Cinema: Tour De Force

The movie focuses on one of the events in

A Swiss sailor jumps ship in Lisbon, tired of the noisy engine room, the ship "a floating factory of crazy people." He rents a room and does little. He writes letters to his lover, describing the whiteness of the city, the solitude and the silence. He sends his love and emptiness; she replies with love and confusion. He sends movies from his 8mm camera. Then he becomes friendly with Rosa, a chambermaid, and soon it's a love affair. He continues to send letters and movies home. His Swiss lover is hurt and angry; she sends an ultimatum.

The last days of an elderly couple stricken by dementia.

Mina's life is turned upside down when she learns that her husband Babak was wrongly accused of the crime for which he was executed. The bureaucracy apologizes for the miscarriage of justice and holds out the prospect of financial compensation. As an act of self-respect and for the sake of her deaf daughter, Mina takes up the fight against an apparatus marked by cynicism; she demands an apology. Just as money is running out and she loses her flat, a stranger named Reza shows up. He claims to have owed Babak a debt that he now wants to settle.

Jean, a farm lad, wants to escape his silent father; he runs to Paris to his older brother, Georges, who's away covering the war in Kosovo. Angry, he throws a bag of half-eaten pastry into a beggar's lap. Amadou, a young Franco-African, berates him. The police arrive, arrest Amadou and deport the beggar. Georges's girlfriend Anne is upset; it colors her relationship with Georges when he returns from the war. Separate lives intersect for the one moment, around the pastry bag, and all are altered. We follow each as repercussions of the incident play out. Deaf children bookend the film pantomiming words, feelings, and situations: what they are expressing?

Life for an isolated rural family is upended when a major highway next to their property, constructed 10 years before but apparently abandoned, is finally opened.

With an older brother in jail and living with their single mother on Pine Ridge Reservation, Johnny and his sister Jashuan's lives develop new challenges when their absentee cowboy father suddenly dies. The loss prompts Johnny to strike out for Los Angeles, but would mean leaving behind his beloved sister.

An upcoming exhibition celebrating photographer Isabelle Reed three years after her untimely death, brings her eldest son Jonah back to the family house - forcing him to spend more time with his father Gene and withdrawn younger brother Conrad than he has in years. With the three of them under the same roof, Gene tries desperately to connect with his two sons, but they struggle to reconcile their feelings about the woman they remember so differently.

Sam Ali, a Syrian young man, took refuge in Lebanon to flee the Syrian civil war. There, he meets Jeffrey Godefroi, a famous tattoo artist, who makes Mr Ali's back his canvas for a piece of work. Soon, Mr Ali becomes aliving work of art, worth an astronomical sum on the art market,l. Collectors are interested, auction goes up, human rights activists are outraged. Mr Ali must get out of the predicament he's in; the man who sold his skin.

A former university professor now living as a goldfish farmer in a Northern Iranian village, Reza quietly tends to his own affairs alongside his wife Hadis, a principal at a local girls' school, and their young son. After his river-sourced water supply is cut off, Reza's goldfish begin dying. His attempt to reopen his sluice is met with a violent attack by thuggish local Abbas, a strongman for a shadowy organization known as simply "the company." Reza refuses to compensate Abbas for a fake injury, or bribe his way out of mounting legal problems, but he quickly discovers the steep price to be paid for holding on to principles in a system where money trumps morality.

Maia, a single mother, lives in Montreal with her teenage daughter, Alex. On Christmas Eve, they receive an unexpected delivery: notebooks, tapes, and photos Maia sent to her best friend from 1980's Beirut. Maia refuses to open the box or confront its memories, but Alex secretly begins diving into it. Between fantasy and reality, Alex enters the world of her mother's tumultuous, passionate adolescence during the Lebanese civil war, unlocking mysteries of a hidden past.

Middle-aged Mr.Badii is planning to commit suicide and desperately seeks anyone to assist him - he has already dug out the grave in the mountains, but the assistant will have to bury him when he will do the deed. He asks Kurd soldier, Afghan seminarian, but everyone refuses by some reason. Finally he finds an old Turkish taxidermist, who has a sick son and previously attempted suicide himself, and he agrees to assist Badii.

Two competitive friends, fueled by literary aspirations and youthful exuberance, endure the pangs of love, depression and burgeoning careers.

Anders is a recovering drug addict in an Oslo rehab clinic. On 30 August, he is given a day's leave to attend a job interview in the city center. After visiting his friend Thomas, he proceeds to his appointment. In the interview, he admits to being a drug addict and storms out. He then wanders the streets of Oslo for the rest of the day and night, meeting, and sometimes confronting, people from his past. The film ends the next day, 31 August. Focusing on the decisions Anders has made with his time off.

In a sleepy provincial town, a Jehovah's Witness community is attacked by an extremist group. In the midst of this conflict, the familiar world of Yana, the wife of the community leader, slowly crumbles. Yana's inner discontent grows as she struggles to make sense of her desires.

Irreverent city engineer Behzad comes to a rural village in Iran to keep vigil for a dying relative. In the meanwhile the film follows his efforts to fit in with the local community and how he changes his own attitudes as a result.

Well-known actress Behnaz Jafari is left distraught when she comes across a provincial girl's video plea for help, after her family prevents her from taking up her studies at the Tehran drama conservatory. Behnaz abandons her shoot and turns to filmmaker Jafar Panahi to help with the young girl's troubles. They travel by car to the rural northwest, where they have amusing encounters with the charming and generous folk of the girl's mountain village. But Behnaz and Jafar also discover that old traditions die hard.

A chance encounter on a street corner has Lisa and Giorgi fall in love at first sight, but an evil spell is cast on them. Will they ever meet again?