The Faraway Place

In Valeska Grisebach’s subtle, gripping crime drama, archaeologist Vesna (Yana Redeva) unearths more than she bargained for when she returns to the southern Bulgarian town of her youth, running afoul of local gangsters in the process.

Mihail, a contemporary art expert, has been living in Montreal since he left Bulgaria with his daughter almost thirty years ago. When he is commissioned to authenticate the work of an 8-year-old painting prodigy, he returns to Bulgaria for the first time.

Based on a short story by Colm Toibin and set in the Rockies in the 1950s, the latest from All of Us Strangers director Andrew Haigh is a piercing emotional drama about a family facing hardships over a few months in a cabin far above town.

In Yugo Goes to America, millennials from Belgrade drive a Yugo — Yugoslavia’s notoriously unreliable vehicle — from New York to Los Angeles. Their freewheeling road trip traces the car’s volatile history alongside the breakup of Yugoslavia itself.

An immersive, essayistic documentary, Afterlives examines the effects of violent spectacle via propaganda, refusing reductive answers or cliched responses to questions about extremism, justice, and art.

Derya and Aziz, a theatre couple based in Ankara, are celebrating the premiere of their latest play when they find themselves targeted by state investigations. Their lives change practically overnight, they find their political convictions put to the test.

Image: © EllaKnorz ifProductions Alamode Film