Office Fédéral de la Culture

In late 18th century Venice, in a convent school for girls, Teresa, a student with prophetic gifts, joins forces with some amazing music-makers. They create a new kind of pop, bright and bold, and challenge the ancient and rigid system.

Two friends from a small Greek town travel to Bulgaria and Switzerland, hoping they can gain money from the difference in foreign exchange rates.

In Torino, a bittersweet crowd is bringing its own belongings to a pawn shop, waiting for a ransom or the final auction. Between the thousands of faces that tell the human inventory of the crisis, three stories intertwine unconsciously in the thin line of moral debt. Sandra, a young trans, in order to escape her past sells her fur coat. Her gaze will cross Stefano’s, a novice who just started working at the bank, and who drags her towards a tender obsession. Michele, a retired porter, asks for a loan to a family member, who will turn out to be fatally the wrong person to ask a favour from.

Roger Closset is a man who obviously loves his family, though that doesn't always make them feel better. Dad is an obsessive type with a short fuse and a long list of curious ideas, and his wife and children must often bear the brunt of his eccentricities. Roger works as a reporter, a job he doesn't like which doesn't pay especially well, either. One day, Roger learns an area business association is sponsoring a contest for a family that can break a world record, with the grand prize being a new car. Suddenly, Roger gets a brainstorm -- if his son can open and shut a door 40,000 times in 24 hours, the car will be theirs. 15-year-old Michel, however, is not at all happy to have been drafted into this new responsibility, especially when dad builds a practice door in the backyard and finds a trainer to teach Michel how to open and close it with greatest efficiency.

After the fall of the military dictatorship in 1983, successive democratic governments launched a series of reforms purporting to turn Argentina into the world's most liberal and prosperous economy. Less than twenty years later, the Argentinians have lost literally everything: major national companies have been sold well below value to foreign corporations; the proceeds of privatizations have been diverted into the pockets of corrupt officials; revised labour laws have taken away all rights from employees; in a country that is traditionally an important exporter of foodstuffs, malnutrition is widespread; millions of people are unemployed and sinking into poverty; and their savings have disappeared in a final banking collapse. The film highlights numerous political, financial, social and judicial aspects that mark out Argentina's road to ruin.

A teenager unwittingly reveals a terrible family secret to her new neighbors.

Back home in Bujumbura with a Parisian diploma in his pocket and expecting to walk into a civil service job, Gito finds himself both unemployed and caught between two women: his current French girlfriend Christine and his local old flame Flora.

A witty, despairing French-Russian-Italian-Swiss art movie set in 16th-century Georgia, Stalinist Georgia, contemporary Georgia, and contemporary Paris, featuring the same set of actors in all four settings.

In which Scheherazade doubts that she will still be able to tell stories to please the King, given that what she has to tell weighs three thousand tonnes. She therefore escapes from the palace and travels the Kingdom in search of pleasure and enchantment. Her father, the Grand-Vizier, arranges to meet her at the Ferris wheel, and Scheherazade resumes her narration: “Auspicious King, in old shanty towns of Lisbon there was a community of bewitched men who, in all rigour and passion, dedicated themselves to teaching birds to sing…”. And seeing the morning break, Scheherazade fell silent.

Every night, in danger of being beheaded, Scheherazade tells King Shahryar unfinished tales to continue them the following night, hence defying his promise of murdering his new wives after their wedding night. Scheherazade tells King Shahryar her stories but these are not those in the book. As in the book, these stories are tragic and comical, with rich and poor, powerless and powerful people, filled with surprising and extraordinary events.

Ambulance-chasing lawyers takes on the case of a convicted murderer who, just being released after doing 27 years in jail, claims he was innocent.

In a fairy tale world, a winemaker creates the most exquisite wine in the world. When Death herself wants to taste the wine, he discovers that his bride is next on Death list.

This European existential drama utilizes complex symbols inspired by abstract psychological theories to explore the effects and reasons behind a young classical actor's decision to stop talking. No one knows why Massimo has vowed to stop talking. Other than speaking dialog from classical plays, Massimo refuses to say a single word. His father, a classic-literature professor believes it reflects to a disappointing love affair. His new girlfriend thinks Massimo is rebelling against his mother, a poet. A director learns of Massimo and commissions his mother to write a play about him. Though Massimo plays himself in the play, and does speak, he returns to silence when the play is finished.

Scheherazade narrates three more tales, supposedly selected from the 470th, 484th and 497th nights of her ordeal: “It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that a Judge will cry instead of giving out her sentence. A runaway murderer will wander through the land for over forty days and will teletransport himself to escape the Guard while dreaming of prostitutes and partridges. A wounded cow will reminisce about a thousand-year-old olive tree while saying what she must say, which will sound none less than sad!

Some of the chapters from Arabian Nights are adapted to a modern Portugal in this epic.