

Commissioned to mark the 60th anniversary of the Cannes Film Festival, "To Each His Own Cinema" brought together 33 of the world's pre-eminent filmmakers to produce short pieces exploring the multifarious facets of cinema and their perspective on the state of their chosen artform in the early 21st century.



(segment "Irtebak")
Boy (segment "Anna")
Supporting
7.6A semi-autobiographical account of an incident in Makhmalbaf's life when, as a 17-year-old, he stabbed a policeman at a protest rally. Two decades later, he tracks down the policeman he injured in an attempt to make amends.
5.6It's night. Perhaps after a dream of an intruder crashing through a window, a woman who's sensitive to light has a telephone conversation with a friend. The woman has a plane ticket from Copenhagen to Buenos Aires at 6 that morning. She doesn't want to go. Her friend encourages her to make the trip. Later, she stands in a car park with her suitcase. Flying geese fill the screen.
8.1The film has three stories. First is about local village idiot Paletta, who can not afford the services of a whore and so steals a locket from a holy shrine belonging to local mafia don. Second shows the story of betrayal of Pitrinu (who's dead now) by his lover Fefe. Final episode is about lowlife Lazarus. He is killed by mob boss Toto, but raised from the dead by a local messiah, who is also known as Toto (and is played by same actor).
7.1Takada, a Japanese fisherman has been estranged from his son for many years, but when the son is diagnosed with terminal cancer his daughter-in-law, Rie, summons him to the hospital. Through a series of obstacles and relationships, he is brought unexpectedly closer to both an understanding of himself and of his son.
7.1Irreverent city engineer Behzad comes to a rural Kurdish village in Iran to keep vigil for a dying relative. In the meanwhile the film follows his efforts to fit in with the local community and how he changes his own attitudes as a result.
7.0Machisu is a painter. He never had the success he thinks he is entitled to. Regardless of this, he always remains trying to be successful. His wife Sachiko keeps supporting him, despite all setbacks.
6.2A collection of deleted scenes from David Lynch's 2006 surrealist horror INLAND EMPIRE.
6.0Angela de Marco is fed up with her gangster husband's line of work and wants no part of the crime world. When her husband is killed for having an affair with the mistress of mob boss Tony "The Tiger" Russo, Angela and her son depart for New York City to make a fresh start. Unfortunately, Tony has set his sights upon Angela -- and so has an undercover FBI agent looking to use her to bust Tony.
6.9Caught in the stranglehold of debt and structural adjustment, Africa is fighting for its survival. In the face of disaster, representatives of African society bring an action against international financial institutions. The trial takes place in Bamako, in the yard of a house, among its inhabitants.
6.5Stop-motion animated short film in which, among other things, a man made of wire looks malevolent.
7.1German director Wim Wenders tries to explore the Tokyo that was depicted in the films of Yasujiro Ozu and finds a very different city.
5.3Dziga Vertov-directed Soviet newsreel covering: Reports of the Pioneers: Excursion to the country, to the zoo etc.
6.6The owner of an Information Technology firm wants to sell his business for profit. The trouble is that when he started his firm he invented a nonexistent company president to hide behind when unpopular steps needed to be taken. When potential purchasers insist on negotiating with the "Boss" face to face the owner has to hire a failed actor to play the part.
7.6Two Greek children embark on a journey to search for their father, who supposedly lives in Germany.
6.4Thomas Jerome Newton is an alien who has come to Earth in search of water to save his home planet. Aided by lawyer Oliver Farnsworth, Thomas uses his knowledge of advanced technology to create profitable inventions. While developing a method to transport water, Thomas meets Mary-Lou, a quiet hotel clerk, and begins to fall in love with her. Just as he is ready to leave Earth, Thomas is intercepted by the U.S. government, and his entire plan is threatened.
7.3A civilian oil rig crew is recruited to conduct a search and rescue effort when a nuclear submarine mysteriously sinks. One diver soon finds himself on a spectacular odyssey 25,000 feet below the ocean's surface where he confronts a mysterious force that has the power to change the world or destroy it.
7.2Now fully revealed as the ultimate threat to existence, the Anti-Monitor wages an unrelenting attack on the surviving Earths that struggle for survival in a pocket universe. One by one, these worlds and all their inhabitants are vaporized! On the planets that remain, even time itself is shattered, and heroes from the past join the Justice League and their rag-tag allies against the epitome of evil. But as they make their last stand, will the sacrifice of the superheroes be enough to save us all?
5.3One of the most far-reaching events in a human life is the birth of your baby. But life with a newborn can be so ordinary and at the same time all-embracing: the wash is drying in the corridor, the bathroom has to be cleaned. In the calm rhythm of the day, 'Ordinary Time' skims past authentic moments like this.
5.7Three childhood friends - Elise, Sonia and Cecile - leave for a summer in the South of France to help clear Cecile’s holiday house before it is put up for sale. There, they soon become the prime targets of three horny young men, for whom these single forty-year-old women are much more attractive than girls their age.
While many GDR opposition activists emigrated to West Germany at the beginning of the 1980s, the well-known singer-songwriter Bettina Wegner held on to her homeland against all odds. Although she was sent to prison as a young mother, she remained convinced that it was worth fighting to make the GDR a better, freer society. However, life as an undesirable person in the state becomes a real ordeal for her and her family.
In the near future, the “method” controls the health and freedom of society. The life of neuroscientist Mia Holl, who is loyal to the system, changes abruptly when her brother Moritz Holl is wrongly accused of murder and imprisoned. In the fight for truth and justice, Mia begins to question the system and becomes the hunted herself.
5.5»Dancers« is centred round a dance school run by the bright and lively Annika and her no-nonsense mother. One day Annika meets Lasse and falls passionately in love. But there is something Lasse hasn't told her, something he has done that is not so easy to forgive. Confronting an unknown darkness in Lasse, and in herself, Annika is forced to recognize the high cost of saying yes to love.
5.7Anna, a young theology graduate, starts work as a prison chaplain. She becomes especially concerned about one inmate, Kate, regarded as difficult and withdrawn, but whom the other inmates credit with mysterious healing powers.
5.7Charlie is a clumsy waiter in a cheap cabaret, suffering the strict orders from his boss. He meets a pretty girl in the park and tries to impress her by pretending to be an ambassador. Unfortunately she has a jealous fiancé.
5.9A drug addict becomes a mother and has to deal with responsibility and self-respect.
5.4A young married couple has to deal with their emotional breakdowns after the death of their only daughter.
6.8A young Sicilian is swindled twice, but ends up rich; a man poses as a deaf-mute in a convent of curious nuns; a woman must hide her lover when her husband comes home early; a scoundrel fools a priest on his deathbed; three brothers take revenge on their sister's lover; a young girl sleeps on the roof to meet her boyfriend at night; a group of painters wait for inspiration; a crafty priest attempts to seduce his friend's wife; and two friends make a pact to find out what happens after death.
4.4A crippled dwarf is forced to become jester to a tyrannical king, but when the king abuses a beautiful dwarf with whom the jester is in love the jester plots a terrible revenge.
3.7When Detecive Max Garrett is assigned to protect the sultry photographer Laura Cross from a ruthless killer, he has no idea what he's in for. The more involved Garrett gets in the case, the more attracted he is to Cross, but as they get closer, so does the killer.
4.8Based on the journal of Knud Rasmussen's "Great Sled Journey" of 1922 across arctic Canada. The film is shot from the perspective of the Inuit, showing their traditional beliefs and lifestyle. It tells the story of the last great Inuit shaman and his beautiful and headstrong daughter; the shaman must decide whether to accept the Christian religion that is converting the Inuit across Greenland.
6.0Yojin, an eccentric young farmer living in the countryside, falls in love for the first time in his life. Her name is Machiko, she teaches in a kindergarten and is from Tokyo.
6.0During an experiment, an accident occurs at the Institute of Epidemiology. To prevent the virus of a deadly disease from penetrating the walls of the laboratory, five employees remain in quarantine. In this situation, people reveal themselves in the most unexpected ways.
The two brothers Alfred and Hans are very different, one, a mummy's boy, still hopes for the great love at 35, the other enjoys life as a womanizer. When their mother dies, their lives change. Mama's boy Alfred and Don Juan Hans fall in love with the same woman. Their beloved is called Angelika who is in her mid-30s, works in a travel agency and considers herself emancipated. She has not married the father of her now 18-year-old daughter. All parties involved change as a result of the courtship of Angelika. The sad Alfred becomes a radiant lover, the womanizer starts thinking and Angelika herself feels younger and younger.
6.6Many people assume that life does not end after death. Not Dr. Tyrsa, practical and skeptical man, who never believed in this nonsense. However, thanks to the bowling accident, he finds himself in a desert land with people like him not belonging to this world yet not accepted into the other. Now Dr. Tyrsa realizes that the life he used to live was not so bad, and he's got something worth returning to.
6.3Connie, the fifteen-year-old black sheep of her family, finds her summertime idyll of beach trips, mall hangouts, and innocent flirtations shattered by an encounter with a mysterious stranger.
6.3In a hopeless small town in Sweden, lives Maja, 18 years old. Her highest and only dream is to become an actress. She wants to be the center of attention - for everyone to see HER, to see the beautiful person she is inside. It's just a little hard to see. Maja is severely overweight, clumsy and completely without social skills... We get to follow Maja and her struggle to realize her dreams during the last semester of high school.
6.3The story of a woman that remained distracted for a long time from her life, from the passions that made her feel alive. The importance of true love is compared with the material value of diamonds. Only one truly lasts forever. She's got to find the thing that values most for her, the thing that gives psychical stability and real happiness again to her life.
