The Puppet’s Tale

Boundary

July 1973 •

Pajo is a hardworking, lonely but also very rich farmer. His son Toma was, however, bored with country life and tried to seek fortune in the city. Short on money, Toma returns to the farm for a handout while Pajo tries to convince him to stay.

Dogville

May 2003 •English

When a beautiful young Grace arrives in the isolated township of Dogville, the small community agrees to hide her from a gang of ruthless gangsters, and, in return, Grace agrees to do odd jobs for the townspeople.

Luna Papa

September 1999 •Russian

The unborn child of Mamlakat is telling her story. She is 17, beautiful and vivacious, and dreaming secretly of becoming an actress. She lives with her father and brother in a small village in Central Asia. One night she is seduced by an actor from a travelling troupe, who poses as a friend of Tom Cruise, and makes her pregnant. She tries to abort, but her father and brother become determined to find the seducer, setting in motion a cascade of comic adventures.

Silent Light

October 2007 •German

Johan and his family are Mennonites from the north of Mexico. Against the law of God and Man, Johan falls in love with another woman.

A Love in Germany

October 1983 •German

In May of 1983, a man turns 49 and, with his 17-year old son, journeys to the village in Baden that he left 40 years before. He wants to discover what happened then, the truth about an affair his mother had with a young Polish prisoner of war, how the authorities came to learn of it, the lovers' arrest, and the aftermath. While his son takes Polaroid photographs, he retraces the steps of his childhood and interviews those who should remember. The story is disclosed in flashbacks that focus on the lovers (Paulina and Stanislaus), on a jealous and conniving neighbor, and on Mayer, the local SS commander who wants to find a way out of inevitable consequences.

Hatred

October 2016 •Polish

Summer of 1939. Zosia is a young Polish girl who is deeply in love with Ukrainian Petro. Their great love will be put to the test when her father decides to marry her to a wealthy widower Skiba. Right after wedding she is left alone because her husband is drafted to the Polish army for the war with Germany. Meanwhile, tensions grow due to Jews, Poles, and Ukrainians living side by side.

Local Hero

February 1983 •English

An American oil company sends a man to Scotland to buy up an entire village where they want to build a refinery. But things don't go as expected.

Dead Landscape

April 1972 •Hungarian

This Hungarian film chronicles the slow deterioration in the life of Juli, a farmer's wife. As the countryside grows ever more deserted because people are moving to towns or large collective farms, she spends more and more time alone. Despite her best efforts to appreciate her situation, her despair grows. The loneliness is briefly interrupted when she and her husband take in an old woman and care for her, but the woman dies. Shortly after her son visits, she is killed in an accident which may have been a suicide. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

Girls in My Hometown

January 1991 •Korean

Girls in my Hometown, released in 1991, is a melodrama dealing with individualism and sacrifice. A young girl has a friend who has just come back from abroad, bringing with her foreign fashions and foreign ideas. When the solider to whom the friend was engaged becomes blinded in an accident, she decides to put herself first, neglecting her duties to her fiancé and the community she lives in.

And There Was Evening and There Was Morning

January 2014 •Italian

In the main square of the town of Avila, everybody is celebrating the feast of Saint Eurosia, protector of earth's harvest. But something is happening in the village bar...

Aaj Kal Parsur Galpa

August 1981 •Bengali

Rawmapawdo is a poor farmer in Bengal who reunites with his ravaged wife and starts afresh with the help of Shankar, a social reformer.

Mêrên Ji Avê Ditirsin

April 2012 •Kurdish

Nothing Left - Just That Summer

November 2018 •German

Lower Austria in the 80s. Anna helps out in her uncle's tavern to fund her studies and meets handsome Kurt who casts an eye on her. But when the local factory closes, life in the valley changes. Anna learns that Kurt is going to marry. Then a terrible accident occurs. The film conveys the rural society's changing self-conception and outlines the conflict between staying or leaving for the city.

Nefret

January 1974 •Turkish

Il retuorn

April 1986 •Romansh

TWO FACES

Invalid date •English

A fine distinctness of manhood come from the aftermath of a rape victim's life.

Longing

February 2006 •German

An average, everyday metalworker and volunteer firefighter content in his marriage to his childhood sweetheart finds his emotions unexpectedly stirred when he falls for a pretty waitress from a nearby town.

The Inheritors

June 1998 •German

In a small farming valley in Austria in the beginning of the 20th century a tyrannical farmer is found dead, and all the farmhands are relieved to be free of their tyrant. But the farmer was childless, so suddenly they all inherit the farm together. Now conflicts begin, as nobody is the boss and nobody has to obey.

Sommersby

February 1993 •English

Set in the South just after the US Civil War, Laurel Sommersby is just managing to work the farm without her husband, believed killed in battle. By all accounts, Jack Sommersby was not a pleasant man, thus when he suddenly returns, Laurel has mixed emotions. It appears that Jack has changed a great deal, leading some people to believe that this is not actually Jack but an imposter. Laurel herself is unsure, but willing to take the man into her home, and perhaps later into her heart.

In My Father's Den

June 2004 •English

Paul (Macfadyen), a prize-winning war journalist, returns to his remote New Zealand hometown due to the death of his father, battle-scarred and world-weary. For the discontented sixteen-year-old Celia (Barclay) he opens up a world she has only dreamed of. She actively pursues a friendship with him, fascinated by his cynicism and experience of the world beyond her small-town existence. But many, including the members of both their families (Otto, Moy), frown upon the friendship and when Celia goes missing, Paul becomes the increasingly loathed and persecuted prime suspect in her disappearance. As the violent and urgent truth gradually emerges, Paul is forced to confront the family tragedy and betrayal that he ran from as a youth, and to face the grievous consequences of silence and secrecy that has surrounded his entire adult life.