Playlist
<p>Three friends unite to celebrate a bachelorette party and end up navigating their friendship and confronting its secrets by transforming male-dominated spaces—gas stations, their restrooms, the highway—into queer places fed by anonymous sex, inebriated arguments, and a celebration of unpredictable freedom.</p>
<p>A night of jubilation breaks out in Marseille following Algeria's victory in the 2019 Africa Cup of Nations. In the centre of Marseille thousands of people gather to celebrate, rekindling a vibrant connection between Algiers and Marseille. Amidst collective joy, urban tensions and historical echoes, this memorable moment transcends a mere sporting triumph to become an expression of national pride and a complex dialogue with colonial history and the myths of the French Republic.</p>
<p>It’s a sweltering summer in New York. Morgan, a soft-spoken young woman prone to daydreaming, finds refuge inside the cinema where the boundaries between fantasy and reality blur, on screen and off.</p>
<p>Spring 2025. Brooklyn, New York. One chapter closes and another begins.</p>
<p>Mars Verrone turns the camera on their grandfather Carroll B. Williams Jr., a Black pioneer in the natural sciences, whose reflections on facing institutional discrimination throughout an accomplished career offer a template for resilience and survival for future generations.</p>
<p>Puppy love crumbles under the pressures of the creative gig economy in Sanju Surendran’s very modern romance, executive produced by Payal Kapadia, in which the bustling megalopolis of Delhi tramples all over the plans of an aspiring artist and film-festival worker.</p>
<p>A commune in the Basque Country is the setting for Irati Gorostidi Agirretxe’s intricate ensemble drama, as its residents split from the Spanish mainstream after Franco’s death to explore new approaches to life and labor. Special Jury Mention, San Sebastián Film Festival.</p>
<p>Three athletes—including one played by a real-life gold medalist in women’s judo—prepare for a fictional Olympiad in this elemental study of athletic discipline from first-time feature director Giulio Bertelli. Winner of the FIPRESCI Prize at Venice Critics’ Week.</p>
<p>Brand New Landscape is the debut feature film of 26-year-old Japanese director Yuiga Danzuka. The film portrays a poignant family reunion in Tokyo, years after the disappearance of the mother. With elegant direction and a sensitive depiction of familial relationships, the film has been compared to the works of Yasujirō Ozu for its emotional depth and portrayal of family dynamics.</p>
<p>A French academic is seduced into a world of untold histories in her scholarly quest to uncover the mystery of a history-capturing camera-like machine created by clandestine Benedictine monks. An academic-noir, armchair mystery in the lineage of Jorge Luis Borges and Umberto Eco.</p>
<p>Mario wakes up with no memory of his past life. His encounter with Lazare marks the beginning of a spatio-corporeal drift, from the eastern suburbs of Mexico City to the surrounding underground cavities, where bodies and landscapes crack in the same motion.</p>
<p>Do You Love Me is a playful and personal journey through Lebanon’s audiovisual memory, composed entirely of archival footage. It is a love letter to Beirut, spanning 70 years of film, TV, home videos and photography, exploring the Lebanese collective psyche—marked by joy and intimacy, destruction and loss. Through the eyes of citizens, filmmakers and artists, the film pieces together a fragmented history in a country without a national archive, celebrating creative expression as a form of resistance and renewal, and as a means of preserving memory.</p>
<p>Sisters Anna and Charlotte have always fought for their mother’s attention. As old wounds reopen and suck them back to their family home, they unravel mesmerizing mysteries, including anonymous ashes and their mother’s love for a donkey. Will they come to terms with each other?</p>
<p>Lost in her fears and fantasies, a young woman writes in a notebook. A young man finds this notebook on a train. Suddenly, they find themselves in the heart of a forest, in a nocturnal reality where dreams come to life.</p>
<p>In the northern Alps, Anne, Hélène and Suzanne take turns looking after a mountain hut. Through the seasons, hikers come and go. Stories bloom and fade, leaving each of them facing the silence of their chosen solitude and the poetry of nature.</p>
<p>While pregnant with her second child, Kika faces the sudden death of her partner. Totally heartbroken, and broke, she sets her priorities straight: stay strong and make money fast.</p>
<p>Two star-crossed teenage boys must escape a violent entity that takes the form of the person they desire most — each other.</p>
<p>Opening this year’s Discovery programme is Maddie’s Secret, the unmissable directorial debut satirizing and skewering content culture from iconic alt-comedian John Early, who plays the titular role, alongside a troupe of comedians including Kate Berlant, Vanessa Bayer, and Conner O’Malley.</p>
<p>After her parents’ separation, six-year-old Vladlena Sandu moved from Crimea to Grozny. There, in 1994, she was caught up in the Russian Federation’s war of occupation against the Chechen people. Years later, as a filmmaker, she revisits her childhood in this deeply personal, hybrid work of unbridled creativity. She searches for an answer to a fundamental question: how can we break the cycle of violence that shapes so many children and is passed down from generation to generation?<br /> <br /> Sandu has transformed her war memories into an imaginative film brimming with lyrical, political, and surrealistic images. She created a toy theater in which plastic dolls depict the horrors she witnessed as a child, recounted matter-of-factly in her autobiographical voice-over.<br /> <br /> The tableaux and saturated colors are reminiscent of her inspirations, Andrei Tarkovsky and Sergei Parajanov, interspersed with Europop hits such as It’s My Life. A recurring figure is King Kong, her imaginary friend and protector amid the chaos and death brought by war—which is today still scarring the lives of countless children worldwide.</p>
<p>A father dies; his family cares for the deceased and prepares him for his next life. The American setting and way of life intertwine with Buddhist beliefs and customs in a Tibetan family exiled in the United States.</p>
<p>Four wraithlike figures of different ages and pasts, haunted by memory, drift along Nanjing’s wintry riverbanks. They share an abandoned ruin where talk turns to poetry, painterly pauses, instrumental reveries and the unabashed group therapy of karaoke.</p>
<p>When Pastor Hélder’s faith begins to wane, he turns to witchcraft to reclaim it – gaining miraculous powers in return for sacrifice. Shot luminously in black and white, this austere debut unfolds with quiet intensity, revealing how doubt and darkness seeps into everyday life.</p>
<p>Nine-year-old Milo lives in a remote Argentinian village where he studies the Malambo, a folk dance full of bravura. He is an excellent dancer, but Milo’s only desire is to escape the countryside on a train for the Buenos Aires of his dreams.</p>
<p>Dídac (15) travels by bicycle along the Danube with his family during one summer. He starts the journey where the river has just emerged, in Germany. But one afternoon, he begins to encounter a strange figure. It is Alexander (18), who appears and disappears among the waters of the river. Dídac feels that something is changing in him. At that moment, the Danube widens and becomes a giant river. The appearance of this mysterious boy starts to affect his relationship with his family. Biel (13) feels how his brother is growing and distancing himself from him to be with Alexander. Monika (40), the mother, who had made the same trip when she was sixteen, behaves strangely as she flirts with other strangers. Now, upon returning to the river, she evokes the memory of a youth love she experienced at that time. At the end of the journey, when Monika sees Alexander and Dídac together, she understands that it is now her son's turn to live what she lived and invites them to escape downstream in a boat. But during twilight, Dídac begins to mistrust Alexander.</p>
<p>After 14 years away, Hein returns to his home village on a remote island, only to discover that the close-knit community no longer recognises him. Suspecting him to be an impostor, they demand a trial to determine his true identity.</p>
<p>A Chinese wannabe artist drifts between Berlin’s overwhelming queer scene and her traditional family in Beijing. With wit and insight, the film follows her search for identity and belonging in a globalised but polarised world.</p>
<p>Adapted from Yoshiharu Tsuge’s manga Mr. Ben and his Igloo, A View of the Seaside, Tabi to Hibi follows unexpected encounters between a Japanese man and a visiting Korean woman. Their quiet journey together explores moments of distance and connection, interweaving cultural transience with emotional nuance</p>
<p>Ouma Hettie is an elderly goat herder in South Africa’s Kamiesberge. Drawn into a scam offering overdue reparations for her father’s unpaid wartime service, her rituals are unsettled and her independence imperilled in this lyrical portrait.</p>
<p>An elderly Malaysian-Tamil couple discovers their male goat, set for ceremonial slaughter, is pregnant. Torn between faith and the expectations of their community, they struggle to decide whether to slaughter it or face the wrath of the gods.</p>
<p>Having arrived from Ukraine, Russia, and Lithuania, Natalia, Igor, Sergei and Anna are employed at the shipyards in Saint-Nazaire. Dimly lit shadows silhouetted against the lights of the port, as the blue hour gives way to dawn they tell Clément Pinteaux what they have left behind and what they hope to find on their journey into exile.</p>
<p>In this love story, a young couple faces an uncertain future between Africa and Europe. When they reunite in Lisbon, sharing a house with other immigrants, farness and closeness will test their relationship.</p>
<p>A director has to reimagine his film – a love story between two men – because he was not allowed to shoot it in his home country. In a different location, he finds a new leading actor and, together with him, a tender gesture of resistance.</p>
<p>Patricio works for his sisters and feels trapped in a life that no longer fits him. Searching for change, he agrees to go on a date with a mysterious man.</p>