Synopsis

A couple learns that, due to a hospital mix-up years ago, they must welcome their unknown biological son — and bid farewell to the boy they’ve long loved.

Synopsis

Melrick, an unruly 13-year-old boy living in Stains, France, spends his summers at his grandmother’s house in French Guiana. He loves drumming — in no small part because his uncle Lucas, who tragically died 11 years prior, was also a drummer. As Melrick’s awareness of his family’s devastating past grows, he searches for ways to pay tribute to his history, culture, and heritage. Through a blend of intimate invented scenarios and carefully observed documentary footage, director Maxime Jean-Baptiste deftly crafts a heart-wrenching, deeply human portrait of a family and of a community committed to the anti-colonial struggle trying to reconcile their grief with an impulse for revenge. Listen to the Voices is urgent, beautiful, and filled with humanity.

Synopsis

Set in the lush days of a Finnish summer, Mika Kaurismaki’s Long Good Thursday is a gentle comedy of growing older and of accepting the never-ending possibility of finding joy. Finnish comedy star Heikki Kinnunen plays an aging farmer intent on finishing his life in the home he shared with his late wife. Much to his surprise, he finds himself smitten with a free-spirited artist (the ever alluring Jaana Saarinen) intent on using him as a model for her photography. Similar in tone to Hannes Holm’s A Man Called Ove, Long Good Thursday perfectly balances deadpan humor with simple yet profound observations about our shared journey of aging.

Synopsis

In this touching deadpan comedy, a welder, who finds himself in Helsinki and experiencing total amnesia, sets out to rebuild his life with a ragtag group of outsiders.

Synopsis

Visionary stop-motion animation director Adam Elliot returns to the Festival (Mary and Max, 2009) with a film eight years in the making. As a girl whose young life is troubled by misfortune, Grace (voiced by Sarah Snook) seeks comfort in her loving twin brother Gilbert and her pet snails. But when the siblings are forcibly separated after the death of their father and placed in foster homes at opposite ends of  Australia, Grace’s loneliness causes her to withdraw into her shell — much like her beloved pet snails.

Years pass and her sorrow grows, until one day she strikes up an odd friendship with Pinky (Jacki Weaver), an eccentric older woman with a glowing outlook on life and kindness to spare. At once gloomy, affecting, and hopeful, Memoir of a Snail is a beautiful testament to the power of friendship and resilience in the face of adversity.