A small town shortly before the end of the GDR: 15-year-old Ulla lives with her mother in a dilapidated old building where not even the electricity works properly. Economy of scarcity and national bankruptcy are visible everywhere. Only higher party comrades live in the lap of luxury. When Ulla meets Winfried after a summer bathing trip, the two fall in love. Winfried is the son of an influential general director and owns things from West Germany that others only dream of: a computer, a games console, a walkman. On an excursion with her biology class, the high school student discovers that a dacha is being built in the middle of the nature reserve and the creek has been dammed. Winfried's father turns out to be the culprit, but the mayor is on his side. Ulla rebels against this environmental destruction connected to political corruption and organizes a protest. Her activism not only endangers her own future, but also her first great love.
An uncompromising and controversial short set in the Scandinavian suburbia on the hottest day of the summer. A sister reluctantly babysits her little brother. Two young boys catch her attention, and she makes a crucial decision.
Cristi has just moved to an unknown country, far away from family and friends. At first, she is happy for the challenge. But soon she begins to question her place in this new world that seems to be a lost town, made of absences, distances, silence and indifference. '4242' is the story of a young female immigrant, a story of a teenager's anguish who is trying to redefine her identity after being forced to leave home.
An Irish Catholic family returns to 1930s Limerick after a child's death in America. The unemployed I.R.A. veteran father struggles with poverty, prejudice, and alcoholism as the family endures harsh slum conditions.
Young love blossoms amongst a group of Athenian teenagers during a boisterous summertime idyll, in the raw, romantic and anarchic feature debut from Greek New Wave director Sofia Exarchou. One of the most eagerly awaited films to come out of Greece in recent years, Sofia Exarchou's feature debut is a coming-of-age story that presents a summertime idyll from the perspective of Athenian youths. It allows us to see the fragility they try to conceal, and at the same time shows them to be unwaveringly resilient despite the socio-economic troubles that affect their destinies.
Akira is a high school transfer student with a deteriorating relationship with his father. When he arrives at his new school, he stumbles onto a classmate being bullied. His intervention triggers two new friendships — one with the victim Scott and the other with Elizabeth — the classmate who aids him after he is knocked out. Scott has a worse problem than the bullies — he has not come out at home yet. But Elizabeth may have an even bigger problem: she is a social pariah because she keeps acting as though someone or something is after her. Meanwhile, Akira’s home front situation is going from bad to worse.
On her last night in town, a shy teenager sneaks out with her best friends to throw caution to the wind and confess her feelings to her longtime crush.
A Jewish woman named Jettel Redlich flees Nazi Germany with her daughter Regina, to join her husband, Walter, on a farm in Kenya. At first, Jettel refuses to adjust to her new circumstances, bringing with her a set of china dishes and an evening gown. While Regina adapts readily to this new world, forming a strong bond with her father's cook, an African named Owuor.
The story is set at the beginning of the 20th century in Sicily. Salvatore, a very poor farmer, and a widower, decides to emigrate to the US with all his family, including his old mother. Before they embark, they meet Lucy. She is supposed to be a British lady and wants to come back to the States. Lucy, or Luce as Salvatore calls her, for unknown reasons wants to marry someone before to arrive to Ellis Island in New York. Salvatore accepts the proposal. Once they arrive in Ellis Island they spend the quarantine period trying to pass the examinations to be admitted to the States. Tests are not so simple for poor farmers coming from Sicily. Their destiny is in the hands of the custom officers.
The struggle to survive, for a generation, torn between wanting to leave its country, yet bound by blood to home.
Šestapadesát neomluvených hodin
A man from communist Czechoslovakia unexpectedly meets his childhood love on a flight to Cuba. When they stop over in Canada, he has a plan… but can he trust her?
Sweden, 1849. A poverty-stricken family decides to move to America in the hope of finding a better and more prosperous life. Although they know the journey will be dangerous and the pressure of facing a new life in a strange and wild land is great, they are determined to succeed.
A corrupted border agent decides to clean up his act when an impoverished woman's baby is put up for sale on the black market.
Mistakenly landed in Corsica, Mehret, a young woman in exile, is forced to cross the island to to reach Italy. Survival and walking are her only concerns, the East coast her destination.
When her intellectually disabled sister enters the after school program at her school, a young teen struggles to keep her worlds appart.
"Baba" is a bitter melodrama set in Istambul. A father is not able to earn enough money to feed his family. He is waiting to emigrate to Germany. When his landlord's son kills a man while drunk, the father is prepared to answer for the deed himself, provided that the landlord supports his wife and children. As there is little difference for the father between ten years in prison or ten years in a foreign country, he regards this to be the best solution.
Robert, a jaded middle-aged New Yorker, travels to Belgrade to make some quick cash by marrying someone for U.S. immigration papers. The plan goes awry when the money never arrives, leaving Robert stuck in Serbia. Meanwhile in New York, Banko, the young Serb whose girlfriend Robert is to marry, fights to come up with the cash.
In love with a girl that smells of oranges while in a complicated relationship with his father, Darek is gentle, strong and devoted to his little sister and their herd of horses. Darek's world is a story about the joy and pain of growing up in the isolated yet beautiful Lusatian Mountains. Here, horses are not expensive specimens of racing stables but beings you should care for and love. Not even that is enough in life though, as Darek finds out nearing the Summer's end, closing his childhood definitely. However, just like any ending, this is a start of something new.
With only his wife by his side, a promising young boxer flees communist Poland to chase his dream of becoming the greatest fighter in history.