Aragon, Spain. After living through her parents' divorce, Mar arrives in the summer in a mysterious town where she is fascinated by the horrifying stories about the Civil War and its terrible consequences told by members of a group of teenagers who seem to live according to rules that are strange to her.
At the height of the summer tourist season, the Spanish beach town Magaluf turns into a hellscape of the low-cost travel industry. For eight weeks every year, over one million mostly British vacationers ride an alcohol-soaked tide of public urination, fisticuffs and ambulance sirens for recreation. Instead of assembling a clip-reel of "balconing," when drunk idiots jump into hotel pools from their balconies, filmmaker Miguel Ángel Blanca crafts a far deeper and atmospheric look at a place where visitors and locals alike are driven by pleasure. Long-time resident Maria has little time left, so she takes in a seasonal lodger who listens to her relive her glory days. An enterprising real estate agent peddles an extravagant development, while a young gay man drifts without any plans beyond robbing a tourist for kicks. Part ghost story, part foreboding parable, this is a stylish and vivid impression of people and a place dreaming of escape. Myrocia Watamaniuk (Hot Docs)
A portrait of the disenchanted youth of the city of Tolyatti, once a symbol of Soviet progress and the automobile, now devastated by economic decline. Laura Sistero encounters an aimless young generation, who express their dreams of escape through crazy races in old patched-up Ladas. A cinematic object is propelled by spectacular skids to the rhythm of an electro-rock soundtrack.
Claudia, a ten-year-old girl, leaves with her family to spend the weekend out of town. During their car trip, they decide to take a short rest at an abandoned gas station. The appearance of a strange woman will reveal her true fate to Claudia.
In a deportation centre in the middle of idyllic Denmark, Artin and Jahan seek ways to bring hope to their lives and to the people around them.
Thoughts, sometimes just numbers, reach us from offscreen almost like music, like a mantra or a prayer. What we see are circular fragments from familiar spaces: a mirror, a magnifying glass. A day like any other day: without medication, or perhaps better with? A film like the investigation of an uncertainty principle: do we really see better with a magnifying glass? A face scratched out of the family album: the gap is draped with flowers and cut-out pictures of clothes and finally filled again by a drawing.
In 2015, Ossamah Al Mohsen and her son were the victims of a trip on the Hungarian border by a television reporter in her desperate flight from a Syria at war. The cameras captured this moment by scandalizing public opinion. This kick allowed Ossamah, famous soccer coach in his country, to arrive in Madrid and resume his profession. But the rest of his family did not have the same luck. The story of Ossamah allows us to reflect on the survival of thousands of Syrian families trapped in Turkey but also that of Moatassam, Youssef and Muhannad, three promising Syrian footballers who were robbed of the best years of their lives by war.
