Romance in the scrapyard is the focus of this working class drama from Jamshid Mahmoudi, which looks at the secret romance between a young Iranian and an Afghan refugee who meet clandestantly in an empty shipping container on the Tehran docks.
Sony Pictures pounced on this story of six intertwined tales of out-of-control people after its debut in Cannes and Warner Bros. grabbed rights in Latin America, Spain and France. The feature, tipped to be Argentina's second Oscar winner after Juan Jose Campanella's The Secret in Their Eyes, has already helped the career of director Damian Szifron, who signed with WME on the strength of the feature.
Dutch director Rolf de Heer continues to find inspiration in the Australian outback and in Aboriginal actor David Gulpilil, who co-wrote as well as stars in this semi-autobiographical tale about Blackface Charlie, an indigenous Australian whose traditional way of life is quickly being wiped out by encroaching white civilization.
It's high noon in the high peaks with Austria's entry, in which director Andreas Prochaska relocates to the Austrian Alps a classic Western revenge tale involving a brooding lone cowboy (Sam Riley) cleaning up a corrupt town. The Dark Valley itself cleaned up at this year's German Film Awards, taking home eight statuettes, including best picture.
An elderly couple confront the ravages of war in their poor village in Elchin Musaoglu's drama, a slow-pace fairy tale that has won rave reviews for the lead performance of Iranian actress Fatemeh Motamed-Arya.
Khalid Mahmud Mithu's second feature film is a romantic family drama about a woman caught between love for her husband and her desire to care for the poor children who live in one room shacks in the country's villages.
The latest low-key social drama from two-time Palme d'Or winners the Dardenne Brothers, Two Days, One Night stars Marion Cotillard as a young mother who has a single weekend to convince her colleagues give up their bonuses so that she can keep her job.
A Bolivian general and veteran of the country's brutal dictatorship finds himself on his death bed, confessing his darkest secrets to his only son in this intimate drama from director Carlos Bolando.
Faruk Loncarevic's study of a middle-class family that's slowly falling apart is looking to be only the second-ever Oscar nominee from Bosnia and Herzegovina after 2002 winner No Man's Land from Danis Tanovic.
Director Daniel Ribeiro expanded his award-winning short to a feature-length film in this coming-out, coming-of-age tale of a gay, blind teenager's struggle for independence. An audience favorite — The Way He Looks won Berlin's Teddy Award for best LGBT film and honors at LGBT festivals in New York, San Francisco and Turni — the film is hoping to be Brazil's first Oscar nominee since Walter Salles' Central Station, in 1999.
The nomination of this Holocaust tale to represent Bulgaria in the Oscar race caused controversy at home, with a group of local directors signing a petition in protest, claiming Ivan Nitchev's look at the expulsion of Bulgarian Jews to the Nazi death camps did not reflect the country's modern film industry.
Many thought this latest melodrama from Canadian wunderkind Xavier Dolan deserved the top prize in Cannes this year. As it was, the runner-up jury prize, shared with Jean-Luc Godard for Goodbye to Language, is a clear-enough sign that, with his fifth film, 25-year-old Dolan, is ready for his closeup.
A working class man, tired of being the victim to criminal gangs, take justice in his own hands in this Chilean drama from director Alejandro Fernandez Almendras which enters the Oscar race after winning the World Cinema Grand Jury prize at Sundance.
Officially, Philippe Muyl's drama, about a old man and his granddaughter walking through China with a bird in a cage, is a remake of the director's French-language feature The Butterfly. But this version changes the dynamic of the two characters (the Chinese grandpa is kinder, the kid, a product of China's one-child policy, a spoiled brat) and offers a delicate reflection on the China's growing generation gap.
Art, in the form of local theater, helps to heal the damage done by drug violence in this Colombian drama, based on real-life events, from first-time director Maria Gamboa.