Caught in forbidden love, Yong Joon defects from North Korea, leaving Jae Sung behind. Years later, a reunion forces him to choose between past and present.
A New York gangster and his girlfriend attempt to turn street beggar Apple Annie into a society lady when the peddler learns her daughter is marrying royalty.
A pious old man, who is a proponent of suicide attackers, comes to Kabul to visit his only son, who, after the holy war had remained in the Soviet Union. He had enrolled his son in a religious school "to study the Koran and return to the village as a Mullah". In Kabul he learns that his son had decided to become a divine suicide bomber so as to go to Heaven. The film presents two different forces of the inner world of the protagonist father: paternal feelings and the holy religious ideology. The spectator witnesses how he loses his only son and holy belief. Shot in chaotic and dirty Kabul, the film portrays the incorrect interpretation of religion and the conflict of generations.
After defecting from North Korea, Loh Kiwan struggles to obtain refugee status in Belgium, where he encounters a dejected woman who has lost all hope.
A neo-nazi sentenced to community service at a church clashes with the blindly devotional priest.
North Korea, facing international sanctions, seeks assistance from a Hungarian NGO to build churches in Pyongyang as a way to bypass the sanctions. The NGO proposes organizing a revival meeting with international Choir organizations, leading the Ministry of 5 Securities to apprehend believers. The "Victory Orchestra," a replacement ensemble, is actually composed of underground Choir members. As they sing hymns openly for the first time, their true identity as underground believers is revealed, creating moments of laughter, tears, and emotion.
In WW2, twelve year old Soviet orphan Ivan Bondarev works for the Soviet army as a scout behind the German lines and strikes a friendship with three sympathetic Soviet officers.
In feudal Korea, a group of starving villagers grow weary of the orders handed down to them by their controlling king and set out to use a deadly monster under their control to push his armies back.
Poongsan has the unenviable - and death-defying - job of delivering messages across the North and South Korean border to separated families. When South Korean government agents ask him to smuggle in In-ok, the lover of a high-ranking North Korean defector, into the South, the damsel and rescuer fall in love instead.
Bite, directed by Nisma Qureshi, is a short film that focuses on hunger, mental illness, disease and the struggles of anorexia nervosa. It features a young girl, played by Nisma Qureshi, trapped in a room with bare white walls and is only given an air mattress with a pink floral quilt. She is consistently dressed in a floral babydoll dress with light pink ballet flats. The girl is only given an apple to eat, which clearly does not sustain her. She is forcibly wrapped in plastic wrap by The Disease, played by Camryn Halfaker. Eventually the cycle displayed through the apple starts again, never awarding the young girl peace.
A chronicle of a few days in a small family, a story about the difficulties of human contacts, the complexity of love. The image of red apples - strong and clear, profound and lucid. Okeyev's "apple" bears a special meaning. Juices of the earth and sun, it is a lyrical symbol of happiness and harmony.
Anna, the child of Swiss-Korean parents, is torn between her culture and identity. When a strange North Korean man magically appears in her wardrobe, she not only learns more about herself, but also develops a precious friendship.
Over many years of division, North and South Korea have become like a hall of mirrors where it is difficult to tell the real from the false. Inspired by real people who have traveled between North and South amid this division, this film depicts a relationship between the two that is so deeply skewed that it is impossible to tell what anyone is working to achieve.
Mu-kwang volunteers to be a kitchen police of Sa-taek, the divisional commander, dreaming of success. One day, Mu-kwang meets Su-ryeon by chance, who is a young and beautiful wife of the commander. Soon, he feels a strong attraction by her.
From the late 1950s through the '70s, more than 90,000 of the ethnic Koreans in Japan emigrated to North Korea, a country that promised them affluence, justice, and an end to discrimination. KAZOKU NO KUNI tells the story of one of their number, who returns for just a short period. For the first time in 25 years, Sonho is reunited with his family in Tokyo after being allowed to undergo an operation there. Sonho’s younger sister Rie is at the centre of the film, and is not hard to recognise as the director’s alter-ego. In her documentaries DEAR PYONGYANG and SONA, THE OTHER MYSELF, Yang Yonghi told the story of her own life, and how, at age six, she experienced the departure of her three older brothers, who left their family for Pyongyang.
One morning, as kids are stealing apples from an old man’s orchard high above a seaside town, an earthquake hits. No one is hurt, and the townsfolk are non-plussed, but the old man is agitated: he alone is aware of the imminent tsunami and tries to warn the village. Based on a classic Japanese fable, The Orchard was made by one-man band Bob Stenhouse, who had been nominated for an Academy Award the previous decade for pioneer tale The Frog, The Dog and The Devil. Fans of the animator will recognise his lush, luminous hand-drawn style.
In 1951 ceasefire is declared, but two remaining armies fought their final battle on the front line Towards the end of the Korean War, a South Korean battalion is fiercely battling over a hill on the front line border against the North in order to capture a strategic point that would determine the new border between two nations. The ownership of this small patch of land would swap multiple times each day. Kang is dispatched to the front line in order to investigate the tacit case that’s been happening there.
On the morning of her first day at a new school, a girl practices different ways to greet her teacher in order to make a good impression. A bundle of nerves, she heads off to school, and, contrary to her expectations, is met with indifference by the teacher.
From the dungeons of the SARA Production crew comes Bad Apple, a story of power, family, and fruit. Stacy Cavendish slips on a banana peel one day, leading her to discover an age old rivalry that only she can solve. No one is safe from being chewed up and spit out. Try not to go bananas as you watch this twisted, mysterious action-packed drama.
Seven year old Sasha practices violin every day to satisfy the ambition of his parents. Already withdrawn as a result of his routines, Sasha quickly regains confidence when he accidentally meets and befriends worker Sergei, who works on a steamroller in their upscale Moscow neighborhood.