Apolonia, Apolonia
A portrait of the artist as a young woman. Apolonia is talented, but is that enough to break into the art world? An impressive film that covers 13 years in an anything-but-average life.
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International Competition
The International Competition presents 13 singular films that absorb us in cinematic worlds of human emotion, looking across generations for rich sources of meaning. Urgent stories draw from the filmmakers’ own arenas in reflecting on today’s world, while others peer into intimate spaces as a window onto the wider world.
Films in this section
Films in this section
Colette and Justin
Debut filmmaker Alain Kassanda and his grandparents explore their family history in this richly layered portrait, drawing together politics and personal memories. The upheavals of post-colonial Congo feel palpably close.
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Dreaming Arizona
Jon Bang Carlsen has five teenagers from a small Arizona town stage their own lives—past, present and future—blurring the lines between reality and fiction. The photogenic landscape also plays a major role.
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Journey Through Our World
The first year of Covid lockdowns is seen through the eyes of documentary veterans Petra and Peter Lataster, in this affectionate look at their shrunken world. Their calm account captures the uniqueness of this strange period in history.
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Girl Who Dreams About Time
A coming-of-age film about the young shaman Sujin, who oversees a temple together with her grandmother in the mountains of South Korea. Will she be able to combine her calling as a seer with her studies at the University of Seoul?
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Much Ado About Dying
This tragicomic portrait of filmmaker Simon Chambers’ eccentric uncle demonstrates that death comes as a necessary end to life, caregiving is a heavy responsibility, and it’s wonderful to recite Shakespeare stark naked.
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Non-Aligned: Scenes from the Labudović Reels
Based on unseen 35mm material, Non-Aligned retraces the birth of the Non-Aligned Movement during the era of decolonization. Forming a documentary diptych with Ciné-guerrillas, it examines how cinema gave expression to their political dream.
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Paradise
A heatwave leads to huge forest fires in Siberia. Villagers join forces to subdue the inferno they call the Dragon. A visually powerful film about the havoc that climate change can wreak.
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Parallel World
An account, filmed over 12 years, of the close bond between a mother—the filmmaker—and her daughter, who has Asperger syndrome. They face a challenge when, as a young adult, the daughter moves from Taiwan to live with her father in France.
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Port Desire
You can take a soldier out of the war, but you can’t take the war out of the soldier. That certainly applies to Marcelo Wytrykusz, an Argentinian veteran of the Malvinas War. Forty years later, he’s still seeking revenge.
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Portrait of My Father
When the filmmaker was eight, his father’s body was found on a beach near Montevideo. In this stylized cinematic quest, he seizes on every possible lead to find out what happened, and who his father was.
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Silent House
We follow the fortunes of three generations of an upper-middle-class family against the backdrop of four decades of Iranian history. With the century-old family house in Tehran as a silent witness, the family’s story becomes a mirror of society.
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Wisdom Gone Wild
A poetic and affectionate portrait of a born storyteller with dementia. Now that Rose, the Japanese-American mother of filmmaker Rea Tajiri, is sinking deeper into her dream world, her daughter and caregiver tells Rose’s complex life story.
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