Soldier's tale

13 year old Lili fights to protect her dog Hagen, and is devastated when her father sets Hagen free on the streets. Still innocently believing love can conquer any difficulty, Lili sets out to save her dog. Failing in his desperate efforts to find his beloved owner, Hagen joins a canine revolt leading a revolution against their human abusers.

The war is over. Once a young sculptor, and now a soldier, he returned home. Married, there were children. In search of work, he was hired to make grave monuments. Time passed... At one time, visiting a cemetery with friends, he saw with different eyes all his work done over the years...

The way home for Aleksandr Rekhviashvili is not charted in the conventional sense. It takes the viewer along some peculiar roads and across a unique landscape: Georgian history and legend, politics and social stratification, religion and ethics. Allusive, stylized and allegorical from beginning to end, his long-banned The Way Home is in part a tribute to Rekhviashvili’s favorite director, Pasolini, especially to The Hawks and the Sparrows (1966). Together with the short film Nutsa (1971) and the widely acclaimed Georgian Chronicle of the 19th Century (1979; SFIFF 1983), The Way Home closes a triptych of films that represent Rekhviashvili’s poetic contemplation of Georgia’s past. It makes extensive use of poems by Bella Akhmadulina (the major female poet of the cultural ‘thaw’ of the ’50s and ’60s and a Georgian by descent), and of sets by Amir Kakabadze. Like other films in the trilogy, The Way Home is stunningly photographed in black-and-white.--Oxymoron

In this dreamlike film, a nameless father and his son, Aleksei, live together in an apartment in St. Petersburg. Aleksei's mother has died and consequently the two have a very close relationship. When Aleksei acquires a girlfriend, she refuses to take a back seat to his bond with his dad, and breaks up with him. Aleksei is also experiencing nightmares, dreading separation from his father to be a part of the military as his father was.

This film ballad is dedicated to those who never returned home from WW2. A group of retreating Soviet soldiers, crossing a lunar terrain in a desperate attempt to escape death, is attacked by a German fighter plane that appears like a bolt from the blue. One by one they are killed. Then suddenly, in an unlikely denouement bordering on the mystical, the attacker is shot down with a simple rifle. For ideological reasons that defy understanding this film, one of Viktor Hres’ earliest works, was shelved in 1967 by Soviet censors. In 2010, it was restored by the Debut Studio of the Oleksander Dovzhenko Film Studio with the support of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of Ukraine.

Two monks on a mission choose very different paths

Banned in the Soviet Union for its "negative" content and never released, Kalatozov was forced to retreat from filmmaking for seven years because of this film. The film sets out to illustrate the old adage, "For want of a nail, the battle was lost," showing how the inferior quality of something so trivial as a nail in a soldier's boot leads inexorably to the capture of an armored train. Kalatozov had intended to demonstrate the crucial and universal importance of efficiency in Soviet industry, but the government decided that his fable gave a negative impression of the Red Army's capabilities.

A poetized chronicle of the events taking place in one of the Georgian villages in the late 19th century, when, to save a forest, the innumerous intelligentsia could rally the people and oppose the industrialists…

The short film (conveyed in a parable-like story structure) follows a man devoted to himself and the blessings of his attributed god. He struggles to survive a primitive life and is forced to take action to ensure his own prosperity.

A full-blooded, interesting life has long eluded the house where a mother, father, son and daughter live. Trivial household matters, conversation at dinner about duty — that's all that connects them. The situation changes when it becomes known that the family inherited the village house, and that it will probably be necessary to enter into a struggle with the joint heirs. From the bottom of chests, old albums and documents confirming the priority of the family are extracted, and intrigues begin ...

Directed by Zaza Khalvashi.

Garib in the Land of Jinn

Lithuania, 1977. Memories of childhood, adolescence, and first love in a small provincial town, shown through complexity of human relations at this periodical film.

While Mike and Sara can candidly and concisely acknowledge their shortcomings, it doesn’t mean they’re comfortable with the position they find themselves in: completely incapable of curbing their spending, they’ve turned up on the doorstep of their affluent friend Paul in hopes that he can help administer some long overdue "aversion therapy".

"Welcome to the zoo," Samira is advised as she’s admitted to an in-patient care facility in the wake of a suicide attempt. As she slowly familiarizes herself with her fellow residents and their idiosyncratic traits, a makeshift community takes shape.

A prominent lesbian couple adopts a child who gets diagnosed with a genetic predisposition for violence, and they must contend with their hard-lined stance on acceptance while attempting to raise the perfect family in the spotlight.

Young and vulnerable Charlie discovers a secret entrance into a dream-like forest, and the line between perception and reality blurs.

Firas sails together with his Syrian countrymen towards Europe. While crossing the Mediterranean Sea a plane crashes near their boat. Among all the debris, one little girl miraculously survives. The refugees manage to bring her aboard the ship; in shock and confused. Firas is confounded by the presence of the girl. Soon his state of mind starts to work against him.

People seem to find their way in a rebuilt city. They live their lives and rush home at the end of a working day. Until a colossal eruption shakes the city and embraces it in a blanket of smoke. Modern interpretation of the bombing of Rotterdam, inspired by a poem by Dean Bowen.

A missionary’s wife questions her needs to "save souls" after finding solace in her new friendship with a Ngarrindjeri woman.