Directed by: Cătălin Mitulescu
Romania, Sweden, 2015, 88 min

Adrian left for a year’s work abroad to help his family financially but when he returns home nothing is like it was before. His wife acts so differently, it’s as if they were never married. In his third feature, director Cătălin Mitulescu becomes an observer of that key moment when a love relationship teeters on the fine line between breaking up and beginning anew.

Directed by: Roberto Andò
Italy, France, 2016, 103 min

A charismatic monk named Roberto Salus (the excellent Toni Servillo) is a guest at a meeting of G8 finance ministers held at a luxury hotel on the Baltic coast. But who invited the taciturn friar in the snow-white habit? And who killed one of the financiers who are planning radical changes to the world economic order? A stylistically-polished philosophical suspense drama from the director of the hit Viva la Libertà (KVIFF 2013).

Directed by: Szabolcs Hajdu
Hungary, 2016, 81 min

The renowned Hungarian filmmaker (White Palms, Bibliothèque Pascal) has come out with an intimate study of two families thrown together by circumstance to temporarily share an unusual apartment. This independent movie – outstanding for its inventive production, precisely limned characters, and performances that get under the skin – draws faithfully on the work of Cassavetes and Bergman.

Directed by: Kıvanç Sezer
Turkey, 2016, 101 min

Set against the backdrop of construction activity promising to fill in the empty spaces of the urban landscape with entirely new neighborhoods, a story unfolds of an aging construction worker who, unlike his peers, has to drop all plans for the future after being diagnosed with a malignant tumor. This self-assured debut contemplates the dignity of the individual within the context of modern Turkish society.

Directed by: Isaki Lacuesta, Isa Campo
Spain, Switzerland, 2016, 103 min

For many years no one knew what happened to nine-year-old Gabriel after a mysterious accident in the mountains. Years later the now teenage boy suddenly appears pleading a case of amnesia. Are we witnessing the return of a real son searching for his identity or the strategic manipulations of an imposter?

Directed by: Damjan Kozole
Slovenia, North Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, 2016, 85 min

The lives of a wealthy married couple radically change in an instant. While the husband is in critical condition after an accident that occurred under strange circumstances, the wife tries to understand the situation and to salvage what she can… In this constricted, small-scale drama by a renowned Slovenian filmmaker, Pia Zemljič excels in the role of the resourceful wife.

Directed by: Sven Taddicken
Germany, 2016, 101 min

Helene Brindel’s childless marriage bears no traces of happiness, and the somber woman has also lost her faith in God. Liberation from the emotional trap of gloomy thoughts and insomnia has its price, however, when it one day appears in the person of charismatic psychologist Eduard Gluck. Martina Gedeck (The Lives of Others), Ulrich Tukur (The White Ribbon), and Johannes Krisch (Revanche) star in an uncommon psychological romance based on the novel of the same name by renowned Scottish author A. L. Kennedy.

Directed by: Jan Hřebejk
Slovak Republic, Czech Republic, 2016, 102 min

The principal of an elementary school calls a special parents meeting after it’s alleged that the seemingly empathetic and kindly-looking teacher Mrs. Drazděchová uses her students to manipulate their parents. Although this confidently-directed drama is set in the era of late Czechoslovak Normalization, the multifaceted study of pathological manipulation has universal applicability.

Directed by: Grzegorz Zariczny
Poland, 2016, 78 min

Ania and Kasia are hairstyling apprentices spending time between school, shifts at a salon in a deserted Kraków housing complex, and home where relations with parents are far from harmonious. The story of two likably headstrong girls on their way to adulthood was shot with an emphasis on authenticity, and it can’t help but recall the best work of the Czechoslovak New Wave.

Directed by: Jesse Klein
Canada, 2016, 82 min

Chris can’t go on. His classmates bully him, the girls don’t know he’s alive, and his mother doesn’t understand him. Attacked by a gang of boys, he unexpectedly finds an ally in a young stranger and thinks maybe they could take off together. After having completely new experiences Chris finds out that Bobby may be more needy than he thought.

Directed by: Jan Němec
Czech Republic, Slovak Republic, France, 2016, 68 min

“Our life zips by faster than our recollections of it,” stated Jan Němec (1936–2016), internationally celebrated Czech director. A true original, the hard-headed and hard-nosed rebel adapted his own quasi-autobiographical short stories into his final film to give us a dejected comedy, an unsentimental reminiscence, and a nonchalant settling of scores in punk regalia. Both the movie and its maker defy categorisation.

Directed by: Ivan I. Tverdovskiy
Russia, France, Germany, 2016, 87 min

Natasha is a lonely, middle-aged admin employee at the zoo who still lives at home with her mother. One day her life is turned upside down when she discovers she has grown a tail… A realistically structured story into which the director deftly inserts a fantastic motif in a film that speaks of loneliness, otherness, fear, and also of the courage to be different.