2026 Film Selection
Opening Reception | IRELAND | Saipan
SAIPAN explores the explosive clash between soccer star Roy Keane and manager Mick McCarthy before the 2002 FIFA World Cup. Their feud, rooted in clashing standards and personalities, erupted on the island of Saipan, shaking the Irish team and nation. As Keane walked out, McCarthy faced chaos. This gripping true story goes beyond sport, it’s a dramatic, often comic tale of leadership, loyalty, and a rivalry that captured global attention.
GERMANY | The Goldfish
A fund manager who has recently become a paraplegic uses an unsuspecting group of physically challenged people as cover to smuggle his illegal earnings across the Swiss border. In the process, he learns that there is more to life than money and finds happiness at a moment when he least expects it.
LATVIA | More Than a Dance
The documentary film “More Than a Dance” tells the story of Selga Apse and her Toronto Latvian folk dance group “Daugaviņa” on their journey to the 2023 Song and Dance Festival in Riga. The film reveals the importance of preserving traditions, the search for identity, and the challenges of the diaspora in keeping the Latvian language alive.
ITALY | Gloria!
Set in a girls' institute in Venice at the end of the 1700s, Gloria! tells the story of Teresa, a young woman with a visionary talent, who, together with a small group of extraordinary musicians, crosses centuries and challenges the dusty catafalques of the Ancien Régime by inventing rebellious, light and modern music. Pop!
BULGARIA | Birthday
Grandma Genoveva wants to die. On her birthday, Vasil breaks into her house to rob it. They make a deal – he will kill her, and she will bequeath her house to him. Soon everything goes wrong. This leads to a series of comic situations, in which three outsiders are also involved – a hockey fan, a puppeteer and a crazy romantic.
FRANCE | Zion
In Guadeloupe, Chris juggles his time between drug deals, one-night stands, and motorcycle rides. When Chris draws the attention of local gang leader Odell, he entrusts Chris with a risky delivery. But on the day of the mission, Chris finds that a baby has been left at his doorstep. With the arrival of the helpless child, a race begins for Chris as he finds himself forced to make a crucial decision...
UKRAINE | Cuba & Alaska
Best-friends “Cuba” & “Alaska”, wisecracking medics on Ukraine’s frontline, live the same battlefield story as all soldiers: slowly losing connections with friends, family and their previous lives the longer they stand up for Ukraine. With war so deeply rooted in them, can the two ever go back to the life they used to know?
SWITZERLAND | Silent Rebellion
15-year-old Emma — pregnant after a rape — defies her repressive rural Protestant community to carve a path of self-determination, transforming trauma into a catalyst for emancipation while confronting the moral hypocrisy of the village and the specter of World War II around her.
BELGIUM | Young Mothers
Jessica, Perla, Julie, Ariane and Naïma are housed in a young mothers’ home to help them in their life as young mothers. Five under-aged mothers fight to obtain a better life for themselves and their children.
SWITZERLAND | Wisdom of Happiness
A Heart-to-heart With the Dalai Lama - This will be the official U.S. premiere of this film. Dalai Lama talks directly to camera about inner peace, happiness, and potential for a peaceful, happy 21st century.
FRANCE | Souleymane’s Story
As he pedals through the streets of Paris to deliver meals, Souleymane repeats his story. In two days, he has to go through his asylum application interview, the key to obtaining papers. But Souleymane is not ready.
LATVIA | Maria’s Silence
The story of Maria Leiko - a famous actress who late in her career has to decide between fame and love for her grandchild, between her ideals or the lies of Stalin's totalitarian regime.
NETHERLANDS | Jippie No More!
A lively 16-year-old boy eagerly prepares for his older sister's wedding at their beloved grandfather's country house.
LITHUANIA | Remember to Blink
A french couple adopts 2 Lithuanian kids. To help them adapt they hire Gabi, a bilingual student. Cultural differences, mismatched attitudes, disparate values and diverse educational methods soon ignite conflicts between the adults.
BELGIUM | My Dad is a Sausage
Zoë (12) is best buddies with her father. When Dad suddenly and inexplicably decides to become an actor, the rest of the family thinks he's having a burnout. Zoë is the only one who believes her dad is an amazing actor waiting to be discovered...
ITALY | Little Tito and the Aliens
A Neapolitan professor lives isolated in the Nevada desert, officially on a scientific assignment, in the grip of depression. The unexpected arrival of two nephews from Italy following the death of his brother shakes his indolence.
UKRAINE | Budapest Memorandum
This gripping film explores how Ukraine, once the world's third-largest nuclear power, became vulnerable due to its voluntary disarmament and the geopolitical dynamics that shaped its fate.
GREECE | Listen
Financial upheaval forces a teenage deaf girl, Valmira 16, to leave her progressive Athens school and return to her father's struggling island where she is confronted by the danger of prejudice and intolerance, most shockingly - her own.
LUXEMBOURG | A Silence
The story of Astrid, the wife of an acclaimed lawyer. Silenced for 25 years, her family balance suddenly collapses when her children initiate their search for justice.
IRELAND | Four Mothers
A struggling novelist who is forced to take care of three eccentric older women - and his own mother - over the course of one chaotic weekend in Dublin.
Opening Reception | GERMANY | Two to One
A family in East Germany finds millions in soon-to-be-worthless East German currency during 1990’s reunification, and take what they can carry.
FRANCE | Anatomy of a Fall
A woman is suspected of murder after her husband's death; their half-blind son faces a moral dilemma as the main witness.
ESTONIA | Smoke Sauna Sisterhood
In the darkness of a smoke sauna, women share their innermost secrets and intimate experiences, washing off the shame trapped in their bodies and regaining their strength through a sense of communion.
SWITZERLAND | Bon Schuur Ticino
The Swiss population decides that there should only be one national language in the future. During the transition to monolingualism, federal policeman Walter Egli and his colleague have to deal with a group of opponents.
NETHERLANDS | Sweet Dreams
Tumultuous events triggered by the death of a Dutch sugar plantation owner who ends up leaving his Indian Ocean island estate to his young illegitimate son - the child of his Indonesian housemaid.
ITALY | The Girl from Tomorrow (Primadonna)
A young woman in rural Italy of the 1960's is violently forced into marriage and fights for justice.
LUXEMBOURG | The Wall
A committed and zealous American officer of the United States Border Patrol on the Arizona-Mexico border loses control and kills a harmless migrant in front of three witnesses and tries to cover her crime.
ROMANIA | Libertate
During Romania's 1989 revolution, Sibiu witnesses a violent attack on a police station that spirals into armed clashes between soldiers, police, protesters and secret police.
GREECE | Dodo
A Dodo, a bird species extinct for the last 300 years, shows up mysteriously at the luxurious villa of a formerly wealthy family in Athens, dragging all the protagonists into a crazy round.
UKRAINE | 20 Days in Mariupol
As the Russian invasion begins, a team of Ukrainian journalists trapped in the besieged city of Mariupol struggle to continue their work documenting the war's atrocities.
CZECH REPUBLIC | Il Boemo (The Bohemian)
A historical film about an 18th-century Czech immigrant to Italy who became the most prolific and celebrated opera composer of his time.
IRELAND | The Quiet Girl (An Cailín Ciúin)
In rural Ireland, a quiet, neglected girl is sent away from her dysfunctional family to live with relatives for the summer where she blossoms and learns what it is to be loved.
LATVIA | Soviet Milk (Mātes piens)
A young, promising doctor destroyed by the Soviet totalitarian regime deprives her daughter of breast milk.
GERMANY | The Teachers’ Lounge
When one of her students is suspected of theft, teacher Carla Nowak decides to get to the bottom of the matter. Caught between her ideals and the school system, the consequences of her actions threaten to break her.
Official Opening Reception | BELGIUM | La Fiancée du Poète
A lover of painting and poetry, Mireille adapts to her work as a waitress at the cafeteria of the Beaux-Arts in Charleville while living on petty theft and trafficking in cigarette cartons.
