Mountains

Samet, a young art teacher, is finishing his fourth year of compulsory service in a remote village in Anatolia. After a turn of events he can hardly make sense of, he loses his hopes of escaping the grim life he seems to be stuck in. Will his encounter with Nuray, herself a teacher, help him overcome his angst? More

In the Bolivian highlands, an elderly Quechua couple has been living the same daily life for years. When an uncommonly long drought threatens their entire way of life, Virginio and his wife Sisa face the dilemma of resisting or being defeated by the environment and time itself. More

After Patricio Guzmán had travelled to the Atacama Desert in the north of Chile for «Nostalgia de la luz» and to the deepest south for «El botón de nácar» in Patagonia, he deals in the last part of the trilogy on his homeland with the central chain of Andes and the memory of the moving images. All his films are personal, but in some respects «La cordillera de los sueños» is the most intimate, leading the artist back to the ruins of the house of his childhood. X More

When his father dies, anti-regime partisan Chandra must travel to his remote mountain village after nearly a decade away. Little Pooja is anxiously awaiting the man she thinks is her father, but she’s confused when Chandra arrives with Badri, a young street orphan rumoured to be his son. Chandra must face his brother Suraj, who was on the opposing side during the Nepalese civil war. The two brothers cannot put aside political feelings while carrying their father's body down the steep mountain path to the river for cremation. More

A nomadic family lives with their horses in the intoxicating nature of Kyrgyzstan. Schaiyr's husband drowned in the nearby river years ago. A new love is on the horizon as meteorologist Jermek sets up his measuring station next to Schaiyr's home. Told in the gentle rhythm of the nomadic life, director Mirlan Abdykalykow takes us on a journey through time into the easily vulnerable heart of a family and into the dreamlike nature. More

Nabat and her husband Iskender, an old and sick ex-forestry worker, live in a small isolated house far from the village. War has been raging for some time and their son has been killed at the front. Their sole means of survival is the sale of milk from their only cow that Nabat takes to the village every couple of days. As the shadow of war envelopes the region the village is slowly deserted by its inhabitants. Following Iskender’s death Nabat has to survive in a now abandoned village under the regard of a she-wolf. 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

Six-year-old Yusuf has just begun attending primary school where he is learning how to read and write. His father, Yakup, is a beekeeper. He goes about his trade deep inside the woods where he hangs up his bee hives in the treetops of the highest trees. The mountain forest is a place of deep mystery to Yusuf and he derives great pleasure from accompanying his father there. One morning Yusuf tells his father about a dream he had the night before. Yakup turns on him curtly telling him never to share his dreams with others. The same day, Yusuf is asked to read out a text in front of the class. 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

Self-discovery journey of two girls in their mid twenties while they travel along the Ecuadorian mountains and coasts. Esperanza (Hope) and Tristeza (Sadness) will not find postcard views or perfect love, but their journey will teach them there’s a world beyond that. More

Under the encouragement of the Chinese government, the traditional way of life of the nomads of the Mongolian plains change. Once a culture with a great emphasis on raising horses on the grassy plains, they are encouraged to move into the cities to work as industrial workers. However, one family tries to resist this change, trying to raise money to send their child to school by selling yogurt. Unfortunately, this is hardly sufficient and they are forced to sell their beloved horses. More

Discontentment reigns in a Kyrgyzian village: money is not flowing as expected, everyone is trying to arrange his own business, if necessary secretly, communism is still finding adherents and the rustler Taschmat is at work, pursued by the village police man Salamat. The villagers belief in better times is weak, as well as their belief in a fair God. Be it Allah or Jehova, they prefer devoting themselves to terrestrial joy. While some are managing to profit from the situation, others are getting nothing. More

When Beijing journalist Ga Yu arrives at the mystical camp of the Kekexili Mountain Patrol, he witnesses a Tibetan funeral and a village in mourning. Ga Yu is determined to uncover the real story behind the mysterious disappearance of patrol volunteers, the killing of rare Tibetan antelopes and the rumor that the Mountain Patrol collaborates with the poachers. Ga Yu joins a patrol headed out into 40,000 square kilometers of wilderness. More

The centre stage of this story there is a boy who is ill-famed as the child of a wolf and is said to be frosty, along with his seductive mother and a hunter and shaman. After the boy has made an attack, he starts for an initiation journey, together with his mother and the hunter, who's also her lover. During the trip, which is nestled in the nature of the Kazakh mountain scenery, the hunter tries to inseminate his vitality and his insights to the boy by bringing him near the beauty of nature and letting him discover friendship and death. More

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Beshkempir (The Adopted Son) takes its title from the name of the boy whose story it tells. His life is sunny and carefree, spent in childhood games, until the day he hears terrible news from his playmates: he is not his parents’ biological child. Overnight, his best friend becomes his rival and the young girl of his dreams starts going bicycling with somebody else. His pleasant and peaceful existence is over: if his parents are not his own, Beshkempir feels he has lost his whole identity. He tries to gradually overcome the problems that arise from this new situation. More

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A blind master wanders through a mythic landscape of a terrific beauty to play his songs and sing his ballads. His whole life he's had one hope, one dream of another world: According to a prophecy he shall be able to see, if he has broken 1000 of his banjo strings. His blind disciple, on the contrary, doesn't want to rely on one hope. He longs for a woman's love. Does sight await the saint when the 1000th string breaks? Can the disciple's strength of character overcome provincial prejudice to win the hand of his love and a place in the village? More

The young teacher Li Mingguang is to be murdered in the north of China because of having taken the virginity from the young girl Li Pingwa. The whole family wants to take revenge on him for that, even the whole village. Critical of society, the film is about the backgrounds origin of the deed. This is shown through the inquiries on the part of the prosecution, the conversations between the villagers and the social structures of the place. More

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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

Sebastian Mamani returns to his Aymara community from which he was expelled long ago. He is carrying the great mask of death, he must dance until he died, in a kind of atonement for the sins that caused his exile and as a way to be reborn in his lost cultural identity. More

Norbu is a nomad who lives with his wife and his child in the mountainous highland of tibet as a shepherd. He belongs to an ethnic minority and from time to time he sees himself compelled to act as a horse thief in order to provide his family with food. But the day Norbu tries to steal some treasures of a temple the community excludes and banishes him. Living in exile, he loses his son. After his last theft of a horse he sacrifices himself in order to save his wife and his second child. More

Peaceful living and dying are a central theme in this masterpiece by the Japanese Shohei Imamura, a literary film adaptation in the mountain region of Narayama. In a small mountain village on the edge of a valley, all who have turned seventy must leave the community and climb a certain mountain to die. Anyone who defies tradition brings misfortune to his own family. Orin is 69 years old and is about to climb the mountain this winter. But first she has to make sure that her eldest son Tatsuhei finally finds a wife. More

The film is a study of the 20th century cult of personality - the myth, the lure and the corruption of the political hero who is a fusion of two characters. Drawing from the so-called Dilessi incident of 1870 (updated in the film to the dawn of the twentieth century), this Megalexandros is a bandit of the sort that typically plagued nineteenth century Greece. More

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