Directed by: Jacek Lusiński
Poland, 2015, 106 min

Popular secondary school teacher Kacper starts having problems with his vision and the medical prognosis is grim: soon he won’t be able to see at all. But Kacper refuses to surrender to his affliction; he is determined to prepare his class for their school-leaving exams, even if it means concealing his progressive disease from everyone around him. A drama based on a true story starring the outstanding Andrzej Chyra.

Directed by: Gus Van Sant
USA, 2017, 114 min

John is never one to turn down a party invitation. After a particularly successful bash, however, he wakes up in hospital with paralysis in his arms and legs. All he can do now is gather together every vestige of humour he has inside him, even the blackest kind, in order to come to terms with his new life in a wheelchair. The life story of caricaturist John Callahan, masterfully directed by Gus Van Sant.

Directed by: Jean-Pierre Améris
France, 2014, 95 min

In the late 19th century the Larnay Institute in France takes in a deaf-blind girl called Marie whom the convent’s Catholic sisters soon brand as a “wild animal”. She doesn’t speak, she won’t walk anywhere and she is unable to integrate into her new community. Sister Marguerite, however, is not about to give up. With remarkable patience she teaches Marie tactile signing and, later on, sign language. A moving story which, to this day, even specialist journals consider a miracle.

Directed by: Katarína Kerekesová, Ivana Šebestová
Slovak Republic, Czech Republic, 2018, 65 min

The world’s full of best friends like Mimi and Lisa. But there’s one small thing that sets them apart. Mimi’s eyes are always shut, but it’s not because she’s asleep. Mimi cannot see. This delightfully playful animated film for both children and adults looks at a wonderful world where you can read with your fingers, and that’s not even the half of it.

Directed by: Franck Dubosc
France, Belgium, 2018, 107 min

Jocelyn is a ladies’ man and lying comes pretty easily to him. Particularly when it helps win over the woman of the moment. One day he sits down absent-mindedly in an empty wheelchair, and when an attractive nurse happens to come by, it seems the most natural thing in the world to pretend that this is right where he belongs. A comedy about the preconceptions we should have discarded long ago and about a world in which pathological lying is a greater handicap than being confined to a wheelchair.

Directed by: Todd Haynes
USA, 2017, 117 min

New Jersey, 1927. Hearing-impaired Rose runs away from home to meet her idol in New York. Fifty years later, Ben becomes deaf as the result of a freak accident. His quest to find the father he never knew takes him to the same city. The two children will perhaps never meet in person but their destinies draw them to the same locations. But in different eras. A touching, dreamlike film about family bonds and other mysteries.