Hubert Bals Fund

In Mumbai, Nurse Prabha's routine is troubled when she receives an unexpected gift from her estranged husband. Her younger roommate, Anu, tries in vain to find a spot in the city to be intimate with her boyfriend. A trip to a beach town allows them to find a space for their desires to manifest.

2021, Afghanistan right before the Taliban’s return. Naru, the only camerawoman at Kabul’s main TV station, struggles to keep custody of her three-year-old son after leaving her serial cheater husband. Convinced no good men exist in her country, Naru is caught off guard when Qodrat, Kabul TV’s most important journalist, gives her a career opportunity. As the two crisscross the city reporting on its last days of freedom, sparks fly and Naru starts to doubt herself: could there actually be a good man out there?

A poet hearkens back to his Philippine village after years abroad in Europe. Horrified to discover that the community has been buried under landslides, he wanders the countryside, reconnecting with friends, lovers, and family whose lives teeter on the brink of destruction.

Suffering from a kidney disease and sure of his death, Uncle Boonmee assembles his relatives in the countryside. He reminisces about his past lives and plans to visit a place before dying.

Deaf-mute Sergey enters a specialized boarding school for the deaf. In navigating through the school's hierarchy, he encounters a corrupt underbelly of criminality, known as The Tribe. By participating in several robberies, he gets propelled higher into the organization, when he meets one of the Chief’s concubines Anya, and unwittingly breaks all the unwritten rules of the group."

Kyoko, a young Japanese girl training to become a professional mermaid, is saved by her coach's mouth-to-mouth "kiss of life". Desire awakens within her, she finds her mermaid voice and discovers the devastating effects of her singing, which will lead her to face the other side of the world.

Amalia is an adolescent girl who is caught in the throes of her emerging sexuality and her deeply held passion for her Catholic faith. These two drives mingle when the visiting Dr. Jano takes advantage of a crowd to get inappropriately close to the girl. Repulsed by him but inspired by an inner burning, Amalia decides it is her God-given mission to save the doctor from his behavior, and she begins to stalk Dr. Jano, becoming a most unusual voyeur.

After the rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan and the restriction of women in public life, a preteen girl is forced to masquerade as a boy in order to find work to support her mother and grandmother.

Mai, a rising J-Pop idol, is finally about to have her big break when she unexpectedly falls in love. But in a treacherous industry where young singers must maintain an image of flawless purity, love is forbidden. When her relationship is exposed, Mai's agency takes drastic action, dragging the couple to court over the "no love" clause in her contract, throwing her life into chaos.

Santa Claus tries to outrun a gang of knife-wielding youth. It's one of several vignettes of Palestinian life in Israel - in a neighborhood in Nazareth and at Al-Ram checkpoint in East Jerusalem. Most of the stories are droll, some absurd, one is mythic and fanciful; few words are spoken. A man who goes through his mail methodically each morning has a heart attack. His son visits him in the hospital. The son regularly meets a woman at Al-Ram; they sit in a car, hands caressing. Once, she defies Israeli guards at the checkpoint; later, ninja-like, she takes on soldiers at a target range. A red balloon floats free overhead. Neighbors toss garbage over walls. Life goes on until it doesn't.

In a small Nepalese village nestled in the heart of a forest populated by wild elephants, Pirati is the matriarch of a Kinnar community. She dreams of escaping to a “normal” life with the man she is in love with. But when one of her daughters disappears, she must investigate and choose between love and responsibility to her community.

A psychedelic docu-essay, inspired by Arthur Rimbaud’s visionary poem Une Saison en Enfer, in which the poet’s ghost travels through history, encountering revolutionary figures and queer ‘freaks’ such as Emma Goldman, David Wojnarowicz, and Marsha P. Johnson. These encounters form a multilayered collage that interrogates identity, the meaning of revolution, and the role of the artist in shaping radical histories and collective imaginaries.

Freddy emigrates to Buenos Aires in search of a more prosperous life. In his native country, Bolivia, he left his family. But the capital of Argentina is not the paradise he dreamed of, and much less for illegal immigrants like himself. But even with that, he gets a job as a griller in a restaurant.

After the theft of his motorcycle, Lucio bums aimlessly around Buenos Aires drifting from one arcade and record store to the next, indulging in short chats with friends and, more often, setting out onto the streets alone.

Man was made to be happy for simple reasons and unhappy for even simpler ones – just as he is born for simple reasons and dies for even simpler ones... Isa and Bahar are two lonely figures dragged through the ever-changing climate of their inner selves in pursuit of a happiness that no longer belongs to them.

Santiago, gay single father, has reached a tipping point in his life. Reeling from a bitter breakup, he is facing the impending departure of his daughter Laila, with whom he shares a close yet emotionally charged relationship. As the fear of being alone threatens to swallow him whole, his behavior becomes increasingly erratic. Over the course of a chaotic summer divided between Argentina and Brazil, Santiago must learn to let go of Laila so each can find their own freedoms.

When reformed ex-smuggler Pamfir returns home to his village on the Ukrainian border after working abroad for several years, he’s determined to earn an honest living and set a good example for his beloved teenage son Nazar. But in a town where corruption runs deep and crime and religion are inextricably linked, his plan is quickly thwarted when Nazar sets fire to the local church in a misguided effort to keep him at home. To pay for the damage, Pamfir must take on one last job for a crime syndicate operating a risky smuggling venture in a place where all the rules have changed.

After a Vietnamese woman dies in a car crash in Saigon, her brother-in-law and her young son transport her body back to the former’s hometown in rural Vietnam, where they plan to give her a funeral.

A heterosexual Beijing policeman and a young homosexual challenge each other's sexuality.

An elderly goat herder falls victim to a scam promising long-awaited reparations for her father's WWII service. Structured as a series of recurring visual 'variations', Variations on a Theme is a portrait of endurance and loss.