Ognon Pictures

In 1933, a young woman and her father discover an Alabama plantation whose inhabitants live as if slavery had never been abolished. Feeling a sense of duty to those behind the heavy gates, she stays to liberate the people and see them through their first harvest. With four of her father's colleagues and a lawyer, she faces the daunting task of resurrecting the place known as Manderlay.

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.

An emotionally cold man leaves the safety of his Alpine home to seek a heart transplant and an estranged son.

In the 12th century's Andalusia lives Ibn Rushd a prominent Islamic philosopher with his wife Zeinab and daughter Salma. The principality is ruled by Khalifa ElMansour who has two sons, ElNasser, an intellectual that likes Ibn Rush and is in love with his daughter Salma. The younger son Abdallah is more into dancing and poetry, spending most of his times with the gypsy family and getting the daughter pregnant. The Khalifa is depending on the extremists to build his army granting them more power which they use to combat artists and philosophers. The extremists succeed in recruiting Abd Allah and train him to kill his father. Events go on where Marawan, the gypsy singer, is killed and Ibn Rushd's books are burnt. Adapted from the real life of Ibn Rushd AlMasir is Chahine's statement against extremism.

An actress, who goes all over rural France with her monologe "Sex and Crime", meets and falls in love with a man, since that moment starts helping him in his plays.

Sexy, gritty and as provocative as a lap dance, The Bathers takes an insider's look at the lives of six women working as dancers at a seedy Parisian peep show. Governed by their overprotective boss, the girls' routine of glittery neon lights and lecherous customers is soon disrupted when an enigmatic stranger enters the scene. Now, drugs, sex and bickering all take a back seat as the girls unite to save this man haunted by a mysterious past and unforgiving demons. A fascinating glimpse into a world of back alleys and primal instincts, The Bathers transports us to a netherworld where the show always goes on.

Reda, summoned to accompany his father on a pilgrimage to Mecca, complies reluctantly - as he preparing for his baccalaureat and, even more important, has a secret love relationship. The trip across Europe in a broken-down car is also the departure of his father: upon arrival in Mecca, both Reda and his father are not the characters they were at the start of the movie. Avoiding the hackneyed theme of the return to the homeland, the film uses the departure to renew a connection between two generation.

Bo is a transexual prostitute in Brussels who left home after being abused by her father. She's infuatuated with a neighbor and suspected by the police in a series of transexual murders. In order to clear herself she must turn detective.

The end of an affair from the woman's point of view.

In March 1996 the French government decided to expel all African family who did not have papers from the city of Paris. During a six month period of time, the director followed many of the families and got there testimonials about how it felt to be discriminated against by the French on film. Eventually the documentary focuses on one man who emerges at the center of the fight to not to be sent back to Africa. In the end he is sent back to his native Mali, the director and his camera accompany him.

Beginning with perestroika and reaching its peak after the demise of the Soviet Union, pessimistic youth sub-culture films abounded in Russia and the former republics. Anguely V Rayou is another example of these "youth without future" films. Based on the novel Two Notebooks by Piotr Kojevnikov, the action takes place in the Leningrad of 1975, when the "stagnation" era is at its peak. Two teenagers, Micha and Galia, are experiencing a slow death in the slums of the city. Galia's aunt is going crazy in her desperation. Micha's mother is killed by a drunk. One of their friends has committed suicide. These kids are typical of a generation wasted by alcohol and misfortune. Some are bound to become outcasts, some will be destroyed, and others will be sacrificed in Afghanistan. The title is ironic, as there is neither paradise nor angels in this story.

An enthralling look at the relationship between America and the Arab World from an Arab perspective. It tells the story of Yehia, a renowned Egyptian filmmaker whose life has been shaped by a pair of disrupted love affairs, one with an American woman named Ginger, the other with America itself.

Raï Story is a musical journey in search of the Raï legend, Cheikha Remitti, in Oran, Algeria, where the Raï musical tradition began. In 1923, the first Raï singers performed behind screens during ceremonies to protect their identity. It was only when the music of singer Cheikha Remitti began to gain popularity among the general public that Raï music was made public, in the 1940s. Cheikha Remitti, who lives between Paris and Oran, is nowhere to be found, the filmmakers then decide to meet producers, musicians, singers like Cheba Dalila or Cheba Djenet, for whom Remitti created a wake. The opportunity, through these unique stories, illustrated with archive images, to retrace the important place of women in this musical tradition and the transformation of Raï music from the 1960s to 2000.

Just before taking an irrevocable and tragic step, Caroline talks to Claire, her lycée friend. Later, Claire gathers five other school friends, and tells them Caroline's secret. The six agree to wage a guerrilla war against their philosophy teacher, the sarcastic and belittling M. Terrien, the cause of Caroline's despair. After seeking advice from Mayard, the school's guidance counselor and a leftist with a police record, the six look for evidence that could get Terrien fired. They strike gold, and then raise the stakes. Sarah, one of the six, hatches a deadly plan.

Pierrot, a young boy, does not live in the present. One night, Pierrot finds himself face to face with the old man that he will be himself. A strange journey then begins for the unlikely duo.

An expatriated French novelist returns to Paris when she learns that her childhood home is being placed on the auction block.

A young girl is deprived of her baby: her descent into hell begins. Still in high-school, Agnès leaves her alcoholic father, finds a boyfriend and gets pregnant. Giving birth to a baby boy, deprived of him by her her stepmother, left by her boyfriend, she find shelter by junkies friends and subsequently turns to prostitution under the name Sabine only to become HIV-positive. In her diary, the young woman recounts her fight against the disease without ever sinking into despair.

A woman and her seven children live on a farm in Southern France. In spite of the hard work and the mediocre accommodation, their life would be a happy one, but for one person: the owner of the farm, an egotistic and authoritarian individual who is also the lover of the woman and the father of all her children. The farmer handles them as his property, uses them as cheap labour to work in the fields, and denies them the right to leave the farm. It is only the love of the woman for her children that allows them to endure their situation; but even for her, disenchantment has set in.

Mimi isn't a star, she's just someone. A close-up of the singularity of a real life. An encounter of someone's particular story, romance, fantasy and territories.