78th Golden Globe Awards

Iran, today. Forty-something Heshmat is a doting husband and father.

Life, death and everything in between and beyond. These are the themes of This Is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection, a film from Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese, an African filmmaker and visual artist, who was born in Hlotse, a market town in Lesotho, and now lives in Berlin.

Show Me What You Got, Svetlana Cvetko's directorial debut, tells the story of three late twentysomethings and their playful forming of a ménage à trois, in a sensual scenario reminiscent of the French New Wave, like Jules et Jim. Filmed in black-and-white in Los Angeles (and partly in Italy), each character is seen at a moment of transition.

When the director of True Mothers, Naomi Kawase, read the book Asa ga Kuru/ 朝が来るby Mizuki Tsujimura, she felt something within her say “this is a story meant for me”. True Mothers is a story about a young couple, Satoko and Kiyokazu.

Meet Sayuri (Yoshiko Sengen), a winsome and bright-eyed part-time waitress working at a small Tokyo coffee-shop, “Extra”. She has a secret.

Carlos Sorin’s Notes for My Son details in almost documentary fashion the last days of a terminal cancer patient who has been told that her treatments are no longer effective. Unlike recent Hollywood movies on the subject, it does not sugarcoat the experience but also it keeps the viewer from turning away thanks to the remarkable performance of Valeria Bertuccelli who plays the victim, Maria Valdez.

The fable of “La Llorona” – the weeping woman – of a mother who drowns her children after her husband betrays her, has often ignited the imagination of artists, and Jayro Bustamante is no exception. But in the version of this Guatemalan director in his eponymous film, the legend takes on a new dimension.

Edoardo Ponti once again directs his mother – none other than Sophia Loren – in the Netflix feature film The Life Ahead, based on French novelist Romain Gary's novel, and adapted for the screen by Ponti with Italian screenwriter Ugo Chiti. Set in present-day Bari, Italy, the movie tells the story of Madame Rosa (Loren), a tough-as-nails lady who takes in young refugees from Africa as foster children.

The artistic and political lives of Vaclav Havel, leader of the Velvet Revolution, are skillfully interwoven in this elegant biopic by Czech director Slávek Horák. Spanning three decades, beginning with the 1968 Prague Spring, the viewer sees how Havel is transformed by politics, yet never loses the playwrights’ perspective as he melds political action and police repression into dramaturgy and then back to politics.

 A drama with doses of humor, Guerrero Dos: Tuloy ang Laban (The Fight Continues) chronicles the struggles of a mother and her young son, Miguel (Julio Caesar Sabenorio). When Miguel’s brother, Ramon, falls into a coma after a boxing match, mother and son must soldier on, keeping vigil in the hospital while coping with their daily struggles.