Siblings

It's Winter

Unemotional, restrained cinematographic poem, situated in a wintry and poor suburb of Tehran. A man is dismissed and his lack of prospects for the future make him decide to seek his happiness abroad. He leaves his wife and child behind and for a long time nothing is heard of him. Then a stranger turns up, a car mechanic looking for a job. The attractive single mother can’t resist his attentions. Very subtly, a struggle ensues that reflects that of a whole generation of young doubting Iranians who may want to leave the country, but hardly know how to start.

Grande école

Paul and Agnes have been going out for quite a while and Agnes is shocked to learn that he'd rather live with two roommates on campus than move in with her. As soon as he meets one of his roommates, Louis-Anault, Paul's behavior changes - he is attracted to Louis without realizing so himself. Agnes, on the other hand, gets quite jealous and offers a bet: Whoever gets to have Louis-Anault first, wins... If she does, Paul will no longer explore his homosexual desires, if he does - she'll walk away. Meanwhile, Paul meets Mecir, a young Arab worker, who shows him there's more to life than elite colleges...

Import/Export

A nurse from Ukraine searches for a better life in the West, while an unemployed security guard from Austria heads East for the same reason. Both are looking for work, a new beginning, an existence, struggling to believe in themselves, to find a meaning in life...

Ulysse est revenu

Sounds of Sand

On the one hand, there’s the desert eating away at the land. The endless dry season, the lack of water. On the other there’s the threat of war. The village well has run dry. The livestock is dying. Trusting their instinct, most of the villagers leave and head south. Rahne, the only literate one, decides to head east with his three children and Mouna, his wife. A few sheep, some goats, and Chamelle, a dromedary, are their only riches. A tale of exodus, quest, hope and fatality.

Nowhere in Africa

A Jewish woman named Jettel Redlich flees Nazi Germany with her daughter Regina, to join her husband, Walter, on a farm in Kenya. At first, Jettel refuses to adjust to her new circumstances, bringing with her a set of china dishes and an evening gown. While Regina adapts readily to this new world, forming a strong bond with her father's cook, an African named Owuor.

Golden Door

The story is set at the beginning of the 20th century in Sicily. Salvatore, a very poor farmer, and a widower, decides to emigrate to the US with all his family, including his old mother. Before they embark, they meet Lucy. She is supposed to be a British lady and wants to come back to the States. Lucy, or Luce as Salvatore calls her, for unknown reasons wants to marry someone before to arrive to Ellis Island in New York. Salvatore accepts the proposal. Once they arrive in Ellis Island they spend the quarantine period trying to pass the examinations to be admitted to the States. Tests are not so simple for poor farmers coming from Sicily. Their destiny is in the hands of the custom officers.

Beyond Words

A young Polish-born, Berlin-based lawyer working on refugee cases is unexpectedly reunited with his father, who is his only tie left with his homeland.

Varvara

Sasha works for a natural gas company. When his wife gives birth 2 months early, Sasha is searching for money to save the premature baby. Despite this, he refuses to take bribes, which threatens his job and leads to friction with his colleagues. His wife doesn't understand him anymore. Faced with a crisis, Sasha receives an order to install a furnace in a church, where he will have to destroy an icon painted on the church wall. Hoping to save the sacred image, Sasha has to corrupt the system.

Ulysses' Gaze

An exiled filmmaker finally returns to his home country where former mysteries and afflictions of his early life come back to haunt him once more.

Crossing Borders

In 1960, Martín and Marcos are forced by their difficult personal circumstances to travel to Switzerland in search of work, leaving their families in the Madrid of Franco's Spain. But they undertake more than a simple journey; they begin the road to a new life.

The Emigrants

Karl and Kristina Nilsson work on a farm in a cold and desolate area of 19th century rural Sweden. Growing privations, combined with increasing social and religious persecution, motivate the Nilssons and many of their neighbors to strike out for the United States. Following a treacherous ocean crossing and an equally grueling land passage, the emigrants find themselves in seemingly idyllic Minnesota.

The Painted Bird

After losing his parents, a young Jewish boy wanders Eastern Europe, seeking refuge during World War II.

White Nights

After his plane crashes in Siberia, a Russian dancer, who defected to the West, is held prisoner in the Soviet Union. The KGB keeps him under watch and tries to convince him to become a dancer for the Kirov Academy of Ballet again. Determined to escape, he befriends a black American expatriate and his pregnant Russian wife, who agree to help him escape to the American Embassy.

The Master Butcher

After his return from World War I, there is no more work for Fidelis in his parents' butcher shop in Swabia, Germany. To make a better life for himself and Eva, the former fiancée of a friend who fell in battle, he emigrates to Argus, a town in North Dakota, in the United States. The artist Delphine, in whom Eva will find a friend, also moves there. To relieve Eva's homesickness, Fidelis founds a singing club.

Elliot

Set in the dark depths of a strange and mysterious power supply complex, ELLIOT tells the tale of a conflicted humanoid (Elliot) struggling to maintain his reality and understand his true identity. Elliot is thrust into a disconcerting downward spiral of despair in which he is forced to recognize the perils of his own cognition and constructed ideals in a crumbling universe where the lines between fantasy, simulation, and reality are blurred, and the fibers of Elliot’s fragile existence are ruptured.

Swedish Package Holiday

Three intertwined stories about Serbian truck driver who is involved into drug trafficking without knowing, Czech family who live by the road which makes them a lot of troubles since many cars crash into their house, and a bus full of Swedish grannies who go on a Trans-European package holiday.

The Mosquito Coast

An inventor spurns his city life and moves his family into the jungles of Central America to make a utopia.

Pelle the Conqueror

In the late 19th century, two Swedish emigrants, Lasse Karlsson and his son Pelle, arrive on the Danish island of Bornholm hoping to find work on a farm and save enough money to travel to the United States of America.

Stroszek

Bruno Stroszek is released from prison and warned to stop drinking. He has few skills and fewer expectations: with a glockenspiel and an accordion, he ekes out a living as a street musician. He befriends Eva, a prostitute down on her luck and they join his neighbor, Scheitz, an elderly eccentric, when he leaves Germany to live in Wisconsin.