Foreign Language Film Submissions 2020

Games People Play is a comedy about the tragedy of being forever young. An old group of friends gathers to celebrate Mitzi’s surprise birthday party over a nostalgic weekend at an idyllic seaside villa – just like they used to do as teenagers.

Imagine renting happiness. Imagine someone rented your long-lost father who left your mother when you were still a baby and whom you have never seen before.

The setting of Forest Giant is a very Finnish one. Finland is a country full of forests and lakes which has survived largely because of its wood factories.

On the Sicilian island of Favignana, in the late 1960s, Lucia (Marta Castiglia) is left behind by her parents who moved to France in search of work. She stays with her grandmother (Lucia Sardo), the “general”, a tough lady who forcefully tries to protect Lucia from the macho world around them.

The Crying Steppe is a film based on real events that happened in the early years of the Soviet communist regime, when artificially imposed hunger on the native population of Kazakhstan during the 1920s and 1930s cost the lives of 8. 5 million people – 70% of native Kazakhs.

This Bangladeshi movie from director Rubaiyat Hossain is the story of a group of garment workers who work in tyrannical conditions to produce cheap clothing for westerners. Wages are withheld, sexism, violence and abuse are the norm.

A remake of the popular 2013 South Korean film of the same name Miracle in Cell No. 7 is directed by Mehmet Ada Oztekin.

Pinocchio, written and directed by Matteo Garrone, is based on the 1883 Italian children classic The Adventure of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi.   The familiar story, popularized worldwide by the Disney cartoon of 1940, is retold with renewed accuracy to the original version.

Asuran (Demon) is a Tamil language action drama written and directed by Vetrimaaran and produced by Kalaipuli S. Thanu.

Rome, Italy, the early 1980s: four friends, Giulio, Gemma, Paolo and Riccardo are 16 and have their whole life ahead of them. The Best Years, co-written and directed by Gabriele Muccino, is a heartfelt story about a friendship among four people that starts when they are teenagers in the tumultuous early 1980s.