Optic Nerve(1985)

Room 237(en)

A subjective documentary that explores various theories about hidden meanings in Stanley Kubrick's classic film The Shining. Five very different points of view are illuminated through voice over, film clips, animation and dramatic reenactments.

For Sama(en)

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.

Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession(en)

A documentary on the Z Channel, one of the first pay cable stations in the US, and its programming chief, Jerry Harvey. Debuting in 1974, the LA-based channel's eclectic slate of movies became a prime example of the untapped power of cable television.

Starlet(en)

An unlikely friendship forms between 21 year-old Jane and the elderly Sadie after Jane discovers a hidden stash of money inside an object at Sadie's yard sale.

Lullaby(en)

Estranged from his family, Jonathan (Hedlund) discovers his father has decided to take himself off life support in forty-eight hours’ time. During this intensely condensed period, a lifetime of drama plays out. Robert (Jenkins) fights a zero sum game to reclaim all that his illness stole from his family. A debate rages on patients’ rights and what it truly means to be free. Jonathan reconciles with his father, reconnects with his mother (Archer), sister (Brown-Findlay), and his love (Adams) and reclaims his voice through two unlikely catalysts – a young, wise-beyond-her-years patient (Barden) and a no-nonsense nurse (Hudson). Through this intensely life affirming prism, an unexpected and powerful journey of love, laughter, and forgiveness unfolds.

The Sweet East(en)

A high school senior from South Carolina gets her first glimpse of the wider world, picturesque cities, and woods of the Eastern seaboard on a class trip to Washington, D.C.

Butterflies Are Free(en)

Striving to be independent, the blind but determined Don Baker moves away from his overprotective mother. After settling into his new San Francisco digs, Don meets kooky neighbor Jill Tanner. Don's quick wit and good looks disarm the free-spirited Jill, and before long they're more than just friends. Will Mrs. Baker's incessant meddling destroy Don and Jill's budding relationship?

Mammal(en)

After Margaret, a divorcée living in Dublin, loses her teenage son, she develops an unorthodox relationship with Joe, a homeless youth. Their tentative trust is threatened by his involvement with a violent gang and the escalation of her ex-husband's grieving rage.

Band Aid(en)

A couple who can't stop fighting embark on a last-ditch effort to save their marriage: turning their fights into songs and starting a band.

Room for Rent(en)

Lonely widow Joyce rents out a room in her house and becomes dangerously obsessed with one of her guests.

Hallam Foe(en)

Hallam's talent for spying on people reveals his darkest fears-and his most peculiar desires. Driven to expose the true cause of his mother's death, he instead finds himself searching the rooftops of the city for love.

The Silent Twins(en)

June and Jennifer Gibbons are twins from the only Black family in a small town in Wales in the 1970s and '80s. Feeling isolated from the community, the pair turn inward and reject communication with everyone but each other, retreating into their own fantasy world of inspiration and adolescent desires. After a spree of vandalism, the girls are sentenced to Broadmoor, an infamous psychiatric hospital, where they face the choice to separate and survive or die together.

Wasp(en)

Zoë is a single mother who lives with her four children in Dartford. She is poor and can't afford to buy food. One day her old flame drives by and asks her to go on a date with him. Scared that he doesn't want to go out with her, she lies and tells him that she is just babysitting the kids. This will be her first date in years.

Love & Sex(en)

When her rather explicit copy is rejected, magazine journalist Kate is asked by her editor to come up with an article on loving relationships instead, and to do so by the end of the day. This gets Kate thinking back over her own various experiences, and to wondering if she is in much of a position to write on the subject.

Pariah(en)

A Brooklyn teenager juggles conflicting identities and risks friendship, heartbreak, and family in a desperate search for sexual expression.

The Taking of Deborah Logan(en)

What starts as a poignant medical documentary about Deborah Logan's descent into Alzheimer's disease and her daughter's struggles as caregiver degenerates into a maddening portrayal of dementia at its most frightening, as hair-raising events begin to plague the family and crew and an unspeakable malevolence threatens to tear the very fabric of sanity from them all.

Censor(en)

A screener at the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC), who has earned an unsavory reputation for being the strictest censor of violent films, begins to spiral out of control after viewing a low-budget horror with similarities to the disappearance of her sister.

Desert Hearts(en)

While waiting for her divorce papers, a repressed literature professor finds herself unexpectedly attracted by a carefree, spirited young woman named Cay.

A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night(en)

In the Iranian ghost-town Bad City, a place that reeks of death and loneliness, the townspeople are unaware they are being stalked by a lonesome vampire.

Don't Make Me Go(en)

A terminally ill man and his teenage daughter embark on a road trip from California to New Orleans for his 20th college reunion. While there, he secretly hopes she can reunite with the mother who left them long ago.

My Life Without Me(en)

A fatally ill mother with only two months to live creates a list of things she wants to do before she dies without telling her family of her illness.

Open Hearts(da)

Cecilie and Joachim are about to get married when a freak car accident leaves Joachim disabled, throwing their lives into a spin. The driver of the other car, Marie, and her family don’t get off lightly, either. Her husband Niels works in the hospital where he meets Cecilie and falls madly in love with her.

The Secret Life of Words(en)

A solitary nurse bonds with a badly burned patient who survived an accident on an oil rig.

Italian for Beginners(da)

Several lonely hearts in a semi-provincial suburb of a town in Denmark use a beginner's course in Italian as the platform to meet the romance of their lives. The film, which unspools the connections and family drama shared between the students, complies with several aesthetic principles of Dogme 95 movement.

Railway Station(pl)

Warsaw's Central Railway Station. 'Someone has fallen asleep, someone's waiting for somebody else. Maybe they'll come, maybe they won't. The film is about people looking for something.

Dream Girl(en)

Humans use technology to improve their lives, to forge connections, to create time that doesn’t exist, to replace real interactions. When we devise a second version of ourselves on social media, do we lose a piece of our true selves in the process? Do our digital connections threaten our real life relationships? What happens if the filtered characters we’ve imagined take on a life of their own?

Lemon(en)

Isaac has seen better days. His acting career is tanking, his blind girlfriend of 10 years plans to leave him, and his own family singles him out as a constant disappointment. Even as he takes a chance on new romance, he struggles to define his place in a world that has seemingly turned against him.

Not Farewell, Sweet Flesh(en)

Lovers from opposite worlds are forbidden to be together.

Deidra & Laney Rob a Train(en)

After their mother ends up in jail, two sisters turn to train robbery in order to support their family.

Close-Knit(ja)

After being neglected by her mother, a little girl is taken in by her uncle and his transgender girlfriend, who create a loving home for her.

D.E.B.S.(en)

The star of a team of teenage crime fighters falls for the alluring villainess she must bring to justice.

The White Mazurka(pl)

A film about the life and activities of the Polish revolutionary Ludwik Waryński. In his memoirs, Ludwik returns to his student years in St. Petersburg, to Warsaw, to Krakow, where he was arrested and put on trial. After the end of the process in Krakow, Waryński leaves for Geneva, where he meets with Russian revolutionaries. In 1881, he returned to his homeland and created the first party of workers in Poland...

Bridget Jones's Diary(en)

Bridget Jones is an average woman struggling against expectations. As a New Year's resolution, Bridget decides to take control of her life, starting by keeping a diary in which she will always tell the complete truth. Her charming boss takes an interest in her, and she cannot stop running into a rather disagreeable acquaintance whom Bridget cannot help finding quietly attractive.

Opportunus(sv)

Love Games(ko)

I remember the games I played when I was young. We were happy playing together, but, looking back, I realize I used the games to satisfy my own desires. It was a child’s selfcentered behavior. But adult lovers, too, display immature sides in their relationships. Consumed by self-love, they act like children. I have tried to illustrate this kind of love through the metaphor of children’s games.

Pitch Perfect 2(en)

The Bellas are back, and they are better than ever. After being humiliated in front of none other than the President of the United States of America, the Bellas are taken out of the Aca-Circuit. In order to clear their name, and regain their status, the Bellas take on a seemingly impossible task: winning an international competition no American team has ever won. In order to accomplish this monumental task, they need to strengthen the bonds of friendship and sisterhood and blow away the competition with their amazing aca-magic! With all new friends and old rivals tagging along for the trip, the Bellas can hopefully accomplish their dreams.

Annaluise & Anton(de)

Luise, called Pünktchen, and Anton are closest of friends. Being the daughter of a wealthy surgeon, young Pünktchen lives in a great house. Her mother, who always travels through the world more for public relation reasons than for the social tasks she pretends to fulfill, is never available to her as a mother. Anton, son of a single and sick mother in financial trouble, does his best to help her out of it by working late. Pünktchen decides to help her only friend (as nobody else would anyway) and starts singing in public places. Trouble arises when Anton can't resist stealing a golden lighter and Pünktchen's secret life is discovered by her parents. Two troubled families finally can see the need for actions to be taken.

The Pinkie(ja)

Since they were both five, Ryosuke has been stalked by Momoko - the ugliest girl in the village. Her love for Ryosuke is so boundless that she has her face surgically altered to suit his taste - but still he wants nothing to do with her. Ryosuke goes in for fleeting romance - for example, with the girlfriend of a gangster boss. But when he finds out about their affair, he has Ryosuke's little finger hacked off. Magically, the finger falls into Momoko's hands, and she uses it to clone Ryosuke, so she can finally have him (or almost him) for herself. And this is just the first five minutes of Lisa Takeba's short-but-powerful feature debut. Just like in her previous short films, the director - who cut her teeth in the advertising world and as the writer of a video game - throws a lot of genres and techniques into the mix: from science fiction to gangster films, from hospital eroticism to animation. Hectic and absurd, but with its heart in the right place. © IFFR

Costa Brava(es)

In Barcelona, Anna is a tour guide working on her monologue, in which she's a Communist housewife whose lesbian neighbor is an object of curiosity. She's sent an audition tape to San Francisco's Another Stage. While giving a tour, she meets Montserrat, American, Jewish, teaching in Barcelona and unhappy with her job. Montserrat, claiming "I'm not a lesbian," approaches Anna; they start a relationship, and with occasional trips to the Costa Brava, it becomes a romance. Anna helps Montserrat find another job, but it's in the States. Their parting seems inevitable. They take a last trip to the Costa Brava and keep praying. Does God have a miracle in store?

Rap's Most Wanted(en)

Documentery from 1991 where The 2 Live Crew, Chuck D (Public Enemy), Too Short, Ice-T, Geto Boys, H.W.A. drop real talk on different topics.