The Staircase

Frühstück mit einer Unbekannten

Thirteen-year-old Paula lives with her mother on a well-kept estate in a small town surrounded by nice neighbours. But Paula's view of normality has been sharpened by her extensive and consistent diet of horror movies.

It's 1947 and the borderlines between India and Pakistan are being drawn. A young girl bears witnesses to tragedy as her ayah is caught between the love of two men and the rising tide of political and religious violence.

The year is 1938, and Mahatma Gandhi's groundbreaking philosophies are sweeping across India, but 8-year-old Chuyia, newly widowed, must go to live with other outcast widows on an ashram. Her presence transforms the ashram as she befriends two of her compatriots.

A thirty-something southern woman searches for love, despite the burdens she carries with her.

Nacht vor Augen

In a beauty salon in Beirut the lives of five women cross paths. The beauty salon is a colorful and sensual microcosm where they share and entrust their hopes, fears and expectations.

The lives of five seemingly unrelated lost souls intertwine in Sweden’s chilly capital in this delicate and wryly funny ensemble film. A precocious yet untalented young writer, a friendless advertising genius, a tight-lipped workaholic, a shy upper-class boy with a secret crush, and a recently dumped young woman all come to realize hard truths about love and life over the course of several days.

An isolated farm in a remote part of the Jura region: this is where Pauline and Alex are living in complete self-sufficient harmony with nature. Their life project is sealed by their love, their ideals and their work. The couple is now ready to take the step towards total independence, and start producing their own electricity. The arrival of Samuel, who comes to install a wind turbine, deeply troubles Pauline, upsetting their relationship and their values.

Black comedy about a lucrative business. Grandmother, mother and daughter live together in a love-hate-relationship and run their business with divided responsibilities: via marriage ads they are looking for candidates. It’s the daughter that gets dressed and styled according to the new mission: no matter if vamp or tree-hugger she twists the men around her little finger until they clear their accounts from all the savings. The money ends up in coffee tins stored in grandma’s fridge. But where do the men end up when they discover the secret of the trio?

A young girl Marie faces the troubles of growing up when her mother takes a new boyfriend home.

For his 11th birthday, Felix' mother gives him money that he can spend however he wants. More than anything else in the world, Felix wants the soccer ball with the autograph of Cristiano Ronaldo. But the older boys tell him that turning 11 means that you will have to lose your virginity and that local girl Sisse is the right girl to help him - if he can pay.

In 1987, during the austere days of Thatcher’s Britain, a teenager learns to live life, understand his family, and find his own voice through the music of Bruce Springsteen.

Berlin provides the backdrop for this crime drama that centers on a military doctor falsely accused of dealing illegal drugs. Determined to prove his innocence, he escapes from the MPs and ends up holing up in the apartment his wife rented. He doesn't know that she has sublet the flat to a nightclub singer. When he finds out, he begs the singer to assist him. She is attracted to him and agrees. The doctor believes that his wife is behind the black-market dealings, but in the end, they find the real culprit.

After her much older husband forces a move to a suburban retirement community, Pippa Lee engages in a period of reflection and finds herself heading toward a quiet nervous breakdown.

B For Boy is a contemporary drama set in Nigeria, about one woman's desperate need for a male child; which reveals the discrimination of women in the names of culture and religion.

An affluent city is covered in snow, all seems perfect – on the surface. Divorcé Rolf is doing his best to rebuild his relationship with his daughter. Pregnant Lena appears to be living a faultless family life with her husband and son. Social worker Judith has a tough job and escapes it through her fantasies, whilst widowed Maria has finally built up the courage to invite her male acquaintance to a romantic dinner. In the course of one day, all of them will cross paths with the Bulgarian Mia, who works in the red-light trade and their seemingly perfect lives will never be the same…

A woman struggles with her self-image in a house run by a weight-obsessed mother, alongside a younger sister whose eating disorder has tragic coincidences.

As seen in flashback, this is the story of 43-year-old Julie a beautician who when 15 was forced by her mother to give up her baby for adoption. Her son, now 28, a minister, with his wife expecting, begins to search for his biological mother to find out his family medical history. She hears of his search and reunites.

Two young girls who live in a small town in Lower Austria dream of America, men and love. They live in Ternitz, they dream of Tennessee.