Film Under the Stars 2018
Parallel Mothers Madres paralelas
Pedro Almodóvar / Spain / 2021 / 123 min / Spanish
Two single women meet in the hospital as they are about to give birth. Both pregnancies were unplanned. Middle-aged Janis has no regrets and is looking forward. The young Ana is regretful and scared. Their accidental meeting will transform their lives. The film brought Penélope Cruz the Best Actress Award in Venice.
Celts Kelti
Milica Tomović / Serbia / 2021 / 106 min / Serbian
An intimate and honest, 24-hour insight into the life of one Belgrade family in which political identities clash and entangled relationships cause conflicts.
Compartment Number 6 Hytti nro 6
Juho Kuosmanen / Finland, Estonia, Russia, Germany / 2021 / 107 min / Russian, Finnish, English
A young Finnish woman escapes a love affair in Moscow by boarding a train to the Arctic port of Murmansk. Forced to share the long ride and a tiny sleeping car with a Russian miner, this unexpected encounter leads the occupants of compartment no. 6 to face the truth about their own loneliness and yearning for human connection.
Jallikattu Jallikattu
Lijo Jose Pellissery / India / 2019 / 95 min / Malayalam
A bold new voice in Indian cinema, Lijo Jose Pellissery paints a portrait of a remote village where an escaped buffalo causes a frenzy of ecstatic violence.
Memory Box Memory Box
Joana Hadjithomas, Khalil Joreige / France, Canada, Lebanon / 2021 / 102 min / Arabic, French, English
An unexpected package reopens old wounds from Lebanon’s civil war while creating an opportunity to finally heal them.
Great Freedom Grosse Freiheit
Sebastian Meise / Austria, Germany / 2021 / 117 min / German
Hans is repeatedly imprisoned for homosexuality; in post-war Germany, homosexual relationships are still criminalised by Paragraph 175. However, Hans continues to pursue freedom and love even inside the prison walls… At Cannes, the film won the Un Certain Regard Prize, it was the winner of the Sarajevo Film Festival and a nominee for the LUX Audience Award.
Amparo Amparo
Simón Mesa Soto / Colombia, Sweden, Germany, Qatar / 2021 / 95 min / Spanish
A moving story about a single mother fighting for her son in a society ruled by men, corruption and violence.
Balloon Qi qiu
Pema Tseden / China / 2019 / 102 min / Chinese
A drily comic approach to China’s one-child policy. In this world, there is no chasm between modernity and tradition; rather, the two gently rub against each other.
The Girl and the Spider Das Mädchen und die Spinne
Ramon Zürcher / Switzerland / 2021 / 99 min / German
A tale of secret desire and unspoken emotions in the close intimacy of a small flat. A seemingly completely uneventful move exposes hidden feelings of jealousy, seduction, and a sense of abandonment and betrayal.
Memory House Casa de antiguidades
João Paulo Miranda Maria / Brazil, France / 2020 / 92 min / Portuguese, German
João Paulo Miranda Maria’s first full-length film melds past and present, realism and fantasy, to offer a mesmerising symbolic and political immersion into the Brazilian collective subconscious.
Sweet Thing Sweet Thing
Alexandre Rockwell / USA / 2020 / 91 min / English
A tragicomic story about the challenges of growing up in difficult circumstances, Sweet Thing celebrates the redemptive power of adventurous spirit and children’s imagination. The main characters are played by the director’s real-life children and wife.
Ahed's Knee Ha'berech
Nadav Lapid / France, Israel, Germany / 2021 / 109 min / Hebrew
Israeli director Nadav Lapid follows up his immensely successful Synonyms with an even more direct contemplation on the role of artists in occupying regimes.
A Chiara A Chiara
Jonas Carpignano / Italy, Sweden, Denmark, France / 2021 / 121 min / Italian
Told in captivating, nocturnal images, A Chiara recounts the story of a 15-year-old girl forced to confront the dark underbelly of the Calabrian mafia after her father’s disappearance.
The Frenchman Francuz
Andrej Smirnov / Russia / 2019 / 128 min / Russian
An exchange student roaming the streets of 1950s Moscow in search of his roots, the Frenchman’s visit resonates with political undertones…
Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy Guzen to sozo
Ryusuke Hamaguchi / Japan / 2021 / 121 min / Japanese
Each of the film’s three episodes revolves around a woman in love and a series of coincidences leading the protagonists to complex personal relationships. 2021 Berlin International Film Festival Grand Jury Prize.
Paris, 13th District Les Olympiades
Jacques Audiard / France / 2021 / 106 min / French, Mandarin Chinese
The film by Jacques Audiard (A Prophet, Rust and Bone) is a story about love, sex and friendship in the time of social networks.
Cop Secret Leynilögga
Hannes Thór Halldórsson / 2021 / 98 min / Icelandic
An amusing commentary on major action-film productions, such as the Fast & Furious series, offering several layers of complexity and an intelligent way of dealing with important social issues.
Beginning Dasatskisi
Dea Kulumbegashvili / Georgia, France / 2020 / 125 min / Georgian
In a sleepy provincial town, Yana lives a quiet life in a Jehovah’s Witness community. But, when an extremist group burns down the church where her husband works as the community’s religious leader, Yana’s world begins to disintegrate… The Georgian filmmaker’s feature debut and winner of the Golden Shell for Best Film at the San Sebastián Film Festival.
Heavens Above Nebesa
Srdjan Dragojević / Serbia, North Macedonia, Slovenia, Montenegro, Germany, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina / 2021 / 120 min / Serbian
After half a century of communism and atheism, religion is back! But is Eastern European society ready for it? A working-class man wakes up with an aureole around his head; a criminal sentenced to death turns into a baby; an artist discovers that his paintings, apart from feeding people’s souls, also feed their stomachs. The film Heavens Above by Srdjan Dragojević (The Parade) was inspired by the French master of fiction, irony and the absurd, Marcel Aymé. Youth Jury Award in Locarno.
Bird Atlas Atlas ptáků
Olmo Omerzu / Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia / 2021 / 93 min / Czech
Hinged on persuasive character acting, Slovenian director Olmo Omerzu’s Bird Atlas uses a special brand of gentle irony to demonstrate that, in order to preserve our dignity, we occasionally need to lose face in the eyes of others.
The Hole Il buco
Michelangelo Frammartino / Italy, Germany, France / 2021 / 93 min / Italian
In the hands of Michelangelo Frammartino (The Four Times), an expedition into one of Europe’s deepest caves turns into a poetic journey into the unknown, where time and space acquire a whole new meaning. Must be seen in a cinema! Special Jury Prize at Venice.
Vortex Vortex
Gaspar Noé / France, Monaco, Belgium / 2021 / 142 min / French
Life is a short party that will soon be forgotten. A film by Gaspar Noé (Enter the Void, Love, Climax), dedicated to “those whose brains decompose before their hearts do”. World premiere at Cannes.