Highly Explosive (2025)

La espera

Yazmín and Zenaida, daughter-in-law and mother-in-law, live awaiting the arrival of their husbands. Time that will reveal infinite possibilities.

Crossing The Line

Jakop, a lone fisherman on the coast of lake Peipus has to decide whether refugees brought to his door are his way of redeeming past sins or merely a means to quickly earn much needed cash.

Dragphoria

Dragphoria is a short film about drag and identity, finding yourself in a noisy crowd, and slowly accepting yourself after a long-awaited denial.

Eres tú

A WLW romance/drama about two girls torn apart by heartbreak, although all they have for one another is love.

Money Monster

Financial TV host Lee Gates and his producer Patty are put in an extreme situation when an irate investor takes over their studio.

¡Salsa!

Margarita seeks freedom in a place that judges those outside the norm when her path crosses with Liana’s, a deaf tourist, between the vibrations of congas and bongos.

Strayed

Fleeing the June 1940 arrival of Hitler's army in Paris, a young war widow and her two children are rescued from dive-bombing German fighters by a cocky, reckless teenager. He finds them refuge in an abandoned house, but despite the fact that the family quickly comes to be depending much on his cunning and survival abilities, their cohabitation proves uneasy.

North Sea is Death Sea

14-year-old Uwe lives in a suburban Hamburg housing estate. Besides trouble, the boy has not much to expect from his parents. To get his hands on some money, he prizes open vending machines, and to let out his frustration, he beats up "wogs". Among them is Dschingis, his nemesis. But one day, the rivals make peace. They become friends because they realize that they have the same problems and are driven by the same dreams and hopes.

Flood

When Jonas loses his job at a Hamburg startup company, he doesn’t have the heart to tell his girlfriend Katharina, as her nerves are already on the edge with her final law exams coming up. Every morning he leaves their flat and drift aimless through the metropole on endless underground rides. After a chance meeting with his former boss Marc, Jonas starts to observe the young manager. His curiosity gradually turns into obsession, small and bigger everyday lies become a kind of survival strategy for Jonas. While Katharina notices his increasingly odd behavior, Jonas is losing control over events more and more. Flood deals with feelings of powerlessness of the individual facing a growing competitive and performance pressure. The fear of failing in a perceived competition of life kicks off a spiral of wrong decisions, with no apparent way out. Georg Pelzer’s debut was shot basing on a 20-page plot description, dialogues and actions where improvised with the actors on location.

Totally F***ed Up

Gay, alienated Los Angeles teens have a hard time as their parents kick them out of their homes, they don’t have money, their lovers cheat, and they are harassed by gay-bashers.

In Another Life

Our once beautiful homeland had become uninhabitable. Too dangerous to walk the streets, drive a car, visit friends. Many had already left Syria. Risking their lives on the open water. Giving all we had to the ruthless, opportunists who trade in the currency of human misery. We all spent what little money we had to reach anywhere, a safe place, a new life away from the bloodshed, the bombing, the murder. Europe was meant to offer us hope. Yet the borders closed one by one. We gave up everything, left all we had behind. Living on hand outs, with no shelter, no money and now no hope. I am here, trapped in Calais Jungle. I don’t know where my wife is. The police treat us like animals. They beat us and spray us with teargas everyday. We cannot move forward, we cannot go back. We have to get out of here. I look into the eyes on this camp and I can see it; The blank emptiness of desperation. In another life I was a teacher. Now I’m a refugee. My name is Adnan.

Dogville

A woman on the run from the mob is reluctantly accepted in a small Colorado community in exchange for labor, but when a search visits the town, she learns that their support has a price.

Places of Worship

Steph, a sixteen year old altar server, dutifully puts away the collection money after mass. But when a fellow altar server tries to pocket some of the money, Steph attempts to stop her. What starts as an innocent attempt to prevent thievery looks an awful lot like something else to the priest who interrupts them...Suddenly Steph is followed by symbols of the Virgin Mary, a warning around her sexual desires. Steph must navigate the intimidation of her fellow altar server, a crush on her movie theater coworker, and her own feelings around the comfort of her queer identity.

Welcome

Bilal is 17 years old, a Kurdish boy from Iraq. He sets off on an adventure-filled journey across Europe. He wants to get to England to see his love who lives there. Bilal finally reaches Calais, but how do you cover 32 kilometers of the English Channel when you can't swim? The boy soon discovers that his trip won't be as easy as he imagined... The community of struggling illegal aliens in Calais

Tears of the Sun

Navy SEAL Lieutenant A.K. Waters and his elite squadron of tactical specialists are forced to choose between their duty and their humanity, between following orders by ignoring the conflict that surrounds them, or finding the courage to follow their conscience and protect a group of innocent refugees. When the democratic government of Nigeria collapses and the country is taken over by a ruthless military dictator, Waters, a fiercely loyal and hardened veteran is dispatched on a routine mission to retrieve a Doctors Without Borders physician.

The Pier Man

Theo is a young docker languishing in his native port. His life flows at the monotonous rhythm of cargo ships passing by. Through his encounter with Giuseppe, a disillusioned sailor ashore for a while, Theo will gather the courage to face the waves to escape his dull existence by trying to get into Giuseppe's gruff crew.

Lakeview

A queer ensemble comedy set over a weekend at the lake house of a group of lifelong friends

Akoni

A Nigerian refugee struggles to integrate into Australian society after escaping the clutches of Boko Haram, until he meets a woman who opens her home, and ultimately her heart, to him.

Jacir

A glance at the divided U.S. political system through the eyes of a young Syrian refugee on the streets of Memphis, TN, as he faces the harsh realities of chasing the American dream.

Locked In

Samira and Nazim, asylum seekers who fled after torture find themselves in the UK again detained by the state. They are on the fast track system, soon to be deported. With the clock ticking, the memories of their torture and what awaits on their return torment them. Will they be able to gain asylum in time? What will the cost be to their relationship?

The American Friend

Tom Ripley, an American who deals in forged art, is slighted at an auction in Hamburg by picture framer Jonathan Zimmerman. When Ripley is asked by gangster Raoul Minot to kill a rival, he suggests Zimmerman, and the two, exploiting Zimmerman's terminal illness, coerce him into being a hitman.

The Hurt Locker

During the Iraq War, a Sergeant recently assigned to an army bomb squad is put at odds with his squad mates due to his maverick way of handling his work.

Cyber Cemetery

A teenage boy uploads video diaries to YouTube describing his terrifying experiences with a demonic entity that haunts his dreams. Meanwhile, a young woman with an eerily similar story lurks beyond the other side of the screen.

The Lawyer

Marius is a highly successful lawyer based in Vilnius. He becomes obsessed with Ali, a handsome Syrian refugee he first encounters in an online chatroom run out of Belgrade. Marius is rich and enjoys a vibrant social and cultural life. Nevertheless, he feels that something is missing from it. The journey from Lithuania to Serbia is a relatively short one, but can the two navigate their way through the gulf that separates their very different lives? And how do they deal with the precarious obstacles of the physical borders that stand between them? Written and directed by Romas Zabarauskas, The Lawyer questions assumptions about what it means to be an immigrant and the possibilities offered by life in contemporary Europe.

Skeleton Kids

Three outcast queer teens runaway from society.

Two Women

A young widow flees from Rome during WWII and takes her lonely twelve-year-old-daughter to her rural hometown but the horrors of war soon catch up with them.

The New Country

A 15-year-old Somalian boy meets a 40-year-old Iranian man in a refugee camp in Skåne, in the south of Sweden. With the threat of deportation hanging over them, they decide to take their faiths in their own hands and together they go on a journey in the Swedish summer.

The Carousel Never Stops Turning

This film talks about today’s Indonesia from different perspectives—economy, politics, arts and culture, society, laws, and history—outlined in several fragments influenced by one another.

Coup

Hamburg, Germany, summer 1988. A young bank employee embezzles a large amount of money using an ingenious technique and flees to Australia, from where he phones his girlfriend to tell her what he has done so easily; but her reaction is not what he naively expected.

HIM

Leo recalls his old love, Joe. He misses him dearly. When Leo imagines Joe being present in his life again, he doesn’t know how to feel. Everything’s the same about him: his eyes, his hair, his lips, and that necklace. The last thing Leo heard was that Joe has a girlfriend now, Juliane. Leo thought he had moved on; it's been a tough two years, but when Leo suddenly starts remembering everything they’ve done together, he doesn’t want this wishful thinking to end.

Tscherwonez

A Soviet sailor travels to the West for the first time. In Hamburg, he hopes to find his missing brother. But German secret service agents, inquisitive reporters and even his own countrymen are hot on his heels.

Kandahar

After an Afghanistan-born woman who lives in Canada receives a letter from her suicidal sister, she takes a perilous journey through Afghanistan to try to find her.

Hedgehog

A headstrong trans teenager is propelled into their hangover when a reckless decision to have sex without a condom triggers an urgent need for the ‘morning after’ pill.

Birds Are Singing in Kigali

We meet ornithologist Anna in 1994 just as genocide is raging in Rwanda, perpetrated by the majority Hutus against the Tutsis. Anna manages to save the daughter of a colleague whose family has been murdered, and she takes her to Poland. But the woman returns to Rwanda to visit the graves of her loved ones. The director originally worked on the movie with her husband Krzysztof Krauze (My Nikifor – Crystal Globe, KVIFF 2005), but after his death in 2014 she eventually finished this challenging picture alone.

Night Shapes

The Pope is in town and the night of his stay is anything but heavenly for some of Berlin′s inhabitants. Rich and poor, down-and-outs and policemen, street kids and taxi drivers - in their search for a little bit of happiness, they all end up on an amusing and at times harrowing odyssey through the labyrinth of the big city.

The Day After

In the mid-1980s, the U.S. is poised on the brink of nuclear war. This shadow looms over the residents of a small town in Kansas as they continue their daily lives. Dr. Russell Oakes maintains his busy schedule at the hospital, Denise Dahlberg prepares for her upcoming wedding, and Stephen Klein is deep in his graduate studies. When the unthinkable happens and the bombs come down, the town's residents are thrust into the horrors of nuclear winter.

Misericordia

Jérémie returns to his hometown for the funeral of his former boss, the village baker. He decides to stay for a few days with Martine, the man's widow. A mysterious disappearance, a threatening neighbor and a priest with strange intentions make Jérémie's short stay in the village take an unexpected turn.