Improvement Club

Dear Thirteen(en)

A nuanced portrait of a new generation, Dear Thirteen is a cinematic time capsule of coming of age in today’s world. Through the eyes of nine thirteen-year-olds, we see how pressing social, geographical and political challenges are shaping, and being shaped by, young people: rising anti-Semitism in Europe, guns in America, gender identity and racial divisions across Australia and Asia. With no adult commentary outside the filmmaker, Dear Thirteen offers an intimate view into the universal uncertainty inherent in growing up.

Atropia(en)

When an aspiring actress in a military role-playing facility falls in love with a soldier cast as an insurgent, their unsimulated emotions threaten to derail the performance.

Weihnachtsüberraschungen(de)

Nurse Nora is looking forward to her first Christmas vacation in years and wants to spend it quietly and relaxed with her mother Ellen. She doesn't really mind that her brother Moritz, formerly Maike, isn't coming, as she has always felt inferior to him. But then not only Moritz turns up, Grandma Lore also changes her plans and, to make matters worse, they are joined by their widowed neighbor Rolf and his detestable son Bent, as well as their daughter Katja and grandson Fritz, due to a faulty heating system.

Emiliana de Zubeldia(es)

Documentary that portrays the life of the Navarrese composer Emiliana de Zubeldia, a woman ahead of her time.

Was im Leben zählt(de)

In Munich's apartment building No. 23, one still shares in the joy and suffering of the neighbors. The single mother Miriam fell in love with the pastor Gregor. But his community is outraged. A pastor who is married to a woman who is still married is out of the question for her. Meanwhile, Miriam's ex-husband tries to regain Miriam. Daughter Jule is in need: she wants her dad back, but she also likes mom's new friend Gregor.

Nowhere Man(nl)

A drama about a fortysomething man who entertains fantasies of a different life. Staging his apparent death, he moves to an island but pines for his former existence, and wonders if he could return to it.

Rache für mein totes Kind(de)

I Love My Daughter's Husband(de)

Ode(en)

"Tallahatchie Bridge": With those two simple words, the powerful images of a lost innocence, a murky river and a mysterious suicide spring to mind. Scorning the demands of her overbearing family, Bobbie Lee Hartley and Billy Joe McAllister meet at their usual Choctaw Ridge trysting place and attempt to consumate their forbidden love. Ode attempts to reconcile modern moralites with a tradition-bound faith, and asks whether it's possible to commit a sin against a religion that won't even have you as a member.

Travis(en)

An experimental film matching shifting colors with audio taken from an NPR radio interview with a mother who lost her son in the Iraq War.

Train to Pakistan(hi)

Tensions run high near the border of British India, which is about to be partitioned with a new country called Pakistan. Sikhs living in this border town have heard numerous stories of Muslims killing, raping, and looting other Sikhs, Hindus, and Christians, and many of whom are their friends and relatives. Enraged at the loss of law and order, they plan their own attack on a trainful of Muslims leaving British India. The train is overcrowded with tens and thousands of migrating passengers, who are even perched on the windows and seated on the roof of this train. The plot is to tear the bridge down when the train is on it, and no one will dare stop these men to carry out this horrific task

North Went Mad(bs)

Selma, an eighteen years old girl is murdered during a football game. Her dead body is being past form hand to hand. Everyone who cames in touch with her dead body thinks that he/she murdered Selma. In the meanwhile, at home, Selma’s Mother is finishing her Prom Dress…

The Red Kitchen(fr)

On a wedding day, women are confined to the kitchen to prepare the meal while the men wait to be served. While men talk politics and sports, women talk about their condition. A teenager observes the gap between the sexes. Co-directed by two actresses, Paule Baillargeon and Frederique Collin, The Red Kitchen is the birth of the Quebec women's cinema. The birth of the film was difficult, and funding has been largely achieved through donations from friends and a benefit concert. This war of the sexes takes place in a demanding formal research, based on the improvisation of the actors, whose preparation took place over long sessions in the workshop. The end result mixes black humour, horror and a very expressive fantasy that gave rise to heated debates.

Plaza vacante(es)

Truth is slippery at the prestigious firm of Martín and Associates, a place where Lucía Aldarando intends to make her mark. Although go-getter Ricardo Martín heads the company, Lucía is ready to move up the corporate ladder, calling upon her smarts and her wiles to make her dream come true. Ambition, however, has a way of changing one's character, and not for the better.

Invisible World(pt)

An anthology film following different stories around the theme of invisibility in the modern world.

The Woman Condemned(en)

When a radio star is found murdered in her home, everyone assumes that the mysterious young woman discovered with her is the culprit — everyone, that is, but newspaper reporter Jerry Beall, who sets out to prove her innocence.

Extranjeras(es)

The 3 Rooms of Melancholia(fi)

A searing examination of the unrelenting Chechen conflict, observed through the prisms of a Russian military boys academy, a war-torn town and a children's refugee camp.

150 Milligrams(fr)

In the hospital where she works in Brest, France, a lung specialist discovers a direct link between suspicious deaths and state-approved medicine. She fights single-handedly for the truth to come out.

Joe's Violin(en)

A 91-year-old Polish Holocaust survivor donates his violin of 70 years to a local instrument drive, changing the life of a 12-year-old schoolgirl from the nation’s poorest congressional district, and unexpectedly, his own.