Variations on the Same Theme (1977)

The ruins of paganism and the birth of Christianity portrayed by immobile people along with music.

A typical experimental film, in which a variety of audiovisual techniques are used to create the sense of polymorphic eroticism as developed by European and Mediterranean cinematography of the 20th century. Combining the methods of “animation” and “live action”, this intricate work embodies the idea of an “ars combinatoria”. The structure is loose, with neither a central axis nor a point where everything converges, contributing greatly to the open-ended character of the film, where rhythm is the key element.

A surreal account of Lizzie as she struggles to make life fit.

Stavros and Charlotte - i.e. the director and his partner in life and art, Charlotte van Gelder - are wandering the streets of a burdensome reality like immigrants, tracing the world around them through friendships, journeys and political quests. Made with minimal means with a few rolls of black and white film they managed to scrape together, this is a thoroughly unconventional film that defies traditional narrative structures, spectacularly revealing the director's true vision: a primordial cinema full of imagery that comes out of nowhere and communicates freely, like a small wonder. A large slice of the international film critic community - including Frenchman Louis Skorecki who described the film as a comet - will adore "Coatti" and continue to support Tornes' lonely path until the end.

A blacksmith and a car mechanic, harboring a hostile relationship they inherited from their grandfathers, must come to terms with a new way of dealing with each other, when the blacksmith faces economic struggle and the mechanic offers to buy him out.

A sociology professor going through a mid-life crisis resigns from his job, abandons his family and lives isolated in his country house. His only incentive for living is the faded face of an unknown girl in a photograph he had taken in the past and whom he now starts looking for.

Ricky rides her motorcycle among real and imagined dangers, to arrive unscathed, but unalterably changed, at the end of summer. The unrelenting wind of the season disrupts a landscape of inaction, theft and drug use. The end of innocence has already begun and a new path, dark and hopeful, stands waiting like the ships beyond her window. It will be an act of violence that thrusts the girl into womanhood and leads her to a new life where, not without pain, everything is possible.

The friendship between two young boys during the summertime in 60's Chios Island.

Eva, a young woman and a student of classical singing, decides to meet her father, who is unaware of her existence. Thomas works as a guard in a truck lot. He lives in a container and aspires to nothing. Their meeting will be a meeting of two different worlds and the relationship they develop will be all their own; a relationship beyond easy classification. (Thessaloniki International Film Festival)

A documentary about Eleusina. The past and the present, in complete antithesis, coexist in a place spoiled by modern industry but which long ago hosted the Eleusinian Mysteries, the secret ceremonies that initiated the ancient Greeks into the miracles of life, death and the afterlife.

Edyta is forty and in the midst of a crisis. She has left her family, her husband and son and their house on the Baltic Sea behind her. She spends her nights in a Warsaw hotel room and her days driving around the unfamiliar city. When she runs out of cash, she hatches a plan: An ad in the newspaper – sex for money. Edyta never lets things get that far though, as she drugs her clients and then uses their apartments as a refuge for the night. Then she meets an artist, Patryk. A smidgen of luck and Edyta can no longer maintain her dismissive attitude. In this enthralling character study, Tomasz Wasilewski uses filmic minimalism to ensure that glances and gestures say more than words. He portrays a lonely woman in both fragility and strength, using precise image composition.

In this avant-garde look at a series of unique or eccentric men and women, director Stavros Tornes has created a film that is visually engaging, but too obscure in many points to be understood. The main protagonists are a young taxi driver -- a man who has had some very unusual, puzzling, and inspirational experiences -- and a middle-aged painter he gains as a new friend. The two men are complemented by a few tough women (all played by the same actress), a pair of verbose politicos, and a handful of other distinctive characters. By the end of the movie, transformations are in store for the pair of friends, reflecting the tenor of the film throughout. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

A tanner, swamped with debts, must abandon his trade and go work in the local factory.

“Wild Duck” is the story of Dimitris, a telecommunications engineer who’s forced to shutter his business after running up a considerable debt with a local loan shark. He and his buddy Nikos, another telecommunications expert working for a big outfit, decide to get to the bottom of a big scandal. Their research leads them to a certain apartment, whose tenant Panagiota becomes the focus of their attention. Dimitris is now facing some major dilemmas and a trip to his hometown will help him clear his head and look at himself under a different light.

Twelve-year-old Vasilis escapes the orphanage, wanders a while in the capital and then takes the train for his hometown, Tripolis. As he wanders through the mountains of Arcadia, he meets a girl whose car has broken down. They become friends and spend the summer together, until Vasilis returns to his grandmother's house, which he finds abandoned and in ruin. The girl disappears, and Vasilis, deserted and alone, takes the road to Tripolis, where, in order to make ends meet, he performs odd jobs. On the day celebrating his patron saint, however, he abandons the city and takes the road back to his village.

Ten years after Mondovino, his analysis of the increasingly standardised wine production in France, wine expert Jonathan Nossiter picks up the thread again and shows what it means to be rooted in the soil you're working on. During walks through the vineyards and relaxed gatherings with a group of alternative Italian wine growers, he trades experiences and arguments. What looks like a bucolic paradise, where intelligent people produce wine according to time-honoured and organic methods, is actually revealed to be a battleground. The DOC association, which is supposed to look after the interest of independent vintners, promotes winemakers who produce vast amounts in a standardised quality; and the agricultural industry with its hygiene regulations excludes traditional methods of production. The only thing saving the landscape from being totally destroyed is affluent foreigners using the old vineyards as summer holiday homes.

1962. Uma geração de jovens se rebela contra o estabelecimento. O ativista e pacifista Eik Skaløe conhece Iben e se apaixona perdidamente, mas Iben é uma garota de seu tempo: se recusa a comprometer-se com um só homem. Desesperado, Eik tenta ganhar o coração da garota se transformando em poeta, escritor, nômade, junkie e, eventualmente, cantor da promissora banda Steppeulvene.

A group of friends listen as one man tells them a story about a time when, in a small cafe, he discovered a peephole into the ladies' bathroom and became addicted to looking through it at female genitals. They ask him questions and come to conclusions about sex. This is a filmed, scripted version. Then, the actual person who this happened to relates the same story; this time, however, it is an unscripted documentary, in which the same things occur as in the scripted one.

10-year-old Nori is obliged to grow up at a very young age after the early death of his mother and then being abandoned by his father Gezim in the Kosovo of the 1990s.After a dangerous and eventful journey, Nori finally arrives in Germany and is reunited with his father, but he cannot understand how Gezim could just have left him. And chances of them being able to stay in Germany look bleak when Gezim’s application for asylum is rejected.

Mehmet is a man living with his family in a mountain village in the Black Sea region. He earns his living by breeding a few animals, while passionately looking for a mineral reserve on the mountains, but his pursuit is seen useless by his family. Devastated by vain efforts, his hope is renewed with a competition. Mehmet will attend the bull fight held in Artvin, but he returns from Artvin completely lost, once again. This simple story pictures the naive portrait of a touching life, a life struggle in hardship and the relationship between nature, animals and human beings.