Paper Year

Fat Girl(fr)

Anaïs is twelve and bears the weight of the world on her shoulders. She watches her older sister, Elena, whom she both loves and hates. Elena is fifteen and devilishly beautiful. Neither more futile, nor more stupid than her younger sister, she cannot understand that she is merely an object of desire. And, as such, she can only be taken. Or had. Indeed, this is the subject: a girl's loss of virginity. And, that summer, it opens a door to tragedy.

Once Upon a Zipper(en)

Rachel can't stop herself from falling in love with Paulie, the woman who helps her try on wedding gowns.

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?

Moral(tl)

The episodically connected lives of four college friends unfold throughout the incipient martial law years, as they struggle to define their sexual and professional desires and how best to attain them.

D.E.B.S.(en)

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

Bread and Tulips(it)

An endearing light comedy about a woman who spontaneously becomes a resident of Venice after her family left her behind. While enjoying the wonderful people she meets she achieves a new life and the first time independent of her family.

Little Miss Sunshine(en)

A family loaded with quirky, colorful characters piles into an old van and road trips to California for little Olive to compete in a beauty pageant.

The Marriage of Maria Braun(de)

Maria marries a young soldier in the last days of World War II, only for him to go missing in the war. She must rely on her beauty and ambition to navigate the difficult post-war years alone.

Four Weddings and a Funeral(en)

Over the course of five social occasions, a committed bachelor must consider the notion that he may have discovered love.

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.

Pussy Have the Power(en)

Pussy Have the Power is the song improvised by four girls in a recording studio. When an established music producer walks in, they face the choice of selling out their work to something that could lead to success, while they risk losing their own message

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

Die Augen von Jade(de)

Home Again(en)

Life for a single mom in Los Angeles takes an unexpected turn when she allows three young guys to move in with her.

Supernova(nl)

Meis is fifteen, lives in the back of beyond and aspires to a grand and stirring life, but all that happens is the passing of the time, waiting for the next car to run into the front of the house.

The Piano(en)

When an arranged marriage brings Ada and her spirited daughter to the wilderness of nineteenth-century New Zealand, she finds herself locked in a battle of wills with both her controlling husband and a rugged frontiersman to whom she develops a forbidden attraction.

The Old Settler(en)

The Old Settler is the story of two middle-aged sisters, Elizabeth and Quilly, who share an apartment in Harlem in 1943. The sisters quarrel amiably, but they share a wounded history that becomes revealed as the tale unfolds. An earnest but unworldly young man named Husband travels up from the South to board with the sisters while he searches for his beloved Lou Bessie, who left their small town a few years back to find a new life. Husband would like to bring Lou Bessie back home, but she's enamored with the excitement of the city, and her plans are more complicated. In time, Elizabeth and Husband begin a courtship that may or may not overcome their considerable age difference, while Quilly reacts disapprovingly.

Candy(en)

A poet falls in love with an art student, who gravitates to his bohemian lifestyle — and his love of heroin. Hooked as much on one another as they are on the drug, their relationship alternates between states of oblivion, self-destruction, and despair.

Subway in the Sky(en)

Berlin provides the backdrop for this crime drama that centers on a military doctor falsely accused of dealing illegal drugs. Determined to prove his innocence, he escapes from the MPs and ends up holing up in the apartment his wife rented. He doesn't know that she has sublet the flat to a nightclub singer. When he finds out, he begs the singer to assist him. She is attracted to him and agrees. The doctor believes that his wife is behind the black-market dealings, but in the end, they find the real culprit.

Northern Lights(en)

A stranger's call informs Roberta that her estranged brother Frank has died in a small town under bizarre circumstances. Ben, his best friend from college, also gets the call. Arriving just in time for his funeral, it becomes quickly obvious to them that the little slice of small-town America in which they find themselves is like an episode of The Twilight Zone featuring Frank's eccentric friends, his amazing secrets and his stunning final request. Both Ben and Roberta are shocked to discover that Frank not only had a child, but that he has left them responsible for his son's care.

Not Easily Broken(en)

A car accident and shifting affections test the bond between a married couple.

The Magnificent Ambersons(en)

The spoiled young heir to the decaying Amberson fortune comes between his widowed mother and the man she has always loved.

Shirley(en)

A famous horror writer finds inspiration for her next book after she and her husband take in a young couple.

Clash by Night(en)

An embittered woman seeks escape in marriage, only to fall for her husband’s best friend.

My Brilliant Career(en)

A young woman who is determined to maintain her independence finds herself at odds with her family who wants her to tame her wild side and get married.

Inventing the Abbotts(en)

In the 1950s, brothers Jacey and Doug Holt, who come from the poorer side of their sleepy Midwestern town, vie for the affections of the wealthy, lovely Abbott sisters. Lady-killer Jacey alternates between Eleanor and Alice, wanting simply to break the hearts of rich young women. But sensitive Doug has a real romance with Pamela, which Jacey and the Abbott patriarch, Lloyd, both frown upon.

Strangers When We Meet(en)

A suburban architect loves his wife but is bored with his marriage and with his work, so he takes up with the neglected, married beauty who lives down the street.

Nine Lives(en)

Captives of the very relationships that define and sustain them, nine women resiliently meet the travails and disappointments of life.

How to Make an American Quilt(en)

Soon-to-be-wed graduate student Finn Dodd develops cold feet when she suspects her fiancé is cheating on her. In order to clear her head, Finn visits her grandmother, Hy, and great aunt, Glady Joe Cleary, in Grasse, Calif. There, Finn learns that Hy and Glady Joe are members of a group of passionate quilters, and over the course of her visit she is regaled with tales of love and life by women who have collected rich experiences and much wisdom.

Unrelated(en)

A woman in an unhappy relationship takes refuge with a friend's family on holiday in Tuscany.

To the Wonder(en)

After falling in love in Paris, Marina and Neil come to Oklahoma, where problems arise. Their church's Spanish-born pastor struggles with his faith, while Neil encounters a woman from his childhood.

The Magic of Ordinary Days(en)

Pregnant out of wedlock, an educated young woman is pressured by her father into an arranged marriage with a lonely farmer in this drama set during WWII.

The Divorcee(en)

When a woman discovers that her husband has been unfaithful, she decides to pay him back in kind.

The Pumpkin Eater(en)

Jo, the mother of seven children, divorces her second husband in order to marry Jake, a successful but promiscuous screenwriter. Though they are physically and emotionally compatible, they are slowly torn apart.

Gabriel's Redemption: Part I(en)

After leaving his prestigious post at the University of Toronto, Gabriel embarks on a new journey with Julia, and he is eager to become a father. However, Gabriel's idyllic vision is jeopardized when Julia's intensive program becomes all consuming. When Julia is granted a prestigious opportunity to deliver an academic lecture at Oxford, Gabriel challenges her about the subject of her presentation, which clashes with his own research. In Oxford, their past resurfaces, including an old nemesis determined to humiliate Julia and expose one of Gabriel's well-guarded secrets. Emotions run high, alliances are tested, and the couple must confront the shadows of their shared history in a battle for love, truth, and redemption.

The Lost Husband(en)

Trying to put her life back together after the death of her husband, Libby and her children move to her estranged Aunt's goat farm in central Texas.

The Crowd(en)

John, an ambitious but undisciplined New York City office worker, meets and marries Mary. They start a family, struggle to cope with marital stress, financial setbacks, and tragedy, all while lost amid the anonymous, pitiless throngs of the big city.

City Girl(en)

A waitress from Chicago falls in love with a man from rural Minnesota and marries him, with the intent of living a better life - but life on the farm has its own challenges.

Heights(en)

Spanning twenty-four hours, HEIGHTS follows five New Yorkers challenged to choose their destiny before the sun comes up the next day.

Elena Undone(en)

The wife of a pastor who preaches against homosexuality embarks on an affair with a female writer.