2020s

17-year-old Salya grew up in Japan from an early age, leaving the place where she was born with a Kurdish family. She lived a normal high school life, just like the Japanese of her generation, and her relationship with Sota is becoming special but at some point she lost her status of residence in the shape of her life’s upside down. In Saitama, there is an area where about 2000 Kurds live, and Salya is a high school girl who lives there. However, when she learns that her family’s refugee status is turned down, restricting her family of work and travelling across the city. Her father, who had continued to work to sustain a living, is taken into custody for illegal employment. It tells the story of her growing up, suddenly being forced into a situation where she is responsible not only for her younger siblings but for her very existence.Read More »

Based on the book by German writer W.G. Sebald, examines the perception and processing of the phenomenon of mass destruction of the German civilian population in European post-war literature.Read More »

Jilted on his wedding day, Laurent, a stage actor playing the role of the famous seducer Don Juan, cannot help but see his ex-fiancée in every women he meets. In an attempt to mend his broken heart and ego, he tries to seduce them all but none are receptive to his elaborate (and musical) advances. Meanwhile, at the theater, the leading lady quits and the production brings in Laurent’s ex-fiancée as the replacement.Read More »

The world is a mysterious place when seen through the eyes of an animal. EO, a grey donkey with melancholic eyes, meets good and bad people on his life’s path, experiences joy and pain, endures the wheel of fortune randomly turn his luck into disaster and his despair into unexpected bliss. But not even for a moment does he lose his innocence.Read More »

This is Sparklehorse is a feature length music documentary. Mark Linkous, a cult and hugely influential figure in the alternative music scene, had a dramatic life that saw him battle with drug and alcohol addiction, paralysis, and debilitating mental illness that resulted in his untimely death.

Sparklehorse’s music was heralded by his peers and critics; a mix of alt-country, discordant punk and psychedelic pop; it has been described as “defiantly surrealist… with all manner of references to smiling babies, organ music, birds, and celestial bodies.” Collaborators included PJ Harvey, Tom Waits, The Flaming Lips, Danger Mouse, David Lynch & Thom Yorke (Radiohead).Read More »

Sooner or later, every police investigator comes across a case that remains unsolved and that haunts him. For Yohan, Clara’s murder proves to be that case. What starts as a thorough investigation into the victim’s life soon turns into a nagging obsession. One interrogation follows another, there is no shortage of suspects, and Yohan has more and more doubts. Only one thing is sure, the crime occurred on the night of the 12th.Read More »

As the happily patriarchal Rana family craves for the birth of a baby boy, the youngest of the Rana men secretly joins an erotic dance theatre and finds himself falling for a fiercely ambitious trans starlet. Their impossible love story slowly illuminates the entire Rana family’s desire for a sexual rebellion.Read More »

Ezio Bosso reveals his real self and takes us into his world and his imagination, as if were a diary.Read More »

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Katja, Sascha, Benni, Laila and Schöller. These five young people have more in common than just the fact that they are living in provincial Germany free of parental interference. They have one last winter together before they finish school, then they are supposed to know what they want to do: stay or leave. In between homework and smoking dope, martial arts training and gossiping about deflowering people, they explore their feelings in all kinds of different relationships, searching for each other, hiding, kissing and fighting. They want to live, to conquer the world and find out who they really are. They are young and exude an enviable naturalness when it comes to gender identities and roles, above all Katja, played by Marie Tragousti with a lot of new female power. Melanie Waelde’s feature debut is tremendously intense and vibrant. Going beyond cuteness, she draws these “naked animals” with a raw, sensual and sensitive openness rarely seen in German cinema. On the cusp between the end of childhood and burgeoning maturity, body and soul are still more or less united. Just like loneliness and intimacy. We are vulnerable – and that’s a good thing.Read More »