Frontier (2021)

Sounds of Sand

On the one hand, there’s the desert eating away at the land. The endless dry season, the lack of water. On the other there’s the threat of war. The village well has run dry. The livestock is dying. Trusting their instinct, most of the villagers leave and head south. Rahne, the only literate one, decides to head east with his three children and Mouna, his wife. A few sheep, some goats, and Chamelle, a dromedary, are their only riches. A tale of exodus, quest, hope and fatality.

Secret Sunshine

Shin-ae moves to her recently late husband’s hometown. Despite her efforts to settle in this unfamiliar and too-normal place, she finds that she can’t fit in. After a sudden tragedy, Shin-ae turns to Christianity to relieve her pain, but when even this is not permitted, she wages a war against God.

Boys and Girls

Ryan and Jennifer are opposites who definitely do not attract. At least that's what they always believed. When they met as twelve-year-olds, they disliked one another. When they met again as teenagers, they loathed each other. But when they meet in college, the uptight Ryan and the free-spirited Jennifer find that their differences bind them together and a rare friendship develops.

The World Is Big and Salvation Lurks Around the Corner

The story of Alex, who, with the help of his charismatic grandfather, embarks on a journey in search of his real self.

The Borderline

A man and his dog cross the desert in search of La Frontera, a mighty river that represents the geographical limit with the neighboring territory. Exhausted, they manage to see their goal, but they must cross other obstacles before conquering its waters.

Butterflies Can't Swim

Nabil has to deal with his fear of water caused by a trauma he had, which he tries, day after day, to fight.

Protihráč

Plot unavailable

Margarita y el lobo

Lorenzo is a handsome, intelligent, charming, elegant and liberal man. All he asks for is total devotion. And Margarita, foolishly, falls in love with him…

Snakehead

Sister Tse is brought to New York by a Snakehead, a human smuggler. Although she is indebted to the crime family responsible for her transport, her survival instincts help her gain favor with the matriarch, and she rises quickly in the ranks. Soon Tse must reconcile her success with her real reason for coming to America—to find the child that was taken from her. In the end, Sister Tse must draw on the strength she found in transforming her victimhood into power.

Frontiera

On a ferry travelling towards Lampedusa, we find a teenager on his first day of work as a gravedigger and a boy on his first mission as a diver. They do not know each other, but when they will set foot on the island, both their lives will change forever: one has to retrieve the bodies of drowned shipwreck victims, the other one has to bury them. A sort of dance between life and death, innocence and its loss.

Rhinoceros

Plot unavailable

Sessão Especial

A itinerant cinema comes to Rita’s small town and she has the opportunity to go to the movies for the first time in a long time.

The Players

Arthur studies at the library of his high school. Sarah, near him, looks at him with interest. Nothing prepared them for what awaited them, behind the door.

Across the Sea

A former war photographer tries to ward off his personal ghosts by taking pictures of trees only. He lives alone among olive trees in southern Italy. One day he decides to cross the sea. Once in Albania, he goes near the location where he had made his last war picture, as if he was retracing his steps. He finds a tree he wants to photograph. He is just about to do so, when he discovers a runaway girl hiding in it with the sole objective of crossing the sea and getting to the other side. The man has no choice. He has to flee with her, follow her and guide her along until a storm separates them.

Apuntes sobre la tortura y otras formas de diálogo

In a country subjected to a cruel dictatorship, a political activist is savagely tortured, unleashing the indignation of certain leftist intellectuals.

The Focusing Effect

For his final project for film class in college, Kevin Morris, with the help of his girlfriend Julie and his roommate Jay, is making a documentary in which ex-couple share their breakup stories individually. When he comes across a disturbing secret involving one of his subjects (Ashley), he goes against his better judgment and shares it with Ashley's ex-boyfriend, James. But when the results are anything but satisfying, things start to get dangerous as James acts more ominous and it seems the lives of Kevin, Julie, Jay, and Ashley are soon in question.

Soursweet

Just married Hong Kong couple Chen & Lily emigrate to England, soon to become parents to a little baby boy and generally struggle through life. Chen works long days in a restaurant, while Lily does the housekeeping, daydreaming of setting up their own business, much to Chen's chagrin. When Chen lets his colleague Fok seduce him down a path of mounting gambling debts, he is recruited as a drug courier for a shadowy Chinese triad. Suddenly he realizes that getting their own enterprise could be their only means of escape.

Rheum

Libuše and her husband Jaromír have been together for a long time, perhaps too long. It seems their lives have become mired in a vicious circle of enervation, which neither of them wants to admit. The couple might have spent the rest of their days like this were it not for the arrival of a motivational package from an agency called The Sun…

Fireflies

Ramin flees from persecution in Iran and ends up living in the limbo of exile, far from everything he knows, in the tropical port town of Veracruz, Mexico. There his nostalgia and melancholy are confronted with new friendships, while he starts to rediscover his own desires.

I Am You

The story of Masoud, who is trying to emigrate to Europe to make a better life for himself, his mother and his fiancé. After embarking on a difficult and dangerous immigration journey with his best friend, Masoud meets a pregnant doctor and an old man on the way and they band together. Having to flee because of war and terror, Masoud tries to reach his goal with a hopeful but painful journey.

The Other Side of Sadness

In a hybrid film, both documentary and fiction, five young women describe the feeling of grief when losing a parent at a young age. Anna returns to her father's home, a year after his death. In one weekend, she lives through a storm of emotions as these may come and go in the process of grief.

Serenity

Originally edited in two versions. Version I, 70 minutes; version II, 90 minutes. (The only known existing version is not Markopoulos’s edit and contains additional titles, music and voice-over added later than 1961. 65 minutes.) Filmed in Mytilene and Annavysos, Greece, 1958. Existing copy on video, J. and M. Paris Films, Athens.