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2020 | 122 minutes

Antti Jokinen

Talented veteran filmmaker Antti Jokinen’s exquisite period piece is a biographical drama about groundbreaking Finnish painter, Helene Schjerfbeck (1862 – 1946). Set in 1915, the film finds the then 53-year-old Helene, now largely a forgotten artist, living in the countryside with her elderly mother. Her last exhibition was years ago, but Helene has continued to paint for herself out of a deep commitment to art. Her quiet, reclusive life changes when she is visited by an art dealer, who discovers Helene and her many impressive paintings and wants to organize a large solo exhibition. This leads to an even bigger change. As a result of this new interest in her work, Helene meets amateur painter Einar Reuter, who is a passionate admirer of Helene's art. Their friendship blossoms, as Einar soon becomes Helene's close confidante and, perhaps, the love of her life. Given that he is 19 years her junior, however, can their relationship last? A fascinating commentary on the role of women artists in the early 20th century, Helene is also an evocative portrait of a Finnish society in transition against the distant backdrop of World War I. An elegant and artful film, Helene also features a marvellous performance by Laura Birn in the title role.

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2018 | 103 minutes

Nevio Marasović

Successful Zagreb-based graphic designer Alan has a thriving career. His personal life, on the other hand, is another matter entirely. His intense, passionate, on-again off-again relationship with Marina is showing signs of deterioration. When this starts to negatively affect an important job he’s doing for a foreign client, Alan decides it’s time to get away and gain some perspective on his chaotic life. He heads to the island of Vis for a retreat at his father’s place. Trouble is, his father Bruno, an accomplished artist, is there and the two have had issues over the years. In addition, Alan soon learns that one of his ex-girlfriends, Barbara, is on that same island with her new fiancé, which brings a whole new set of tensions to the surface. Some retreat! By turns comic and poignant, Comic Sans is an insightful, decidedly offbeat dramedy about one man’s slow recognition of his life’s problems, his own flawed character, and his possible paths to a new beginning. Featuring a fine ensemble cast (particularly Janko Popović Volarić and Zlatko Burić as Alan and Bruno, respectively) and visually rich cinematography (in both the Zagreb and Vis locations), this film captured the Best Film Award at the 2018 Belgrade Film Festival.

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2019

Claude Lelouch

Legendary French cinema stars Jean-Louis Trintignant (Les Biches, The Conformist, Amour) and Anouk Aimée (La Dolce Vita, Lola, 8 1/2) reunite again in Claude Lelouch’s wistful, sweetly nostalgic second sequel to his classic 1966 romance, A Man and A Woman. (The first sequel, A Man and a Woman: 20 Years Later, arrived in 1986.) Now in his early 80s, former racing driver Jean-Louis Duroc (Trintignant) is convinced that his best years are behind him. He lives in a care facility, stubbornly refusing to participate in any home activities. He prefers to be alone, lost in his memories and dreaming of his former beloved, Anne (Aimée). Antoine, Jean-Louis’ son, resolves to find Anne and invite her to visit. And find her he does: she is a widow, running a small shop. When she does visit Jean-Louis, the reunion is an extraordinary moment for the characters, and for these veteran performers as well. As they get reacquainted, Lelouch interweaves footage from A Man and A Woman in clever, revealing ways, both contrasting past and present while stitching them together. Both whimsical and deeply moving about time’s passage, The Best Years of a Life’s spirit is captured when Jean-Louis says to Anne, with charm, humour, and a touch of playful regret, “We never could live together but we could die together.” As the film’s opening epigram from Victor Hugo states, ‘The best years of a life are those not yet lived.’ These two characters (not to mention Trintignant, Aimée, and Lelouch) offer ample proof of that.

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2019 | 112 minutes

Attila Szász

An elegant, noirish thriller about postwar identity, the latest film from talented director Attila Szász (The Ambassador to Bern and, shown at last year’s EUFF, Eternal Winter) is set in 1945 Hungary as World War II is ending and new, uncertain times are beginning. In the rubble and ruin of war’s aftermath, an opportunistic con man named Balász pretends to be a close friend of soldiers killed in the war and insinuates his way into their families and their bank accounts. It’s a dangerous game and gets him into such serious trouble he must flee Budapest to save his skin. When he is given shelter in a remote forest by a woman named Judit and her son, Balász’s con man trickery fades as he finds himself falling in love. Things go well in their passionate affair until Judit’s brutish husband returns home from the front. Choices now have to be made, not only about love, but also about whether to acquiesce to the occupying Soviet army or fight back against their presence. In love and in politics, Balász now understands, there’s no pretending anymore. Compelling.

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2018 | 104 minutes

Michael Noer

In this moody period drama set in mid-19th century rural Denmark, veteran Danish actor Jesper Christensen stars as Jens, a widowed, aging farmer who has mouths to feed at home but barely enough subsistence crop to survive. Struggling to make the most out of his meagre livestock and spotty wheat fields, Jens toils incessantly alongside his daughter, Signe, and nephews, Peder and Mads, praying constantly for a good harvest. In addition to storms and other natural disasters that further limit the farm’s productivity, an incident at the local church reveals what the local landowners really think of Jens. His luck appears to change, however, when a pair of wealthy Swedes offers to buy part of his farm. While intrigued, he holds out, preferring instead to partner with a neighbour who's also interested in marrying Signe. When the first offer evolves into one he cannot refuse, Jens has to decide between it and his daughter’s happiness. For his intense, compelling performance, Jesper Christensen was awarded for best actor at festivals in Chicago and Tokyo. In Tokyo, the film also took home the Special Jury Prize.

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2018 | 94 minutes

Peter Sant

Located somewhere between Shakespeare and Samuel Beckett, Peter Sant’s imaginative Of Time and the Sea weaves together the fantastical and the existential in its strange, beguiling tale. Set on an island, the story revolves around “the Old Man,” who believes that he was once a king. Together with his two daughters – the submissive “Auxiliary Girl” and the defiant “Girl in Orange” – they live day to day scrabbling for survival in a world where animal life has vanished due a strange sickness. Into their arduous existence drift several unusual characters: an obnoxious neighbour, a Chinese billionaire, and a handsome lost sousaphone player in search of his band. Meanwhile, the mysterious malady threatens to return and destroy this eccentric, precarious social order. Dreamlike and wondrous (and strangely timely, too), this film “confirms Sant as a talented auteur and should establish him as a name to watch on the arthouse feature circuit.” Matthew Boas, Cineuropa.

“Eerie, stunning, challenging and always compelling,” Paula Fleri-Soler, Sunday Times.

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2019 | 107 minutes

Aoife Crehan

Sometimes a shared surname and a death in the family can lead to some rather unusual circumstances. Such is the clever premise of Aoife Crehan’s debut feature film, The Last Right. It involves two passengers randomly assigned seats beside each other on a flight to Ireland who bond during the journey over a shared surname and a similar state of grief. Having lived abroad for years, Daniel Murphy is flying home for his mother’s funeral; Padraig Murphy is returning for the funeral of his brother, his last remaining next of kin. When Padraig dies on the flight, it’s assumed by authorities that, since they that the responsibilities for Padraig’s and his brother’s funerals are now his. were sitting together, Daniel belongs to the same Murphy family and Reluctantly, Daniel agrees. With his younger brother Louis and his friend Mary in tow, he embarks on a strange odyssey to bring Padraig’s body (in a simple cardboard coffin) to the final resting place in the north of Ireland where he and his brother will be buried together. Along the way, there will be complications involving mistaken identity, misunderstandings, and even a police chase. With its winning mixture of mirth and melancholy, not to mention cameo appearances by Colm Meaney and Brian Cox, The Last Right is one unforgettable Irish road trip.

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2018 | 99 minutes

Paul Negoescu

A bittersweet romantic comedy in the tradition of Italian ironist Nanni Moretti and the neuroses-fuelled early works of Woody Allen, The Story of A Summer Lover is the third feature by acclaimed writer-director Paul Negoescu, whose previous award-winning films have appeared at the Cannes, Berlin, Rotterdam, and Venice. This latest film revolves around Petru, a feckless forty-something professor of mathematics at the Polytechnic University of Bucharest, a man who leads a carefree life. Rather smug and self-satisfied, he brags to his friends that he lives in an open relationship with his partner, Irina, who overlooks that Petru occasionally has affairs with other women. He gets the shock of his middle-aged life when Irina not only announces that she is pregnant, but that she’s leaving him. Reeling from this double whammy, Petru is forced to change his lifestyle and grow up. But is he even capable of that? And will his friends be of help, or will they make the situation worse? A wry tale of male inadequacy, Story is an incisive and amusing assessment of modern relationships.

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2019 | 86 minutes

Víťo Staviarsky, Richard Staviarsky

A box office hit in Slovakia, this offbeat romantic comedy revolves around a complicated love affair between a man with a disability and a Romany woman. When Milan, a fairground salesman born with only one leg, discovers that Veronika, a Romany woman, has stolen one of his caramel cakes because she was desperately hungry, he takes pity on her and decides to buy her lunch. In return, Veronika offers him her services as a sales assistant in order to pay off her debt. The intense spark generated between these two socially marginalized figures leads to some very magical moments. Elated by their newly discovered love, they start making plans for a future together, but they must also face society’s attitudes. For their part, Veronika certainly does not mind that Milan has only one leg and Milan does not care in the least that Veronika is Romany, but will society accept them? In addition to being a marvelous, eccentric love story, the film also cleverly confronts issues of discrimination and racism in contemporary times. Written by the well-known Slovakian father-son duo of Vít’o and Richard Staviarsky, Loli Paradicka won the Audience Award at the 2019 Kosice Art Film Festival.

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2020 | 94 minutes

Andy Bausch

From veteran Luxembourg filmmaker and EUFF returnee Andy Bausch, whose films Back In Trouble and Rusty Boys screened in past editions, comes this clever, irreverent documentary about the social, political, and cultural shifts in the Grand-Duchy of Luxembourg during the tumultuous and, in many ways, defining decade of the 1980s. Blurring the lines between documentary and fiction, Bausch has as our guides two fictional characters (played by André Jung and Luc Schiltz) in the roles of a 1980s vintage cop show duo. Deftly interweaving archival footage from television news, music, and pop culture, Bausch creates a fascinating portrait of Luxembourg then and, by extension, Luxembourg now. Lost in the 80s surveys a lot of historical ground, including the country’s steel crisis, the birth of Luxembourg’s booming financial service industry, the rise of Green politics, other political protests, the emergence of a potent alternative culture, the series of infamous and anonymous bomb attacks on public buildings and infrastructure installations in the mid-’80s, the papal visit of John Paul II, and even the state of Luxembourg cinema. While specific to the national experience and memory of Luxembourg, this film also connects to and reflects upon what went on all over the world during that wild, strange, now faraway decade.

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2019 | 169 minutes

Václav Marhoul

Based on the controversial novel set in Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe by the late Jerzy Kosinski, The Painted Bird is a harrowing journey through some of the darkest regions of the war and of humanity. It is an episodic tale of an unnamed Jewish child wandering through war-ravaged villages and towns after being separated from his parents. Along the way he witnesses and experiences virulent anti-Semitism, brutal violence, and all manner of perversity. Struggling to retain his innocence and faith in humanity, he is confronted with examples of the worst in human behaviours and beliefs, as well as a few examples of people coping in these extreme circumstances with dignity and compassion. As powerful as it is profoundly disturbing, The Painted Bird is a potent, unflinching reminder of the appalling consequences, at the individual and collective levels, of ideologies of racism and hatred. Shot in black and white on 35mm film, Marhoul’s starkly rendered odyssey features an international ensemble cast that includes Stellan Skarsgård, Harvey Keitel, Julian Sands, and Udo Kier. While undeniably demanding and distressing, The Painted Bird is also “an exquisitely crafted work of cinematic art.” (Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal).

Note: This film contains disturbing images. Viewer discretion is advised.

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2019 | 98 minutes

Tuva Novotny

Content in her tidy, spotless home and predictable life, 63-year-old Britt-Marie (played brilliantly by legendary Swedish actress Pernilla August) is a creature of habit, routine, and order. Making dinners, doing laundry, and looking after her husband -- who when not away on business spends much of his time watching soccer on television -- keeps her happy and fulfils her modest dreams. That is, until she discovers her husband is having an affair. Shattered, she decides to leave him, find a job, and start over. The only employment immediately available is as a youth leader at a recreation centre in Borg, located in a remote and struggling small town. This job includes coaching a soccer team of 10-year-olds. Knowing nothing about soccer, coaching, or children, Britt-Marie steels herself and resolves to do a life makeover, and fast! An endearing tale of one woman’s resiliency, Britt-Marie Was Here is entertaining (and convincing) proof that life can begin again at any age.

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2019 | 149 minutes

Tanel Toom

This handsome, impeccably filmed family saga, spanning several decades, begins in 1872 in rural Estonia, and revolves around a young, idealistic farmer named Andres Paas. He and his wife Krõõt have big dreams. They purchased a farm and are determined to make a new life for themselves. As they quickly discover, it is an enormous task. Not only is the farm in a state of disrepair, it also has marshy soil that needs draining and many rocks have to be removed. Undeterred, Andres works tirelessly to improve things, hires assistants, and strives to become part of the local farming community. In the midst of these struggles, there appears another, more intractable obstacle: Pearu, a meddlesome, quarrelsome neighbour. Untrustworthy and malicious, Pearu has a bad reputation, having driven the previous two owners of Andres’s farm away. Andres is determined to make things work with Pearu, agreeing to his demands to dig a drainage ditch. The rivalry grows increasingly bitter as Pearu’s trickery and duplicity over the ditch lead Andres to take him to the local courts. Time passes and tensions mount, and Pearu’s transgressions repeatedly test Andres, who becomes obsessed with seeking ‘truth and justice,’ by any means necessary. It will rapidly take a toll on his family and those around him. Based on the classic eponymous Estonian novel, Truth and Justice is a winning blend of family saga, psychological thriller, and courtroom drama.

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2019 | 111 minutes

Markus Schleinzer

Based on the extraordinary true story of Angelo Soliman (1721-1796), a Nigerian born into slavery, the sophomore feature Markus Schleinzer (whose acclaimed debut, Michael, arrived in 2011), Angelo is a stylish, quietly incendiary drama about power and race. At the age of 10, Angelo is taken by force from his homeland. Surviving the arduous journey across the Atlantic, Angelo is purchased by a European countess in Vienna, who decides to turn him into the subject of an educational experiment. As time passes, Angelo grows closer to the Hapsburg society elites, becoming their costumed court curio and storyteller, telling exotic tales of faraway Africa to entertain this 18th century ‘enlightened’ Viennese high-society. To the shock of his ‘owners,’ he also secretly (and scandalously) marries a white woman, which will test not only the limits of Angelo’s social mobility, but Viennese society’s notions of itself as progressive. For its limpid, austere visual style, Angelo has drawn favourable comparisons to the work of both Stanley Kubrick and Michael Haneke (Schleinzer worked with Haneke as a casting director). Despite its 18th century setting, this impressive, daring film is as timely and relevant as ever in its dramatic depiction and critique of race relations.

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2018 | 118 minutes

Krzysztof Zanussi

A disquieting drama about the moral limits of science, this assured latest film by renowned veteran Polish auteur Krzysztof Zanussi (Camouflage, A Woman’s Decision, A Year of the Quiet Sun) is set on the eve of World War I and revolves around a manipulative and unscrupulous doctor. When his dangerous experimentation with a powerful new drug – ether – kills a young woman after he accidentally overdoses her for nefarious reasons, his dubious career appears to be over. Convicted and sentenced to hang for his heinous behaviour, he unexpectedly receives a last-minute reprieve. Relieved, he eagerly volunteers to be a military doctor at a distant outpost along the Polish border. At his new post he has almost no supervision and a very light workload, so he starts performing dangerous experiments with ether in the name of research. Feeling himself invulnerable, he forces his young assistant to help him do ever more reckless experiments. But, as the doctor will soon discover, he is actually anything but invulnerable, anything but in control. His dark fantasies of ultimate power over others are about to face a surprising challenge. Stylishly rendered, Zanussi’s film is a striking, sobering analysis of the sinister territory where science and power intersect. “…. a gripping historical drama.”--Deborah Young, Hollywood Reporter.

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2020 | 110 minutes

Dani de la Orden

A successful wedding planner, thirty-something Marina works hard at making other people’s weddings go smoothly and happily. As she admits, she does this lucrative job not because she is an incurable romantic, but rather because the reality is that "when people are in love, they don't care about money." Unlike her many customers, Marina enjoys a carefree life with no ties or long-term commitments. All is well until she falls head over heels for Carlos at a particularly hilarious wedding she’s organized. It seems love has found Marina. Trouble is, not only is Carlos about to get married, but also, unbeknownst to Marina, his fiancée is Marina's childhood friend Alexia, who is about to hire Marina her as their wedding planner. Talk about conflicts of interest! This sprightly romantic comedy, with spirited good humour, reveals once again that life is the thing that happens to us (and to Marina) when we are making other plans. From the director of Barcelona Christmas Night, shown at the EUFF in 2017.

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2019 | 98 minutes

Martin Turk

Fifteen year-old Klemen admires his older brother Peter. Raised by a single mother in a small town, Peter and Klemen are not only siblings and best friends, but also both dedicated tennis players who dream of escaping their surroundings and becoming world champions. The two are inseparable; that is, until Peter falls in love with Sonja. As Peter spends more and more time with her, Klemen grows alienated, angry, and soon begins plotting to foil the love affair and reclaim his relationship with his brother. Complicating matters further, Klemen is also becoming increasingly obsessed with Sonja’s beauty and sensuality. As his schemes grow more and more reckless, Klemen will have to face the consequences that his increasingly desperate actions are having on his family and the community. Spare and poetic, this coming-of-age story combines psychological intensity, simmering eroticism, and a sensitive, insightful portrait of the passionate confusions of adolescence.

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2018 | 96 minutes

Tonia Mishiali

Trapped in a loveless marriage, middle-aged Elpida has reached a critical moment in her life. Stuck in her modest apartment with a both indifferent and demanding husband, Costas, she’s also approaching what her gynecologist tells her is the normal life stage for menopause. Although she is anything but ready for it, this ‘change of life’ soon will take Elpida on some amazing journeys into love, freedom, and a new and better life. The only problem is that she finds it increasingly difficult to differentiate between imagination and reality, as her daydreaming is vivid and constant. When a handsome tradesman arrives to paint her apartment building’s exterior, Elpida really begins to experience, at many levels, a dramatic ‘change of life.’ But is it actually happening or is it just another fantasy? A fascinating mixture of drama and comedy, dream and reality, the emotionally powerful and engaging Pause has been described by The Hollywood Reporter as a “…striking directorial debut from writer-director Tonia Mishiali.”

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2018 | 137 minutes

Maria Peters

This inspiring transatlantic musical biopic is based on the true story of the brilliant, defiant spirit of Antonia Brico, the first woman to ever conduct a symphony orchestra. Born in the Netherlands and brought to the United States as a child in the 1920s, Antonia’s musical gifts soon guide her to want to lead an orchestra, an unimaginable idea for a woman in the male-dominated orchestral music scene of the time. Dissuaded from such dreams by successive music teachers, Antonia is undaunted. She returns to the Netherlands where she meets the famous conductor Willem Mengelberg, who actually encourages her dream and arranges for her to study in Berlin. She also meets Frank, perhaps the love of her life but a somewhat conventional man who is not sure about Antonia’s ambitions. After two years of intense life and study at the State Academy of Music in Berlin, is Antonia ready to take up the baton? Will she be permitted to? And will her dream of conducting destroy her love life? Set against the riotous and increasingly darkening interwar historical period of the late 1920s and 1930, The Conductor is an engaging story of passion and commitment, with an impressive performance by Christanne de Bruijn as Antonia Brico.

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2019, 94 minutes

Patrícia Sequeira

Part love story, part political thriller, Patrícia Sequeira’s Snu is a fascinating biographical drama inspired by actual events that both scandalized and transformed Portugal in the 1970s. The film revolves around the elegant, fearless Danish publisher Ebba Merete Seidenfaden, who became known as Snu Abecassis, a woman who would challenge and confront Salazar’s dictatorship. After moving to Lisbon with her husband Vasco Abecassis in the 1960s, Snu devotes herself to building her new publishing house. She repeatedly releases controversial books, defying the PIDE (the nation’s International and State Defence Police) and, consequently, attracting its menacing attention. If that weren’t enough, her life will soon change utterly from the moment she meets an interviewee for a new book, in the person of prominent politician and future Prime Minister Francisco Sá Carneiro. Almost instantly, he becomes the great love of her life. Their affair shocks the conservative Portugal of the 70s, and their public romance soon leads them into dangerous places and toward a mysterious, controversial fate.

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2019 | 104 minutes

Dzintars Dreibergs

One of the most expensive productions in Latvian cinema’s history, this impressive adaptation of the classic novel by Aleksandrs Grins is Latvia’s biggest box-office hit in over three decades. Based on Grins’ own experiences, Blizzard is the starkly vivid autobiographical account of Arturs, a 17-year-old farm boy thrust into the trenches of World War I. Witnessing the death of his mother at the hands of German soldiers, he is quickly conscripted with his father and brother to fight in one of Latvia’s first national battalions. Arturs is soon on the march, witnessing trench warfare and village to village combat, not to mention surviving the infamous gas attack in 1916 at the Island of Death battle. A powerful, visually stunning portrait of lost innocence that has drawn stylistic comparisons to Sam Mendes’ 1917 and Elem Klimov’s Come and See, Blizzard of Souls also sounds echoes of Andrei Tarkovsky’s Ivan’s Childhood. An unforgettable, affecting Latvian perspective on ‘the war to end all wars.’

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2018 | 118 minutes

Martin Makariev

The highest grossing movie in Bulgaria in 2018, this second feature by talented director Martin Makariev is a lively romantic comedy with an edge. It is the emotionally charged story of Lora Angelova (played by popular Bulgarian actress Yana Marinova, who also co-wrote the script), a dedicated, intelligent history teacher who is torn between her love of teaching and her not-so-distant past as a professional dancing competitor, which leads some to underestimate her intellect. Everything in Lora’s life seems in balance until she applies for the job to become the headmistress at her school. Suddenly, new forces in her life are at play, including an ambitious colleague who also wants the job, and will challenge her. Moreover, the school has just hired a new music teacher and he will have a say in who gets the position. Whom will he choose to side with, and what can Lora do about it? As the school’s prom night approaches, the answers become less and less certain in a situation made ever more complex (and, of course, entertaining) by the hearts, minds, and, in some cases, dancing shoes of those involved.

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2019 | 102 minutes

Ignas Jonynas

Featured in the New Directors section at the 67th San Sebastián International Film Festival, Ignas Jonynas’s second feature Invisible is a daring, stylish film about love, betrayal, and revenge. Once a rising star in the world of contemporary dance, Jonas is now well past his prime. Undaunted, he sets up a cunning strategy to reignite his career. Dreaming of new fame, he pretends to be blind in order to bluff his way onto a popular TV dance show. All are impressed at the amazing performance of this ‘blind’ dancing phenomenon. Meanwhile, an old acquaintance of Jonas, Vytas, is released from jail. Having served time for his wife’s murder, and hungry for revenge, Vytas is convinced he isn’t solely responsible for his wife’s death, and Jonas, her former lover, also shares the guilt. Now, Vytas is coming after Jonas for payback. With its jigsaw puzzle narrative structure and its assured, rigorous visual design, Invisible is an idiosyncratic, artsy thriller.

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2019 | 99 minutes

Peter Brosens, Jessica Woodworth

In this raucous fictional follow-up to their international 2016 mockumentary hit, King of the Belgians, the creative team of Peter Brosens and Jessica Woodworth return to deliver a deliriously funny political fantasy-cum-parable about the rise of nationalist movements across contemporary Europe. When Belgian King Nicholas III hears news of his beloved kingdom’s collapse while he is travelling, he tries to return as fast as possible. Strange events will slow him down, however, including his being accidentally shot in the head (!) while in Sarajevo (an eerie historical echo of an assassination that precipitated World War I). Waking up three days later, Nicholas finds himself recovering on a Croatian island in a bizarre sanitorium run by the diabolical Dr. Otto Kroll (played with mad flair by Udo Kier). He also learns that his being shot has caused the collapse of the European Union; not only that, this rising new nationalist movement,‘Nova Europa,’ is looking for an Emperor, and maybe Nicholas is the perfect candidate. Now desperate to get off the island, Nicholas enlists the help of the cunning Lady Liz (Geraldine Chaplin, who has likened this film to her father’s classic, The Great Dictator) to outwit the dastardly and authoritarian Dr. Kroll. Can Nicholas escape, and what will become of the dream of a unified Europe? The answers in this marvellously timely film are as witty and wise as they are surprising.

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2019 | 100 minutes

Zacharias Mavroeidis

The second feature film from multi-talented writer (his novel Nine Lives Left was published in 2014) and director, Zacharias Mavroeidis, Defunct is a droll dramedy about a world-weary thirty-something bachelor named Aris. Abandoning his hip downtown lifestyle due to some dire financial circumstances and a less than impressive business venture, Aris moves into his late grandfather’s home in a conservative Athens suburb called Papagou. His grandfather was a Greek Army veteran, and his neighbourhood is heavily populated with retired military men of various ranks. As Aris uneasily adjusts to his new (and decidedly eccentric) surroundings and neighbours, he becomes friends with Vasos, an old comrade of his grandfather. Wanting to live up to his grandfather’s legacy of heroism, but also start his life over, Aris discovers a family secret that will forever change his outlook. A wry, moving portrait of one man reinventing himself, Defunct captured the Best Picture award at the 2019 Thessaloniki International Film Festival.

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2019 | 118 minutes

Ferzan Ozpetek

Alessandro and Arturo have been together for over fifteen years. Despite the strong feelings they still have for each other, their relationship seems to have entered that dreaded middle-aged crisis stage as they both near the age of fifty. Into this already fraught and fragile situation bursts Alessandro’s best friend and former lover, Annamaria. She arrives unexpectedly and asks them to take care of her two kids for a few days, as she is being admitted to a hospital due to recurring headaches. Suddenly Alessandro and Arturo have a lot more on their minds and on their agendas! With their lives already sliding in a state of flux, now this, and then what? Can they cope, just how long will this ‘parental period’ last, and what will be the fate of their dear friend, Annamaria? In the twists and turns of this new life, both Alessandro and Arturo are forced to look at things in a whole new light. By turns amusing, tender, and tough-minded, The Goddess of Fortune features finely tuned performances from Stefano Accorsi and Edoardo Leo, and a witty, observant, sometimes trenchant script that probes the intensities and ironies of contemporary Italian mores.

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2019 | 100 minutes

Caroline Link

Based on a famous life story and directed by Oscar-winning filmmaker Caroline Link (Nowhere in Africa), All About Me is both a wildly entertaining and poignantly serious coming-of-age story about one of Germany’s most beloved comedians and television personalities, Hape Kerkeling. We begin in the Ruhr Valley in 1972. Hape is known then as Hans-Peter, a seemingly ordinary, slightly overweight nine-year-old. His home life, however, is anything but ordinary. His mother, having endured a botched surgical procedure, plunges into a deep depression that drives her to suicide. If this tragedy wasn’t enough, his shattered, despondent father decides to leave, putting Hans-Peter in the care of his two kindly and compassionate grandmothers. Their love and support make it possible for young Hans-Peter to find a way to survive the emotional trauma of his young life: humour. Little by little, he begins to explore his apparently natural (and vast) comedic talents to not only help heal his own wounds, but also to make other people laugh, too. And so, from the heaviness and darkness of his childhood, Hans-Peter recognizes laughter to be an exciting and liberating escape route upon which to drive. Now that he has found the keys, he promptly puts them in the ignition. An inspiring tale of human resilience, All About Me is based on Kerkeling’s best-selling autobiography.