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Sensitive and refined drama in which experiences from the puberty of a female teacher and a piano student reflected in the world of the younger generation they have contact with. Ryo is a young teacher who, unlike her colleagues, does not adopt an authoritarian attitude to the adolescents she has in her care. She does not realise at first that, by doing this, she is putting herself at risk. The 14-year-olds feel misunderstood by the adults who insensitively snuff out their young ambitions. When their frustration grows, the adolescents turn into secretive and hard-bitten kids. As a result, Ryo is thrown back in time and confronted with her own dark past, in which she resisted the insensitive world of her superiors. Then she meets Koichi, a man she knows from her studies. He was a talented pianist in his youth, but his ambitions were also made impotence by an adult. Now he works for the local electricity company and he has allowed himself to be persuaded to give piano lessons to the son of a colleague. It becomes clear that Ryo and Koichi have shared experiences that they can only now relive and then come to terms with. Fourteen is an atmospheric and subtle drama in which two different generations mirror each other in the most vulnerable period of their lives

Abigail Child uses home-movie aesthetics to reconstruct a life in a time when film still had to be invented. Based on diary notes by Mary Shelley (1797-1851) and her stepsister Claire, she filmed the problems of love, pregnancies, babies who died and the written work of these women, who were very emancipated for their day. Child focuses primarily on Mary's intense love affair with Percy Shelley in the years when she was also writing her classic gothic novel, Frankenstein (1818). The form of A Shape of Error is playful and adventurous, with split screen shots filled with doublings and mirrors, chronological facts in inter-titles and Mary's poetic voiceover. For Child, the authenticity of the home video is a way to create intimacy. At the same time, her film is a self-reflective investigation of this authenticity, as she previously did in The Future Is Behind You. A Shape of Error is the first part of a trilogy about women and ideology, in which Shelley's biography tackles Romanticism.

A los libros y a las mujeres canto (To Books and Women I Sing) is titled after a cleverly rewritten quote from Virgil. This bold opening gesture already announces what lies at the heart of the film: the civilising role of women and literature. María Elorza's first feature is structured around four portraits of women and their libraries (containing more than books). While there is much admiration in the director's gaze, this documentary is the opposite of the heroic-epic narratives so characteristic of a male-centred culture: the director wants to give voice to (and sing with) the kinds of characters and stories that often remain at the margins of literature and cinema - while paying homage to the earthiness of these spirited women.

Young Finnish filmmaker Harju's disturbing, raw film gets up close to a psychotic man. We don't all live in the same reality. Nerve-wracking and frayed experimental fiction that shows a psychotic man and his direct surroundings in a totally uncompromising way. 'Our interaction with others is based on the idea that we all share the same reality. That turns out not always to be the case.'

An experimental film that, although it is short, comprises at least three genres. It's a poetic homage to the great American poet of Howl. And a political pamphlet against the repressive censorship of Singapore. And it's also an artistic piece of pornography.

An Algerian is driving with his little son through Paris. He is stopped by the police, apparently because his headlamp is broken. The policemen start badgering him, the tension rises, until an outburst comes from an unexpected corner. Amin is a sensitive drama about injustice and power relationships, not just between authorities and individuals, but also between father and son.

Exploring the state of depression among the current citizens on Hong Kong as China consolidates its power over the metropolis.

The engaging story of the Cairo Jazz Festival and a portrait of its founder Amr Salah. Running it is a risky undertaking, not only due to limited experience, but also due to the increasingly intolerant social climate in Egypt.

The expansive mountainscapes of the Andes are the basis for this new, 35mm film by Daïchi Saïto, who won the 2016 Tiger Award for Short Films with Engram of Returning. Once again propelled by the free, pulsating improvisation of saxophonist Jason Sharp, in which his heartbeat and breathing play a prominent role, the series of images slowly becomes more abstract. The end result is a hypnotic, sensory meditation on 'our' earth.

On a tiny island in Eastern Cuba, the inhabitants gather around to tell stories that have marked them. Their memories and fears float around like visiting spirits and a sense of imminent liberation is present. A poignant take on the need to overcome the past in order to face the present.

An attempt at mourning both personal and political futures that never arrived, organised around a broad interpretation of the trope of the ghost. We see depersonalised figures, urban ruins, consuming fires and microscopic images of decaying bodily matter; footage was shot in Washington DC, Lima and Amsterdam. Issues like failed neoliberal promises of progress, the rise of fascism, and self-image and adulthood are brought together, set to a poem that shifts between Spanish and Dutch.

Inspired by the memories of her home country, director Laura Weissenberger creates an essay film filled with striking stories of Colombian women. Employing a fictional family that represents the larger society, the narrative takes us on a journey through their past, referencing objects, photos and sounds from another lifetime. A collection of masterfully shot scenes complement the beautifully told stories of hope, sorrow, joy and regret.

Filmed after the lockdown caused by COVID-19, Flowers blooming in our throats is an intimate, poetic portrait of the fragile balances that govern everyday life in a domestic setting. The artist films a group of her friends in their own homes, performing various small actions in accordance with her instructions. Giolo chooses to walk a shifting line where gestures remain ambiguous, expressing a kind of violence that is not immediately recognisable.

How does one visualise an amorphous idea, one that has become abstract to the point of obscurity? Landscape, real and imagined, provides the backdrop for a visual narrative, while sound, intertwined with a self-narrated monologue, adds a third dimension to this specific portrayal. Newsha Tavakolian is detached from the real world and yet achingly affected by it. An experimental take on a reality intensified by the emotional flare of PMS (Premenstrual Syndrome).

Before his death in 1932, a monk created his own camera in one of the most isolated places in the world. 90 years later, a filmmaker discovers and reconstructs the found footage.

A villa in Hillegersberg with a speedboat moored to his own jetty, expensive cars, lunch at Old Dutch - life smiled at criminal lawyer Géza Szegedi. Until the tax authorities came to put things straight. Penniless and without regret, he looks back at his glory years. Portrait of a colorful character who refuses to be tragic.

Naomi, a student dropout, only believes in things he can touch. However, when he really wants to touch someone, he recoils. As is the case when he befriends Maki, a happy-go-lucky young man who lives with Midori, a blind woman who dreamily expounds about places she has never been. When Midori becomes seriously ill, Maki and Naomi send her tapes from an imaginary trip around the world. Their relationship becomes more intimate whilst recording, but they only dare engage in rough, painful horseplay.

Through processing a year of bewildering news and images from my home in Hong Kong, I've come to question the significance of dear memories and personal joy in the face of things falling apart. As the days teeter toward an uncertain future, Happy Valley cinematically probes the role of the so-called "little things". A rendering of the perseverance of spirit in Hong Kong - an attempt at irony that can't help but be emotional.

How to cure oneself of panic, distrust and manipulation in the time of the global pandemic? The Congolese director, sound designer and musician Franck Moka has one answer: humanity. In Home Sweet Home, he remixes personal and collective experiences into confident and heartening beats and lyrics.

A documentation of the interior of a Singaporean tower block, from bottom to top.

A poetic and visual portrait of the old Polish woman Jadwiga Kubis Waslicka. Her life coincided with the 20th century. The great movements of history, such as communism, capitalism and fascism, meant she had to roam Europe from Poland via Germany and the United Kingdom to Holland. Now she's back in her homeland, in Warsaw. She is old. Her body is decaying and she's basically waiting until the angels come to fetch her. The filmmaker is aware of Jadwiga's old age and approaching demise, but he also sees much beauty in her appearance. He juxtaposes her wrinkled face with the guilty Polish landscape. At the most intimate of moments, he does not look away and continues to seek beauty in fragility. The woman no longer leaves her house, but the filmmaker does. He brings images and sounds back that tell us things about her life, but without words. Images that mix the suffering from the past with the suffering now.

Brian never thought he would become a political dissident living in exile. Jenny didn't think she would develop a fear of trains. Peter was just a student wondering how best to spend his summer vacation. Eddie was sure his belief in non-violence would never waver. And yet, by the end of summer 2019, everything had changed for all of them. Hundreds of thousands - perhaps even millions - of protestors have taken to the streets of Hong Kong since early June. Sparked initially by the government's plans for a controversial extradition bill, the movement has now transformed into a broader push for greater freedoms and democracy, with anger over police brutality fuelling a cycle of violence. The protests are Hong Kong's biggest challenge to Beijing since its return to China in 1997. If We Burn looks at the movement through the eyes of Hong Kongers whose fates, like their city's future, now hang in the balance.

Monk Can Chen has a cloudy past, and withdraws from a temple bearing a sack of money. Innkeeper Wang Haili labours under an uneasy conscience while being haunted by his dead wife, Su Mei. Retiree Fang Yiguo has abandoned his son Shangqin, only to find out that emotional entanglements and unacknowledged family sins have unavoidable consequences.

In a world where billions are spent on state-of-the-art weaponry, the deadliest weapon is still a so-called Improvised Explosive Device, which most people can make from materials found at their homes. An IED maker, a soldier and a philosopher describe their relationship with these objects, which can have almost any shape, form and content.

Hanging out at the skatepark, studying videos of the trick he wants to learn (frontside tailslide), a punk show now and then: taciturn teen Renzo's life is uneventful until he meets Zoe, a girl who hangs about just as vacantly in the streets of Trujillo, Peru and loves drawing antennas.