Wolfgang Fischer / Germany, Austria / 2018, 94’
Rike embodies a typical Western model of happiness and success. She is educated, confident, determined and committed. We see Rike’s everyday life, as an emergency doctor, before she fulfills a long-held dream and sails out to sea alone in her sailing boat. Her goal: Ascension Island in the Atlantic Ocean. But her dream holiday is quickly broken off on the high seas, when, after a storm, she finds herself near a stricken fishing boat. Around a hundred people are about to drown. Rike follows maritime law and radios for help. As her request is going nowhere, she is forced to make a fatal decision.
Jagoda Szelc / Poland / 2017, 106’
Mula lives with her family in the country. Just before her daughter’s First Communion, Mula’s sister – Kaja – pays them a visit. Kaja is the biological mother of the girl, but she suddenly left without a trace 6 years before. The family believes in reconciliation, but Mula believes that Kaja has come to take the child away. Meanwhile, a series of peculiar metaphysical events take place and Kaja’s presence triggers changes in people. Mula’s fear grows and she wants to get rid of her sister. Yet Kaja has come for a reason.
Daria Gaikalova / India, Ukraine / 2017, 119’
The story of one house in three different eras. 50 years ago, it was divided between a school and an apartment, in which a young boy shares a tiny room with his paralyzed grandfather. The same building 20 years later becomes home to a brothel, where a young unexploited concubine is dealing with her first client. Now, 30 years later these same walls surround a sublime home that belongs to a soul-stirring 75-year-old couple. They whisper the secrets of time forgone and seemed to have overcome the undying need for love and escape which seems to have plagued the inhabitants of this house in the past.
Babis Makridis / Greece, Poland / 2018, 99’
A man of about 45 lives with his teenage son in a well-off home. His wife, however, has been in a coma and has been in a private hospital for some time following an accident. His grief has suddenly made everybody have compassion towards him. Then one day, his wife wakes up from the coma. Sadness is now replaced by joy and he is overwhelmed by a yearning to go back to the previous, mournful state. He begins to invent ways to attract the pity that he has come to enjoy so much. He makes sure to destroy any happy moment that arrives and totally loses control of himself.
Roman Bondarchuk / Ukraine, Germany, Monaco / 2018, 106’
A series of odd coincidences has left Lukas, an interpreter for a military checkpoint inspection tour, stranded near a remote village in the south Ukrainian steppe. With nowhere to turn, this city boy finds shelter at the home of a colorful local named Vova. With Vova as his guide, Lukas is confronted by an anarchist universe beyond his imagination, a world in which life seems utterly detached from any identifiable structure. Fascinated by his host and his host’s daughter Marushka, Lukas’s contempt for provincial life slowly melts away and sets him on a quest for a happiness he never knew could exist.
Darya Zhuk / Belarus, Germany, USA, Russia / 2018, 93’
In post-Soviet Belarus, unemployed raver Velya dreams of emigrating to the USA. After purchasing blank letterhead and forging proof of employment to win a much-coveted visa, her dream appears within reach… Until Velya realizes the American consulate plans to call the fake phone number on her application to confirm her employment. Her only solution is to endure a week in a small factory town to convince the authorities of her supposed job. She locates the cramped Soviet apartment, overrun by a family preparing for the wedding of their son. Velya’s presence soon upends both the family's and the town’s order, with potentially disastrous consequences for all.
Constantin Popescu / Romania, France / 2017, 150’
Cristina and Bogdan are a happily married couple and have two children, Maria and Ilie (5 and a half and 7 years old). They are in their thirties, live in a Romanian city, in a nice apartment. He works at a bank, she is an accountant. Their life is the ordinary life of a couple with kids. One Sunday morning, while Bogdan is with the children in the park near their apartment and Cristina is doing some cleaning in the apartment, Maria goes missing. An event that instantly changes the life of the family.
Jim Cummings / United States / 2018, 92’
Officer Jim Arnaud is preparing to address the mourners at his beloved mother’s memorial service but his eulogy doesn't go quite as rehearsed. Emotionally raw following the funeral, Officer Arnaud must deal with a whole series of real-world problems, including his daughter’s inappropriate school behavior, an impending divorce and custody battle, what to do with his mother’s dance studio, and a viral video that always seems to surface just at the wrong moment. As he struggles through these challenges, Jim does his best to remain cheerful, always striving for the positive.
Lukas Dhont / Belgium / 2018, 105’
Determined 15-year-old Lara is committed to becoming a professional ballerina. With the support of her father, she throws herself into this quest for the absolute at a new school. Lara’s adolescent frustrations and impatience are heightened as she realizes her body does not bend so easily to the strict discipline because she was born a boy.
Jean-Paul Civeyrac / France / 2017, 136’
Etienne comes to Paris to study filmmaking at the Sorbonne. He meets Mathias and Jean-Noël who share his passion for films. But as they spend the year studying, they have to face friendship and love challenges as well as choosing their artistic battles.
Cristina Gallego, Ciro Guerra / Colombia, Denmark, Mexico / 2018, 125’
The origins of the Colombian drug trade, through the epic story of an indigenous Wayuu family that becomes involved in the booming business of selling marijuana to American youth in the 1970s. When greed, passion and honor collide, a fratricidal war breaks out that will put their lives, their culture and their ancestral traditions at stake.
Annemarie Jacir / Palestine, France, Germany, Colombia, Norway, Qatar, UAE / 2017, 96’
Abu Shadi is a divorced father and a schoolteacher in his mid-sixties living in Nazareth. After his daughter’s wedding in one month, he will be living alone. Shadi, his architect son, arrives from Rome after years abroad to help his father in hand delivering the wedding invitations to each guest as per local Palestinian custom. As the estranged pair spend the day together, the tense details of their relationship come to a head challenging their fragile and very different lives.
