Nikander, a rubbish collector and would-be entrepreneur, finds his plans for success dashed when his business associate dies. One evening, he meets Ilona, a down-on-her-luck cashier, in a local supermarket. Falteringly, a bond begins to develop between them.
Police Officer
Pianist
A Black woman's meticulously crafted life of privilege starts to unravel when two strangers show up in her quaint suburban town.
It's Ted the Bellhop's first night on the job...and the hotel's very unusual guests are about to place him in some outrageous predicaments. It seems that this evening's room service is serving up one unbelievable happening after another.
Four young friends, while taking a shortcut en route to a local boxing match, witness a brutal murder which leaves them running for their lives.
The ever-poker-faced Ilona loses her job as a restaurant hostess, as her tram driver husband, Lauri, also finds himself out of work. Together they must hit the streets of Helsinki, facing up to hardship and humiliation in their quest for survival, guided through the gloom by a ray of hope.
A documentary of the German national soccer team’s 2006 World Cup experience that changed the face of modern Germany.
A French corporation goes head-to-head with an American web media company for the rights to a 3-D manga pornography studio, resulting in a power struggle that culminates in violence and espionage.
When their bootlegging father ends up in jail, four twenty-something brothers need money to pay his debts to local crooks. Next, their 9-year-old half-sister is dumped on their doorstep by her prostitute mother. A karaoke set helps reveal that the little girl is quite a singer, just as a talent contest for children is coming up on national television offering more than enough money to the winner.
A group of men all called Frank—except for one named Pekka—have had enough of life in their working-class neighborhood, so they set off for a better existence in the magical seaside district of Eira. But the way is long, and the group face many hurdles including stray dogs and defunct streetlights.
German musician Alexander Hacke explores Istanbul's rich music culture and attempts to create a portrait of Turkey through music genres. On this journey, he encounters a mosaic that covers countless genres from rock to arabesque, electronic to hip-hop.
A self-styled accident choreographer, the Brain is a professional hitman who kills his victims by trapping them in well crafted accidents that look like unfortunate mishaps. When the team's next assignment goes disastrously wrong, Brain begins to suspect that someone else has planned an ‘accident’ on them.
Escaping from China with a microfilm of the formula for the mysterious "Lotus X", Lord Southmere, a Queen's Messenger, is chased by a group of Chinese spies.
During the Great Depression, all Broadway shows are closed down. A group of desperate unemployed showgirls find hope when a wealthy songwriter invests in a musical starring them, against the wishes of his high society brother. Thus start Carol, Trixie and Polly's schemes to bilk his money and keep the show going.
Timo Novotny labels his new project an experimental music documentary film, in a remix of the celebrated film Megacities (1997), a visually refined essay on the hidden faces of several world "megacities" by leading Austrian documentarist Michael Glawogger. Novotny complements 30 % of material taken straight from the film (and re-edited) with 70 % as yet unseen footage in which he blends original shots unused by Glawogger with his own sequences (shot by Megacities cameraman Wolfgang Thaler) from Tokyo. Alongside the Japanese metropolis, Life in Loops takes us right into the atmosphere of Mexico City, New York, Moscow and Bombay. This electrifying combination of fascinating film images and an equally compelling soundtrack from Sofa Surfers sets us off on a stunning audiovisual adventure across the continents. The film also makes an original contribution to the discussion on new trends in documentary filmmaking. Written by KARLOVY VARY IFF 2006
In Helsinki, an ex-law student turned slaughterhouse worker commits a senseless crime that catapults him into loneliness. Only a woman who accidentally arrived at the crime scene wants to follow him, but guilt and the tightening net of the police throw a shadow over their desperate love affair.
It's Bernard's birthday, but he is not happy about it. In a strange world where adults are selfish and indifferent, his parents never accepted him as a child. Bernard doesn't want to grow up if it means to become like them. So he creates a suit that stops his growth. The day he reaches 10 years of age, Bernard will confront his parents and his whole world.
Takes place in the Louisiana backwoods, and follows the momentous discovery of the largest natural gas field in the United States (and maybe the world). The film examines the historic find (a formation called the "Haynesville Shale") from the personal level as well as from the larger perspective of the current energy picture and pending energy future. As the Haynesville Shale boom erupts, the film focuses on three lives caught in the middle of the find: A single mom takes up the defense of her community's environmental protections, an African American preacher attempts to use the riches to build a school for his congregants and a salt-of-the-earth, self-described "country boy" finds himself conflicted as he weighs losing his pristine land to an oil company's offer to make him a millionaire.
Ramy is living a reckless life, but the tough economic conditions and the successive crises made him a different person, his actions are now serious and he becomes more enthusiastic in addressing the problems facing the country and he participates significantly in the daily life concerns.
Uuno Turhapuro's younger brother Peni arrives in Helsinki. Uuno helps his brother in management duties.
An anthology of 5 different cab drivers in 5 American and European cities and their remarkable fares on the same eventful night.
Walt is a lonely convenience store clerk who has fallen in love with a Mexican migrant worker named Johnny. Though Walt has little in common with the object of his affections — including a shared language — his desire to possess Johnny prompts a sexual awakening that results in taboo trysts and a tangled love triangle.
After Homer accidentally pollutes the town's water supply, Springfield is encased in a gigantic dome by the EPA and the Simpsons are declared fugitives.
Convenience and video store clerks Dante and Randal are sharp-witted, potty-mouthed and bored out of their minds. So in between needling customers, the counter jockeys play hockey on the roof, visit a funeral home and deal with their love lives.
A young girl and her two friends from the exceptionally strange land of Oddsville make plans to celebrate Christmas together, but when she is late to pick them up from the train station, the pair wander out on their own leading to a delightful series of hilarious mishaps, inventions, and flights of fancy - until they find their little friend, who finally shows them the true meaning of Christmas.
Based on Tommy Jaud's bestselling novel, this comedy focuses on a dispassionate clerk and his set-backs in life. 29-year-old Simon works in a phone shop, but his thoughts just circle around finding a new girl-friend after being left by his last one year ago. While his Croatian cleaner tries to procure him, his efforts to chat up women in clubs also fail. However, he finds the woman of his dreams (and mother of their future children) in his most hated coffee shop, although not having a clue how to win her heart...
Markus Viitanen, a sculptor living in Suomenlinna, has not seen his son Eero for fifteen years. When he learns of Eero's death, he sets out to find out what kind of person Eero grew up to be during his nineteen years of life, and how the nanny Katri relates to the rest of Eero's life.
When a schoolteacher is sacked, he projects his bad mood at his troubled teenage son. The son, in turn, buys a CD player from a pawnshop with counterfeit money. This starts a chain reaction of misery as every victim projects his problems on to another person.
Roro, a foreign worker in Swedish parks, loves his girlfriend but is about to marry another girl to prevent her from being sent back to Lebanon. Meanwhile, Roro's best friend, Måns, has serious problems getting an erection.
Two employees at a gift shop can barely stand one another, without realising that they are falling in love through the post as each other's anonymous pen pal.
Elmo loves his fuzzy, well-worn blue blanket more than anything in the whole world. However, when Elmo's blanket gets sucked through a colorful, swirling tunnel into Grouchland, the yuckiest place on earth, Elmo goes on an adventure to Grouchland to retrieve his prized possession.
A hot-shot lawyer is hired by a Hong Kong chemical plant to dispose of opposition to their polluting ways. But when he falls for a beautiful woman out to stop the plant, he is torn in a conflict of interest and asks his trusty friends Samo and Biao to help out at least until they discover the true purpose of the plant.
An eccentric, if not charming Southern professor and his crew pose as a band in order to rob a casino, all under the nose of his unsuspecting landlord – a sharp old woman.
Gisela is a young wife and mother, living in a working class German Housing Scheme. She is a supermarket cashier, her husband a delivery driver. The marriage is stale but together they are working their way up into the middle class. George and Gisela evidently knew each other as teenagers. They live on the same scheme and George introduces her to his friend Paul. There is instant mutual attraction. Gisela spontaneously goes to a party that they invite her to that evening, where she and Paul begin a sexual relationship.
Mirabelle is a disenchanted salesgirl and aspiring artist who sells gloves and accessories at a department store. She has two men in her life: wealthy divorcée Ray Porter and struggling musician Jeremy. Mirabelle falls in love with the glamorous Ray, and her life takes a magical turn, but eventually she realizes that she must empower herself and make a choice between them.
Outcast by his co-workers and living alone, Koistinen is a security guard who works the night shift in a luxury shopping mall in Helsinki. But when icy blonde Mirja approaches him, the lonely Koistinen falls helplessly for her, unaware she is manipulating him for her criminal boyfriend.
The ever-poker-faced Ilona loses her job as a restaurant hostess, as her tram driver husband, Lauri, also finds himself out of work. Together they must hit the streets of Helsinki, facing up to hardship and humiliation in their quest for survival, guided through the gloom by a ray of hope.
A scheming raccoon fools a mismatched family of forest creatures into helping him repay a debt of food, by invading the new suburban sprawl that popped up while they were hibernating – and learns a lesson about family himself.
Iris is a shy and dowdy young woman stuck in a dead-end job at a match factory, who dreams of finding love at the local dancehall. Finding herself pregnant after a one-night stand and abandoned by the father, Iris finally decides the time has come to get even and she begins to plot her revenge.