The film is a high-concept project with five stories exploring the themes of motherhood and pregnancy, directed by women filmmakers from five former Yugoslav republics. “Croatian Story” follows an anguished painter who must decide whether or not to keep one of her unborn twins, diagnosed with Down syndrome. “Serbian Story” finds an expectant mother in the same emergency room with a charming killer. “Bosnia-Herzegovina Story” centers on a financially strapped Sarajevo family whose son?s lover is pregnant. “Macedonian Story” unfolds in a clinic where a drug addict struggles to keep her baby, and “Slovenian Story” ends the omnibus on a humorous note with a nun who finds her own way to immaculate conception.
When a thief enters a house desperately looking for money, he finds something more valuable.
A French short film about a harrowed father-daughter relationship
Alba, 11 years old, passes her days in silence. She loves little animals. She has learned to cope with her mother's illness, helping her to use the bathroom. Alba plays silently so that her mother can rest during the day. One night Alba's mother gets worse, and has to be taken to the hospital. With no one else to take care of her, Alba is sent to live with her father, who she hasn't seen since she was three years old. Living with her father is almost unbearable. Embarrassment, her first kiss, visits to mother in the hospital, Edgar's tender efforts to get close to her, and bullying at school; these are some of the experiences that pave Alba's journey to puberty and to self-acceptance.
A luxury hotel in a conflict zone. Development aid worker Dorothea begins an affair with a young drifter, Alec, but what starts as sweet distraction brings her dangerously close to losing control.
Mauł returns to her hometown village to care for her grandmother, who’s suffering from cancer. Her grandfather distances himself from the illness. As her condition worsens, Mauł reconnects with her past and the wild nature surrounding her.
Two sisters cope with the unpredictable behaviour of their depressed, alcoholic mother. Based on the novel by Jacqueline Wilson.
The young and timid surgeon Zhang Wenli has lost contact with his best friend Ji Yinchuan after his study. He hopes to see the charismatic Ji Yinchuan at a reunion organized by his girlfriend, however he doesn't show up. Through flashbacks, where dream and reality are one, the relationship the three young ones had with each other during their study is slowly unraveled.
In the '70s, young Màrja leads a hippie lifestyle in Finland. During a peace march, she meets Fortunato, a young Sicilian, and falls in love with him. They marry and start a family, happily raising two daughters. However, times become hard and Fortunato suggests they move to his old town, where he can find work easily. Màrja accepts, but she'll have to clash with a close-minded and malicious environment as a foreigner in Southern Italy.
A short film about a young woman trying to find a way out of an abusive relationship.
A handful of migrants without papers decide to start a hunger strike. Day by day, overcoming the violence that they inflict upon themselves, they discover the greatness of their true cause. From this realisation they learn to affirm their common humanity.
Tiina decides to reconnect with his aged and bohemian father living alone. With her reluctant daughter and new husband, they move in and start to renovate the old house. However, neither the renovation nor facing the past is effortless.
Playing with Fire
Director Lydia Bobrova pictures the bleak life in the Russian countryside by showing some events in the life of three brothers and their families. The three brothers are different in character, but all suffer from the dreariness of kolchoz life. The title is derived from a nostalgic Russian song. The wild geese have the possibility of moving on to milder climes, a possibility that Russian country people don’t have.
Beat Down is an irreverent comedy about wrestling, family and following your dreams no matter how painful that can sometimes be. Fran Whiteway (Marthe Bernard, Republic of Doyle) is eighteen and a real firecracker. More than anything, Fran dreams of becoming a professional wrestler. Her single-father Whitey (Robb Wells, Trailer Park Boys) is a former-pro, aka White Lightning, with broken dreams of his own and is dead set against Fran wrestling. Fran is determined though and when Whitey's old rival Dark Thunder (Tony Nappo, Saw II) comes to town, she runs away to join his tour. Whitey is devastated and while he tries to get his daughter back, Fran learns the ropes of the wrestling game and of life itself.
Rebekka travels back to a hotel by the Norwegian fjords seeking revenge on the man who ruined her sister's life. Under false identity, she seeks out her deceased sister's violator and embeds herself into his idyllic family to destroy his life.
Lawyers must defend a prisoner accused of murdering two of his inmates during the Attica prison riots in 1971.
A mother urges the father of the child she bore out of wedlock to fulfill their son’s yearning for his father.
At her summer job, Ivana learns it's easy to create a circle of lies, fiction and love when you're bored.
A brother and sister return to their childhood home in order to remodel the space into a recording studio. The house soon turns out not to be as quaint as it seems. Terrifying memories emerge as the siblings spend a night in the house that has destroyed their past.