Land of Nod

Le deuil de la cigogne joyeuse

A single mother, plagued by the violent death of her husband, battles with her son's fear of a monster lurking in the house, but soon discovers a sinister presence all around her.

Freelance journalist Jan Schulte hopes for a job at the online portal of Berlin newspaper “Die Republik” when he discovers a potential scandal. Federal minister of health Elisabeth Stade apparently helped her brother’s search for a heart transplant by moving him up the waiting list illegally. But then Schulte’s colleague Britta claims the compromising material is a fake. Editor-in-chief Weishaupt and publisher Winter refuse to run the article. As Jan keeps on digging into the scandal, investigating state secretary Katharina Pflüger and political advisor Frank Gruber, his evidence is suddenly stolen from the newspaper office, and soon a competing tabloid breaks the story...

Directed by Ariane Louis-Seize, this tribute film was created as a gift for Lorraine Pintal, director of Montreal’s Théâtre du Nouveau Monde. Featuring some of the most memorable characters and performers of Pintal’s career, the film’s succession of surreal scenes from different dramatic worlds introduces viewers to the exceptional woman of theatre, stage director, and friend whom they consider to be the “ghost light” of Quebec theatre.

The author Jurga Ivanauskaitė (1961-2007) was considered a pioneer of contemporary Baltic literature well beyond the borders of Lithuania. Her work deals intensively with the tension between religion, sexuality and emancipation. Film documents and interviews serve to reconstruct the life of this independent and willful woman - from her childhood to her artistic breakthrough as a companion of the Lithuanian rock and punk scene, but also depicting her spiritual side, which brought her all the way to India, where she turned to Buddhism. She is shown as fighting for the Dalai Lama and a "free Tibet", shown as a literary mind, but first and foremost she is shown as a woman who stood bravely in the face of inconvenience, pain and inner demons.

This story follows a young student, who is orphaned as she grows to adulthood in the shadow of the 1956 Hungarian uprising. Coming from the Communist intelligentsia, she sees her friends and family react differently. Her lover, a married factory manager, supports the patriots and later assists fellow workers in staging a strike. Meanwhile her sister and others express anger at being forced from their homes during the revolution and continue to express a hatred for the rebels afterwards. But in the end they realize that for all people, real life is not possible after the revolt and its brutal suppression by the Soviets and their collaborators.

The courageous, life-altering decision to never let anyone bully him ever again – not even his own father – leads a 15-year-old gay teen to fully embrace his true identity.

Chick Strand's SOFT FICTION is a personal documentary that brilliantly portrays the survival power of female sensuality. It combines the documentary approach with a sensuous lyrical expressionism. Strand focuses her camera on people talking about their own experience, capturing subtle nuances in facial expressions and gestures that are rarely seen in cinema. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with The Film Foundation in 2015.

Artist and director Laurel Nakadate takes us beyond the prepackaged and sanitized world of the Jonas Brothers and Hannah Montana to the true heartland of America and the tween-aged girls that inhabit it. In Kansas City, pop culture is something to be twisted and reshaped, relationships are either nonexistent or refabricated, and time is unstructured and teasing. At the heart of these girls' lives—and this innovative work of cinema—is a quest for understanding and a sense of place. The risks run and solutions posed engender both laughs and tears. The film's amateur actors and nonlinear narrative bring an unnerving, utterly human face to the challenges of young womanhood in a world that would prefer that girls watch the Disney Channel.

Seventeen-year-old Athena Dizon unwittingly plays a trick on resident heartthrob and bad boy Kenji de los Reyes. All of a sudden, she finds herself pretending to be his girlfriend to make an ex jealous; however, she falls in love with him.

An accidental meeting between a man being pressured to propose to his girlfriend and a runaway bride.

In this new stand-up special, Norm Macdonald delivers sly, deadpan observations from an older -- and perhaps even wiser -- point of view.

Just one year ago, citizens joined together at Place de la République in Paris to demonstrate against labor reforms, the El Khomri law. This rapidly became an opportunity to invent another way of handling politics. It was the beginning of Nuit Debout. The film follows closely this social movement's inner core, a new kind of citizen's and democratic parliament, without representatives or leaders, which attempts to allow everyone the chance to speak. How do we speak in unison without speaking with a single voice?

Documentary looking at a century of cycling. Commissioned to mark the arrival of the 2014 Tour de France in Yorkshire, the film makes full use of stunning British Film Institute footage to transport the audience on a journey from the invention of the modern bike, through the rise of recreational cycling, to gruelling competitive races. Award-winning director Daisy Asquith artfully combines the richly-diverse archive with a hypnotic soundtrack from cult composer Bill Nelson in a joyful, absorbing watch for both cycling and archive fans.

The movie shows a smattering of images from the story of Wilhelm Jensen's Gradiva. The subject is sublimated desire.

On April 26, 2012, six people entered an Isolated Confined Environment with the mission to simulate a trip to Mars. Their mission was a catastrophic failure.

Anna and Ira prank a local woman by writing her letters from a secret admirer. The prank takes a more serious turn when the local women goes missing,

Therese, the mayor's wife in a Lebanese village, joyfully prepares for an overnight visit of her daughter's suitor and his parents. She excitedly shares the happy news of the engagement with pictures of her beloved brother who was killed by a Syrian bomb 20 years ago and is still bizarrely present in every corner of her house. Only when the long-awaited guests are at her doorstep, she discovers they are Syrian; this engagement will only happen over Therese's dead body!

After an ambiguous Snapchat video featuring Bilel and Adil, rumors start spreading about the two friends. To save their reputation, each of them tries to find a girlfriend. Their hunt for a date doesn’t quite go as expected.

Lila and Mo meet at a bus stop. Lila has a paralyzing speech impediment. Mo is chatty and exuberant. Lila is preparing for her exams. Mo illegally races cars for a living. Opposites attract, and they fall in love. But Mo carries a secret burden…