Why Are the Drums Rumbling?

Still Life(zh)

A town in Fengjie county is gradually being demolished and flooded to make way for the Three Gorges Dam. A man and woman visit the town to locate their estranged spouses, and become witness to the societal changes.

The Gold Rush(en)

A gold prospector in Alaska struggles to survive the elements and win the heart of a dance hall girl.

It's a Free World...(en)

Angie is a working class woman. After being fired, she decides to set up a recruitment agency of her own, running it from her kitchen with her friend, Rose. Taking advantage of the desperation of immigrants, Angie builds a successful business extremely quickly.

Employee of the Month(en)

Naked(de)

The story of three couples, one of which just broke up, one that seems to be about to, and one perfectly okay. They are all friends, and from time to time, they gather to talk about everything. One time, they gather for dinner at the second couple's "mansion“— the husband became rich with his business. We see each couple as they prepare themselves for the party and learn a lot about their relationships. At the dinner, they get to talking about recognizing each other's peer with closed eyes and decide to try it, naked.

Children of a Lesser God(en)

Starting his new job as an instructor at a New England school for the deaf, James Leeds meets Sarah Norman, a young deaf woman who works at the school as a member of the custodial staff. In spite of Sarah's withdrawn emotional state, a romance slowly develops between the pair.

Alice in the Cities(de)

German journalist Philip Winter has a case of writer’s block when trying to write an article about the United States. He decides to return to Germany, and while trying to book a flight, encounters a German woman and her nine year old daughter Alice doing the same. The three become friends (almost out of necessity) and while the mother asks Winter to mind Alice temporarily, it quickly becomes apparent that Alice will be his responsibility for longer than he expected.

Kafka(en)

After a colleague is murdered, insurance worker Kafka gets embroiled in an underground group who are attempting to thwart a secret organization that controls the major events in society.

You, the Living(sv)

In the Swedish city of Lethe, people from different walks of life take part in a series of short, deadpan vignettes that rush past. Some are just seconds long, none longer than a couple of minutes. A young woman remembers a fantasy honeymoon with a rock guitarist. A man awakes from a dream about bomber planes. A businessman boasts about success while being robbed by a pickpocket, and so on. The absurdist collection is accompanied by Dixieland jazz and similar music.

The Pursuit of Happyness(en)

A struggling salesman takes custody of his son as he's poised to begin a life-changing professional career.

It's Winter(fa)

Unemotional, restrained cinematographic poem, situated in a wintry and poor suburb of Tehran. A man is dismissed and his lack of prospects for the future make him decide to seek his happiness abroad. He leaves his wife and child behind and for a long time nothing is heard of him. Then a stranger turns up, a car mechanic looking for a job. The attractive single mother can’t resist his attentions. Very subtly, a struggle ensues that reflects that of a whole generation of young doubting Iranians who may want to leave the country, but hardly know how to start.

Stars Over the River Drin(sq)

After the foreign specialists leave, engineer Lulëzim is left in charge of building the Fierza Hydroelectric Power Station.

Martin and Lea(fr)

A loving couple Martin and Lea have some problems with each other too.

La Belle Noiseuse(fr)

The former famous painter Frenhofer lives quietly with his wife on a countryside residence in the French Provence. When the young artist Nicolas visits him with his girlfriend Marianne, Frenhofer decides to start again the work on a painting he long ago stopped: La Belle Noiseuse. And he wants Marianne as model.

Le Syndrome des cœurs brisés – Takotsubo(fr)

0000 Kilometre(tr)

A phone call to Izmir while she and Ege are living together in France turns their lives upside down. The caller claims to be Izmir's recently deceased mother.

The Shop Around the Corner(en)

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.

Cart(ko)

In response to a sudden dismissal of staff, workers at a big retail store begin a protest against their employer's oppressive labor policies.

Lapsis(en)

In a parallel present, delivery man Ray Tincelli is struggling to support himself and his ailing younger brother. After a series of two-bit hustles and unsuccessful swindles, Ray takes a job in a strange new realm of the gig economy: trekking deep into the forest, pulling cable over miles of terrain to connect large, metal cubes that link together the new quantum trading market. As he gets pulled deeper into the zone, he encounters growing hostility and the threat of robot cablers, and must choose to either help his fellow workers or to get rich and get out.

Samba(fr)

Samba migrated to France 10 years ago from Senegal, and has since been plugging away at various lowly jobs. Alice is a senior executive who has recently undergone a burnout. Both struggle to get out of their dead-end lives. Samba's willing to do whatever it takes to get working papers, while Alice tries to get her life back on track until fate draws them together.