Block (2023)

Vermiglio

Set in the small, mountainous village of Vermiglio during the waning days of WWII, a series of dramatic, consequential events unfold after the arrival of a taciturn Sicilian soldier, who hides out in town after deserting the army. While there, the soldier develops a romance with a provincial family’s eldest daughter.

Don't Sleep

After moving into a cottage together, two young lovers confront horrors of a forgotten childhood.

The Seed of the Sacred Fig

Investigating judge Iman grapples with paranoia amid political unrest in Tehran. When his gun vanishes, he suspects his wife and daughters, imposing draconian measures that strain family ties as societal rules crumble.

The Four of Us

After their partner swap experiment takes a turn, four friends arrive at a remote beach hut to face the fallout and purge themselves of deeper truths.

La Chimera

Just out of jail, rumpled English archaeologist Arthur reconnects with his wayward crew of tombaroli accomplices – a happy-go-lucky collective of itinerant grave-robbers who survive by looting Etruscan tombs and fencing the ancient treasures they dig up.

Three Floors

Follows the lives of three families who live in a three-story building in a Roman neighbourhood.

Jim's Story

Aymeric runs into Florence, a former coworker, one evening in Saint-Claude in the Haut-Jura. She is six months pregnant and single. When she gives birth to Jim, Aymeric is there. They spend happy years together until Christophe, Jim's biological father, shows up... It could be the start of a melodrama, it's also the start of an odyssey into fatherhood.

Out of Darkness

In the Old Stone Age, a disparate gang of early humans band together in search of a new land. But when they suspect a malevolent, mystical, being is hunting them down, the clan are forced to confront a danger they never envisaged.

Queer

In 1950s Mexico City, William Lee, an American ex-pat in his late forties, leads a solitary life amidst a small American community. However, the arrival in town of Eugene Allerton, a young student, stirs William into finally establishing a meaningful connection with someone.

Borgo

Melissa is an experienced, exemplary prison guard. But a dangerous spiral is set into motion when she transfers to a Corsican jail, where she accepts help and protection from inmate Saveriu to get her bearings. Upon his release, he contacts Melissa expecting to collect.

Bye Bye Germany

David Berman and his friends, all Holocaust survivors, have only one purpose: to go to America as soon as possible. For this they need money. Close to his aim, David is not only deprived of his savings but also overtaken by his shady past.

Beyond Outrage

As the police launch a full-scale crackdown on organized crime, it ignites a national yakuza struggle between the Sanno of the East and Hanabishi of the West. What started as an internal strife in Outrage has now become a nationwide war in Outrage Beyond.

A Christmas Prince: The Royal Wedding

A year after Amber helped Richard secure the crown. The two are set to tie the knot in a royal Christmas wedding — but their plans are jeopardized when Amber finds herself second-guessing whether or not she's cut out to be queen, and Richard is faced with a political crisis that threatens to tarnish not only the holiday season but the future of the kingdom.

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives

Suffering from acute kidney failure, Boonmee has chosen to spend his final days surrounded by his loved ones in the countryside. Surprisingly, the ghost of his deceased wife appears to care for him, and his long lost son returns home in a non-human form. Contemplating the reasons for his illness, Boonmee treks through the jungle with his family to a mysterious hilltop cave—the birthplace of his first life.

The Zone of Interest

The commandant of Auschwitz, Rudolf Höss, and his wife Hedwig, strive to build a dream life for their family in a house and garden next to the camp.

Zamora

Soccer is an alien world for Walter Vismara, an unfamiliar terrain he's always avoided. But when his job hangs in the balance, he's thrust into the role of goalkeeper by his soccer-obsessed boss. Forced into a relentless routine of practice sessions and taunts, Walter finds himself trapped in a nightmare. His troubles escalate when he discovers his beloved in the arms of his archenemy, adding a personal dimension to his challenges. Determined to prove his worth, Walter devises a plan: to play the fool outwardly while secretly honing his skills. As he navigates this comedic yet challenging journey on the soccer field, will Walter emerge victorious and finally earn the respect he deserves?

A House on Fire

Montse, divorced and with two children who have long ignored her, prepares for a family reunion at her home on the Costa Brava.

Sometimes I Think About Dying

Fran likes to think about dying. It brings sensation to her quiet life. When she makes the new guy at work laugh, it leads to more: a date, a slice of pie, a conversation, a spark. The only thing standing in their way is Fran herself.

The Neighbor

In the town of Cutter, most people keep to themselves. But when John comes home to find his girlfriend missing, he sneaks into his neighbor's house, finding his girlfriend and several other kidnapped people tied up in the basement. When the neighbor come home, John is forced to get out of the house alive and lead the group to safety.

Good Morning

A lighthearted take on director Yasujiro Ozu’s perennial theme of the challenges of inter­generational relationships, Good Morning tells the story of two young boys who stop speaking in protest after their parents refuse to buy a television set. Ozu weaves a wealth of subtle gags through a family portrait as rich as those of his dramatic films, mocking the foibles of the adult world through the eyes of his child protagonists. Shot in stunning color and set in a suburb of Tokyo where housewives gossip about the neighbors’ new washing machine and unemployed husbands look for work as door-to-door salesmen, this charming comedy refashions Ozu’s own silent classic I Was Born, But . . . to gently satirize consumerism in postwar Japan.

The United States vs. Billie Holiday

Billie Holiday spent much of her career being adored by fans. In the 1940s, the government targeted Holiday in a growing effort to racialize the war on drugs, ultimately aiming to stop her from singing her controversial ballad, "Strange Fruit."

Past Lives

After decades apart, childhood friends Nora and Hae Sung are reunited in New York for one fateful weekend as they confront notions of destiny, love, and the choices that make a life.

My Father the Hero

Veronique, living with her divorced mother, is going on holiday to Mauritius with her father. To impress a local boy, Benjamin, she manages to complicate the situation by making up stories about her father. She presents him as her lover, a mercenary and even a secret agent which gets her into trouble and then her father has to start playing along...

Zeitgeist: Addendum

Zeitgeist: Addendum premiered at the 5th Annual Artivist Film Festival. Director Peter Joseph stated: "The failure of our world to resolve the issues of war, poverty, and corruption, rests within a gross ignorance about what guides human behavior to begin with. It address the true source of the instability in our society, while offering the only fundamental, long-term solution."

Star!

Gertrude Lawrence rises to stage stardom at the cost of happiness.

Foreign Language

Fanny, a shy and lonely teenager, goes on a language exchange to Germany. In Leipzig, she meets her pen pal, Lena, a teenager eager to become politically active. Fanny is troubled. To win over Lena, she invents a life for herself, to the extent of becoming trapped in her lies.

Monster's Battlefield

The soldier king Qin Yang's fiancée Ye Qin met with an unknown beast and died tragically. Gu Ping invites him to participate in Ye Qin's scientific research before her death. But Gu Ping is using Ye Qin's research results to combine the genes of unknown beasts to create the "Zero" dragon creature. The intelligent dragon creature, coupled with the extra-terrestrial beast evolved by devouring, an imminent city war is coming...

Godzilla Minus One

In postwar Japan, Godzilla brings new devastation to an already scorched landscape. With no military intervention or government help in sight, the survivors must join together in the face of despair and fight back against an unrelenting horror.

The People's Joker

An aspiring clown grappling with her gender identity combats a fascistic caped crusader.

Small Things Like These

In 1985, while working as a coal merchant to support his family, Bill Furlong discovers disturbing secrets kept by the local convent and uncovers truths of his own; forcing him to confront his past and the complicit silence of a small Irish town controlled by the Catholic Church.

Strange Way of Life

After 25 years, an ex hired gun visits his old colleague, who is now a small town sheriff. Their past relationship is explored, as is how they reflect on it in the present.

Wow!

Catherine and Oracio are real estate advisors, and are visiting two properties in quick succession: a large bourgeois house "which can have a swimming pool and RER view", and a small modern apartment in the heart of Bougival's golden triangle.

A Man

Akira works as a lawyer. One day, he meets with his former client Rie, who asks Akira to perform a background check on her late husband Daisuke.

Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham

Years after his father disowns his adopted brother for marrying a woman of lower social standing, a young man goes on a mission to reunite his family.

Idol Seungha's R-Rated Film Shooting

Film producer Na-eun and director Yeong-tae are on the verge of shelving out cash for an adult film production. They're too busy blaming each other for the messed-up filming. Before another filming begins, Na-eun suggests Yeong-tae to become an actor himself and practice filming. Na-eun leads the shy Yeong-tae very skillfully. How far will the practice go...?

One Fine Spring Day

A recording engineer falls for a radio announcer after they work together to capture sounds of the natural world.

Boundless

In a moment of cowardice, Detective Carl Mørck sends Rose, his junior colleague in Department Q, to the remote Danish island of Bornholm to answer his old colleague Christian Habersaat's repeated requests. But during his forced retirement ceremony Christian kills himself sending Rose into a journey deep into her own traumatic past. Later, Department Q are embroiled into an old cold case of a girl found dead hanging in a tree.

Letters from Antarctica

A single mother, wanting to protect her eight-year-old son from pain, lies to him that his dad is away with the Antarctic expedition. But postponing the confession about the father's death, causes damage to her and her son.

February

We follow the life of a man at eight, eighteen and eighty-two years old: in his village, outside the village, in the heat of the sun and the icy snow. The course of his monotonous life seems to be written in advance and meaningless. And yet an invisible force exists in him and in a mysterious way pushes him forward, towards death.

The Lesson

An honest, hard-working schoolteacher in a small Bulgarian town is driven to desperate measures to avoid financial ruin.

XIIa

The movie XIIa is the sequel of the super successful XIa. In XIIa the journey continues. After two years break, Lina is back to school to teach a new class - a new class, new problems. At home, the situation is also not better. Lina is separated with her cheating husband and her dominating mother is constantly bullying her, Lina's son is maltreated by classmates - at times the tension reaches extreme limits and Lina is about to collapse. Fortunately, she finds support in the sports teacher, a former boxer. The school director is also on her side, so are some of the students. Though the problems with the new class, especially with the beautiful and difficult Megan and between Lina and one of her colleague teachers deepen more and more. The prom is getting closer, the situation is about to escalate

The Hunter's Autumn

It's never too late to do the right thing, to say the words that have been gnawing at your soul for a long time, to admit that you love - her, him, others, life. It's dangerous, it's risky. Autumn reveals all our colors. It changes everything.

All She Wrote

When Aaron, an ex-fighter, turns to music after years of being knocked around and left with permanent mental disabilities, he falls for Jana, an off-centered Bulgarian immigrant living in New York. While he recognizes that she is as crazy as he is, Jana does not share the same opinion. But her brother, Bobby, an up and coming wannabe fighter, decides to convince her she is that crazy in order to get Aaron in the ring against him.

Hidden in the Dark

Maya is a patient in a hospital in the mountains of Slovakia. She possesses abilities that allow her to sense emotions and events in space and time. This gift makes her interesting to the local police, who use her to find missing people. The latest case involves an eight-year-old girl who has been abducted. Unfortunately, Maya fails to find her in time, and the child is found dead in the forest. This devastates Maya both psychologically and physically.

January

Two men and a bird, trapped in a snowstorm in the middle of nowhere, try to solve a mystery as it slowly devours them.

Flesh

Nadezhda Stoyanova is a renowned translator from Japanese and a university professor at the peak of her career and experience when she learns that she has a tumor. She finds out together with her daughter Evgenia, a host on the most-watched television channel. Both believe that the illness will be cured and that their lives will not change drastically - Evgenia continues her routine television work, while Nadezhda begins translating what is considered an untranslatable Japanese novel by Nobel laureate Yukio Kobayashi, titled Flesh. But they are both mistaken. Nothing will ever be the same again, because it is precisely the flesh—the inescapable human flesh—that has the final word.

Living Legends

Group of friends meet again, 13 years after their prom because of a problem of one of them, and face the opportunity to experience the things in life they have always put aside in life so far.

The Judgement

This is the story of Mityo and his son Vasko, who live in a poor area, near to the Bulgarian-Turkish-Greek Border. Mityo had lost everything that has mattered to him – his wife, his work, the confidence of his son, Vasko. In order to get him back, Mityo has to find forgiveness and pay for his sin, done 25 years ago.

Because I Love Bad Weather

On a rainy spring day, Irina returns to the seaside town where she used to spend the summer holidays as a child. There she meets Boris, whom she has not seen for 20 years. The two set out to rediscover the past, which may change their future.

The Island

In Paris, Sophie and Daneel make a solid couple. Nothing, it seems, can separate them - until the day when Sophie tells her partner she has organised a surprise trip to Bulgaria. Daneel refuses to go, but Sophie insists and soon discovers just why her soul mate was so reluctant to set foot in the country...

The Good Driver

Ivan, a Bulgarian taxi driver living at the Golden Sands tourist resort, is saving money in order to go back to Finland to meet his ex-wife and son, and to make amends for his past mistakes. But money is tight, and eventually Ivan will resort to extreme measures.

Dad

A man returns after spending five years in prison abroad. He wants to start his life anew but faces only obstacles. His stepson sets out to seduce him, leading to a family tragedy.

Revolution X

The cult group "Revolution X" goes on their first big tour at sea, but the producer imposes on Bobby and Philip a new vocalist - the popular in BG singer GARY - NICHOL, which everyone in the group is annoyed with. The two couples plan to see each other secretly and spend a romantic vacation, but the director of the school Tsekov has his own plan for the trip ...

The Art of Falling

Bori (17) refuses to be harassed by the boys. Her artistic, but unstable mother does not give her the support she needs. Her caring grandfather enrolls her in a judo school. There, she realizes that before beating others, one must win the battles within oneself.

Escape

The contrast of a hippie style commune up in the mountain and a drug addicts rehab center in the valley. What could go wrong if someone escapes the rehab?

Windless

Kaloyan returns home to handle the sale of his late father's apartment. At the beginning the process starts as a routine mundane task, but soon transcends into a journey of self-discovery that tries to track the connection between childhood trauma, memory and the passage of time.

Gundi: Legend of Love

The great Bulgarian football player Georgi Asparuhov and his greatest love - his wife Lita go through a number of trials of life, football and the political system.

Liuben

Victor has a nice life in Madrid with his partner, José. However, after returning to his childhood home in the mountains of Bulgaria for his grandfather's funeral, he decides to stay for the summer. While reconnecting with his father and the village way of life, he unexpectedly finds love in the form of Liuben, an 18-year-old Roma boy. Despite their differences, and the conflicts surrounding them, Victor and Liuben find refuge in each other, while a romance begins to take form.

Across the Naked Hills

Zhana, a quiet young woman, lives with her controlling foster father Danail in the remote countryside. Amid her tedious routine, Zhana secretly visits a dog tied to an empty barrel in an abandoned quarry. Soon, Danail discovers her secret.

The Blessed

Based on the book: "Bobby The Blessed and the other American" (2015) by Emil Andreev. Pure love, priceless medicine and a accidental meeting with the future president of the USA - John Kennedy change the life of a man. Bombardment in Sofia during 1944 make him lose his mind, but he saves his innocent soul.

Rhapsody in White

This is a film about the fight against the terrible invincible enemy - the banality of life. Chekhovian provincial hopelessness will creep in, broken by sharp turns of Chaplin-esque humor. A bow to silent cinema and Chekhov.

Monsters

The society strongly opposes a new business - "professional woman". However, there is no shortage of customers. Three of the best employees of the company share their point of view. Who become the Monsters - those who sell or those who buy love?

XIa

XI "A" follows the story of Lina - a former dancer, who goes in for her dream job, namely to become a literature teacher.

Tarika

Tarika lives with her father and her grandmother in a small hut near the border far away from the local village. Marked by her “butterfly wings”, a rare bone condition she inherited from her mother, the girl has been the source of the community’s superstition forever. When the local cattle is struck down by a mysterious disease, fear starts spreading among the villagers...

Starting from the Scratch

A delicate analysis of the movement of the human spirit and the love between men and women which has the power to reveal the beauty of the soul from the cradle to the grave.

Memoir of a Betrayal

A retelling of a crucial story of Bulgaria's troubled times based on the memoirs of Zahariy Stoyanov

The Pig

The story of a 13-year-old Rumen, nicknamed: "The Pig". He is being molested everyday by his schoolmates. Alone and closed in himself outsider, he has used to the insults and to not return back. While one day, he instinctively strikes a single, maybe fatal, blow.

Class ‘90

Schoolmates who graduated in 1989 in Bulgaria gather at a small hotel in the Rhodope mountain to celebrate their 30th high school anniversary. What is supposed to be a festive event turns into painful experience as old secrets and trauma still haunt them. The sum of their life experiences, their unfulfilled dreams and current goals reflect the upheavals of the post-communist society during the 30 years after the fall of the Berlin wall.

Rounds

One night – seemingly just like any other. Two police officers find the body of the well-known drug addict Lazar near the railroad tracks in Sofia. This is how the night of 9 November, 2019 begins – 30 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the regime change in Bulgaria. Three teams of police officers are patrolling the streets of Sofia, doing their job as they believe is right, while facing the challenges posed by contemporary Bulgarian reality.

18

Four classmates, escaping the hustle and bustle of their prom, are together one last time in Nick's car. Faced with the challenge of sharing all their secret thoughts, longings and fears, they embark on an exciting journey with many dangerous turns and amorous passions in the pouring rain.

The Answer To All Questions

Who will save you when your world is falling apart? Who will adore you? Who will touch your heart? Three young women are going to find the answer to all these questions, but will they like it?

Mermaids

Hilarious and dramatic teen story about real girls and boys, magical mermaids and their problems. Can a summer love last forever? Who wants to sabotage the mermaids and how do they deal with their relationship? That's a question for at least one movie time!

The Proletarian Equinox

Three humorous but bitter stories turn into an existential drama in the life of the little people, who must take it all in with dignity and find some sense in the absurdity of it all. The acceptable way to present that is through the means of reality, severity, frankness, concise dialogue and documental simplicity.

Phi 1.618

In a dystopian future, a nation of bio-titans has been created and the female sex and procreation have become obsolete. As the Earth turns toxic, the bio-titans are eager to colonise the cosmos on board a colossal spaceship, taking with them only one female body kept barely alive as a reminder of the troubled past. But everything changes when the immortal calligrapher Krypton, tasked with creating an indestructible copy of the entire written heritage of his kin, sees a forbidden book turn into a feisty girl, Gargara.

Yatagan

A police inspector frames an innocent boy as terrorist, but is later forced to conspire with his victim as both create an intricate web of lies to steal money from the incompetent government bodies.

End of The River

The protagonist's earthly life seems fleeting and meaningless to him, which is why 50-year-old Forry prefers the starry sky - he is a passionate amateur astronomer. By a strange coincidence, he travels with his best friend Theo to the Danube delta and ends up in Vilkovo, a town in Ukraine where the Lipovans live. Here, Forry unwittingly commits a crime and ends up in jail, but it is in this strange town that true love finds him. Fate, however, always has other plans. Will there be punishment? And what will it be? Prosecution or conscience will be the harshest judge.

It's Never Just Sex

A film that presents the modern woman through the images of the four main archetypes - in search of her strength, sexuality, independence, freedom from prejudice and limitations. A comedy about female emancipation whose plot is built through irony, sarcasm and a moderate dose of audacity. Four women, completely different from each other, with completely different personalities, interests, morals and lifestyles. The protagonists of the film are united by a "karmic situation in a past life".

Holiday Makers

The group of tourists go to the black see in Bulgaria. Really funny stuff happens all the time which is the ordinary state of the people's behavior in this local place. they get stranded in an Island near the see and start to get paranoid, also in the same time the mayor is drinking and is not sending a rescue party . they think that they will end up dead in the island, but what happens next? - Really funny things all the time.

The Foreigner

A Frenchman falls in love with a hot temper Bulgarian village girl. Following the call of his heart he starts looking for the village where she lives without knowing the character and the language of the people living there.

The Scent of Linden

Stefan arrives in Memphis and moves in with Dima and Georgi, whose house is a hotel for immigrants. They sway Stefan to stay in town, although Chicago is a distant dream. He meets Rada. A fight breaks out and he must leave. He appreciates more of his community and returns on the Day of Atonement. They remain stronger together, than apart.