Films framed by concrete, hearts burning beneath the grey, and a lingering Soviet haze you can’t quite shake. Welcome to Eastern Europe.

Normal

With witty lyrics and a sprightly directorial pace, Bettina Oberli satirizes family tensions and steals the show by signing the unexpected feelgood surprise of the year from Switzerland.

—
A thirty-five-year-old housekeeper from Poland looks after an elderly couple in their luxury villa in Switzerland. When she suddenly gets pregnant, the identity of the father will lead to ludicrous revelations.

—
Nora Ephron Prize | Tribeca Film Festival | 2020
Audience Award | Vancouver International Film Festival | 2020

My Wonderful Wanda

The Russian director Kantemir Balagov fully justifies the expectations he created with "Closeness" and gets inspired by Nobel prize author Svetlana Alexievich for a masterful and heartbreaking cinematic experience that touches levels of ancient tragedy.

—
1945, Leningrad; two young women, who were found on the battlefield together, try to get back on their feet and rebuild their lives amongst the ruins that the war has left behind. They will meet again at the hospital where one of them works as a nurse, after a tragedy and the unspoken trauma that they both carry, they will try to survive and redefine a relationship powered by secrets, mistakes and guilt.

—
FIPRESCI Prize - Un Certain Regard | Cannes Film Festival | 2019
Best Director Award - Un Certain Regard | Cannes Film Festival | 2019

Beanpole

The greatest chronicler of our time, sharper than ever. After "Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn" Radu Jude composes an uncategorized urban road movie satire of the age of the gig economy and social media, in a riveting film collage between absurdity and pure shock.

—
A story about cinema, social media and the economy, in two parts: Depressed and underpaid, Angela drives all over Bucharest to film casting for a corporate "workplace safety video" commissioned by a multinational company. When one of the interviewees reveals the company's responsibility for his accident, a scandal erupts - in front of a still, unmoving camera.

—
Special Jury Prize | Locarno Film Festival | 2023

Do not Expect too Much from the End of the World

After the worldwide success of "Loving Vincent" and the Oscar, BAFTA and Golden Globe nominations, the same directing duo returns with another visually magnificent animated film. A dramatic story based on the book by the Nobel Prize-winner Wladyslaw Reymont.

—
The tragic story of a peasant woman forced to marry a much older, wealthy farmer despite her love for his son. In time, Jagna becomes the object of envy and hatred of the villagers and must fight to maintain her independence. Set in the Polish countryside on the border of the 19th and 20th centuries, the story's dramatic transformation is linked to the changing seasons, hard work in the fields and traditional local customs.

The Peasants

One of the darkest chapters in modern European history takes the form of a suffocating political thriller full of dilemmas, suspense and – literal – dead ends. Jasmila Zbanic weaves personal tragedies into the canvas of history in an Oscar-nominated masterpiece.

—
Based on true events, the film takes place in the summer of 1995 in Bosnia, during the siege of Srebrenica by the Serbian army. Aida works as an interpreter for the United Nations peacekeeping forces in the area. As the siege of the city tightens, Aida must make life and death decisions for herself and her family.

—
Nomination for Best International Feature | Oscars | 2021
Audience Award | Rotterdam Film Festival | 2021

Quo Vadis, Aida?

Oscar for best documentary, at a historic moment for Ukraine and the world that is still watching. One of the few times when a film captures the present so clearly, turning the camera on the victims to create a gripping cinematic account.

—
An AP team of Ukrainian journalists trapped in the besieged city of Mariupol struggle to continue their work documenting atrocities of the Russian invasion. As the only international reporters who remain in the city, they capture what later become defining images of the war: dying children, mass graves, the bombing of a maternity hospital, and more.

—
Best Documentary | Oscars | 2024
Best Documentary | BAFTA | 2024
Audience Award | Sundance Film Festival | 2023
Documentary Special Mention | Athens Film Festival | 2023

20 Days in Mariupol

Milcho Manchevski, director of the Golden Lion-winning and Oscar-nominated Before the Rain, explores the eternal nature of love through an irreverent, unconventional and poignant love story set in North Macedonia, while daring to touch on darker social issues.

—
A young, wealthy couple feel on top of the world when a distant relative comes to live with them. Meanwhile, their middle-aged neighbors feel left behind in life when the husband begins an illicit affair.

Kaymak

A radical trans character study borrowing from the cinema of Andrzej Wajda, it places a woman's personal struggle in the context of the history of a country in the process of radical change. Courageous, person-centred political cinema, an official selection in the Venice Competition.

—
Set against the landscape of Poland's transformation from communism to capitalism, the film spans 45 years of Aniela's life and her journey to find personal freedom as a trans woman. She faces difficulties in her family life and complex attitudes in her environment. What choices will Aniela have to make to become who she really is?

—
Official Selection - International Competition | Venice Film Festival | 2023

Woman of...

Exciting new dramas are coming out of Latvia. Set in an era increasingly torn between official party dogma and Western influence, Soviet Jeans unfolds a romantic yet political story about a regime showing the first cracks in its facade.
-
Late 1970s. At the height of the USSR’s relentless propaganda against Western culture, a die-hard rock ’n’ roll fan launches a thriving — and illegal — jeans factory inside a Latvian psychiatric hospital.

Soviet Jeans

One of the most beautiful animated films ever made, Flow promises to take us on a floating adventure with its four-legged heroes. An ode to nature, a warning about climate change, pure adventurous fun. Nothing is missing from Ginds Zilbalodis' elegant masterpiece that will move kids and adults alike.

—
The world seems to be coming to an end and people are completely lost. Cat is a lonely animal, but when a great flood destroys his home, he takes refuge on a boat inhabited by various animals with whom he must work together despite their differences. On their lonely ark, floating through mysterious flooded landscapes, they face the challenges and dangers of adapting to this new, aquatic world.

—
Jury Award | Annecy Film Festival | 2024
Audience Award | Annecy Film Festival | 2024
Best Original Music Award | Annecy Film Festival | 2024
Official Selection - Un Certain Regard | Cannes Film Festival | 2024
Best Animated Feature | Golden Globes | 2025

Flow

The best known of the five films made by Hungarian André de Toth before he went to Hollywood was made in 1938, but it reveals a still modern and pioneering filmmaker and a strikingly contemporary and timely look at the power of female solidarity.

—
Two girls escape from a small village and meet on the streets of Budapest. They move in together, supporting each other at every stage of their ever-changing financial situation, the advances of promiscuous men and their amorous adventures.

Two Girls on the Street

Chat rooms will never be the same after this shocking documentary - social experiment that dared to delve into the taboo subject of child sexual abuse on the internet. An experiment that soon turned into an act of activism and led to many criminal arrests in the Czech Republic.

—
Three over-18 actresses with very young appearances are tasked with pretending they are 12 on fake social network profiles. In faithful copies of children’s rooms created in a film studio they chat and Skype with men of all ages who have searched for and contacted them online. The vast majority of these men demand video sex and send photos of their penises or links to porn. Some even attempt
blackmail.

Caught in the Net

The Balkans, who hear stories from the West about gender equality and laugh, are pouncing militantly on the blasphemous Petrunya, who is deemed a scandalous heretic by local tradition. Excellent satire with more than 30 awards internationally and the LUX Prize of the European Parliament.

—
In a small town, the consecration of water is one of the most important moments for the community and, against tradition, an unemployed single woman dives into the water and takes up the cross. Furious at being left empty-handed, the men accuse her of disrespect.

—
Prize of the Ecumenical Jury | Berlin Film Festival | 2019
European Audience Award | LUX Prize | 2019

God Exists, Her Name Is Petrunya

The "difficult second film" for Laszlo Nemes after the triumph of his debut, "Son of Saul", is equally masterful. It’s a superbly orchestrated, suffocating descent into existential hell through the entropic streets of Budapest in 1910, just before World War I.

—
Budapest, 1913. A young girl arrives in town, hoping to work as a milliner in the legendary hat shop that once belonged to her parents, but the new owner won’t hire her. Meanwhile, preparations are being made in the store to welcome some prominent visitors. A man approaches the girl, looking for someone who has her last name, but she doesn't know him. Refusing to leave town, she starts looking for the stranger who might be the only link to her lost past.

—
Official Selection | Venice Film Festival | 2018
FIPRESCI Prize | Venice Film Festival | 2018

Sunset

Contemporary and almost prophetic, the masterful Michael Haneke regards our brave, new and globalized world as a multicultural Babel on the verge of collapse, where people, societies, cultures, and languages entropically seek connection and communication.

—
A series of stories and characters linked through their relationship with contemporary Europe: a continent of refugees, racism and alienation, but also hope for a better future. An actress auditioning for a movie takes a walk with her partner’s brother, a war correspondent in Yugoslavia. Later, the brother throws trash at a homeless person and a second-generation Malian immigrant intervenes.

—
Official Selection | Cannes Film Festival | 2000
Prize of the Ecumenical Jury | Cannes Film Festival | 2000

Code Unknown

True to his mission of portraying late capitalist Europe, Radu Jude proves once again that he is the ultimate contender for the title of the most unpredictable contemporary filmmaker and wins the 75th Berlinale's award for Best Screenplay.

—
Cluj, Transylvania. After being driven from his shelter in a house cellar, a homeless man commits suicide. Orsolya, the bailiff who carried out the eviction, is impelled to make various attempts to address her feelings of guilt.

—
Best Screenplay | Berlin Film Festival | 2025

Kontinental '25

In this gritty social drama from Romania, which won the Sarajevo Festival award, Emmanuel Parvu looks his country's countryside in the eye and creates a martyr's portrait of a young man who becomes the reason for the most conservative instincts of an entire local society to erupt.

—
Andi spends the summer in his village in the Danube Delta. One night he falls victim to a violent attack in the street, and the next day everything around him seems to be turned upside down. His parents no longer look at him as they used to, and the seeming peace of the village begins to be disturbed.

—
Queer Palm | Cannes Film Festival | 2024
Best Film | Sarajevo Film Festival | 2024

Three Kilometres to the End of the World

Taken out of Poland's turbulent political scene in the 70's, Kieslowski's first feature-length fiction film reveals the director’s preoccupation with documentaries by capturing a kaleidoscopic reality.

—
A man takes over the management of a chemical factory in a deprived area of Poland and is confronted with the partisan and local interests of the actors in the area, but also with the traumas of his own past there.

The Scar

If you were born again, what would you choose: to be a boss or a slave? A gripping political parable on morality, fear and resistance in one of the highlights in the history of Hungarian cinema.

—
During World War II in Hungary, a group of friends are chatting around a table in a pub. Outside, Budapest is being bombed but a snobbish bookseller, a religious carpenter, a pragmatic innkeeper and a cynical friend discuss the consequences of fascism. A man appears and asks them: "Imagine that you are going to die, but you will be reborn as a slave or as a rich master. Which do you choose?" This question will change their lives.

—
Official Selection - International Competition | Berlin Film Festival | 1977
Best Film | Moscow Film Festival | 1977

The Fifth Seal

A shocking film experience from Ukraine, a film shot entirely in Ukrainian sign language, but the more you immerse yourself in its world, the more you forget your own prejudices. Multi-award winning and monumental, a film unlike any other.

—
Sergei enters a specialised boarding school for the deaf. In this new place, he must find his place in the school's hierarchy, namely the Tribe, an organized crime network involved in robbery and prostitution. By participating in many robberies, he is promoted higher up in the organization. But then he meets one of the Chief's wives, Anna, and unwittingly breaks all the unwritten rules of the Tribe.

—
Grand Prize - Critics' Week | Cannes Film Festival | 2014
European Discovery Award | European Film Awards | 2014
Sutherland Award for Best First Feature | London Film Festival | 2014
Best Director Award | Thessaloniki Film Festival | 2024

The Tribe

Gripping courtroom thriller set against the background of the true story that led to one of the biggest political scandals of the communist period. Poland's contender for the Oscars stood out at the Venice Film Festival, walking the distance between police violence and the objective truth.

—
In 1983, Communist Poland is in turmoil following the death of 18-year-old Grzegorz Przemyk, after he was beaten by the police. The only eyewitness to the event becomes the number one enemy of the state.

—
Official Selection | Venice Film Festival | 2021
Official Submission of Poland | Oscars | 2021

Leave No Traces

What's right and what's wrong? Who can really impart morality to others? A young teacher gives us an exciting and suspenseful lesson in ethics, unlike anything else we've been taught.

—
In a small Bulgarian town, a young educator is looking for the class thief in order to teach him a lesson about right and wrong. When she finds herself hugely indebted, will she be able to practice what she preaches?

—
Best New Director | San Sebastián Film Festival | 2014 
Bronze Alexander | Thessaloniki Film Festival | 2014
Best Screenplay | Thessaloniki Film Festival | 2014

The Lesson

Documentary veteran Sergey Loznitsa, also manages to create shockingly realistic worlds in his fiction films, even when inspired by literature, as here with Fyodor Dostoevsky’s titular short story.

—
A woman lives alone in a small Russian village. One day she receives a package she had sent to her imprisoned husband, labeled "return to sender." Puzzled and angry, she seeks out the reason of its return and embarks on a difficult journey to the prison, in order to solve the mystery.

—
International Competition | Cannes Film Festival 2017

A Gentle Creature

"Like opening a door to another dimension". This is how Sergei Parajanov's legendary film was described by Martin Scorsese, whose Film Foundation oversaw the restoration of this unique cinematic treasure, which almost magically transforms the poetry of words into a poetry of images.

—
The life of the Armenian poet Sayat-Nova, from childhood to death. His spiritual journey, artistic endeavors, and inner conflicts within the cultural and historical context of 18th century Armenia.

The Color of Pomegranates

Being preoccupied with art is a form of personal and political awakening, but also an act of resistance to an oppressive environment in Kieslowski’s film, with which he gave the first morsels of his later poetic cinema.

—
A man buys an 8mm camera to film his child's early years and family life. But he slowly becomes addicted to the new device, which fascinates him and progressively absorbs all of his attention.

—
Interfilm Award | Berlin Film Festival | 1980
Best Film | Moscow International Film Festival | 1979
Best Film | Chicago International Film Festival | 1980