There and Back
Director: Wojciech Wojcik / Poland

The city of Lodz in 1965. Wartime friends Andrzej and Piotr run into each other for the first time in many years in a hospital. Both have one desire: freedom. But for that they need a passport, something their “suspect” past denies them. In a seemingly hopeless situation, desperate measures are called for.

Mona’s World
Director: Jonas Elmer / Denmark

Mona, a 30-something single who leads a life filled with adventure and romance…in her dreams that is. But an ordinary visit to the bank is about to make her real life as exciting as her imagined one… and introduce her to the man of her dreams in a way she never dreamt of.

The Jungle
Director: Leonel Vieira / Portugal

This story is dedicated to the superb, enigmatic and green majesty that is the Amazon jungle. Set at the beginning of the century, the film tells the story of the adventures of a young Portuguese man, of noble stock, who is forced to emigrate to Brazil. This man, living on the “Paraiso” rubber plantation, experiences the height of the “black gold” fever which will severely test the human soul.

Pauline and Paulette
Director: Lieven Debrauwer / Belgium

Pauline is mentally disabled. She adores her sister Paulette, a local storeowner and small time opera singer. To gain her share of an inheritance Paulette must take Pauline into her home, despite rather packing her off to an institution. Yet however smart or successful Paulette thinks she is there is much she can learn from her sister.

Forget America
Director: Vanessa Jopp / Germany

Three young adults living on the rural outskirts of eastern Germany try to balance love with their hopes and dreams. A wedge is placed between small-town pals Benno and David when the beguiling Anna moves to their sleepy burg. Benno makes the first move on Anna, and the two begin a tempestuous relationship. As the years pass, the three friends find jobs and settle down, but David’s feeling for Anna never completely die down.

The Man on the Flying Trapeze
Director: Fernando Matos Silva / Portugal

Vila Estrela is threatened by the water of the new dam of Alqueva. It will turn Vila Estrela into an island. But as the popular saying goes ‘evil never comes alone’ and the daily life of this small village clutched in the hills is upset by the death of Adriano, who hangs himself in the square during the village festival.

Bright Young Things
Director: Stephen Fry / England

Known to the press as ‘Bright Young Things’ Adam and his friends are eccentric, wild and entirely shocking to the older generation. Adam, who is well connected but totally broke, is desperately trying to get enough money to marry the beautiful Nina. While his attempts are constantly thwarted, their friends seem one by one to self-destruct in their endless search for newer and faster sensations.

Hold-Up
Director: Florian Flicker / Austria

Andreas, a frustrated 32-year-old divorced car mechanic sees the only solution to his problems in robbing a supermarket. He chickens out at the cashier’s desk and ends up grapped by police in a tailor’s shop across the street in a grotesque and quite unpredictable crime drama.

Twin Sisters
Director: Ben Sombogaart / Netherlands

After their parents die in 1926, twin sisters Lotte and Anna are separated. Lotte grows up in the Netherlands and Anna in Germany. During the War they drift apart. Anna marries a SS officer, who is killed in action while Lotte’s Jewish fianc?, is murdered in a concentration camp. When Anna and Lotte meet shortly after the rift is irreparable. Fifty years later they come across each other again. Is reconciliation between the aged twin sisters possible?

Upswing
Director: Johanna Vuoksenmaa / Finland

Upwardly mobile couple Janne and Katri are jealous of their friends who are going on expensive, exotic vacations. In order to impress them, the couple purchases a role-playing summer vacation package that consists of living in a lower-class housing project. But when it comes time to go back to their affluent lifestyle, they realize they’ve been conned.

Class Trip
Director: Claude Miller / France

This psychological drama details the traumas of a troubled boy, Nicolas, on a school ski trip. His anxiety begins to rise when his father decides to drive him there instead of allowing him go with friends on the bus. Once at the remote camp, Nicolas’ fears edge ever closer to the surface. A very humane and insightful piece of work, the film examines how a boy escapes the bizarre world that his father has created for him.

The Third Eye
Director: Christophe Fraipont / Belgium

Michael, a small-time crook, jumps from a train to escape the police. He encounters Malika who helps him find a place to hide. As a fragile relationship blooms between them, Malika discovers she has inherited a gift of clairvoyance — the third eye — which allows her to see into the future. She then decides to use her powers in an attempt to force destiny.

Dutch Light
Director: Pieter-Rim de Kroon / Netherlands

There’s an ancient myth that the light in Holland is unique, discovered by artists and celebrated in their masterly works. But the German artist Joseph Beuys argues that Dutch light lost its radiance around the middle of the 20th Century, bringing an end to a unique visual culture. This film breaks new ground by examining this renowned but elusive phenomenon. Is the light in Holland really different from that in other parts of the World?

Autumn Spring
Director: Vladimir Michalek / Czech Republic

Autumn Spring is a touching story of an elderly conman, Fanda, who can’t resist playing practical jokes on everyone around him. But his wife, Em?lie doesn’t understand his childish behavior, and resents the way he squanders money and wastes his time while she scrimps and saves and makes preparations for their eventual burial. When one of Fanda’s pranks backfires he is forced to dip into the burial fund. As a result, Em?lie decides to take drastic action.

It’s a Jungle Out There
Director: Hans-Christian Schmid / Germany

17-year-old Anna runs away to Munich after a row with her father. Her worried parents also head to Munich in search of their prodigal daughter. However, the trip to the big city is as much a “jungle experience” for her “crinkly” elders as it is for teenager Anna.

Sweet Dreams
Director: Pantelis Pagoulatos / Greece

Antonis and Eleni are married. Antonis’ illness brings his best friend, Dionissis, back home from America. Apart from giving her a shoulder to lean on, Dionissis seeks through Eleni the lost pieces of his past. Meaanwhile, Antonis is forced to fight for his wife’s heart as well as his life.

Read My Lips
Director: Jacques Audiard / France

Carla is a hearing-impaired 35-year old woman who works as a secretary. Loyal and hardworking, she longs to move forward both in her career and in her personal life. When her bosses decide she needs an assistant, she takes on Paul, 25, handsome, charismatic and fresh out of jail. Carla is immediately attracted to Paul, who recognizes this, and so begins between them a cagey dance for position and power.

Stracciatella
Director: Andras Kern / Hungary

This painful, passionate and comic love story stars Andras Kern as a conductor who has lived and worked abroad for several years. Back in Budapest he sees everything and everybody has changed. Losing his self-confidence and bored with his work he has a nervous breakdown and ends up in a mental hospital. There he falls in love with the psychiatrist, and that is when the movie really starts.

The Best of Youth
Director: Marco Tullio Giordana / Italy

This ambitious six-hour movie takes in the history of Italy over the past 40 years, as filtered through the ups and downs of the middle-class Carati family. It follows the life of brothers Nicola and Matteo, of people gravitating around them, the value of friendship, closeness and family.

Minoes
Director: Vincent Bal / Netherlands

Tibbe, a junior journalist, is about to be fired. Racking his brains for his next story, he meets the extraordinary Miss Minoes, a lady who claims to have once been a cat. Tibbe does not know what to make of her, but as she supplies him with exclusive snippets of news his success grows.

Gossip
Director: Colin Nutley / Sweden

In a business still driven by men the film looks into the hopes, fears, emotions and insecurities of ten actresses during one day of their lives. All of them hope to be given the part of Queen Christina in an American remake of the Garbo classic – a break that could be the chance of a lifetime. The world we look into is both tragic and comic, but above all the film is about the family the women are drawn into at work and the family they hold together at home.

Thomas the Falconer
Director: Vaclav Vorlacek / Slovakia

14 year-old Thomas has the gift of understanding animal speech. Following the tragic death of his father. He must fend for his family and he sets off for the mighty Balador’s castle. It’s there that he meets and befriends Balador’s daughter Formina. However, a chain of events at the castle pulls him into a course of intrigue, which he must use all his skills to battle against.

Police Woman
Director: Joaquim Sapinho / Portugal

Distracted following the death of her husband, Tania fails to notice her son Rato is hanging out with a bad crowd until the police arrest him for vandalizing his school. She frees him from custody, and with his young girlfriend Liliana in tow, they leave their northern Portuguese village for the sanctuary of Lisbon. But their journey is punctuated by violence, finally reaching a climax as wrenching as it is mysterious.