Society

Jordan, nowadays. After the sudden death of her husband, Nawal, 30s, has to fight for her part of inheritance in order to save her daughter and home in a society where having a son would be a game changer. More

Zaffan (12) struggles with puberty, discovering a terrifying secret about her physical self. Her failed attempts to conceal the inevitable lead her friends to find out who she really is, and they attack her. As Zaffan is further provoked by her own community, she soon learns that embracing her true self is the only answer to her freedom. More

Emre, a young and dedicated prosecutor, is newly appointed to a small town hit by a water crisis and political scandals. After an initial welcome, he experiences an increasing number of tense interactions and is reluctantly dragged into local politics. When Emre forms a bond with the owner of the local newspaper pressure escalates under heated rumours. More

The 1960s in Indonesia were a period of dramatic political change and turmoil, with Suharto’s coup ousting Sukarno and leading to a violent anti-communist purge. Nana, a gentle, beautiful young woman, has been badly affected by the conflict. Her husband was kidnapped and taken into the forest. Although she managed to escape from the gang leader who wanted to force her to marry him, the incident cost her father his life and drove her into poverty. More

‘Tell them you’re 24’, advises Petrunya’s mother as her daughter heads off to another interview. But Petrunya is 31; moreover, she has studied history, a subject that no one in Macedonia seems to need. So there she sits in front of her potential employer, a factory owner, who looks down on her floral dress and refuses to take her seriously. On her way home – naturally, she did not get the job – Petrunya decides to take the plunge. More

The three sisters Reyhan (20), Nurhan (16) and Havva (13) all live with their father in a remote village in central Anatolia. One after the other they were sent away to town to work as housemaids, but each of them has now returned. The last of the sisters to do so is Nurhan. She beat the local doctor’s son because he wet his bed every night. When Reyhan returned home pregnant, her father hastily married her off to the shepherd, Veysel. One day, the inebriated Veysel rises up against the village elder; his actions have dramatic consequences. More

“Good Kenyan girls become good Kenyan wives,” but Kena and Ziki long for something more. Despite the political rivalry between their families, the girls resist and remain close friends, supporting each other to pursue their dreams in a conservative society. When love blossoms between them, the two girls will be forced to choose between happiness and safety. More

25-year-old Sibel lives with her father and sister in a secluded village in the mountains of Turkey’s Black Sea region. Sibel is a mute, but she communicates by using the ancestral whistled language of the area. Rejected by her fellow villagers, she relentlessly hunts down a wolf that is said to be prowling in the neighbouring forest, sparking off fears and fantasies among the village women. There she crosses path with a fugitive. Injured, threatening and vulnerable, he is the first one to take a fresh look at her. More

Shy and loveable Palestinian Salam is already in his thirties without, however, having quite found his way in life. That is why he eagerly takes on an internship with the successful TV soap «Tel Aviv on Fire». In order to reach the television studio, Salam has to pass through the check-point between his home in Jerusalem and Ramallah on a daily basis. This is where he meets Assi, chief of the Israeli border crossing, who is excited to meet one of the "makers" of his wife's favourite series. More

CHINESE PORTRAIT investigates the current state of China, taking the audience on a journey to discover the complexity of the country through the path of one family. The film is entirely composed of fixed long shots and is narrated from the personal point of view of established Chinese director WANG Xiaoshuai. Tracing his ancestors’ movements both on his father and mother’s sides, Wang tracks the history of an ordinary Chinese family over the course of the tumultuous last century. Wang Xiaoshuai is our main character and guide throughout the film. More

During a student party, Mariam, a young Tunisian woman, meets the mysterious Youssef and leaves with him. A long night will begin, during which she’ll have to fight for her rights and her dignity. But how can Justice be made when it lies on the side of the tormentors? More

Which should take precedence - passion or duty? How do we choose? And who gets to judge? These are eternal questions, remorselessly thrust upon us by life. Anna Karenina made her choice, leaving her son Sergei to grow up struggling to understand why his mother took such a tragic and terrible path, and Count Vronsky haunted by the memory of the woman for whose death he still blames himself 30 years later. More

Reza (35), having distanced himself from the urban quagmire, leads a simple life along with his wife and sole child, somewhere in a remote village in Northern Iran. He spends his days working in his gold fish farm. Nearby, a private company with close links to the government and local authorities, has taken control of nearly every aspect of the regional life. More

Amal is 14 years old when she ends up on Tahrir Square during the Egyptian revolution, after the death of her boyfriend in the Port Said Stadium riot. During the protests, she is beaten by police and dragged across the square by her hair. This coming-of-age film follows her over the years after the revolution. As the film cuts between the unfolding current events and Amal’s rapidly changing life and appearance, we see her searching for her own identity in a country in transition. More

This restrained and realistic record of a personal crisis slowly but surely acquires allegorical dimensions. After a failed marriage about which he doesn’t want to speak, a young man, Selim, returns from Istanbul to his birthplace, Izmir – which just happens to be the birthplace of the filmmaker, who refers in his first full-length feature to autobiographical material as well as the state of the country. Selim doesn’t seem able to pick up where he left off. More

A small coastal town in China has half-hearted ambitions to make more of its touristic potential. In one of the many, more or less interchangeable hotels along the beach, 12-year old Wen is the victim of and receptionist Mia a witness to a crime. Mia came to the town illegally and is frightened of reporting what she saw to the authorities. But she's not the only one who fears the consequences of what happened, and the net draws ever tighter around Mia and Wen. Vivian Qu's delicate neo-noir drama concentrates on the perspectives of the complex female figures to expose patriarchal structures. More

Vicente is a young, reckless loner who comes back to his parents’ beach house after a year studying in LA. One of those random nights of downing shots and chasing girls changes his life forever when Vicente becomes the prime suspect in a hit-and-run that kills a local fisherman. Vicente was wasted. His memories are a blur. Yes, he was in the car, but he swears he wasn’t driving. And what’s worse, the guy he remembers being behind the wheel is the son of a powerful politician. A tangled web of lies engulfs the truth, crushing out a  social scandal before it can begin. More

If you were to ask a group of film experts which country is currently the least appropriate setting for a hilarious, truly wacky romantic comedy, the chances are that Saudi Arabia would come out on top. But their guesses would be wrong, as Barakah yoqabil Barakah provides more than enough evidence to the contrary. He’s a municipal civil servant from Jeddah whose origins are humble to say the least, while she’s a wild beauty, the adopted daughter of a rich couple whose marriage has suffered due to their lack of biological children. More

Set on the eve of Tunisia’s Jasmine Revolution, the first feature from director Leyla Bouzid follows an up-and-coming underground band as they are pulled in all directions by creative energy, authoritarian oppression, and rebellion. As I Open My Eyes (À peine j'ouvre les yeux) gives us a look at Tunisian youth on the eve of the Jasmine Revolution as they are pulled in all directions by conflicting forces: disenchantment, fear, creativity, rebellion against dictatorship, rejection of conservatism, and the courage to pursue their desires. More

Aydin, a former actor, runs a small hotel in central Anatolia with his young wife Nihal with whom he has a stormy relationship and his sister Necla who is suffering from her recent divorce. In winter as the snow begins to fall, the hotel turns into a shelter but also an inescapable place that fuels their animosities… More

Tunisia, before the revolution. A man on a motorbike, razor blade in hand, prowls the streets of Tunis slashing women's buttocks. They call him The Challat, aka "The Blade", and the mere mention of his name provokes fascination and terror. Is he a lone criminal, an urban legend, or could he be the creation of a political group or religious fanatics? 10 years later, in the aftermath of the Arab Spring, a stubborn young female director sets out on an investigation to unravel the mystery and discover the true Challat of Tunis. More

Movie director Hussein would like to shoot a film in his homeland of Iraqi Kurdistan about the Anfal military operation of the 1980s that led to the murder of more than 182,000 Kurds. The viewer follows the entire crew’s efforts to achieve the goal of making the film despite the numerous problems that accompany the shoot. More

Set in post-colonial India, QISSA tells the story of Umber Singh, a Sikh, who is forced to flee his village due to ethnic cleansing at the time of partition in 1947. Umber decides to fight fate and builds a new home for his family. When Umber marries his youngest child Kanwar to Neeli, a girl of lower caste, the family is faced with the truth of their identities; where individual ambition and destinies collide in a struggle with eternity. More

Arash is an Iranian academic who lives in the West. He returns to teach classes in Shiraz, where his mother lives, far from Tehran. Trapped in a whirlwind of family and financial intrigues, he plunges back into the difficult hours of his childhood at the beginning of the Iraq-Iran war in 1981. Following the death of his father and discovering what has become of his "respectable family", he is forced to make choices. More

Does love at first sight exist? This may certainly be the case, but sometimes you need time to be sure of this love. This film describes such a story about getting to know somebody and falling in love as a teenager, and about meeting again many years later. It begins in the 70s, in the summer in a small town by the river. Bruno and Lalo are teenagers and good friends. They hang around together in the heat, until one rainy day Lisa turns up, a beautiful young woman who capriciously and quick-wittedly turns the heads of both boys – and then decides on one of them. More

Leyla and Kaveh are the instruments of a cruel and bizarre game. The well-situated couple drive through the mountains distributing plastic bags full of money to every poor and unfortunate person they meet. At first everything goes according to plan as they disdainfully “share the joy” with their shocked “neighbors” while documenting the event via cellphone. They encounter those, however, who refuse the strange gift – and others who end up offending the irresponsible strangers. More

Life in a small town is akin to journeying in the middle of the steppes: the sense that "something new and different" will spring up behind every hill, but always unerringly similar, tapering, vanishing or lingering monotonous roads... More

A successful screen adaptation of a novel by renown Chinese writer, Xiaolu Guo, UFO in her Eyes is a hyper-vivid portrait of chaotic contemporary Chinese society. Has a flying saucer come to disrupt life in a village or is it simply the fantasy of an illiterate, attractive single lady? Starring Udo Kier. More

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Simin wants to leave Iran with her husband Nader and daughter Termeh. She has already made all the necessary arrangements. Nader, however, is having second thoughts. He is worried about leaving behind his father, who is suffering from Alzheimer’s. For this reason he decides to call off the trip altogether. As a result of Nader’s decision, Simin decides to sue for divorce at the family court. When her request is rejected, however, she refuses to live with Nader, moving instead into her parents’ home. More

While The Orator's status as Samoa's first feature film makes it a native landmark, writer/director Tusi Tamasese's deft command of atmospherics, tone, and rhythm transforms it into a genuinely noteworthy achievement. Primarily employing first-time actors to bring this delicately wrought tale to life, Tamasese centers his film on Saili (Fiaula Sagote), a diminutive pariah who lives with his wife Vaaiga and her wilful daughter at the outskirts of a remote jungle village. More

Marina is 23 and lives together with her father in an industrial village on the Greek coast. She finds the human species to be peculiar, almost daunting, if it weren't for Bella, her only and very unconventional friend. Marina derives her first sexual insights from the animal documentaries of Sir David Attenborough - "Attenberg", as she calls him. Bella, on the other hand, shows Marina a completely different approach to her own sexuality. This leads to bizarre moments in Marina's approach to an unknown table football player, as well as in discussions with her sick father. More

This is the story of Yuma a strong-willed and rebellious girl from the poor neighborhoods of Managua who dreams of being a boxer. Managua, today. Yuma wants to be a boxer. In her poor neighborhood, gangs fight for control of the street. In her home, lovelessness is the name of the game. She dreams of the ring, energy and agile feet and hands. They are also her only options. A street, a theft, a chance encounter: Yuma meets Ernesto, a journalism student from the other side of the city. More

Two sisters and a brother live in the center of İstanbul today. They are in their thirties and forties, and lead very different lives, self centered on their upper-middle class preoccupations. One day, a phone call brings them together on a voyage through Turkey’s suburbs and villages to the small town in the Black Sea mountains where they were born. Their aged mother, Nusret, has dissappered. More

From the 2008 Beijing olympic games to the avant-guard art scene, new chinese talent is heating up audiences around the world. Wu Hongyan, woman executioner in her thirties, works at the court in the province of Shaanxi in China, where she executes women condemned to death only. In spite of her macabre job, Wu Hongyan travels every weekend to a town nearby to join parties organized by a marriage bureau. The result of her dating is mediocre, until she meets the mysterious Li Jun. But she is thousands of miles away of imagining that Li Jun’s wife is the last of the women she executed. More

Maids presents audiences with a glimpse of life in Latin America's most dynamic urban center, São Paulo. The poor women within their local spaces defy easy definition, but both films explore the limits and possibilities of their respective subjects. More

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An intoxicating, time-bending experience bathed in the golden glow of oil lamps and wreathed in an opium haze, this gorgeous period reverie by Hou Hsiao-hsien traces the romantic intrigue, jealousies, and tensions swirling around four late-nineteenth-century Shanghai “flower houses,” where courtesans live confined to a gilded cage, ensconced in opulent splendor but forced to work to buy back their freedom. More

In the early morning of 26 april 1986 the nuclear power plant in Chernobyl exploded. Before this catastrophe, the land in this part of Belarus was fertile and under cultivation. Right after the explosion a strong wind blew the radioactivity through the whole area and transformed the ground into contaminated and dead land. Almost all of the three hundred families living there were forced to leave their homes. Only six of them were left behind. They refused to move to another part of the country and were from then on called "Samosyol" (egoists). More

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Together with his young son a father heads off for an inimitable quest: By car they drive through the nightmarish chaos of the erathquake catastrophe from 1990. The destruction demanded over 50'000 deaths, entire villages were razed to the ground. People report how they were suddenly faced with the catastrophe, standing in front of nothing, having lost their entire families with over thirty relatives. But still the film is not a report of terror. More

Takuji’s been in a coma for quite some time after an accident in the mountains, where he often wandered wistfully. His family and friends have been coping rather well with his condition, and he lies in bed at home where everyone can visit him. More

The young priest Father Giulio returns to Rome, his hometown, after a long pilgrimage. Don Giulio hopes to live peacefully with his family and his friends, but discovers that many of them are depressed or frustrated, and some suicidal. Father Giulio determines to leave again, but his stopped parents convince him to perform the wedding ceremony for his friend Caesar and his fiancee. Don Giulio rushes through the ceremony and then away from Rome. Once away from the city, he immediately regains happiness. More

In Lucía, Humberto Solás has interpreted the theme of the hundred years' struggle in an entirely novel way to create an epic in three separate episodes: each centred around a woman called Lucía, which takes place in a different period of Cuban history, corresponding to the three stages of Colonialism, Neocolonialism and Socialist Revolution. The three episodes also present us with "Lucías" of different social classes. More

The story begins with the death of a model worker, who is buried with his labor card as a badge of honor. However, his widow is told she needs that card to claim the benefits she is entitled. The story then takes several surreal turns, as the family of the dead man try to recover the precious card from the grave. More

Kingo Gondo, executive director of the National Shoe Company, meets with three other executives from the same firm in his beautiful Yokohama mansion. Their purpose is to change the production policy of the company: Instead of making expensive footwear, long famous for good quality and durability, they would switch to a low-cost mass-produced line of shoes and thus increase sales and income. But to make this change, the president must be eased out of office. More

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It happened in the age of civil wars. Feudal Lord Yamana defeats his rival, Akizuki, holding the neighboring province. But Lady Yukihime, heiress to the Akizukis, survives and hides within her dead father’s fief and the whereabouts of Akizuki clan’s war funds consisting of some 170 pounds of gold bars are unknown. Feeling uneasy at the thought that Lady Yukihime may escape with the gold into the neighboring province held by Hayakawa who is friendly to Akizuki, Yamana orders a thorough search for Yukihime and the gold and places a strict guard along the border. More

Five fates of women from Tokyo's brothel district in the 1950s are the focus of Kenji Mizoguchi's last film, who devoted the majority of his works to the historical and social situation of Japanese women. The theme is shaped by socio-critical commitment, human sympathy and unspeculative openness. More

In the post-war Gion district of Kyoto, the geisha Miyoharu agrees to apprentice the 16 year-old Eiko, whose mother was a former geisha who had just died. After a year of training they have to find a large sum of money before Eiko can debut. Miyoharu borrows the money from the tea-house owner, Okimi, who in turn obtains the money from the businessman Kusuda. Kusuda fancies Eiko himself and wants to give Miyoharu to Kanzaki in order to close a large business deal. However both geishas have minds of their own and, going against tradition, want to be able to say no to clients. More

The Russian writer Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky wanted to show a really good person in his well-known novel "The Idiot". Ironically, he chose an idiot. The Japanese Akira Kurosawa realized his obsession with the film adaptation of the book: The depiction of the necessary failure in an unjust society. It is an adaptation in the best sense, as the filmmaker transfers the material to the cold Japanese island of Hokkaido. The eponymous hero returns home after an absence and fails because his naivety prevents him from defending himself against the intrigues. More

Kurosawa's favourite actor of the early years was Toshiro Mifune. Here he plays the famous painter Ichiro Aoye, who spends his holidays in the mountains and meets the young singer Miyako Saijo. They live in the same hotel and spend some time together. Two reporters photograph them together and publish the pictures in a tabloid magazine - in revenge for Saijo's refusal to give them an interview. The scandal was there, and the painter's lawyer is bribed by the editor-in-chief of the magazine to get money for his seriously ill daughter. More

Yoshii, his wife and their two sons, Ryoichi and Keiji, move into a Tokyo suburb. The head of Yoshii’s department lives nearby. When he invites Yoshii’s family and all the children in the neighbourhood to a film show at his house, Ryoichi and Keiji are thrilled to discover their father on the screen. But when he starts pulling all sorts of faces to please his boss and thereby – in the eyes of his sons – embarrasses himself in front of everyone, the two boys’ world is in tatters. Upon returning home, they demand an explanation for his undignified behaviour. More

Shiraz is based on the true story of the 17th-century Mughal ruler Shah Jahan, his queen and the building of the world’s most beautiful monument to love, the Taj Mahal. Shot entirely in India, it features lavish costumes and gorgeous settings, including the extraordinary fort at Agra. Himansu Rai (also the film’s producer) stars as the humble potter Shiraz, who follows his childhood sweetheart Selima (Enakshi Rama Rau) when she is sold by slave traders to the future emperor. More

A minor clerk, Bashmachkin, replaces his threadbare overcoat with one made from the finest materials he can afford. Then one evening ruffians beat him up and steal his cherished new garment. The actors’ highly stylized gestures border on modern dance, and Bashmachkin’s world, especially as he begins to lose his grasp on reality, is powerfully rendered with looming shadows, oblique camera angles and eccentric architecture. More

The revolution film par excellence, here in the German needle-tone version of 1930: The film presents a dramatized version of the mutiny that occurred in 1905 when the crew of the Russian battleship Potemkin rebelled against their officers. Battleship Potemkin was named the greatest film of all time at the Brussels World's Fair in 1958. In 2012, the British Film Institute named it the eleventh greatest film of all time. More