All Recommendations
The Wonders
Gelsomina’s family works according to some special rules. First of all, Gelsomina, at twelve years of age, is head of the family and her three younger sisters must obey her: sleep when she tells them to and work under her watchful eye. But the world, the outside, mustn’t know anything about their rules, and must be kept away from them. They must learn to disguise themselves.
Journey to the West
Tang Zhijun, an editor of a science fiction magazine, attempts to find signs of an alien civilisation. When a strange young man claims to have received instructions from aliens, Tang and his team follow him in search of extraterrestrial creatures.
Fists in the Pocket
A deeply disturbed and epileptic young man benignly decides to murder other members of his dysfunctional family for altruistic reasons.
My Class
The ostensibly simple story of a sympathetic veteran teacher giving Italian lessons to a weekly class of diverse immigrants is given infinitely more depth and complexity by the manner in which director Daniele Gaglianone renders his story. Blurring the lines between fact and fiction, truth and artifice, and between documentary and drama, Gaglianone has created a film within a film. You see the apparent artifice of Gaglianone’s crew using professionals, including the noted film actor Valerio Mastandrea as the teacher, interlinked with ‘real’ immigrant protagonists, studying the language to improve their chances of employment and of gaining a permanent residence permit. Thus in the course of the lessons there is simultaneously the painful and upsetting relation of the students’ personal stories but also humour, as they interact and share their humanity, bridging cultural differences, united in their striving to make a better life for themselves. (Source: LFF programme)
Si muore tutti democristiani
Enrico, Fabrizio and Stefano are three left-winged friends.
Omelia Contadina
A farming community gathers on a plateau on the border of three regions for the funeral of traditional agriculture. It’s a film to ward off the disappearance of a millenary culture.
Aribada
In the middle of the Colombian coffee region, Aribada, the resurrected monster, meets Las Traviesas, a group of indigenous transwomen from the Emberá tribes. The magical, the dreamlike and the performative coexist in their unique world - an aesthetic and spiritual universe in which documentary and fiction merge into a transcultural narrative. Enchanted by the beauty and power of their jais (spirits), Aribada decides to join Las Traviesas in creating their own trans*futurist community.
Sinderella and the Golden Bra
Prince David is having trouble finding a bride amongst the maidens of the village, so his father decides to hold a masked ball. Sinderella, an adopted French orphan, puts up with abuse from her stepmother and two stepsisters, and is not allowed to go to the ball. She is despondent until her inebriated fairy godfather appears and fixes her up real pretty and sends her on to the ball, with the admontion that she must return by midnight. Sinderella and the Prince get along famously, but the time flies and she leaves in a hurry, dropping her gilded support in her haste. The Prince mounts a desperate search for his loved one, requiring all the maidens of the village to try on the forgotten garment.
Libera
Three separate women endure trouble with the men in their lives.
Weekend
After a drunken house party with his straight mates, Russell heads out to a gay club. Just before closing time he picks up Glen but what's expected to be just a one-night stand becomes something else, something special.
Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai
An African-American Mafia hit man who models himself after the samurai of ancient Japan finds himself targeted for death by the mob.
Happy as Lazzaro
Purehearted teen Lazzaro is content living as a sharecropper in rural Italy, but an unlikely friendship with the marquise’s son will change his world.
Cinderella
Cinderella, an orphaned girl with an evil stepmother, has big dreams and with the help of her Fabulous Godmother, she perseveres to make them come true.
The Host
A teenage girl is captured by a giant mutated squid-like creature that appears from Seoul's Han River after toxic waste was dumped in it, prompting her family into a frantic search for her.
The Florida Project
The story of a precocious six year-old and her ragtag group of friends whose summer break is filled with childhood wonder, possibility and a sense of adventure while the adults around them struggle with hard times.
Aftersun
Sophie reflects on the shared joy and private melancholy of a holiday she took with her father twenty years earlier. Memories real and imagined fill the gaps between miniDV footage as she tries to reconcile the father she knew with the man she didn't.
The Virgin Suicides
A group of male friends become obsessed with five mysterious sisters who are sheltered by their strict, religious parents.
Hugo
Orphaned and alone except for an uncle, Hugo Cabret lives in the walls of a train station in 1930s Paris. Hugo's job is to oil and maintain the station's clocks, but to him, his more important task is to protect a broken automaton and notebook left to him by his late father. Accompanied by the goddaughter of an embittered toy merchant, Hugo embarks on a quest to solve the mystery of the automaton and find a place he can call home.
I, Tonya
Competitive ice skater Tonya Harding rises amongst the ranks at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships, but her future in the sport is thrown into doubt when her ex-husband intervenes.
BlacKkKlansman
Colorado Springs, late 1970s. Ron Stallworth, an African American police officer, and Flip Zimmerman, his Jewish colleague, run an undercover operation to infiltrate the Ku Klux Klan.