Firmeza

Mildred and Doris are two middle-aged white women, from very different backgrounds, who become lovers and set up house together. Film explores the pleasures and uncertainties of later-life emotional attachment and lesbian identity in a culture that glorifies youth and heterosexual romance.

Two twin brothers, Romain and Sylvain, live together in an isolated house by the ocean. Between them, violent relationships that oscillate between love and hate. The guardians of the house watch, fascinated and powerless, their dangerous games. Until the day when Hélène, who has already lived with them, returns to look for Sylvain, with whom she has chosen to live.

Jas is the story of a young, English-Iranian girl, and her unlikely meeting with a racist war veteran. It is a story of the desire to escape, and the impossibility of escaping oneself. Alice Trueman won the Red Rock Entertainment Film Competition 2016 to make this short film, which is currently in post-production.

At the age of seventeen, Irina Chistyakova looks back at an international concert career spanning ten years. Irina is the youngest of the four protagonists of the film Russia's Wonder Children made in 2000. By now seventeen years old, she is going through a drama that many prodigies experience: while they were children, they were able to stun audiences with the contrast of their delicate appearances and precocious talents. Like Irina, Nikita Mndoyants (18), Dmitry Krutogolovy (19), and Elena Kolesnichenko (25), are still showered with praise and distinction. But what price did they have to pay for it?

Role play exploration turns into a boundary shattering experience.

Documentary on the life and accomplishments of the members of this uniquely talented musical family. The film focuses on the Figueroa family’s history within the context of its creative universe, dating back to the 19th century. Through the use of photographs, historic film footage, recordings, sheet music, newspaper clippings, and posters, the musical trajectory of the family is brought to life and their role in transforming the musical history of Puerto Rico and the world is portrayed.

A group of children, fleeing the war, is taken to Luanda accompanied by a nun. When they reach the aeroplane, 12-year-old N'Dala decides to leave the group and to reconnoitre the city. The nun then starts her unceasing quest for the missing boy. N'Dala, only carrying a textile bag and a doll made of wire, walks through the busy streets filled with people and traffic. Later he finds the tranquility of the island off the coast, where he meets the old fisherman Antonio, with whom he becomes friends. Not much later, he meets the lively, whimsical Zé, who is a little older than he is. N'Dala starts to experience the city and its inhabitants as increasingly forbidding and he would most like to return to the countryside from whence he came. Then he meets Joka, a fringe figure who persuades him to help with a robbery in exchange for money. With this film, Maria Joao Ganga wanted to provide a realistic sketch of the bitter political situation in Angola. One of her most important motivations ...

Documentary on one of Brazil's most controversial personalities: Getúlio Vargas, an ex-president.

This documentary profiles iconic journalist Helen Thomas who has held a front-row seat at White House press conferences for more than 60 years.

Marking a stylistically and philosophically turn away from the earlier features, The Sand Rose is Reis and Cordeiro’s most abstract, conceptual and literary work. The film’s collage structure gathers texts from multiple sources – including Kafka and Montaigne – and crafts a world of theatrical artifice far from the documentary inspired naturalism of Ana and Trás-os-Montes. Reis and Cordeiro’s least known film has lingered in obscurity and never recovered from the unfairly negative reviews that resulted in its severely limited release. Reis died less than two years later, just as he and Cordeiro were about to begin an ambitious adaptation of Juan Rulfo’s Pedro Parámo. - Harvard Film Archive

While observing others, Paula is also, herself, observed. ' Know the difference between an old maid and a spinster? The old maid does not have a choice. '

La torre de Babel

The inspiring life story of the late photojournalist, artist and activist Dan Eldon, who abandoned a comfortable life in London to document the struggle, heartbreak and hope of a war-torn and famine-ridden region of Africa.

In the turbulent aftermath of the Tunisian revolution, young Samia flees her homeland. She braves hostile seas in the crossing to France, but once there she finds that her struggles have only just begun. With no friends, no family, and — most crucially — no immigration papers, Samia has to figure out how to make a life and a living in a foreign land. She meets a young man, Imed, and soon finds work in the employ of the elegant Leila. But her presence in Leila's middle-class household triggers a shift in its dynamics, and soon Samia is enmeshed in a web of sexual tension.

Jorge de Sena was forced to leave his country. First he moved to Brazil, and later to the USA. He never returned to Portugal. During his 20-year-long exile, he kept an epistolary correspondence with Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen. These letters are a testimony of the profound friendship between the two poets, letters of longing and of desire to “fill years of distance with hours of conversation”. Through excerpts and verses, a dialog is established, revealing their divergent opinions but mostly their strong bond, and their efforts to preserve it until their last breaths.

A film director and her muse who was a student activist in the 1970s, a waitress who keeps changing jobs, an actor and an actress, all live loosely connected to each other by almost invisible threads. The narrative sheds its skin several times to reveal layer upon layer of the complexities that make up the characters' lives.

A nurse traffics the ID cards of demented patients on the black market of identity theft. Driven by easy cash, and an addiction to morphine, she struggles to keep tabs on her emotional void, and a growing fear of punishment.

A boy, a girl. They live in the same building. They share a passion for music. But when they meet in the elevator, Théo doesn’t see that Élise is blind. It’s hate at first sight. Love takes its time. Will that early misunderstanding bring them together or drive them apart?

Tairo, a young lion-tamer, is unhappy. Losing his lucky charm gives him a reason to set off for a journey across Italy in search of Arthur Robin, a former Mister Universe, who gave him the charm a long time ago.

When Tsanko Petrov, a railroad worker, finds millions of lev on the train tracks, he decides to turn the entire amount over to the police. Grateful, the state rewards him with a new wristwatch… which soon stops working. Meanwhile, Julia Staikova, the head of PR for the Ministry of Transport, loses his old watch. Here starts Petrov’s desperate struggle to get back not only his old watch, but his dignity.