There are several foursomes in this light-hearted sex comedy. Two families live next door to each other in identical houses, and their closeness is more than geographic. The husbands work together at an electric utility. Vitek (Jirí Langmajer) and Marie (Marika Prochazkova) have two teenage daughters, while Ondra (Hynek Cermak) and Dita (Viktorie Cermakova) ... more

In the overcrowded, sweltering Marketplace in Asunción, Paraguay, people scramble to get by any way they can. Teenage Víctor is a delivery boy who pushes a cumbersome wheelbarrow through the narrow alleys. He is fascinated with the action movies he sees from afar on small televisions, and he really wants a cell phone. When he is offered half a $100 bill ... more

A darkly comic road movie with deadly serious implications, About 111 Girls follows an Iranian bureaucrat on his quest to locate the young Kurdish women who have written a letter threatening mass suicide unless their lives are improved and more marriageable men can be found. The further he gets from the capital and the closer he comes to the isolation ... more

Grammy nominated, New York-based singer Cucú Diamantes returns to her homeland in Cuba to perform her songs while becoming the first touring artist from outside the country in over 50 years. Along the way she realizes that she is "too much of a Cuban to live in New York and too much of a New Yorker to live in Havana." This paradox, along with a new-found ... more

Featured in the prestigious Telluride line-up and winner of a Special Mention by the jury of the San Sebastian Film Festival, The Attack is a taut, unsentimental moral thriller about an Arab surgeon in Tel Aviv who discovers his newly dead wife of a decade was in fact a suicide bomber. A pillar of the local medical community first seen giving an ... more

For millions of basketball players across America and throughout the world, there are no refs, no sneaker deals, and no doctors on call. To get in the game, you have to show up at the local park or gym, claim a spot, and fight to keep it. That's pickup basketball. Ballin' at the Graveyard is a gritty, intimate look into the culture and community ... more

An international film festival favorite through the last half of 2012, the austere and languorously disaffected youth drama Beijing Flickers connects directly to 1993's Beijing Bastards, the debut film that put pioneering sixth generation Chinese writer-director-cinematographer Zhang Yuan simultaneously on the map and afoul of mainland ... more

In 1930's Tiancheng Province in China, the death of a young factory girl accused by a ruthless crime boss of stealing bullets at a munitions factory sets off a series of strange murders—and the bullets seem to vanish into thin air. A message written in blood references a curse on the factory involving a "phantom bullet," and, as the mysterious deaths pile ... more

Chen Kaige, the master of opulent period dramas (Farewell my Concubine, The Promise), turns his attention to modern China, office politics, sex scandals, and cyber bullying. In this digital world, where everything and everyone is connected and gossip spreads like a virus, the technology that is meant to bring us closer can be used to tear ... more

The host of Check Mate, a popular TV game show, picks up the phone for the call-in segment of his program only to discover that the caller is holding the emcee's family hostage. The kidnapper (Marcos Bonetti) is also a computer hacker, who is breaking into the television studio's system to broadcast video of himself and his captives and incriminating footage ... more

Winner of a whopping 10 Argentinian industry prizes, including film, director, original screenplay, actor, and actress, as well as Argentina's official entry to the Foreign Film Oscar© sweepstakes, Clandestine Childhood is the autobiographical memoir of director Benjamin Avila's adolescence as the child of resistance fighters in Buenos Aires. In ... more

This delightful romantic comedy satirizes the reality of Korean politics and cheerfully depicts the characters' struggles as they attempt to realize their dreams. Jung-hwa was once famed for her beauty and dancing. Now she lives the dull existence of a housewife, teaching aerobics to middle-aged women to pass the time. Frustrated, she challenges herself ... more

In a melancholy backwater town in central Russia, old religious traditions banned by the Bolsheviks are vying with fitful attempts at modernization. Adding to the turmoil in the community is the recent series of murders of young girls, including the daughter of the new priest. We first meet teenage Inna (a superb Maria Smolnikova), who lives with her widower ... more

A major contemporary artist and leading authority on African American art, David Driskell (b. 1931) grew up in a family of Georgia sharecroppers. Now a collector, connoisseur, scholar, and a primary conduit for bringing black artists into the mainstream, Driskell has, since the late 1970s, been curator of Bill and Camille Cosby's collection. A celebrated ... more

One of the most anticipated Nordic films of the year, Baltasar Kormákur's The Deep fashions a modern-day myth about a man whose superhuman will to survive made him both an inexplicable scientific phenomenon and a genuine national hero. When a fishing boat goes down miles off Iceland's coast in some of the most forbidding seas on the planet, one ... more

In a particularly rough neighborhood of the Motor City, young Lebanese-American Sami must postpone his college dreams to run the family gas station after his father dies suddenly. It is more or less love at first sight when sophisticated Arab looker Naj passes through, and the balance of this immensely likeable love story is a witty, cultural melting pot. ... more

Is it any wonder the sequel to the action thriller that wowed Filmfest DC audiences two years ago should knock The Dark Knight Rises from its box office reign in Sweden? In the hotly-anticipated Easy Money II, it is three years later and JW (Joel Kinnaman, soon to star in that Robocop reboot) has made peace with Mrado while they're both ... more

For three resourceful eco-warriors, the battle to save the planet from environmental catastrophe is not merely a matter of science or politics but an inspired and inspiring personal mission. In India, water activist Rajendra Singh takes on his biggest challenge yet when he leads the charge to purify the Ganges of pollutants. Indigenous activist Eriel Deranger ... more

The strong runner-up for the audience award a few months ago at the Palm Springs International Film Festival, writer-director Gauri Shinde's comedy-drama English Vinglish marks the welcome return, after 15 years away from the spotlight, of incalculably influential Indian film actress Sridevi, often called India's answer to Meryl Streep. Here, she ... more

In 1996, the development of antiretroviral drug therapies did not cure AIDS, but it made the disease treatable—if patients could afford the hefty price tag. An intricate tale of medicine, monopoly, and malice, the film reveals how Western pharmaceutical companies and governments aggressively blocked access to low-cost AIDS drugs in Africa and the global ... more

The Blair Witch Project meets Re-Animator by way of John Carpenter's The Thing in Andrew Weiner's atmospheric, faux found-footage horror odyssey The Frankenstein Theory. When brilliant but socially inept academic John Venkenheim (Kris Lemche, in a savvy variation of Jeffrey Coombs' Herbert West in Re-Animator) ... more

Dounia, a Moroccan woman, and Dimitri, her Spanish lover, are overseeing the building of a villa in Casablanca when the excavations uncover ancient Christian ruins beneath the worksite. Seduced by the promise of easy money, they decide to cash in on the find without informing the owner of the land. For Dounia, this windfall represents the solution to all ... more

The filmmaking duo of director Margarethe von Trotta and actress Barbara Sukowa team up for an intelligent and powerful look at the philosopher Hannah Arendt, whose The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951) made her famous in philosophical circles. She shot to further international fame via her chronicle of Nazi Adolph Eichmann's 1961 trial for war ... more

A couple from Kathmandu has been trying unsuccessfully to have a child. The man travels to the mountains of eastern Nepal to seek help from a miracle healer, who gives him a potion and tells him he must return to his wife within 36 hours for the medicine to work. The bus that winds its way through Nepal is full of people who all urgently need to be somewhere ... more

Winner of critics and other prizes at the Palm Springs and Thessaloniki festivals, writer-director Tobias Lindholm's incredibly suspenseful thriller is a nuts-and-bolts procedural about the attempts to negotiate a hijacked Danish freighter away from a band of Somali pirates. It isn't long into its trip through the Indian Ocean that the MV Rozen is boarded ... more

In director Lasse Hallström's gripping psychological thriller, the only chance of discovering a serial killer's identity may lie with a disgraced doctor. Dr. Erik Bark (Mikael Persbrandt) uses hypnotism to pry deep secrets from the minds of patients, but his methods have been called into question for implanting false memories. Still, detective Linna (Tobias ... more

The Czech Republic's official Oscar® submission for Best Foreign Film, In the Shadow intriguingly grafts a film noir sensibility to a time of great political tension in the former Czechoslovakia to create an absorbing, resonant thriller. In 1953 Prague, honest and determined police captain Jarda Hakl (Ivan Trojan) uses good old-fashioned shoe leather ... more

Winner of major awards at the San Sebastian Film Festival, In the House is a return to the comic, provocative form of French writer-director Francois Ozon. In adapting Spaniard Juan Mayroga's play "The Boy in the Last Row" about a cynical teacher and his precocious charge, Ozon has made a thriller that stands as his most complex and satisfying film ... more

A Quebec doctor discovers the heartbreaking absurdity of life in Israel's divided West Bank in this intense, politically charged drama from the producers of the Academy Award®–nominated Incendies and Monsieur Lazhar (FFDC 2012 Audience Award Winner). Chloé is a young Canadian doctor working in a West Bank refugee camp. Between checkpoints ... more

Jamie Meltzer's complex portrait of the political and psychological transformation of Brandon Darby, a radical leftist activist turned FBI informant, lets Darby tell his own story. A hero amongst activists in post-Katrina New Orleans, Darby subsequently went undercover for the FBI, helping to entrap protestors at the 2008 Republican Convention. As a result, ... more

Even if he hadn't been one of YouTube's first viral video sensations with his ukulele arrangement of George Harrison's song "While My Guitar Gently Weeps," the likeable Jake Shimabukuro seemed destined for success. The Hawaiian-born musician took to the small, four-stringed instrument at the age of only four and was a ukulele master by his early teens, forming ... more

Premiering at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival, The Kings of Summer is a unique coming-of-age comedy about three teenage friends: Joe (Nick Robinson), Patrick (Gabriel Basso), and the eccentric and unpredictable Biaggio (the hilarious Moises Arias). In the ultimate act of independence, the boys decide to spend their summer building a house in the ... more

Co-produced by Jeremy Thomas (The Last Emperor) and in the final five for the Academy Award® for Best Foreign Language Film, Kon-Tiki brings a remarkable visual and narrative fidelity to the wide-screen dramatic rendering of Thor Heyerdahl's 1950 Oscar®-winning documentary about his 1947 journey across the Pacific Ocean on a balsa wood ... more

With a probing, hand-held camera and an instinctive feel for the throbbing pulse of his native Bogotá, director Juan Andres Arango Garcia brings La Playa DC, a coming-of-age story set in the culturally vibrant, turbulent city of his youth. The sounds of local hip-hop pour from the streets as Tomas, a young Afro-Colombian barber's apprentice, tries ... more

As epic visually as it is in scope, Laurence Anyways is rendered with what has become precocious Xavier Dolan's signature panache. His most ambitious film to date, it is a monumental tale about relationships and identity, a story of impossible love that once experienced can never be fully relinquished. Set in 1990's Montreal, Laurence (Melvil Poupaud) ... more

An imaginative, sinewy thriller about international banking corruption and corporate greed, The Lithium Conspiracy taps into global apprehension over financial mergers and exploitation of natural resources to emerge a colorful, tautly entertaining morality play. When his boss is incapacitated by a sports injury, Banco Lario lawyer Giulio Rovedo ... more

Lunafest is an annual international traveling festival of short films by, for, and about women. The 13th annual Lunafest features stories of reflection, hope, and humor from around the world that will compel discussion, make you laugh, tug at your heartstrings, and motivate you to make a difference in your community. Incredibly diverse in style and content, ... more

From the director of the charming Loose Cannons (FFDC 2011) comes another humorous examination of how secrets of the past can haunt the present. Young Pietro (Elio Germano) works nights as a baker but dreams of becoming an actor. When he rents a wonderfully rococo old-world house in Rome, he is more than surprised to discover that it is haunted. ... more

While clueless professionals Ben and Gail obsess over who has sacrificed more for their careers and who is actually responsible for getting their car repossessed, their cheerful nanny, Margarita (a winning Nicola Correia Damude), is busy keeping the McMansion running as smoothly as possible. Every day, Margarita makes healthy and cost-conscious meals, does ... more

Based on the life of the actual 15th king of Korea's Joseon Dynasty and shot in beautiful historic palaces and courtyards, Masquerade (also known as Gwanghae, The Man Who Became King) is a clever take on Mark Twain's The Prince and the Pauper. The film finds comedy and drama in the complicated politics of early 17th century Korea. ... more

A momentous collaboration between Academy Award®–nominated director Deepa Mehta and author Salman Rushdie, Midnight's Children marks a milestone in international cinema. Rushdie's adaptation of his own magical realist novel follows the destinies of a pair of children born at the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947, the very moment that India claimed ... more

A graceful and polished tribute to the power of art, Jem Cohen's new narrative feature is also a sly homage to the architectural marvels of Vienna and a shrewd character study. Set mainly in Vienna's vast Kunsthistorisches Museum, Museum Hours uses the tentative bond that develops between a first-time visitor to Vienna (Mary Margaret O'Hara) and ... more

From the director of the mischievous financial satire Win/Win (FFDC 2011) comes this dramatically rich effort about a middle-aged Dutch woman whose life is changed by a West African refugee. Perpetually morose Mirte (Bianca Krijgsman) is a cleaner at the detention center for asylum seekers adjacent to Amsterdam's mammoth Schiphol international Airport, ... more

In this film, Krishna Das talks openly about his journey from depressed Long Island kid to internationally renowned spiritual teacher and chant singer. His story, interspersed with interviews with Ram Dass, Rick Rubin, Sharon Salzberg, Daniel Goleman, and others, reveals the narrative of his life, including drug abuse; finding, losing, and re-finding his ... more

In a society permeated by fear, a young man realizes that he can no longer stand on the sidelines and watch innocent people be sentenced to death. It is the beginning of a dangerous double life in which love, loyalty, and betrayal become matters of life and death. In 1950's Spain, Enrique works as an assistant to a military judge known for briskly assigning ... more

In this wryly inventive parable, a kingdom is divided into three castes: the impeccably painted Alldunns, who reside in a majestic palace; the Halfies, whom the Painter has left incomplete; and the untouchable Sketchies, simple charcoal outlines who are banished to the cursed forest. Chastised for her forbidden love for an Alldunn and shamed by her unadorned ... more

No one does crisis like the Greeks. This topical feel-good comedy about a reversal of fortune and the meaning of home and family follows a rich Greek family in London that loses it all in the latest economic crash. Over-leveraged on his latest business venture, self-made millionaire Harry Papadopoulos reluctantly reunites with Spiros, his estranged freewheeling ... more

An equal opportunity offender, the laugh-out-loud, political comedy-drama The Parade follows the unlikely pairing of a gay rights march organizer and the prejudiced former soldier he hires to provide security for the Belgrade event. The hilariously intertwined plot finds gruff veteran Limun (Nikola Kojo) forced by ditzy fiancé Biserka (Hristina ... more

The second film in director Seidl's Paradise trilogy takes an unsparing look at religion, sexuality, and marriage. Austrian medical technician Anna-Maria (Maria Hofstatter) spends her days in close, intimate contact with patients at their most vulnerable times, but at home she will not share a bed with her invalid husband. He is a fairly secular ... more

The final film in director Seidl's Paradise trilogy begins with a nod to his previous work. Anna-Maria (Maria Hofstatter) from Paradise: Faith brings Melanie (Melanie Lenz), her overweight, 13-year-old niece, to a diet camp in the mountains. Seidl's visual style frames scenes almost like photographic still lifes as the unhappy teens are ... more

The first film in director Seidl's Paradise trilogy, Paradise: Love gives us an unlikely, unexpected protagonist in Teresa (Margarete Tiesel), a middle-aged woman who leaves her staid home life in Austria for a vacation that becomes a sex tour of Mumbasa, Kenya. She's not alone on the journey. A large group of older European women sunning ... more

A tour de force of visual style, Paris Under Watch reveals its gripping story via the various surveillance footage that monitors us all day and night. We begin with a bomb explosion in the Paris subway, thought to be a terrorist attack. Although the news claims that security footage was destroyed, we know this is not true because we are watching ... more

Depending on your view, the philosopher and academic superstar Slavoj Žižek is a genius, madman, contrarian, clown, sensationalist, or all the above. What he never fails to be is wildly entertaining. Director Sophie Fiennes reunites with the provocateur for this follow-up to their hit The Pervert's Guide to Cinema. This time around, Žižek examines ... more

This vivid recreation of the 1969 terrorist bombing of a national bank in Milan and its aftermath captures the internecine squabbles among the many political factions that were vying for power in Italy at the time. Detailing the events leading up to the bombing and going deep into the various investigations that followed, Piazza Fontana features ... more

This beautifully shot, fact-based period piece is set in 1915. At the suggestion of Henri Matisse, 15-year-old Andrée Heuschling takes a position in the arthritic 74-year-old painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir's gorgeously situated home on the Côte d'Azur. In short order, the beautiful, vivacious young woman inspires a renewed vigor in the aging master and assumes ... more

After 22 years in the West, College professor Arash returns to Iran to teach at a university. When his semester of teaching comes to an end, punctuated by the unpleasant experience of the authorities interfering with his syllabus, Arash finds himself barred from leaving Iran and drawn into a series of domestic and financial dramas as he discovers a family ... more

Shored Up is an urgent call to action in the face of accelerating sea-level rise. Set in Long Beach Island, N.J., and the Outer Banks of N.C., the film explores the political conflicts and personal stakes of communities along the shore. Shored Up presents viewpoints from scientists, politicians, residents, and a wide range of experts to expose major ... more

A collection of fantastic new short films from around the globe. Featured in our first set are: No Bread (Chile), To Put Together a Helicopter (Mexico), Family Dinner (Sweden), A Pretty Funny Story (Canada) and Ellen is Leaving (New Zealand).... more

A collection of fantastic new short films from around the globe. Featured in our second set are: Kiruna-Kigali (Rwanda/Sweden), Sense of Direction (France), Pride of the East (Germany), Intervention (South Korea) and Paulie (USA).... more

Some films just connect with audiences everywhere, and documentarian Andrea Segre's first fiction film, the perceptive immigrant drama Shun Li and the Poet, is one of them. Winner of major festival awards and audience prizes from Venice to Reykjavik, this is a story, like Kolya or Good Bye Lenin!, at once drenched in regional culture ... more

Just as the inventors of the harmonica and the melodica had no idea that their instruments would one day transform blues and reggae music, the German immigrants who brought their "poor people's organ" with them to Argentina in the nineteenth century probably didn't anticipate the rise of the tango. The bandoneón's astringent, sliding tones suggest passion ... more

Oscar®-nominated actor/director Sarah Polley's (Away From Her) latest is a riveting and joyful documentary that has screened at the Venice, Telluride, and Toronto film festivals. Polley turns the camera on her own family and creates an essay/love letter to her actor parents: Diane, who passed away when she was 11, and Michael. In the process, she ... more

Lover's rock, often dubbed "romantic reggae," is a unique black British sound developed against a backdrop of racial tension and the Brixton riots as young people sought solace in the music of the late '70s and '80s. The Story of Lover's Rock, directed by award-winning filmmaker Menelik Shabazz, tells the story of how this genre of music defined ... more

An inhibited prison guard, Jean-Christophe (François Damiens), meets an intriguing woman in his tango dance class and is captivated but too shy to pursue her. He is surprised when Alice (Anne Paulicevich) shows up on visiting day at the prison—and confused to learn that she is there to see not one but two inmates. The relationship between Alice, the two ... more

Audrey Tautou is haunting as the title character in this adaptation of the classic French novel about an aristocratic woman in the 1920s set up in an arranged marriage to consolidate the vast properties of neighboring families. Thérèse is a woman born too soon, whose modern ideas make her worry that she "thinks too much" and hope that "marriage will save ... more

Yu-Siang is blind, but he has a superb sense of hearing. Born in rural Taiwan, the extremely talented musician moves to Taipei to study the piano. But how will he manage on his own? Even the walk across campus from his halls of residence poses a challenge, and he must learn how to make the trip step by step. Yu-Siang began winning awards for his piano playing ... more

Support him or condemn him, there's little doubt Australian-born activist, journalist, and computer expert Julian Assange has become the personification of the central dilemma of our turbulent times: what does the public have a right to know, how is this information procured, and when are governments justified in restricting access to it? Filmfest DC audiences ... more

Septuagenarians Terence Stamp and Vanessa Redgrave costar in this touching crowd-pleaser, a sentimental comedy in the vein of Calendar Girls and The Full Monty. Marion (Redgrave) is a staunch member of the old folks choir at the local community center, but her hubby, Arthur, is adamantly opposed, not just because he's against seniors having ... more

Widely considered to be the crown jewel of Kashmir, Dal Lake is a sprawling aquatic community where political violence often distracts from the natural beauty. Gulzar, a young, working-class boatman, plans to skip town with his best friend, but a weeklong military curfew derails their departure. Forced to wait it out, Gulzar takes a job assisting Asifa, ... more

Ever since Venus and Serena Williams started playing tennis, they've provoked strong reactions, from awe and admiration to suspicion and resentment. They've been winning championships for over a decade, pushing the limits of longevity in such a demanding sport. How long can they last? In Venus and Serena, we gain unprecedented access to their lives ... more

A woman joins a couple on a trip to a hunting lodge in the mountains. When evening comes, her friends go the pub in the valley but they don't return. The woman sets out for the village and discovers that an invisible wall, behind which there appears to be no sign of life, now separates her from the rest of the world. Left behind with a dog, a cat, and a ... more

Cross Ocean's Eleven with The Usual Suspects, move the setting to Northern England, and you have the basis of this remarkable feature debut from writer-director Rowan Athale. Harvey Miller had big dreams before he was convicted of drug possession. Now, bloodied, bruised, and recently paroled, he reveals how he ended up back in the hands ... more

Haunted by his dark past, Nihat works in a remote tower in the wilderness. Seher lives at a rural bus station, hiding a secret of her own. The two go about their solitary lives until their fates collide. Beginning as muted antagonism, their connection turns into tender domesticity, yet the weight of the past presses on the silence between them, serving as ... more

In Annemarie Jacir's moving follow-up to her award-winning debut Salt of This Sea (FFDC 2011), a young boy and his mother personify the emancipating dream every refugee has imagined. Displaced to a Jordanian refugee camp in 1967, free-spirited Tarek and his mother temporarily settle in the Harir camp, and in the chaos they are separated from Tarek's ... more

What does it take to make a difference? Eighteen inspired social entrepreneurs from around the world show us how everyday people can create global change through innovative enterprise. Among those profiled are Bill Drayton, founder of D.C.-based Ashoka, the first organization to recognize and support social entrepreneurship; Nobel Prize winner Muhammad Yunus, ... more

With breathtaking visuals and charismatic performances, Xingu recounts the epic saga of three brothers' 18-year quest to create Brazil's first indigenous-only national park. The product of in-depth research and cooperation with local Indian tribes, it’s a compelling story with a distinct vision of Brazil. In 1943, Orlando, Cláudio, and Leonardo ... more

Under a baobab tree, an old man tells a story to the children around him. He relates the story of the everlasting friendship between Maki, a little boy aged 10, and Zarafa, an orphaned giraffe, who was a gift from the Pasha of Egypt to Charles X, the King of France. Hassan, Prince of the Desert, is instructed by the Pasha to deliver Zarafa to France, but ... more

Traversing minefields literal and political, Zaytoun is a hopeful kind of buddy road movie that recreates in tragically authentic detail the fraught world of Beirut in 1982, just before the war between Israel and Lebanon. Fahed (Abdallah El Akal), a 14-year-old Palestinian refugee, has witnessed his father's death from a bombing raid and when he's ... more