintentionally becomes involved, he takes a vow of silence and spends time away from his work. As he begins to ease his troubled soul, he takes steps towards becoming a painter once again.

Timbuktu is silent, the doors closed, the streets empty. No more music, no tea, no cigarettes, no bright colors, no laughs. The women have become shadows. The religious fundamentalists are spreading terror in the region. In the dunes, away from the chaos, Kidane enjoys a quiet life with his wife Satima, his daughter Toya and Issan, his little shepherd. But his peace is short-lived. After accidentally killing Amadou, a fisherman who stroke down his favorite cow, Kidane must face the law of the new foreign rulers determined to defeat an open and tolerant Islam. Against the humiliations and acts of brutality performed by these complex men, Timbuktu tells the story of the silent struggle of the people, the fight for life of little Issan, and the uncertain future of the children.

Sinan is passionate about literature and has always wanted to be a writer. Returning to the village where he was born, he pours his heart and soul into scraping together the money he needs to be published, but his father’s debts catch up with him.

Amine steals a big bag of money and escapes into the hills with the police hot on his trail. Before he is arrested, he digs a grave to bury the cash and disguises it as a modest tomb. Years later, Amine is released from prison and sets off to find his money. In the meantime, a religious shrine has been built directly over the place he buried his cash. The mausoleum honors an unknown saint from the region whose tomb was recently discovered. Down the hill from the resting place of the “The Unknown Saint”, a new village subsists on the pilgrims who travel from far and wide to visit the mausoleum. Amine settles into the village and begins plotting a way in. But with the loot now hidden in a holy place, retrieving it suddenly becomes much more complicated.

The young priest Don Giulio left his first parish on the small Italian island of Ponza. Here he spent ten happy years: he shared the joys and sorrows of the villagers, was their friend and advisor. His new church is located in a middle-class district of Rome, where his parents, brothers and sisters and his old friends from their student days also live. Here, too, he hopes to be able to help the people, but his optimism is soon destroyed. Not even his closest relatives can save him from disaster: his father leaves the family because of a younger woman, and his mother commits suicide. Finally, Don Giulio resigns and is transferred to a remote village in the mountains, where he hopes to be useful.

Suffering from acute kidney failure, Uncle Boonmee has chosen to spend his final days surrounded by his loved ones in the countryside. Surprisingly, the ghost of his deceased wife appears to care for him, and his long lost son returns home in a non-human form. Contemplating the reasons for his illness, Boonmee treks through the jungle with his family to a mysterious hilltop cave -- the birthplace of his first life... From the director of SYNDROMES AND A CENTURY, TROPICAL MALADY and BLISSFULLY YOURS.

Before dying, Nora devises a plan to make José, ex-husband, take care of her funeral. But she misses something-the only flaw in the plan, a mysterious photograph left under the bed, will lead to an unexpected outcome that will remind us that sometimes the greatest love stories are hidden in the smallest places.

Jaffa’s Ajami neighborhood is a melting pot of cultures and conflicting views among jews, muslims and christians. Back and forth in time, and through the eyes of various characters, we witness how impossible the situation actually is …

A rough, atmospheric drama about the construction of masculinity in South Africa's Bible Belt. South Africa, Free State region, isolated stronghold to the Afrikaans white ethnic minority culture. In this conservative farming territory obsessed with strength and masculinity, Janno is different, secretive, emotionally frail. One day his mother, fiercely religious, brings home Pieter, a hardened street orphan she wants to save, and asks Janno to make this stranger into his brother. The two boys start a fight for power, heritage and parental love.

Simin wants to leave Iran with her husband Nader and daughter Termeh. She has already made all the necessary arrangements. Nader, however, is having second thoughts. He is worried about leaving behind his father, who is suffering from Alzheimer’s. For this reason he decides to call off the trip altogether. As a result of Nader’s decision, Simin decides to sue for divorce at the family court. When her request is rejected, however, she refuses to live with Nader, moving instead into her parents’ home. Termeh decides to stay with her father, hoping that her mother will soon come back to live with them.Nader finds it difficult to cope with the new situation - not least because it turns out to be so time-consuming. And so he hires a young woman named Razieh to look after his father. This young woman is pregnant and has accepted the job without her husband’s knowledge. One day, Nader arrives home to find that not only has his father been left alone, he has also been tied to a table! When Razieh returns, a blazing row ensues, the tragic consequences of which not only shatter Nader’s life, but also the image his daughter Termeh has of her father.

A pious 20-year-old juvenile delinquent is sent to work at a sawmill in a small town; on arrival, he dresses up as a priest and accidentally takes over the local parish. The arrival of this young, charismatic preacher is an opportunity for the local community to begin the healing process after a tragedy that happened a year prior.

Aïcha, Johan and the couple Lo Manto have taken a step in their lives that has disturbed many people around them. They have made the Muslim creed. This is the beginning of their transformation and reorientation. Aïcha moves from the rural province to the big city and euphorically follows the strict rules of her new religion. The Lo Mantos try to assert themselves against prejudices in their surroundings. And Johan? He wears a beard and flirts with his role as a devout Muslim. Or is filmmaker David Vogel just imagining it? What role does his own Jewish past play? The longer he accompanies his protagonists, the more he feels that he cannot ignore his own biography. His religious past catches up with those he thought he had left far behind.

Hidden in the mountains on the west coast of Japan lies the small Zen monastery Antaiji. A young woman sets off from autumn to spring to immerse herself in the adventure of monastic life. The young woman is Sabine Timoteo from Bern. The abbot of the monastery is Muho Nölke, born in Berlin ("Zazen oder Der Weg zum Glück").

A fictionalized documentary about the great Japanese poet Bashô (1644-1694), the spiritual father of Haiku poetry. A monk plays the role of Bashô and walks through the Japanese countryside, following the tracks of the poet’s travel diaries. On the way he writes many of his famous haiku poems. A film about poetry, meditation, zen buddhism and a view of untouched, virgin nature, seen and to understand as a lost paradise.

Inspired by the famous story “The Abduction of Sita” from the great classic of ancient Indian and South East-Asian literature the Ramayana, OPERA JAWA is a musical like no other in cinema. It tells of a passionate love triangle that leads inexorably to conflict, violence and death. Setio and his wife Siti, run a pottery business in a small village where Ludiro, a powerful and ruthless butcher, controls all the trading activities. When the couple’s business collapses, Ludiro, who has always been in love with Siti, seizes his chance, abducts and tries to seduce her. Inevitably the two men begin to fight over Siti...

Felix lives in French Canada; he doesn’t have any money or ambitions, but he isn’t worried since his wealthy father is about to die. Meira’s life is completely different: she is a young member of the Hasidic Jewish community in Montreal, she is married and has a child. Despite the solid certainties provided by her environment, Meira is yearning for something different. Unexpectedly, she finds it in the eccentric Felix. Their encounter will unleash feelings stronger than any social barrier.

This fairy tale tells the story of Hassan, a young man who is taught calligraphy by his master. One day he runs across a portion of an old text which convinces him that it holds the secrets to love. With the help of an impudent young boy and the boy's monkey (whom the boy thinks is an enchanted prince), Hassan sets out to find the rest of the manuscript. What he finds instead is the beauteous Aziz. Despite their being separated by war, they are soon reunited. This film takes us in the midst of a time when djinns and visions were still, real. In its world we discover the peaceful coexistence of different cultures, religions and forms of life.

The film "Zwingli - The Reformer" presents Zwingli's life from a unique perspective: from the point of view of his wife Anna, who remembers their life together after Zwingli's death - a life of infinite love and mutual incomprehension, marked by both happiness and tragedy.

Dusk, alpine summer time. Through a milk funnel, the dairymen, rarely a dairymaid, call out the alpine blessing or Bättruef. Every day, in all weathers. They ask God and the saints to avert harm from the alp, as loudly as possible, because as far as their voice can be heard, the protective spell should also work. At the mercy of the forces of nature in the mountain world at night, the alpine farmers experience their own existence as part of a greater whole. They call out the Alpine blessing out of deep inner conviction.

Fortuna (14), a young Ethiopian teenage girl, has had no news of her parents since arriving in Lampedusa, Italy. Together with other refugees, she is given shelter for the winter in a Swiss catholic hospice at an altitude of over 2000 meters. While they wait for their fate to be decided by the Swiss authorities, Fortuna meets Kabir, a 26-year-old African refugee, and falls desperately in love. Their relationship develops in secret, till the day Kabir disappears. - Bruno Ganz as Brother Jean.

The story of a blind dervish named Bab'Aziz and his spirited granddaughter, Ishtar. Together they wander the desert in search of a great reunion of dervishes that takes place just once every thirty years. With faith as their only guide, the two journey for days through the expansive, barren landscape.

Clara, 40, is believed to have a special connection to God. As a "healer", she sustains a family and a village in need of hope, while she finds solace in her relationship with the natural world. After years of being controlled by her mother’s repressive care, Clara’s sexual desires are stirred by her attraction to her niece’s new boyfriend. This newly awakened force takes Clara to unexplored territory, allowing her to cross boundaries, both physical and mystical. Empowered by her self-discovery, Clara gradually frees herself from her role as “saint” and begins to heal herself.

Evangelical Christians are calling out for a second sexual revolution: chastity! As a counter-movement to the attitudes of today’s culture, one in eight girls in the United Sates has vowed to remain “unsoiled” until marriage. But the seven children of the Wilson family, founders of the Purity Ball, take this concept one step further; even their first kiss will be at the altar. For two years, the filmmaker follows the Wilson offspring as they prepare for their fairytale vision of marriage and documents how the religious right is grooming a young generation to embody an Evangelically-grounded Utopia.

In New York in the early 1950s, Therese Belivet (Rooney Mara) is working in a Manhattan department store and dreaming of a more fulfilling life when she meets Carol Aird (Cate Blanchett), an alluring woman trapped in a failing marriage. As an immediate connection sparks between them, the innocence of their first encounter dims and their connection deepens. When Carol's involvement with Therese comes to light, her husband retaliates by challenging her competence as a mother. And as Carol and Therese take refuge on the road, leaving their respective lives behind, a confrontation emerges that will test each woman's assumptions about herself and commitments to one another. Director Todd Haynes ("Dark Waters") adapts the successful novel by Patricia Highsmith, which was first published in 1952 under the title "The Price of Salt" and (then later re-published as "Carol"), which the author denied writing until 1989. In the leading roles, Oscar winner Cate Blanchett as the modern Greta Garbo is her usual impressive self though the real sensation is Rooney Mara, who finally made her breakthrough with her portrayal of a character that would probably have been played by Audrey Hepburn in classic Hollywood.

Set against the landscape of the Polish transformation from communism to capitalism, "Woman of..." spans 45 years of the life of Aniela Wesoły, who lives more than half of her adult life in a provincial Polish town as a man. Aniela’s journey to find personal liberty as a trans woman reveals hardships in marriage and parenthood, strained family relations and complicated attitudes in her environment, which constantly place her in impossible situations. What choices will Aniela have to make? Will she be ready to sacrifice all to become who she truly is?

Demosthenes (Yorgos Tsiantoulas) and Nikitas (Andreas Labropoulos), two queer bros, spend a day at the rocky beach of Limanakia, in the south of Athens, a landmark for the LGBTQ community of the Greek capital. Surrounded by gay men, naked or in swimming suits, sunbathing or cruising for casual sex, the two friends recall the events of a recent summer, hoping to turn them into Nikitas' feature debut screenplay. Their day-long debate is intertwined with the action at the amphitheatrical rocks: friendly chats, blow-jobs, DIY fashion shows, a bit of Greek rebetiko music, a joint. "The Summer with Carmen" is an unapologetically out-and-proud comedy from Zacharias Mavroeidis that spotlights the friendships between gay men, a complex and multifaceted type of relationship that rarely holds the leading part in movies.

Black dust, shrill metallic noises, dark tunnels, muscular bodies – all that is the past. At the end of 2018, extraction of coal throughout Germany came to an end. That same year, the voices of the emerging climate protest movement Fridays for Future grew louder. Against the backdrop of these media and socio-political events, the film follows five miners on their tragic, humorous and heartwarming search for a new role in life.

Spring. Yorkshire. Young farmer Johnny Saxby numbs his daily frustrations with binge drinking and casual sex, until the arrival of a Romanian migrant worker for lambing season ignites an intense relationship that sets Johnny on a new path.

On an isolated island in Brittany at the end of the eighteenth century, a female painter is obliged to paint a wedding portrait of a young woman. An intense relationship develops between the two.

"Good Kenyan girls become good Kenyan wives," but Kena and Ziki long for something more. Despite the political rivalry between their families, the girls resist and remain close friends, supporting each other to pursue their dreams in a conservative society. When love blossoms between them, the two girls will be forced to choose between happiness and safety.

Following the tragic death of her teenage son, Manuela (Cecilia Roth) travels from Madrid to Barcelona in an attempt to contact the long-estranged father the boy never knew. She reunites with an old friend, an outspoken transgender sex worker (Antonia San Juan), and befriends a troubled actress (Marisa Paredes) and a pregnant, HIV-positive nun (Penélope Cruz).