AIFF Favourites

In a vast metropolis full of antitheses, love could be hiding where you least expect. This ingenious rom-com from Argentina lives and breathes where the others merely begin, justifying why it’s been worshipped by audiences. Winner of the Golden Athena at the Athens International Film Festival. — Mariana and Martin live on the same block in Buenos Aires. They pass by each other daily, shop at the same stores, swim at the same pool but have never met. Martin rarely leaves his apartment after his breakup, while Mariana works as an architect and feels incapable of any serious commitment, since coming out of a 4-year relationship. — Golden Athena | Athens International Film Festival | 2011

2019's documentary, a surprisingly photographed ode to Mother Nature and a way of life that's centuries old and gradually disappearing. It stood out among the other entries in its genre, being the only documentary to be nominated for an Oscar for Best International Film in history. — In a secluded mountainous region deep within the Balkans, Hatidze Muratova lives with her elderly mother, in a village without roads, electricity or running water. Last in a series of generations of beekeepers of wild honey, Hatidze produces small batches of pure product, which she sells to the nearest town, a four-hour walk away. — Nominated for Best Documentary | Oscars | 2020 Nominated for Best International Feature Film | Oscars | 2020 Best Documentary | Athens International Film Festival | 2019 Grand Jury Prize | Sundance Film Festival | 2019 Cinematography Award | Sundance Film Festival | 2019

Hayao Miyazaki picked a Dutch animator who had never directed a feature to make Studio Ghibli’s first film outside Japan, and it was Oscar-nominated. It’s almost wordless and dazzling to look at, the story of one man alone with nature and a red turtle that won’t let him go. — A castaway washes up on a beautiful desert island where the only other inhabitants are birds, reptiles and crabs. Every time he tries to escape on a raft, a red turtle stops him. Then the animal turns into a woman, and a feeling neither of them saw coming begins to grow between them. — Nominated for Best Animated Feature | Oscars | 2017 Audience Award | Athens International Film Festival | 2016 Special Mention | Athens International Film Festival | 2016 Special Jury Prize - Un Certain Regard | Cannes Film Festival | 2016

That’s how Apocalypse Now would look like if instead of the Vietnam jungle, Coppola had set it in hushed lounges, offices with giant doors and eclectic swimming pools. Made with enviable confidence, Azor is a fascinating directorial debut about the dark journey to corruption. — In 1980 Argentina, in the midst of dictatorship, a Swiss private banker disappears under unspecified circumstances. When his partner takes over the investigation of the case himself, he immerses in a mystery set behind bourgeois offices' heavy doors and dense gardens of the regime's favoured parvenus. — Official Selection - Encounters | Berlin Film Festival | 2021 Official Selection | San Sebastian Film Festival | 2021 First Feature International Competition | London Film Festival | 2021 Official Selection | Athens Film Festival | 2021

Sold as a date movie and released in Chinese cinemas on New Year’s Eve, the film Bi Gan made before “Resurrection” took $38 million on its first day and $1.5 million on its second. It ends with the director’s virtuoso signature, a final shot that runs for an hour. — Luo Hongwu comes back to Kaili, a rainy town in southern China, after many years away, and almost at once he sets out to find the woman he has never managed to forget. The trail leads him to people who knew her and to a name that may not have been her own. Then he goes into a cinema, and it’s no longer clear whether he’s still searching or already dreaming. — Official Selection - Un Certain Regard | Cannes Film Festival | 2018 Official Selection | San Sebastián International Film Festival | 2018

The Palm d’Or that sent shockwaves through Cannes. After the triumph of Raw, Ducournau returns to become only the second woman in the festibal's history to have won its highest honor. She did it with a story that’s hard to stomach, where nothing is as it seems and nothing is out of limits. — After a series of unexplained crimes, a father rediscovers his son, who has been missing for 10 years. Titane: A metal highly resistant to heat and corrosion, with high tensile strength alloys. — Palme d'Or | Cannes Film Festival | 2021

What's the flip side of the Disney dream? Next to the dreamy Florida Disneyworld, children build their own dominions and struggle to survive. Little chunks of life, sometimes hilarious, sometimes heartbreaking, in a colorful paradigm of contemporary neorealist cinema. — This is the story of a wild 6-year-old and her fearless friends. Their summer is full of wonders, bewilderment and exciting adventures, while the adults around them have to face a harsh reality. — Nominated for Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role (Willem Dafoe) | Oscars | 2018

The cinematic triumph of Cinobo-favourite Bong Joon-ho. A stylistic apotheosis filled with suspense and a piercing social commentary that defies genre. Rightful winner of the Palm d’ Or and the Best Picture Oscar that made Academy history. — The Kims are a loving family, but they are all unemployed and their future seems gloom. The son of the family finds a job as a private tutor and can finally hope for a steady income. Carrying the whole family’s expectations, he goes to interview at the Park household – owners of an international tech company – where he will meet the lady of the house. After that first meeting, a cascade of unfortunate events begins. — Best Film | Oscars | 2020 Best Director | Oscars | 2020 Best Original Screenplay | Oscars | 2020 Best International Feature Film | Oscars | 2020 Palme d'Or | Cannes Film Festival | 2019

Noe’s magnum opus, a kaleidoscopical LSD aesthetics’ journey of a lost soul. The viewer watches through the protagonist’s eyes, the camera is always on the move, while the great provocateur delivers a directorial tour de force for an audience with a strong stomach and a pure spirit of adventure. — Oscar is an American dealer living in Tokyo. After his best friend's betrayal, he is murdered during a transaction. His soul, watching the consequences of his death, wanders in search of resurrection. — Official Selection | Cannes Film Festival | 2009 Jury Prize | Sitges Film Festival | 2009

A shocking animation capturing a path of hope away from Franco's Spain, leading hundreds of thousands of people to another impasse. When a gorgeous cartoon is combined with historical recording. Official Selection at the 2020 Cannes Film Festival. — February 1939. The French government is inundated with Spanish people trying to escape Franco's dictatorship. Its solution is to place them in concentration camps where refugees have no choice but to build their own barracks, feed on the horses that transported them out of their country and die due to lack of hygiene and water. In one of these camps, two men, separated by barbed wire, will become friends. One is a police officer, the other is Josep Bartoli, a designer and anti-Franco fighter. — Official Selection | Cannes Film Festival | 2020 Best Screenplay | Athens International Film Festival | 2020 Audience Award | Athens International Film Festival | 2020

Cannibalism as the perfect allegory for maturation and sexual awakening. A young vegetarian studying to become a vet, starts feeling... hungry. A triumph of Belgian fantasy cinema for extreme viewers. — A promising 16-year-old student from a vegetarian family of veterinarians enters a merciless, dangerous and seductive world, as she begins her studies in veterinary medicine. Her first week is filled with strange rituals. Determined to be accepted, she renounces her principles and tastes raw meat for the first time. She will soon face the consequences of her actions as her true nature emerges. — FIPRESCI Prize- Critics' Week | Cannes Film Festival | 2016 Best First Feature Award | London Film Festival | 2016

Jep Gambardella turns sixty-five on a terrace overlooking the Colosseum, where the wild partying keeps running into an existential void. Sorrentino’s most Felliniesque tribute to Rome won him the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, and it’s all painful revelry and, well, great beauty. — In summertime Rome, Jep Gambardella is sixty-five and still the most wanted guest at every dinner and party in town, and the best of them are the ones he throws himself on his terrace overlooking the Colosseum. Back when he was a young journalist, he wrote one novel, which won a prize and earned him a name as an artist. He hasn’t written a word since. — Oscar Best Foreign Language Film | Oscars | 2014

Irresistibly humane and emotionally disarming, hilarious and heartbreaking at the same time, this is the film that firmly placed Maren Ade among the elite of world cinema. A cinematic experience that feels like a hearty embrace. — A father who delights in pranks tries to get close to his daughter by sneaking into her life, business meetings and nights out. Annoyed, she asks him to stop, but then Toni Erdmann shows up. Her father's alter ego, a peculiar guy in an ugly suit, a terrible wig and an even worse pair of teeth. Oddly enough, the more eccentric he becomes, the more his daughter seems to respond. — Nominated for Best Foreign Language Film | Oscars | 2017 FIPRESCI Prize | Cannes Film Festival | 2016 FIPRESCI Prize | San Sebastián Film Festival | 2016

Absolutely current, absolutely modern and absolutely meta, this biting social satire by Romanian Radu Jude, which triumphed in Berlin and took home the Golden Bear, is the first great cinematic depiction of the Covid-19 era. — A couple films its own amateur porn tape, but when that leaks to the internet, its star tries to secure her position at the school where she works, while the fabric of society is being disrupted by the Covid-19 pandemic. — Golden Bear | Berlin Film Festival | 2020 Official Selection | San Sebastián International Film Festival

For his first martial arts film, the legendary Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-hsien goes back to the ninth century and a girl trained from childhood to kill, and Cannes gave him Best Director for it. He tells her story quietly, so it pays to listen closely. — In ninth-century China, a nun kidnaps a ten-year-old girl and spends thirteen years shaping her into an assassin who is sent after corrupt officials. After Yinniang leaves one job undone, her punishment is to go back to the place she grew up and kill the man she was supposed to marry. Back home, nobody has forgotten her. — Official Selection | Cannes Film Festival | 2015 Best Director | Cannes Film Festival | 2015 Cannes Soundtrack Award | Cannes Film Festival | 2015 FIPRESCI Prize Best Foreign Language Film | 2016 Palm Springs International Film Festival | 2016

A sweet embrace to an unknown world, the one that every young person must discover when coming out of their shell. A supernatural growth of the need for emancipation in one of the most beautiful European films of recent times. — A shy young girl leaves her religious parents behind, in a small west coast town in Norway, in order to study at one of Oslo's universities. One day, while she is in the university library, she experiences an intense and unexpected seizure, which resembles those caused by epilepsy. Equally unexpected is the attraction she feels for a beautiful fellow student, which seems to respond to the magnetic presence of the lonely, strange provincial girl.

The film that re-established Chan-wook Park's popularity on a scale similar to that of "Oldboy". An erotic thriller during the era of Japanese-occupied Korea that magnetizes the audience due to its amazing visual work that turns it into a true celebration of the senses. — In 1930s Korea, during the Japanese occupation, a young girl (Sook-Hee) is hired as a maid to a Japanese heiress (Lady Hideko) who lives a lonely life on a large estate in the countryside, with her domineering uncle (Kouzuki). But the maid has a secret. She is a pickpocket who has been hired by a fraudster to seduce the heiress, steal her property and have her locked up in a madhouse. Things seem to go according to plan, until Sook-Hee and Hideko "discover" an unexpected connection between them. — Vulcain Prize | Cannes Film Festival | 2016 Best Non-English Language Film | BAFTA Awards | 2018

Gaspar Noé (“Irreversible”), the leading provocateur of European cinema, wrote just seven pages of script before he shot this sexual odyssey, and it may be the furthest he has ever gone. Across the two years of the affair, you land, almost literally, in bed with the lovers. — It’s early on New Year’s Day when the phone wakes Murphy, asleep beside his young wife and their two-year-old child. The message on the machine is from Electra’s mother, whose daughter has been missing for a long time and who wants to know if he’s heard anything. Murphy stays in the flat and drifts back through his two years with Electra, the promises, the games and the mistakes.