Agitprop

Secretary of the most influential Communist Party in the Western world, Enrico Berlinguer challenged the international balance by seeking to bring the Communists to government in Italy and achieve socialism in a democratic country. From 1973, when he escaped an attack by the Bulgarian secret services, to the assassination of his main ally Aldo Moro in 1978, not forgetting his trips to Moscow and the covers of Time: the story of a man who wanted to change the world, but failed.

Together, a filmmaker and her characters venture into a personal research project about intimacy. On the fluid border between reality and fiction, Touch Me Not follows the emotional journeys of Laura, Tómas and Christian, offering a deeply empathic insight into their lives. Craving for intimacy yet also deeply afraid of it, they work to overcome old patterns, defense mechanisms and taboos, to cut the cord and finally be free. Touch Me Not looks at how we can find intimacy in the most unexpected ways, at how to love another without losing ourselves.

Welcome to the picturesque world of the Kaldarash Roma – a closed community of no more than 1 million people all over the world. 'Concrete Pharaohs' take us on a journey into the lifestyle and traditions of the most hidden and intriguing Roma communities. A charismatic Gypsy baron will walk us through his stories and his new house. We will learn the hot trends in Roma tombstone design. We will go down into the underground homes of African granite, furnished with beds, wardrobes, stereos and a charged cell phone – a direct line to the other world. A celebration of life and afterlife in all of their manifestations.

This is a modern pirate story complete with a captain, a mutinous crew of outlaws, a princess, her wedding dress and untold riches. Only one thing is missing: the ship. According to legend, Vulchan, a 19th-century gypsy pirate, attacked three convoys laden with gold. He robbed them, sunk them and hid his treasure by the coast. Fast forward to present day. Captain Jack, an ex-con himself, leads a motley bunch of homeless outcasts—alcoholics and petty criminals—in a search for the hidden loot. But their hopes of riches and glory are threatened when the brother of the Bulgarian Prime Minister announces plans to build a new mega tourist resort by the Black Sea.

Chronicles Stephen C. Apostolof's rise from Eastern-European fugitive to producer and director of sexploitation films in the 60's and 70's, his turbulent relationship with infamous Ed Wood and his downfall in the late 70's with advent of hardcore pornography.

A cinematic, character-driven insight to what it meant to produce and to own a car in communist times: the Socialist propaganda dreams and the hard reality of living that dream. The freedom that these slow and clumsy vehicles were giving to their owners; the cars as an instrument in the Cold War battle; legends and homemade tune-ups as an attempt to stand at least a little bit off the crowd.

Warner lives in a cramped townhouse with his wife, Claire, and their two children. While buying a house in Calgary's competitive real estate market, he learns his job isn't as secure as he'd like, and when he asks Claire to reconsider, they fight. On the same afternoon, Claire is attacked; Warner emerges as the prime suspect.

What Swiss director Stefan Schweitert did for accordion music and for yodeling (Accordion Tribe, Cinequest, 2005; Echoes of Home, Cinequest 2008) he now does for traditional Balkan music. This wonderful film is also a love story – and a door into a world of musical wonders.

A cinematic journey into the heart of the Europe through the life-changing experience of young participants of Erasmus - the most ambitious mobility programme of our times. The film’s characters leave the comfort zone of their country, to prove to themselves that they can survive in a foreign environment, overcoming their fears and adapting to different cultures and mentalities. Set against the current European crisis, fueled by unprecedented youth unemployment and fears about the refugee situation, their journeys offer a bird’s-eye view of a continent in transition, giving a sense of what the future holds.

Paintings, performances, experiments, electronic music sounding in the spaces of two old houses in a small Italian town, heated conversations about contemporary art, touching meetings with the closest people and places in Bulgaria after 50 years of separation. "Flying with Fins" is a film about the constant search for meaning in art and life. Alzek Misheff, artist - rebel and experimenter, leads us in this philosophical and aesthetic journey through time, space and ideas.

Georgi and the Butterflies tells the story of a man and his dream. This man is Dr Georgi Lulchev, a psychiatrist, neurologist, Chinese medicine man, administrator, amateur chef, entrepreneur and Director of the Home for Psychologically Disabled Men. His dream is to organise a farm in the yard of the home, where the patients can raise snails, ostriches and pheasants, produce silk fibres and soybean food. This is a story full of optimism, snails, ostriches, silk, charity, the Eastern Orthodox Church, soybean food, schizophrenics, oligophrenics, psychopaths, Korean investors, Western hunters, misery, acupuncture and compassion. Compassion, business, butterflies.

Love & Engineering is for everyone who has experienced uncertainty, had a crush on someone or been on a date. The film asks what are our so-called “feelings” and can we can control them or not. Challenges of the dating world are approached through the perspective of male engineers: how to encounter people in the real world? The film reveals that falling in love happens in three phases and that charming your date could be just a matter of adept hacking skills!

The factory that once employed the entire town and surrounding villages has been closed down due to a questionable privatization process, coinciding with a tragic incident where a group of its workers perished in a deliberately set fire. The remaining workers, devastated by the loss of their loved ones and the subsequent corrupt sale of the factory, initiate protests, but their efforts seem futile, yielding no concrete results. Feeling abandoned not only by the authorities but also by their cherished church, they find themselves seeking solace and answers in the supernatural.

The story of one-time boy Tsar, now-adult politician Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha and his relationship to the people of his birth country.

Elitza Gueorguieva films the making of the novel that her Belarusian alter-ego Aliona begins about her father, a maritime adventurer, physicist and dreamer, who disappeared off the Turkish coast in 1995.

For years, Russia has been trying to rebuild its empire. The hybrid war doctrine introduced by Putin in 2013 assumes attacking Western countries without declaring war. The invasion of Ukraine made us lose our sense of security. A pair of documentary filmmakers from Poland set off on a journey to look for answers to the question about the threats that may face Central and Eastern Europe.

A Finnish documentary follows four young men who have one year to find new love in Helsinki.

Audrius Mickevičius puts the horribly disfigured face of his murdered brother at the start of his film. It is almost a meditation about the question whether a final act like murder can be atoned for in a temporal order – and whether the passing of time allows the victim’s family to forgive. Mickevičius uses the example of two lifers (one of them gets married and wants to have children, the other pours his whole passion into an idea of craftsmanship) and a philosopher with prison experience to make that strange state of suspended life comprehensible.

The life and death of socialist architectural monsters. An epic fairy-tale in five chapters.

The epic story of a village turned concentration camp, turned a city, turned nuclear power plant and of its population. A world instantly transformed by ideologies, regimes and dreams of economic prosperity. The tales of characters whose lives intersect in a sinister past, nuclear future and the stinging mosquitoes flying through time, sealing their fate together.