November. (2024)

The Darkest Hour

A writer in self-exile is haunted by the memory of his long-lost love. Mysterious events and an unexpected visitor are about to offer him a chance to relieve his pain. Based on the famous poem of Edgar Allan Poe: The Raven.

Strawman

Budny, a secret service officer, secretly surveils Bishop Karol Wojtyla for 20 years. An unreciprocated bond forms between Budny and the unaware Wojtyla, leading to an obsessive, pathological relationship from Budny's perspective.

The House of Mirth

In early 20th century New York City, an impoverished socialite desperately seeks a suitable husband as she gradually finds herself betrayed by her friends and exiled from high society.

The Future Awaits

In July 1942, during the Vel’ d’Hiv’ Roundup of Jewish families in Paris, 13 year old Tauba Birenbaum and her parents, who are Polish Jews, find refuge in a tiny room for the next 765 days. Living conditions are tough and they fear being discovered at any moment. But while her parents sink further into despair, Tauba’s fighting spirit shines through. She finds joy in every little thing, from a piano drawn on the floor, to the views of Paris through an open window. Despite extreme circumstances, she will keep hope until the liberation of Paris, and take back control of her life.

Despair

After a phone call ends in despair, a young woman faces a fatal decision.

Lilya 4-ever

In a struggling post-Soviet community, Lilya a teenage girl is abandoned when her mother moves to the United States with her boyfriend. Facing neglect and poverty, she meets Andrei, who offers her a job in Sweden, giving her hope for a better life — and a journey that will change everything.

Hope Floats

Birdee Pruitt has been humiliated on live television by her best friend, Connie, who's been sleeping with Birdee's husband, Bill. Birdee tries starting over with her daughter, Bernice, by returning to her small Texas hometown, but she's faced with petty old acquaintances who are thrilled to see Birdee unhappy -- except for her friend Justin. As he helps Birdee get back on her feet, love begins to blossom.

The Notebook

An epic love story centered around an older man who reads aloud to a woman with Alzheimer's. From a faded notebook, the old man's words bring to life the story about a couple who is separated by World War II, and is then passionately reunited, seven years later, after they have taken different paths.

Where is the Final Destination?

A single tree that has witnessed events, a girl who loves Forough, and a boy who reads Sohrab.

Threads

Documentary style account of a nuclear holocaust and its effect on the working class city of Sheffield, England; and the eventual long run effects of nuclear war on civilization.

Stealing Beauty

Lucy Harmon, an American teenager is arriving in the lush Tuscan countryside to be sculpted by a family friend who lives in a beautiful villa. Lucy visited there four years earlier and exchanged a kiss with an Italian boy with whom she hopes to become reacquainted.

Shades of Fern

Based on the only extensive prose work by the surrealist painter Josef Capek, Shades of Fern most resembles the philosophical fairy tales and fables of Josef’s older brother, the legendary Czech novelist and playwright Karel Capek. Two young poachers, more boys than men, kill a gamekeeper when they are caught illegally hunting. Panicked, they retreat into a forest that grows steadily more forbidding and deadly as their fear for the future—and guilt over their action—mounts. Loosely based on hundreds of oral folk tales and legends that haunt the woods of Czechoslovakia, Vlácil’s contemporary updating artistically underscores the relationship between man and nature, crime and punishment, isolation and society, and guilt and memory.

Rendition

When an Egyptian terrorism suspect "disappears" on a flight from Africa to Washington DC, his American wife and a CIA analyst find themselves caught up in a struggle to secure his release from a secret detention facility somewhere outside the US.

The Phone Call

Heather is a shy lady who works in a helpline call centre. When she receives a phone call from a mystery man, she has no idea that the encounter will change her life forever.

Once Were Warriors

A drama about a Maori family living in Auckland, New Zealand. Lee Tamahori tells the story of Beth Heke’s strong will to keep her family together during times of unemployment and abuse from her violent and alcoholic husband.

Man Push Cart

Every night while the city sleeps, Ahmad, a former Pakistani rock star turned immigrant, drags his heavy cart along the streets of New York. And every morning, he sells coffee and donuts to a city he cannot call his own. One day, however, the pattern of this harsh existence is broken by a glimmer of hope for a better life.

When You Finish Saving the World

Evelyn and her oblivious son Ziggy seek out replacements for each other. As Evelyn tries to parent an unassuming teenager at her shelter, Ziggy fumbles through his pursuit of a brilliant young woman at school.

The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne

A penniless middle-aged spinster scrapes by giving piano lessons in the Dublin of the 1950s. She makes a sad last bid for love with a fellow resident of her rundown boarding house, who imagines she has the money to bankroll the business he hopes to open.

Songs from the Second Floor

A monumental traffic jam serves as the backdrop for the lives of the inhabitants of a Swedish city.

Dodes'ka-den

This film follows the daily lives of a group of people barely scraping by in a slum on the outskirts of Tokyo. Yet as desperate as their circumstances are, each of them—the homeless father and son envisioning their dream house; the young woman abused by her uncle; the boy who imagines himself a trolley conductor—finds reasons to carry on.

What's Up with Cinta?

A popular high school girl strains her relationship with her close-knit clique when she begins falling for a reclusive, lower-class schoolmate.

This Side of Heaven

A family man becomes innocently involved in an embezzlement.

Street of Shame

The lives of five sex workers employed at a Japanese brothel while the nation is debating the passage of an anti-prostitution law.

127 Hours

The true story of mountain climber Aron Ralston's remarkable adventure to save himself after a fallen boulder crashes on his arm and traps him in an isolated canyon in Utah.

The Iceman Cometh

Set in 1912, inside a dive bar named The Last Chance Saloon, its destitute patrons eagerly await the arrival of Hickey, who arrives annually and props everyone up with free drinks and spirited stories of his travels. However, when Hickey does show up this year, it is with a message of temperance and an exhortation to give up hopeless dreams and face reality.

Escargots

An adaptation of a children's poem called Chanson des escargots qui vont à l'enterrement by Jacques Prévert, starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Filmed in Paris, France and Los Angeles, California.

Her Name Is Flor

Tere travels to sell her napkins with her daughter Flor, who loses one of her new shoes. Tere is forced to leave her alone for a moment, a fact that changes her life completely.

Passing Time

From the music of Uruguayan composer Florencia Di Concilio, English filmmaker Terence Davies does a cinematic reading of his own poem about his late sister, delivered over a single serene shot of the countryside near his home in Essex. This short film is part of the 2x25 Project of Film Fest Gent and the World Soundtrack Awards. The project commissioned 25 composers to compose a short piece of music, after which 25 filmmakers made short films that are the ultimate symbioses of music and cinematography, fitting completely within the DNA of the festival. The result: 25 exceptional films where the music inspired the form, narrative and texture.

Shakedown

Jack Early is a photographer who will stop at nothing to climb his way to the very top of the success ladder. On the strength of his sheer tenacity, he gets a job with a major newspaper, and it's not long before he's made a name for himself by charming a notorious crime boss, Nick Palmer, into allowing himself to be photographed. Palmer takes him under his wing, but Early decides to bite the hand that feeds him and sets Palmer and another crime boss, Colton, against one another.