Scenery

Travelling up and down the majestic river Congo on a disheveled boat, the young orphan Antoine Kolosoy composed his first songs on a beat up old guitar. As he gained renown, the young “Wendo,” as he was now known, was persecuted by the church and his music banned by the Belgian Colonial authorities, who feared his joyful rhythms would stir unrest. Wendo became a professional boxer for a time, but he never put down his guitar for long, and when his first album was released in 1948 he became the first superstar of Congolese Rumba. More

THE HOUSE OF SAND brings together for the first time two of Brazil’s most celebrated actresses. Academy Award nominee Fernanda Montenegro and Palme d’Or winner Fernanda Torres – real-life mother and daughter – shine in this unique film about the lives of three generations of women. They persevere as they are challenged by the forces of Mother Nature and the tough, inhospitable sand dunes of northern Brazil, which play pivotal roles in their lives. More

In an amazingly beautiful place, on the bank of the wide Don, in a remote, half-destroyed village, surrounded by only steppe for hundreds of miles, a real drama takes place. An unexpected passionate love between a young man and a married woman literally destroys the lives of not only the main characters, but also their close ones. 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

In Buenos Aires, a few days before traveling to Spain with his beloved wife Liliana Rovira to visit their son Pedro, the leftist Literature professor Fernando Robles is compulsory retired in the University, and he concludes that it is impossible to live with his pension. The crisis in Argentina does not allow Fernando to get a new job, and his wife decides to sell her family's apartment and move to a small farm near Villa Dolores to reduce their expenses. Fernando comes up with the idea to grow lavender and sell the oil to the perfume industry. More

Don Justo hands over the running of his grocery store to his overbearing son and daughter-in-law and escapes to search for his lost dog Badface. Roberto is a love-struck obsessive-compulsive traveling salesman who drives to San Julián to surprise one of his clients by bringing a cake for her son's birthday. Finally, María Flores travels to San Julián with her daughter because she has won a spot on "Multicoloured Casino," a fusty TV game show. The film captures a lot of small details that make a realistic and moving depiction of life in southern Argentina. More

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In the sixties, the people of Mali awoke each morning to the sound of Boubacar "KarKar" Traoré's voice on the radio, singing of independence. Everyone in Mali remembers having danced to his hits. But since his music was only played on the radio, he didn't earn enough money to live on and he had to stop playing music to work as a tailor and a salesman to feed his family. A few years later, he is dealt a cruel blow: his beloved wife, Pierrette dies. More

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In Russas, a poor, desolate and dry settlement in the arid backlands of the northeast of Brazil, the countrywoman Darlene de Lima Linhares lives together with her three husbands - Osias, Zezinho and Ciro - and two children. She has managed her simple life with them, taking from each one what he's able to give best. A very special story in the middle of nowhere. More

A Japanese man searches the internet looking for his dream car, a 1967 Citroen DS (in French: Déesse, or "Goddess") . He locates one in Australia and travels there to buy it. Upon his arrival he finds the seller dead. A 17 year-old blind girl tells him she can take him to find the real owner. Together they embark on a strange and erotic journey into the arid Australian desert, populated by abandoned mining towns - a desolate land and a dark haunting past. 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

Yumiko is a young woman from Osako, whose life is defined by the death of her loved ones. She lost her grandmother at the age of twelve, and her husband Ikuo, who is the reincarnation of her grandmother to her, commits suicide some months after the birth of their child. Once more Yumiko loses a person she had really loved. Five years later she marries Tamio, a man who lives by the sea together with his eight-year-old daughter from his first marriage. Her pain has ceased until the day she returns to her place of birth and gets caught up by her memories. More

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«A Place in the World» by Adolfo Aristarain, looks at people who, having fought for a better world, are in the aftermath of defeat. Federico Luppi plays the main character as a teacher who is back from along exile he shared with his doctor wife, Cecilia Roth. Both are living with their teenaged son, Batyi, in a San Luis valley seven hundred miles away from Buenos Aires. While baking bread for his poor pupils, Luppi inspires and leads a community effort aimed at getting fair prices for the farmers' output, sidestepping ruthless landowner Rodolfo Ranm. More

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This film is an homage to the rich an complex history of Latin America. Without any narrative sequence, but with a serie of images, music and sounds, the spectator gets transported through Mexico's history. More

A fisherman, Kishore, marries a young girl accidentally when he visits a nearby village. After their wedding night, Kishore's young bride is kidnapped on the river. On losing his wife, Kishore becomes mad. Meanwhile, his young bride fights with the bandits, jumps into the river and is saved by some villagers. Unfortunately, the young bride knows nothing about her husband, she doesn't even know her husband's name. The only thing she remembers is the name of the village Kishore belongs to. Ten years later, she attempts to find Kishore with their son. More

On nice summer day Jumpei Niki, a Tokyo based entomologist and educator, is in a seaside village collecting specimens of sand insects. As it is late in the day and as he has missed the last bus back to the city, some of the villagers suggest that he spend the night there, they offering to find him a place to stay. That place is the home of a young woman, whose house is located at the bottom of a sand pit accessible only by ladder. He later learns that the woman's husband and child died in a sandstorm, their undiscovered bodies buried somewhere near the house. More

The film tells the story of Nita, a beautiful young woman who lives with her family, refugees from East Pakistan, in the suburbs of Calcutta. Nita is a self-sacrificing person who is constantly exploited by everyone around her, even her own family, who take her goodness for granted. Her life is ridden with personal tragedy: she loses first her fiancé, then her job and finally her health by contracting tuberculosis. It is only when she collapses that her family begins to realize what they have done to her. More