It is Saturday, April 26th 1986, and a reactor has just exploded in the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. The Party leadership is silent, the population clueless. Only the loyal Party member Valery attempts to flee the invisible danger with his girlfriend Vera. But the vitality and high spirits of his merry-making friends keep him firmly in their grip... The story of the apocalypse in the Ukrainian village Prypiat has stirred the fantasy of the acclaimed Russian scriptwriter and director ALEKSANDER MINDADZE (Russia, 1949), who has created a surreal drama about the dance on the edge of a volcano. One of the most exquisite qualities of the film is its cinematography by the distinguished Romanian cinematographer Oleg Mutu.
Cast: Anton Shagin, Svetlana Smirnova-Marcinkevich, Vasilij Guzov, Aleksej Demidov
Directed by: Aleksander Mindadze
A former actor is fascinated by an idea. He meets with a scientist, a speech therapist and a juggler and convinces them to stage Endgame by Samuel Beckett. An incurable disease – multiple sclerosis, unites them all. Although their bodies become weaker day after day, Beckett’s play about four people trapped in a world that is about to collapse gives them so much emotional fulfilment that no matter what happens to them physically they will continue to perform…
Directed by Līga Gaisa
Scriptwriter: Krista Vāvere, Līga Gaisa
Producer: Mistrus Media
At day, they are down-to-earth employees: wholesale meat buyers, ticket collectors, teachers, and representatives of other serious occupations. They are at an age when the twenties’ dream of becoming a rock star has come to an end. So their option is to resort to their potential of self-irony and... join the male synchronized swimming team. After all, it comes a bit close to being in a rock-band. The men are positive they have founded a unique troupe – the only all-male synchronized swim team in the world when they are forced to realize groups like this exist almost everywhere in the world – Japan, Ukraine, Netherlands, France, and elsewhere. Besides, the discipline’s first championship is drawing near.
Directed by: Dylan Williams
In which place of Finland is it possible to meet the greatest number of naked men? Obviously, in sauna, where men of various age, height, weight, and looks enjoy, live, and suffer a moment of physical and emotional nakedness. It is a moment of purification which at the same time is a ritual. A moment when such issues as love, death, birth, friendship - normally untouched in quotidian life – are discussed. A chance to realize the importance of sauna in the lives of Finnish men.
Cast: Timo Aalto, Pekka Ahonen, Aarne Aksila, Mauno Alasuutari
Directed by Joonas Berghäll, Mika Hotakainen
Scriptwriter: Joonas Berghäll, Mika Hotakainen
Every night a girl, a boy, and an elderly technician meet at a dilapidated cinema. But the appearance of the ramshackle picture palace is deceptive – seemingly old and humble, every night it is a place where magic wonders come true. The three friends have come to enjoy staging colourful dressing-up fantasies, and these make-believe stories are becoming more and more real – the old cinema is taken over by beautiful princesses, elves, and howling werewolves. It is a kingdom of golden cities and deep, dark forests from which no one has found his way home.
Cast: Julien Beramis, Marine Griset, Michel Elias
Directed by Michel Ocelot
Scriptwriter: Michel Ocelot
No matter if you’re a punk, a pensioner, a family man, a nudist, or an umbrella salesman! No matter how you get there – a thumb ride, rev up your convertible so that the breeze riffles your hair, or slam your foot on the gas in a bubble car – it’s time to head for the Atlantic Ocean! A colourful and delightfully humouresque film, a sort of homage to Jacques Tati’s Mr. Hulot’s Holiday and also inspired by Blake Edwards, Aki Kaurismäki, and Jacques Demy, Holidays by the Sea aims for an almost dialogue-less burlesque comedy.
Cast: Jacques Gamblin, Maria de Medeiros, François Damiens, François Morel, Dominique Pinon
Directed by: Pascal Rabate
Tyrannosaur follows the story of two lonely, damaged people brought together by circumstance. Joseph is an unemployed widower, drinker, and a man crippled by his own volatile temperament and furious anger. Hannah is a Christian worker at a charity shop, a respectable woman who appears wholesome and happy. When the pair are brought together, Hannah appears as Joseph’s potential saviour, someone who can temper his fury and offer him warmth, kindness, and acceptance. As their story develops, Hannah’s own secrets are revealed — her relationship with husband James is violent and abusive…
Cast: Peter Mullan, Olivia Colman, Eddie Marsan
Directed by Paddy Considine
Scriptwriter: Paddy Considine
Perhaps the most inspiring movement of stylistic and ideological invention ever encountered in the history of the world cinema, the French New Wave crashed onto international shores when François Truffaut’s debut feature, The 400 Blows, premiered at Cannes in 1959, followed quickly by Jean-Luc Godard’s equally thrilling Breathless, based on a Truffaut story. Two in the Wave is a story of a friendship, an alliance of two of the foremost New Wave figures. As critics, they wrote for the the legendary Cahiers du Cinéma, and through the 1960s loyally supported each other in their filmmaking. The documentary poignantly melds revealing period footage of both men with scenes from some of their greatest films. History and politics separated them in 1968, but their friendship and their break-up embody the story of French cinema.
Cast: Etienne de Grammont, Nick de Pencier
Directed by: Emmanuel Laurent
A mother is informed that her only son, who is serving in a military combat zone, has gone missing in action. After a short while, the mother takes in a homeless immigrant boy, not realizing that she has already decided the fate of her returning son. Set in a bleak industrial zone of a weary provincial Russian town and tackling the themes of motherhood, war, grief, and sibling rivalry, the film is a powerful emotional portrait of a shocked consciousness and the uselessness of individually and politically orchestrated violence.
Cast: Vladislav Abashin, Olga Demidova, Nikita Emshanov, Aleksandr Plaksin, Darya Gracheva
Directed by: Andrei Stempkovsky
A couple has to make a decision to leave Iran to better the life of their child or to stay and take care of a parent suffering from Alzheimers; however, the couple's marriage may end in divorce. Ostensibly simple on a narrative level yet morally, psychologically and socially complex, it succeeds in bringing Iranian society into focus in a way few other films have done. The film was a triumph at this year’s Berlin International Film Festival, receiving Golden Bear for Best Film.
Cast: Peyman Moaadi, Leila Hatami, Sareh Bayat
Directed by: Asghar Farhadi
1970s, Amsterdam. Karo, a ten-year-old girl with a jet-black hair, lives in a hippie commune with her parents. Her father is a charismatic idealist who believes in life with no boundaries and restrictions, whereas her mother would much rather prefer faithfulness and private space for her own work. The moment a young woman enters the family life, Karo is a witness to changes in her parents’ relationships, as well as experiences the aggressive attitude of the authorities directed at the commune. However, the girl’s life is not short of lightness and joy as everyday life in the squat is cheerful and beautiful.
Cast: Anna Franziska Jaeger, Déborah François, Matthias Schoenaerts, Maria Kraakman
Directed by: Dorothee van den Bergh
Every morning, François, a bailiff, bids goodbye to his wife and begins the unpleasant task of evictions. However this morning, September 11th, the usual course of events is upset when, having arrived at one of the apartments, he coincidentally falls hostage to its tenants. In a wink of an eye the neighbourhood is surrounded by the usual crowd – François wife, a committed negotiator, police, snipers, and reporters. Little by little the local residents become annoyed by the irritating presence of the mob, and the captors realize there is a rather strange but possibly one chance to escape.
Cast: Hippolyte Girardot, Mohamed Fellag, Aymen Saïdi, Michel Vuillermoz
Directed by: Angelo Cianci