Bright Future

In Pelin Esmers’ feature debut, time plays the leading role. Around an 80-year-old collector, the film shows today's Turkey: a country that is taking vast strides towards the modern era and is rapidly deserting tradition.

Project of fifteen short films, made by the new generation of Malaysian film makers. In a couple of minutes, they posit their vision of today's Malaysia. Among them is Yasmin Ahmad, who died suddenly in 2009, and who in her film comments on racial segregation.

In the big city chaos of Hanoi, two newlyweds have to come to terms with life before they can be together. Atmospherically filmed reconnaissance of the shadow world of lust and loneliness, passion and pain.

A hallucinogenic horror allegory that is inspired both by film history and psychoanalysis. The viewer follows a woman in her childhood, adolescence and adulthood and her wrestling with her own emotions and those of others. Not suitable for people with a weak stomach.

Moving, atmospheric social realism by the young Chinese debutant is about a simple newlywed couple who have moved to the city like so many others looking for work. He really wants a child, she wants to make him happy. But how does she convince him that his sperm isn't helping?

'Don't say too much' was and remains the motto for the second film by the maker of Falkenberg Farewell. Driving instructor wakes up covered in blood. Why doesn't he call the police straight away?

The Indonesian director Paul Agusta based his experimental film about experiencing manic depression on personal experience, while leading lady and co-writer Kartika Jahja is also manic-depressive. In ten chapters, animations and hellish scenes portray the mental state she describes in voice-over.

An unusual portrait - biopic, international travel log, drama and documentary all in one - of the legendary Ethiopian marathon runner Abebe Bikila, who became Olympic champion on bare feet in 1960 but was later paralysed in both legs. With wonderful archive footage of Bikila in action.

The houses in a poor district in the centre of Recife had to make way for a motorway along the coast. How do the inhabitants experience their life and what are their dreams? Colourful fiction film that uses documentary elements shows their memories and desires. The second full-length film by the assistant of Marcelo Gomes and Claudio Assis.

Fast cut, energetic, comedy à la Shouf Shouf Habibi! about three friends in a poor suburb of Brussels. They believe that every person has a limited allotment of steps. So it is important not to do too much, because any step can be your last. But Hassan has very different ambitions.

His debut film is set during the Sri Lankan civil war. Four years later, the war is gone, but the traces of the struggle are still present everywhere. With Between Two Worlds, Vimukthi Jayasundara captures the no-man's-land after the war in powerful and allegorical scenes.

This Armenian film tells of forbidden love and its consequences. The two ‘bonded parallel’ stories of the film provide a close look at two different societies in entirely different time frames, and in doing so bring unexpected historical similarities to the surface.

Tragic-romantic stream of consciousness in which former film critic Chung Sung-Il does not hide his admiration for literature and cinematographic examples. This story inspired by Dostoevsky and Goethe about a music teacher who is deserted on Christmas Eve by his lover is also a compendium of ten years of recent Korean film history.

Julien, a young French comedian, disembarks in Chacahua, a fishing community in Mexico’s pacific coast. His spiritual search, framed by stunning natural scenery, barely conceals his social failure. He is adrift in a world that is completely foreign to him. Then he meets Pablo, a local fisherman who will guide him towards spiritual healing.

First feature by the video artist Sebastian Diaz Morales about an eroded Patagonia. Long shots of the harsh landscape, the sound of the wind, pebbles crunching and an occasional fragment of music tell of the transformation caused by oil exploration.

A bus full of women gets stranded on its way to a prison in the Lebanese Desert. Three women try to find their way, while they wrestle with relationship problems. With surprising camera work, the debut director El-Horr focuses on the absurdity and drama of the events.

Sardonic British tragicomedy about the Scottish stand-up comedian Joey Frisk (a beautiful leading role by Stephen McCole) who unwittingly becomes involved with a crime as a result of a misplaced joke during one of his shows. Powerful feature debut by Justin Molotnikov with great attention to attractive locations in and around Edinburgh.

Black comic debut film about modern Belgrade in which a group of people cross each other's paths on the same day that Serbian tennis players play an international match at an international tennis tournament. The moral vacuum that was left after the nationalist conflicts in the area are reflected in the self-satisfied behaviour of the characters.

With his emphasis on disruptive family relations and machismo, Antonio Nuic makes a critical parable about the nationalist conflicts in the region. The sweltering heat and the camera treatment that removes all the green from the landscape create an oppressive atmosphere from which only wisdom and respect offer any escape.

Raw realism and black humour are the ingredients of this British crime film about the Hill father and son, who go looking for the person responsible for their arrest after they are released from jail. Filled with cellophane-wrapped bodies.

Sensitive, slightly melancholy teenager-in-love drama about the relationship between two 18-year-olds, who are not able to see their budding love grow. Striking debut about the flaring flames of love and the burns they tend to cause.

Korean drama, almost filmed like a documentary, about Sohee, a physically handicapped girl who is the victim of the good intentions of a volunteer who suspects she has been sexually abused. She is taken away from her also handicapped lover and put in different homes, where only loneliness awaits her.

Story of two brothers who fight in a Filipino slum against ubiquitous gangs and government supported death squads, which summarily execute dozens of teenagers every year. Raw and realistic first film.

After a young Hungarian woman breaks off a relationship, she realises that her fate is tangled up with the political drama facing her country. Intimate film with dry humour sketches how radical nationalism has a grip on Hungary.

Modest feature debut about an Orthodox Jewish father and husband who becomes embroiled in a passionate affair with another man. He realises just how soulless his life was before. The community will not tolerate such deviations from the norm, so he has to choose: will he deny himself or accept to be cast out?

Tensions rise between two Slovakian sisters who have emigrated to Ireland. Something happened in the past that has to explain their lies and jealousy. This grim debut looks at the way immigrants in Europe are treated as second-class citizens.

During the civil war in Sierra Leone (1991-2002), thousands of people had one or both of their hands chopped off. In this documentary, Konetzky talks to numerous victims, some of whom don't want to hear about revenge. Alongside the country's bloody history, the film shows how the land is slowly being rebuilt.

Film maker Jesse de Jong is not happy. After an edifying journey in the jungle, he decides to move from the city to a commune in the countryside and to become happy with his fellow inhabitants. But can he change his life the way he wants?

And equally hyper-realistic and surrealist slacker film is the first solo project by Pablo Stoll after the death of his companion and co-director Juan Pablo Rebella (25 Watts, Whisky). Stoll follows his brother Juan for 24 hours. This almost silent film communicates using post-punk music and inter-titles.

Acting tour de force by Dragan Bakema and Maria Kraakman in a film about the other side of the apparently respectable Dutch society. They play Tako and Sandra, whose ideal life slowly but surely starts to keel over under the pressure of pregnancy.

The 20-year-old Canadian Xavier Dolan wrote and directed this partly autobiographical debut and also played the leading role. A coming-of-age story about the self-assured homosexual Hubert who tries to find his place in the world but keeps getting into trouble with his mother.

Kun1 Action is a wake-up call for young people in China. With his collage of interviews, archive material and reconstructions, the film maker Wu Haohao hopes to 'save local film from degeneration'. Self assured, crazy and naughty.

The Taiwanese marriage market cannot do without the energetic matchmaker Chen, who is specialised in notorious bachelors. Chen also tackles Wu, the maker of this tragicomic documentary. While Wu waits impatiently, she documents bickering couples with everyday irritations and deeper relationship problems.

Unconventional trio - the serious Mikio, his mentally handicapped brother and a lively call girl - seek happiness through thick and thin. Laconic tragicomedy with crazy twists finally plumbs unexpected emotional depths.

Feature debut about loneliness and alienation is aptly set in a no-man's-land filled with high-tension masts and mobile homes and follows the life of the foreman Marcus, his bored wife and his eccentric daughter. The arrival of a Hungarian employee and a tragic accident throw everything into confusion.

Tired of society, Manuel De Ribera travels to his inheritance: an uninhabited island in southern Chile. There he wants to establish the society he dreams of, with his own rules and himself as absolute ruler.

In this ego documentary, Astrid Bussink returns to Enschede, the Dutch city she left on the day of the firework disaster in 2000 that killed twenty-two and left nearly a thousand wounded. She moves into an apartment with a view of the memorial and tries to come to terms with the disaster.

Rebollo was inspired by the sight of a respectable lady sitting at night by a closed bus station. What was she doing there? The film had to give the answer. 'His' Rosa is a housewife with a secret second life. A kind of Kaurismäki in Madrid.

The Belgian girl Karo moves in the 1970s with her parents to Amsterdam, at that time a city dominated by left-wing ideals and experimental ways of life. She becomes the basis of her parents' quarrels. Autobiographically inspired, sensitive coming-of-age drama by the maker of Meisje.

Debut film by the Iranian female poet Granaz Moussavi is about the secret double life that many young people lead in repressive Iran. They can only be themselves and express themselves behind closed doors. The film shows an underground scene in Teheran that is never reflected in the media.

Subtle, restrained feature debut in which the Mexican Andres undertakes various attempts to cross the border to the US illegally. In the meantime, he makes friends with two women who give him friendship and a place to sleep in a shop, right next to the enormous wall that is supposed to prevent him reaching his goal.

Following a death, a young woman returns to her island of birth, Corsica. She finds herself in a nationalist male world in the impressive and desolate landscape around Cap Corse. The story in this film without dialogue by the artist Ange Leccia is driven by songs such as Ne dis rien by Serge Gainsbourg.

A day from the life of a young soldier during the war in Yugoslavia. His brigade only has one task, and the simmering heat, alcohol and coercion lead to atrocities. Based on a trial at the War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague.

The Chinese director shows herself and her parents in their apartment only with fixed camera positions, with which she revolves around the kitchen table. The rigorously minimalist story emerges in real time: the time it takes to prepare and eat Chinese dumplings together.

Fate and conflicting emotions determine the lives of a young activist and the three women with whom he has a relationship. Subtle study of profound feelings against the background of violent protests. The opening film of the festival is the second feature by Park Chan-Ok, who won a Tiger Award in 2003 with Jealousy Is My Middle Name.

A bellhop and a young receptionist at a five-star hotel in Buenos Aires set out at night to investigate and unravel the secrets of the guests. However the guests do not reveal very much and the two go increasingly adrift through their curiosity.

The feature debut by the Swiss video artist Pipilotti Rist is an example of idiosyncratic cinema, a hallucinogenic trip in which she throws all the laws of nature overboard. Pepperminta is a psychedelic colour explosion full of strange camera angles and anarchic incursions. The playful Pepperminta wants to liberate people from their fears and make the world a more human place.

Prize-winning and praised, this extremely calm and occasionally dry, cool yet irresistible story about the boundary between maintaining the law and a sense of justice. A young Romanian policeman wonders whether it's a good idea to put school children in jail just because they smoke marijuana.

Beautifully filmed Korean horror movie in which big sister Hee-jin tries to find her missing sister together with a sober cop. According to inhabitants of the apartment block, the girl is possessed by spirits, and her evangelical mother thinks she is the chosen one. When several neighbours commit suicide, it gets increasingly difficult to stay rational.

One of the top box-office films this year in South Korea is a clever and often humorous commentary on The Chaser (2008, Na Hong-jin), with Kim Yoon Seok as the toothless detective who plays a cat-and-mouse game with a fleeing criminal.

Painting clothes, throwing stones at kangaroos, sniffing glue: that's all life has in store for Samson and Delilah. When the two aboriginal teenagers try to flee their stuffy village, life elsewhere turns out to be not much better. This year's Australian Oscar submission.

In this psychedelic debut by the music phenomenon Omar Rodriguez Lopez (best known for The Mars Volta), he himself plays the lead. Barlam (in his 20s) is obsessed by the divorce of his parents, has an incestuous relationship with his drug-addicted sister and finally succumbs to a psychosis.

Autobiographical documentary in which the film maker Andréa Seligmann Silva investigates why she and her brothers and sister left their home country of Brazil. Maybe it's related to the life story of her mother, who fled the Nazis in Germany as a three-year-old girl.

Since her son Donovan was shot at a year ago, Shirley Adams from Cape Town finds herself facing problems. Because her child sinks deeper and deeper into his mental and physical misery, she keeps from him the shocking news about who the culprit was.

Coming-of-age drama in which a close kids' friendship falls apart when one of three friends has an accident. A story about love, loss, guilt, innocence and impotence set among the bright colours of the Dutch bulb fields.

Stylish, sensitive, occasionally humorous film version of a novel by Christopher Isherwood about a day in the life of George, a middle-aged man who mourns the loss of his partner Jim. Directing debut by the celebrated fashion designer Tom Ford with a prize-winning leading role by Colin Firth.

Black comedy with in which two exorcists fairly literally remove the skeletons from the cupboards from people's homes. Some fairly embarrassing secrets are revealed along the way. A case where the skeletons have hidden themselves turns the lives of all those involved. An original debut with Paprika Steen and Jason Isaacs.

In Thailand, a serial killer leaves a trace of gruesome discoveries. Inspector Chin can't find the culprit and calls in the help of a former hitman. Hardboiled crime thriller larded with soft touches and effective special effects.

What's the state of society and youth culture, twenty years after the nuclear apocalypse? Well, more or less like this in Buenos Aires. Black humour, nasty words and intelligent rubbish in a unique cartoon for adults by the maker of Mercano el Marciano.

Mix of theatre, dance and film about a Japanese dancer who lives in the French countryside in a commune with two women. When his daughter and wife arrive from Tokyo to spend the summer there, something strange seems to happen.

In a neo-realistic style, the dreamy boy Susa is followed in today's Georgia. His mother's illegal vodka trade takes him to the grubbiest corners of the city. Waiting for his father to return fills his heart with hope.

Surrealist comedy by the director of the cult film Dainipponjin could only have been made in Japan. A sad comic wakes up in a closed white room - or is he still asleep? In the meantime a Mexican wrestler prepares for an important contest.

Omnibus of five short films that were shot in the Province of Kars, in eastern Turkey. Among the five directors are three debutants who were chosen to film their stories after winning a scenario contest. The result is a sympathetic collection of small stories.

When a young man suddenly dies, those around him each have to find a way to cope with their loss in their own way. His father, a nonchalant rock star/stockbroker, finds it especially difficult.

Boarding school boy Leon Bronstein is the contemporary, Canadian reincarnation of Leon Trotski. Just like the Russian revolutionary, Bronstein fights oppression. At home he takes on his father (‘the fascist’), at school he takes on the administration. But are his bored fellow pupils interested in a revolution?

Slightly absurd love drama from Tadzjikistan. From one day to the next, a village is cut in two by barbed wire and landmines. Not only the classroom and the Post Office are divided up, even a bridal couple are separated. Nosir Saidov's debut film looks at tragic facts and ethnic conflicts.

Stylish drama in which the secrets and desires of a Finnish family can no longer be suppressed. A hereditary illness overcomes Mikko. He fears he won't be able to run his family company anymore. And how does he tell his children that they might also be affected by the wrong genes?

Debut film about three kids who witnessed a drama in their youth that still pursues them today. Were they only witnesses or maybe also responsible? While everything shimmers with religious excitement around the annual procession, the friends wrestle with memories and guilt.

Visual and musical spectacle about an accursed accordion that entangles the player in the life of an artist. An old folk singer has had enough of the accordion's bullying; while a boy feels attracted to this beautiful instrument - and also feels responsible for the old man.

In Fischer's debut film, occasionally resembling a horror thriller, 17-year-old Anton accompanies his mother and her new boyfriend to a remote holiday cottage by the sea. In the middle of the deserted panoramas with woods, beach and sea, Anton becomes fascinated by a strange duo.

The everyday cares and uncertainties with which 14-year-old Sameer wrestles are suddenly unimportant when his best friend drowns in the well where they often swim together. This light-hearted mosaic of family troubles changes to a moving reflection on life and death.

Controversial documentary sketches the double life of the young Niu Hongmiao, who cares for her sick father in the countryside and works in Beijing as a prostitute. A picture gradually emerges of the Chinese sex industry. A world with its own language, rituals and rules.

The mean blues-rock duo The White Stripes tours the whole of Canada in 2007. The whole of Canada, so not just the big cities. In this Arctic Rock documentary, the controlled Jack and Meg White, surrounded by ice and snow, slowly start to thaw.

Ivan, who works as an assistant for an investment bank, turns out to be the new star on the exchange where Alpha males rake in virtual money or lose it. While the playful young trader keeps winning, he threatens to lose control of his life.

A shy comic strip artist wants to make a story about a famous boxer. He gives the leading role to another, fairly untalented boxer who dreams of defeating the famous boxer Mikuni one day. After that, reality and fantasy start getting mixed up in a confusing way.

A graduate with Down's Syndrome falls in love with a colleague. Yo, también is one of the most surprising films of the last year with two spectacularly good protagonists. Sharp and convincing, humorous and moving. And yes, the film makes you think.

In their second feature, the German directors Christian Becker and Oliver Schwabe follow a young couple who are parasitic on the lives of others. The girl visits a lonely old lady in exchange for money. The boy, also for money, visits a couple whose son has died.

Twenty-four narrative lines (about jealousy, being unfaithful, revenge, despair and fate) cross each other in twenty-four hours, with the camera repeatedly jumping from character to character, in the street, in a bus or cafe. And so the story flows on, to a slow rock soundtrack.