2016 Foreign Film Submissions

Cold of Kalandar is another brilliant example of the current renaissance in Turkish cinema. The film masterfully mixes realism and the poetry of the harsh life some people have to live because of the place and time they were born into.

The best motion pictures always reflect the times people live in. And our times are pretty troubled ones.

A Road to Mother is set during one of the most tragic periods in the history of  the former USSR republic of Kazakhstan. Director, Akan Satayev tells a story of the power of a mother’s love which endures challenges of the turbulent times.

Two twin sisters - excellent singers – never leave each other’s side. Nor could they, since they are Siamese twins, attached at the hip.

House of Others, the directorial debut of Rusudan Glurjidze, is a haunting family drama about two families living in an abandoned village in Abkhazia, a remote region of Georgia. The film is set during the mid-1990s.

The Flower of Aleppo bravely tackles Tunisia's most complicated and painful problem since the start of the Arab spring. Tunisian youth outnumber every other nationality among the foreign fighters who have joined the "jihad" in the Syrian civil war.

Clash, which opened the Un Certain Regard section at the 69th annual Cannes Film Festival this year, positions the viewer on the inside of an Egyptian police riot van in 2013, when Egypt's first freely elected president, Muslim Brotherhood member Mohamed Morsi, was overthrown by the military after a divisive year in power. The country later outlawed the group, branding it a terrorist organization.

Dawn or Ausma, the visually powerful monochrome tragicomedy from Latvian director-screenwriter Laila Pakalnina, is inspired by the mythical propaganda story of Pavel Trofimovich Morozov, the 13-year-old boy who denounced his father to the authorities as an anti-Soviet and was ultimately murdered by his own family. More popularly known as Pavlik, the teenager has been praised by the Soviet government as a political martyr.

Redha (Beautiful Pain), is the first Malaysian film to tackle autism. In her feature directing debut, Tunku Mona Riza delivers a quiet, compassionate look at the condition which afflicts one in 160 children, according to the World Health Organization.

The Demons, a Canadian drama, written and directed by the rising star filmmaker Philippe Lesage ( San Francisco Film Society's Golden Gate New Directors Prize), explores the darkest depths of the human soul, as seen through the perspective of a young boy anxiously witnessing a wave of child abductions in his town. Based in part on Quebecois filmmaker Philippe Lesage’s own childhood experience - though that experience was not as dramatic as the film - The Demons offers an extraordinary examination of childhood fears and of the anxiety associated with a nascent sexuality.