UPC Audience Award 2012   

1. Monsieur Lazhar - 4.742 One morning, an elementary class finds their teacher’s body hung in the classroom. Lazhar, an Algerian immigrant, is hired for replacement. He will teach the... 714 resp.

2. Hugo - 4.568 150 years after his birth, the spirit of film magician Georges Méliès still lives on. At once an adaptation of a children’s book and a celebration of the... 1081 resp.

3. Die Unsichtbare - 4.551 Fine lives with her mother, who only has eyes for her autistic sister. She is passionate about drama but is constantly told to stop being invisible on stage.... 731 resp.

4. Back to the Square - 4.535 A year after the euphoria on Tahrir Square, the demonstrators’ goals have not even come close to being reached. The country is ruled with an iron fist and... 256 resp.

5. A Simple Life - 4.504 A very meticulously observed and, as a result, very moving phase in the very ordinary life of two very ordinary people - see the title. A single Hong Kong... 978 resp.

6. I'm Still Alive - 4.391 She’s alive, but won’t be for long. Soon a host of angels will fetch her. Poetic portrait of a Polish woman called Jadwiga, who is old, poor and has lived in... 87 resp.

7. Black & White & Sex - 4.383 Eight excellent actresses together play Angie, a woman who is more than just a prostitute and wants to show that too. In her interview in this film-in-a-film,... 426 resp.

8. Les géants - 4.375 Three boys in the Ardennes: their summer becomes a fairy-tale adventure without parents, without money and - at one point - without shelter. Shot in beautiful... 979 resp.

9. Une vie meilleure - 4.346 After failing in the restaurant business, Nadia travels to Canada to earn a living. She leaves her son in the excellent hands of her friend Yann. Everything... 815 resp.

10. Grandma Lo-fi: The Basement Tapes of Sigrídur Níelsdóttir - 4.336 Charming documentary shot on Super8 and 16mm, replete with hand-made animations about a cult figure in Icelandic music who, starting when she turned 70,... 342 resp.

11. Le Havre - 4.317 An optimistic fairytale about a selfish old man who betters his life by helping a young African refugee. Heartwarming and drily comic scenes in the French port... 1239 resp.

12. 11 Flowers - 4.282 Wang Xiaoshuai was one of the first independent Chinese filmmakers to come to Rotterdam. His 11 Flowers is an enchanting paradox. Wang’s most... 536 resp.

13. Black's Game - 4.265 Inspired by the style of Nicolas Winding Refn’s Pusher films (the executive producer), Black's Game reflects the increasing violence in the... 850 resp.

14. Pablo - 4.262 More than half a century since his title sequence for Dr. Strangelove, graphic designer Pablo Ferro is still setting the tone, bringing film audiences... 263 resp.

15. Lena - 4.233 Almost every teenage girl yearns for love and almost every teenage girl is insecure. And if you don’t live up to what is seen as the ideal image of women but... 635 resp.

16. 38 témoins - 4.217 A brutal murder in Le Havre: 38 people must have noticed, but say they heard or saw nothing. A claustrophobic, moving, beautifully shot film with a strong cast... 792 resp.

17. Chapiteau-show - 4.211 Light-hearted epic on four kinds of communication (love, friendship, respect, collaboration). Not just another Russian 'art-flick' but an off-beat manifesto on... 166 resp.

18. I Wish - 4.207 The great Japanese filmmakers have always been good at telling sensitive family tales. On the surface a summery children’s film, but underneath a drama about a... 657 resp.

19. Peace versus Justice - 4.200 Gripping documentary explores the different conceptions of Western values in other countries, focussing on the situation in Uganda with the Lord's Resistance... 45 resp.

20. Ace Attorney - 4.193 Miike Takashi has a reputation for dark, violent films. So it was a surprise when he announced he would be adapting a light-hearted Nintendo game (Phoenix... 1442 resp.

21. Shame - 4.169 Michael Fassbender and Carey Mulligan star in McQueen’s second, once again stunning and very physical feature film, as a successful yet sex-obsessed... 1175 resp.

22. Valley of Saints - 4.158 During a violent summer in the beautiful Kashmir Valley, a young boatman tries to escape. But then he finds a new love. It’s a story of conflict, but it’s also... 568 resp.

23. Room 514 - 4.151 In this disturbing, realistic debut a determined young female soldier interrogates an officer. Contrary to her colleagues’ advice she accuses him of beating up... 344 resp.

24. The Hyperwomen - 4.142 Deep in the jungle of Mato Grosso, in the upper course of the Xingu, this sparkling documentary follows preparations for a Jamurikumalu ritual: a festival of... 232 resp.

25. HISTÓRIAS que só existem quando lembradas - 4.098 Beautifully photographed fable about a ghost village where no one has died since 1976, where old people are stuck in their memories - until the arrival of a... 528 resp.

26. Way of Passion - 4.097 Trapani, Sicily. Its inhabitants are preparing for the Good Friday procession that has taken place annually for 400 years. A swift and ubiquitous camera takes... 288 resp.

27. Living - 4.078 It is already a challenge to make a film on death and call it Living. But Sigarev fearlessly gets to the very heart of things, where life, death, God,... 683 resp.

28. Goodbye - 4.077 Without her husband and without her lawyer’s licence, which has been withdrawn, Noora is left pregnant and alone in her apartment. Her attempt to leave Iran... 622 resp.

29. Wavumba - 4.069 Fascinating, personal debut that follows an old fisherman in Kenya who can immerse himself in a world of stories, especially concerning his unwavering belief... 174 resp.

30. Wuthering Heights - 4.062 The fact that cameraman Robbie Ryan won an award for his camerawork will not surprise anyone who sees this earthy Brontë filming: seldom was the mood of the... 1126 resp.

31. Duch, le maître des forges de l'enfer - 4.048 A new chapter by Panh about the Khmer Rouge. Duch is a unique testimony by the man who was responsible for Camp S21, where 12,000 people died. In a... 145 resp.

32. Tatsumi - 4.044 Basing a film on a manga is often a commercial decision, but filmmaker Eric Khoo is a real fan of Japanese manga artist Yoshihiro Tatsumi. Tatsumi invented the... 389 resp.

33. Patience (After Sebald) - 4.038 Unique, beautifully shot essay about the work of the influential writer W.G. Max Sebald (1944-2001). Gee ventures to East Anglia to provide an impression of... 159 resp.

34. Voice of My Father - 4.025 The history of a Kurdish family from 1979-2009, utilising a mix of documentary and fiction. Exquisite images and personal sound recordings (tapes sent to the... 516 resp.

35. Four Suns - 4.025 Since his debut Wild Bees (Tiger Award 2002), Sláma has become the figurehead of Czech cinema. Once again, his powers of observation are combined with... 1003 resp.

36. Un nuage dans un verre d'eau - 4.011 Young Anna is from Romania and old Noun is from Egypt. They are neighbours in a rundown building in Paris. They share the same interest in idle news but they... 458 resp.

37. Weekend - 4.005 A chance encounter between the shy Russell and the extrovert Glen unexpectedly grows into something beautiful. It’s followed by a weekend of drink, sex and... 802 resp.

38. Oslo, August 31st - 4.000 Trier (Reprise) does not attempt to invalidate clichés about Scandinavia (depression, suicide): his lead has just quit drugs, but can think of little... 458 resp.

39. A Temple - 3.990 A light-hearted black comedy that explores states of the human mind. Kesha, a young village man, gets a visit from God. Satirical regarding religious belief,... 203 resp.

40. Now, Forager: A Film About Love & Fungi - 3.977 A couple are picking wild mushrooms to sell to chic restaurants. One of them offers her a job. While her culinary star is rising, their relationship goes... 570 resp.

41. Born in Beijing - 3.974 The subject is raw, poignant and dirty: the poverty-stricken lives of a group of petitioners (people whose rights have been violated by local government) in... 38 resp.

42. A Dangerous Method - 3.965 The titanic struggle between Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. The two giants of psychoanalysis are played by Viggo Mortensen and Michael Fassbender. Between them,... 1410 resp.

43. The Invader - 3.958 Provost has been a regular guest in Rotterdam since his first short film and his feature debut is a hypnotic series of big-city tableaux. An opinionated black... 912 resp.

44. Il se peut que la beauté ait renforcé notre résolution - Masao Adachi - 3.953 This tribute to the radical Japanese writer-director Masao Adachi is the first in a series of documentaries that Philippe Grandrieux wants to dedicate to... 43 resp.

45. Un amour de jeunesse - 3.938 Farewell first love! A sensitive and beautifully shot portrait of a young girl who loses her first great love, because the boy doesn’t want to tie himself down... 320 resp.

46. When the Lights Went Out - 3.931 Yorkshire, 1974. A family finally moves into their dream home, but are soon plagued by an increasingly aggressive poltergeist that primarily targets the... 404 resp.

47. Stillleben - 3.928 A father pays prostitutes to play Lydia, his own daughter. His shameful secret comes to light before the entire family in the most embarrassing way. Meise’s... 443 resp.

48. The Patron Saints - 3.917 Disturbing portrait of life in a nursing home. A handicapped resident shares his experiences in an openhearted and occasionally funny way. Thanks to the... 60 resp.

49. L' hiver dernier - 3.912 Headstrong young cattle farmer in a remote area in France refuses to adapt his way of working to the demands of the modern era. Controlled and beautifully... 604 resp.

50. Louise Wimmer - 3.905 After a painful divorce, Louise Wimmer has lost nearly everything. With only her car, in which she lives and sleeps, and the voice of Nina Simone, she does... 378 resp.

51. Les éclats (Ma gueule, ma révolte, mon nom) - 3.903 Sylvain George has aimed his camera for more than four years at the ups and downs of refugees stranded in the French port of Calais. Most compassionately,... 62 resp.

52. He Was a Giant with Brown Eyes - 3.858 After her parents’ divorce, Sabina reluctantly followed her mother to Switzerland. Five years later Sabina, now 17, finally returns to her homeland of... 246 resp.

53. Two Years at Sea - 3.854 An intimate portrait of Jake Williams, who lives isolated in the forests of Scotland, an area he is very tightly linked to. His everyday activities - in fair... 219 resp.

54. Matière grise - 3.848 If you are cynical, you could call this a genre film. Almost all Rwandan films are about the genocide they can’t come to terms with. As in the case of good... 105 resp.

55. The Sound of Light - 3.844 The filmmaker is a filmmaker, but the filmmaker is also a farmer. The film is about farmers and their problems pursuing a traditional life in this era. Filmed... 416 resp.

56. Parts of the Heart - 3.833 Lessons in life about love: eight of these lessons about Peter from the age of ten to forty. Growing up as a homosexual in Indonesia. Autobiographical? The... 186 resp.

57. Miss Bala - 3.815 Naranjo made a spectacular and expensive film that, in view of the statistics and news reports, still stays close to the reality of the Mexican-American... 1607 resp.

58. De jueves a domingo - 3.806 Scenes from a marriage, viewed from the back seat of the spacious Mazda 929 that a Chilean family uses to go on holiday for a couple of days. Sensitive,... 846 resp.

59. L' Apollonide - Souvenirs de la maison close - 3.797 A members-only brothel in Paris, early 20th century. A prostitute’s face, mutilated by a client, bears a tragic smile. Around her, the other girls with their... 729 resp.

60. El cuaderno de barro - 3.792 Portrait of the world-famous Spanish artist Miquel Barceló. Inspiring documentary counterpart to the feature film The Double Steps featuring the... 159 resp.

61. Nuit #1 - 3.792 Nikolaï spots beautiful Clara in a night club. Clara follows him home for a one-night stand. Before long, a brief sexual encounter turns into a long night of... 548 resp.

62. Die Räuberin - 3.784 Tania is an actress, 43. Thore is 15, a misfit in a small village at the northern tip of Germany. At the beginning of winter, Tania escapes from her numb life... 365 resp.

63. L' ultimo terrestre - 3.783 For his refreshing film debut, comic-strip artist Gipi adapted a strip by colleague Giacomo Monti. That background is tangible in this beautifully designed... 959 resp.

64. La leggenda di Kaspar Hauser - 3.780 The historic Kaspar Hauser updated: in this surreal post-Western shot in beautiful black-and-white, Kaspar washes up on a Mediterranean beach where they try to... 472 resp.

65. Romance Joe - 3.776 A filmmaker with writer's block is given stories by a fun-loving waitress in exchange for night-time overtime. Full of the pleasure of telling stories and... 713 resp.

66. Le reste du monde - 3.764 A family drama. A deceased mother and a father with a new wife. Three sisters; the middle one has lost her lover by whom she is pregnant. During a family... 555 resp.

67. La jubilada - 3.761 Appealing film about how ordinary people relate to each other in unusual situations. Fabiola (played by Tony Manero actress Paola Lattus) returns to her... 664 resp.

68. The Ultimate Pranx Case - 3.759 In 2010, three boys played a prank on a girl at school and streamed it all live on Internet. What started as a fairly innocent joke soon got completely out of... 630 resp.

69. So Sorry - 3.757 Corrupt builders and officials were to blame for the high number of dead schoolchildren after the Sichuan earthquake. This secret would have been buried... 214 resp.

70. Bachelor Mountain - 3.745 In his third film on life and work in the (once) heavily wooded north of China, Yu Guangyi (Survival Song) follows the lonely San Liangzi (46), who for... 440 resp.

71. Rânia - 3.741 Rânia (16) dreams of a career as a dancer - but if you live in the slums of Fortaleza, talent and effort are not enough. Carried by a beautiful leading role by... 537 resp.

72. Shock Head Soul - 3.724 A mixture of documentary and fiction film about Daniel Paul Schreber, who wrote a famous autobiography about his psychiatric past, Denkwürdigkeiten eines... 561 resp.

73. Play - 3.717 With merciless precision, Östlund dissects how three kids are robbed of their mobile phones by street toughs. Does it matter that the perpetrators are... 428 resp.

74. small roads - 3.716 Benning’s latest work fits in perfectly with his extensive oeuvre of landscape films. In small roads, Benning films 47 roads in the USA. Not only... 211 resp.

75. Punk in Africa - 3.706 The striking story of a hidden, underground, even secret and banned movement. Bands with both black and white musicians broke the law. In the apartheid era,... 279 resp.

76. Abrir puertas y ventanas - 3.702 Set during a hot late summer, Mumenthaler’s debut follows the sisters Marina, Sofia and Violeta, who come to terms with the death of their grandmother as they... 937 resp.

77. Future Lasts Forever - 3.696 Sumru travels to Diyarbakir to do research for her thesis. Listening to the evidence of Kurdish victims of the sanguinary oppression, she is confronted with... 572 resp.

78. Kotoko - 3.682 Tsukamoto has to answer for almost unbearable films such as Tetsuo II: Body Hammer and Tokyo Fist. Not exactly free of violence, to put it... 529 resp.

79. Der Fluss war einst ein Mensch - 3.678 A young German travels through an unnamed country in Africa. Soon, he loses his way, moving deeper and deeper into the darkness of the continent. Africa as a... 208 resp.

80. Neighbouring Sounds - 3.675 Meandering past the residents of a wealthy street in Recife, where private security guards ply their trade, this self-assured debut portrays the two sides of... 496 resp.

81. Visiting Room - 3.673 They meet in person many years after seeing each other for the first time in photos sent by regular mail. They have waited for this meeting for a long time, in... 208 resp.

82. Twilight Portrait - 3.666 A young middle-class woman accidentally gets into horrible trouble, which drastically turns her tedious life upside down and makes it much more real. A very... 416 resp.

83. That Small Piece - 3.663 Very simply a story about a quarrel between neighbours about a small piece of land. Made with next to nothing. Not even a low budget. The film maker puts out... 95 resp.

84. Mondomanila - 3.644 Mondo Cane is the legendary and cruel shockumentary by Gualtiero Jacopetti. Khavn sees his own Mondo in Manila. Jacopetti was an outsider; Khavn... 239 resp.

85. About the Pink Sky - 3.642 Cheeky, untouchable girls can make a film immortal. Think of Jean Seberg in À bout de souffle. From now on you can also dream of the bold Ai Ikeda. In... 394 resp.

86. Unfair World - 3.632 It’s hard to be honest in a dishonest world. Sotiris has almost given up. Luckily he still has his work as a cop, which provides a modest opportunity to fight... 666 resp.

87. The Anabasis of May and Fusako Shigenobu, Masao Adachi and the 27 Years Without Images - 3.629 Eric Baudelaire, artist and photographer, films on Super-8 the political and personal reflections of May, the daughter of the founder of the Japanese Red Army... 62 resp.

88. An Oversimplification of Her Beauty - 3.627 Overwhelming debut about the doubts of the director Nance about his relationship with a beautiful young woman. He combines personal experiences with fiction,... 236 resp.

89. Histoire de mes cheveux - 3.608 Artists and filmmakers can be unusual people. Of those unusual people, Boris Lehman is very unusual indeed. He has unusual obsessions, for instance with his... 51 resp.

90. Nick - 3.607 Where were you, Fow Pyng Hu? It took four years after his impressive debut Jacky before Paradise Girls appeared. Another eight years later, he... 305 resp.

91. Los pasos dobles - 3.599 This visually impressive combination of the lives of saints, painted portraits and the Billy the Kid myth earned the Rotterdam regular Lacuesta the main prize... 309 resp.

92. Girimunho - 3.580 Deep in the hinterland of Brazil, in the sleepy town of São Romão, magic and everyday events are juxtaposed in this beautiful debut to create a loving, dreamy... 345 resp.

93. Nana - 3.557 The unusual Nana is filmed from the perspective of a child. Four-year-old Nana walks with a childlike purity through a world that is partly paradise,... 605 resp.

94. The Great Northwest - 3.556 Fifty years after four women recorded their journey through the North-west of America in a scrapbook, McCormick repeats their journey. His film, which is also... 491 resp.

95. Damsels in Distress - 3.554 Four female students want to cause a revolution at their University and end up in drily comic situations when they start getting involved with men, their... 637 resp.

96. The Interceptor from My Hometown - 3.552 One of the filmmaker’s classmates reveals his secret: he 'intercepts' people seeking their rights. That’s how the system works. The filmmaker follows the... 116 resp.

97. Skoonheid - 3.547 Beauty lies in the eye of the beholder. So does obsession. Beauty is set in a South Africa we seldom see: white suburbia, where people speak Afrikaans... 716 resp.

98. Low Definition Control - Malfunctions #0 - 3.545 In the name of safety, the most banal movements in public spaces are being watched. Before a wide screen of strikingly captivating black-and-white images of... 121 resp.

99. Demain? - 3.541 Delmira Agustini (Uruguay, 1886-1914) is considered one of the greatest female poets in Latin America. Filmmaker Laurent provides a beautiful, calm and... 316 resp.

100. Tokyo Playboy Club - 3.536 There are rundown nightclubs where the excitement is gone, but the Playboy Club in Tokyo has long since passed that phase. It’s the ideal backdrop for shady... 800 resp.

101. I Carried You Home - 3.522 Another kind of road movie. Two sisters - played by two striking actresses - accompany their dead mother by ambulance across Thailand. They have grown apart,... 276 resp.

102. Black Dove - 3.499 In a gripping and beautifully constructed narrative, victims and culprits of a car accident are linked by complex feelings of guilt. Roh (The Last Dining... 463 resp.

103. The Comedy - 3.493 Ageing hipster Swanson is about to receive his father’s inheritance, but doesn’t care. He hangs around and acts like a complete jerk. Nevertheless, he’s... 471 resp.

104. Dress Rehearsal for Utopia - 3.477 The filmmaker, whose personal essay/experimental travel journal Color Runaway Dog was screened at IFFR last year, once again links autobiographic drama... 44 resp.

105. Hail - 3.464 Ex-prisoner Jones and his wife play the leading roles themselves in this gripping drama based on his memories. After a tender start, it soon turns rough and... 308 resp.

106. Old Dog - 3.457 Third feature by the front runner of Tibetan cinema, whose first short film was screened in Rotterdam. Without raising the tempo, he gets better and better. In... 293 resp.

107. Malaventura - 3.452 One day, a nameless old man in Mexico City feels that he his life will end - and with it his memories. Dignified debut by the young Lipkes, who’s already the... 221 resp.

108. Clip - 3.449 Clip is not another 'coming-of-age' story about the complexities of adolescence. Miloš has made an honest and non-judgmental portrait of teenagers... 601 resp.

109. Heart's Boomerang - 3.443 Snowy Saint Petersburg. A young man with an incurable heart disease. Underground trains where he spends most of his time working as a subway machinist. Nikolay... 348 resp.

110. Egg and Stone - 3.427 Meticulous in every way: the non-professional actors with incredible skills, the beautiful camerawork, the timing and dosing of the tragic storyline about a... 920 resp.

111. Eden's Ark - 3.402 Compiled from found footage, real and fake, alongside beautifully shot images in the footsteps of the curious narrator: Eden's Ark is a hypnotic film... 82 resp.

112. L' hypothèse du Mokélé-Mbembé - 3.395 South-eastern Cameroon. A French zoologist investigates stories from pygmies about a prehistoric monster. For years, he has crossed the jungle back and forth... 195 resp.

113. The Blindfold - 3.381 Recruits to a radical Islamic organisation are blindfolded before being taken to a contact address. So starts this look behind the scenes of a phenomenon that... 770 resp.

114. Alps - 3.366 Lanthimos (Dogtooth) is a pioneer in new Greek cinema. In the absurd Alps, we follow a nurse, a paramedic, a gymnast and her trainer, who... 800 resp.

115. Papirosen - 3.364 Starting with the birth of his nephew Mateo, the young Argentine filmmaker Solnicki recorded the equally unique and universal vicissitudes of his Polish-Jewish... 286 resp.

116. Iceberg - 3.364 Stunningly shot in the wintry Spanish countryside, the delicate Iceberg, made largely without dialogue, shows the world of young people who bear... 198 resp.

117. Hello, Mr. Tree! - 3.363 Han Jie (Tiger Award winner with Walk on the Wild Side, 2005) constructs a slightly absurd social comedy around the eccentric protagonist Mr Tree (Wang... 810 resp.

118. Los últimos cristeros - 3.348 The eternal battle between worldly rulers and believers resulted in the 1930s in Mexico in a bloody rebellion by the so-called Christeros. Meyer... 135 resp.

119. Lacan Palestine - 3.342 The term essay film is sometimes used a bit too easily, but this really is one - and it isn’t an easy one. Skillfully cut and pasted from existing film... 73 resp.

120. The Day He Arrives - 3.342 The mastery of Hong Sang-Soo is recognisable in the sometimes hilarious, sometimes moving way in which he manages to restructure familiar elements in every new... 1026 resp.

121. Sur la planche - 3.340 Badia and Imane work in Tangier peeling shrimps and at night they earn money robbing men. The determined Badia hates peeling shrimps and sees two new... 524 resp.

122. Splinters - A Century of an Artistic Family - 3.320 A century of development, starting in the era of Finland's nascent nationalism, when the country still belonged to Tsarist Russia, ending in the heydays of... 103 resp.

123. Bunohan - 3.313 A Malaysian kickboxing and gangster film with the flair of a Sergio Leone Western. A crime story about three brothers in a village near the Thai border, but... 278 resp.

124. Stateless Things - 3.311 Claustrophobic drama about two stateless boys struggling with life. Although they couldn’t be more different, they are linked by their loneliness and... 286 resp.

125. Sentimental Animal - 3.303 Mysterious, oppressive and occasionally shocking film in stylised black-and-white (shot by a colleague director Zhang Yuedong) about the latter days of a... 122 resp.

126. Shattered - 3.302 Xu Tong continues his enervating, sometimes controversial reporting on the morals of the Chinese underclass. In the lead role, an 80-year-old, retired railway... 202 resp.

127. Cornelia frente al espejo - 3.296 The cream of Argentine acting talent collaborated on this fiction debut by the award-winning documentary filmmaker Rosenfeld. Stylish and mysterious drama... 436 resp.

128. Tributes - Pulse - 3.281 For his latest celebration of decaying film stock, American filmmaker Bill Morrison collaborated with Simon Christensen. The Danish musician conceived of the... 57 resp.

129. L' estate di Giacomo - 3.281 A summer day in Italy. The camera follows the deaf-mute Giacomo and a childhood girlfriend Stefi closely - in the woods, by the river - without wanting to... 684 resp.

130. A Fish - 3.278 Korean Park taught himself to film in 3D for his debut. Viewers are cleverly fed a red herring in the shape of a philosophy professor who hears that his... 683 resp.

131. Apuda - 3.254 With a painter’s eye, the filmmaker portrays a poor, simple man caring for his sick father. Bitter beauty. An exquisite impression of two men who live the way... 114 resp.

132. The Hunter - 3.240 He's a family man with a farm. She's a convict from a nearby prison obliged to work there. Something happens between them. What does it entail? Without giving... 221 resp.

133. The Whirlpool - 3.227 Two lonely twentysomethings meet by Niagara Falls. A fleeting relationship blossoms, that should provide comfort for both their unhappy pasts. But it isn’t... 211 resp.

134. A Shape of Error - 3.189 Child based this imagined home movie about the life of Mary and Percy Shelley on the real diaries of Mary and her sister Claire. Together with the factual... 111 resp.

135. Francophrenia (or: Don't Kill Me, I Know Where the Baby Is) - 3.176 Ian Olds and Paul Felten wrote a new script to accompany footage of Franco made while shooting the soap General Hospital. The result is an experimental... 324 resp.

136. Return to Burma - 3.173 At the moment, Myanmar (Burma) seems to be opening up slightly. Just before it did so, the young filmmaker Midi Z returned to his country of origin to shoot a... 624 resp.

137. Alms for the Blind Horse - 3.168 In the Punjab region during one turbulent night, a home is demolished at the orders of the landlord. In the morning, the whole village protests. A film dealing... 220 resp.

138. Corta - 3.159 Corta (cut) shows how agricultural labourers in Valle del Cauca, Colombia, harvest a field of sugar cane using machetes. The hypnotic rhythm of the... 176 resp.

139. Women on the Edge - 3.159 The disaster on 11 March 2011 made a huge impression in Japan. Few filmmakers were capable of coming up with an original response, but Kobayashi found a... 195 resp.

140. Gaamer - 3.154 The protagonist of Gaamer is a young Ukrainian guy who spends most of his time playing video games. He is great at shooting enemies in Quake but not so... 162 resp.

141. In April the Following Year, There Was a Fire - 3.152 A poetic title, almost a film description, that demands some close reading. Just like the film, which - as a visual poem - doesn’t immediately divulge its... 303 resp.

142. Kill List - 3.149 Sombre, nervous and easily hurt: Jay is unemployed and his beautiful wife gets on his nerves. Time to do another job? The skilfully improvised social-realist... 651 resp.

143. Ex Press - 3.130 Made on a modest budget, but with an immodest cinematographic eye. Fiction and fact are mixed as in a dream. A dream about trains and the sinister affairs that... 54 resp.

144. Rua Aperana 52 - 3.105 Bressane, a leading name in progressive Brazilian cinema for the past forty years, was honoured with a retrospective at the IFFR in 2000. He has made a musical... 95 resp.

145. It Looks Pretty from a Distance - 3.092 This first feature by contemporary artists Wilhelm and Anka Sasnal is a grasping chronicle of the decline and fall of a Polish village, where everyone is on... 565 resp.

146. A Woman's Revenge - 3.053 This version of the famous story from Les diaboliques by Barbey d'Aurevilly (1874) features beautiful classical music, costumes and theatrical... 358 resp.

147. Dernière séance - 3.033 The lonely, taciturn Sylvain is a projectionist in an old local cinema. The place has to close because it doesn’t get enough customers, but the film lover... 273 resp.

148. L - 3.026 A man lives and works in his car. He meticulously, dutifully works as its driver until, one day, a New Driver is employed. Absurdist-existentialist film about... 656 resp.

149. Verano - 2.992 The informal intimacy of amateur film formats, such as Hi8 or MP4, is often used by film makers. But seldom with such intense beauty as by Torres Leiva. Moving... 367 resp.

150. Mercado de futuros - 2.984 Álvarez won a Tiger Award for The Sky Turns, a beautiful documentary elegy for the village she was born in. Here she utilises an equally measured style... 124 resp.

151. A La Cantábrica - 2.952 La Cantábrica is a factory that recently closed in a suburb of Buenos Aires, where four young friends meet regularly during the financial crisis of the 1990s.... 334 resp.

152. The Loneliest Planet - 2.902 A young couple, played by Gael García Bernal and Hani Furstenberg, hike through the mountains of Georgia led by a local guide. Amid the lush landscape, their... 901 resp.

153. Totem - 2.861 Fiona is young and willing. She is a housemaid in the Bauer family, where all seems meticulously planned but no one seems to understand anyone. They also have... 446 resp.

154. Lost in the Mountain - 2.764 Four friends hike into the mountains in search of another friend who has been missing for some time. They may not even hope to find him, but they do have hope.... 178 resp.

155. Carnival - 2.754 This visually exciting film merges documentary and fiction, evoking notions of Eros and Thanatos, and of joy and sadness. Meandering with a very free camera... 122 resp.

156. When the Bough Breaks - 2.744 Experienced documentary filmmaker becomes involved in the lives of the children of a family trying to survive in their jury rigged shanty stuck in between the... 121 resp.

157. Roman Diary - 2.419 Pilz's description of his film doesn’t even mention Rome or the hill of Gianicolo, which overlooks the Trastevere district. The film should provide a... 62 resp.

158. Buenas noches, España - 2.379 A road movie, but certainly not an ordinary one. A boy and a girl travel through Spain, but they also seem to travel through a lost world. An experimental... 211 resp.

159. Hoy no tuve miedo - 2.291 'Today I felt no fear.' Under this beautiful title, the young Fund (The Lips, IFFR 2011) made a lyrical film in the rural Argentine town of Crespo about... 320 resp.

160. The Pettifogger - 2.111 1963: a year in the life of a petty criminal. This abstract crime film reconnoitres the frontiers of the genre, with images from comics and advertising and old... 99 resp.

161. Par exemple, Electre - 1.905 Balibar, well-known as an actress and singer, left none of her talents unused in her directing debut. In this eclectic homage to Greek tragedy, Balibar and... 42 resp.

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