Seventeen-year-old Xiaokui has spent her entire life in a small seaside town. A top student with a quiet passion for girl idol groups, she is well known throughout the neighborhood — as is her closest friend, Qiangwei, a brilliant math prodigy who recently transferred back from the city.
At seventeen, Xiaokui’s world is one without romance, without a cellphone — just geography magazines and a giant television screen. In the stillness of her routine life, an unexpected “aurora” quietly descends u
North American Premiere
So He Grabbed the Knife
The boy takes the knife his father once gave him. Did what followed make him a “man”?
Tomoshibi
The 2011 Japan tsunami survivors. Walls stand as reminders, separating humanity from the sea. The film explores adaptation to life with these barriers, reflecting on the relationship between man and nature.
Tales of Minho
An emigrant musician can’t recall the stories of his birthplace. A mother keeps the restaurant open, hoping her son returns. A cowboy wonders what’ll become of his cows. A widow cares for a chapel no one visits. And the oldest woman remembers everything—especially that—Estantegas. Under the burning sun, a strange figure roams the empty landscape of Portugal’s Minho with a boom pole, meeting the remaining inhabitants and capturing their memories on a sound recorder. An ethnographic ghost document
Prehistoric (Maghabl-e Tarikh)
"Prehistoric" follows Nina, who refuses to accept the death of her partner and continues to seek the validation he once gave her. As she prepares for a demanding theater performance that eerily mirrors her life, the line between stage and reality begins to blur. Through this performative process, she gradually sheds her dependence on his memory and, for the first time, embraces her own power.
People, Gods and other Creatures
On the remote Greek island of Gavdos, a sanctuary for free spirits and dropouts from across the globe, a dancer named Pavlina struggles to unite the divided island community, whose clashes over tradition, globalization, and individualism mirror the turmoil of the modern world.