Coming to Cinemas (EUFF 2012)

A Perfect Match

Director: Miel Van Hoogenbemt
Cast: Jan Decleir, Maria Popistasu, Wim Opbrouck
Running Time: 1 Hour 40 Minutes
Language:: Dutch
Classification: U
Synopsis: Leopold, retired school teacher, tries to find a life partner through an online web portal named "perfectmatch.com," which forms the crux of the film's title. He is helped by his faithful friend Julien but cannot seem to make up his mind despite having met scores of women. During this time, his maidservant leaves his house because of family reasons, but she manages to find another maidservant named Alina to replace her. Leopold finds that Alina is actually a terrible maidservant, yet he falls totally and desperately in love with Alina who is 40 years younger than he is.

Mataharis

Director: Icíar Bollaín
Cast: Najwa Nimri, Maria Vázquez, Nuria González, Diego Marín, Tristán Ulloa
Running Time: 1 Hour 40 Minutes
Language:: Spanish
Classification: U
Synopsis: Private detective Ines infiltrates the employees at a multinational corporation. Thanks to the collaboration of Manuel, she gets to the heart of company intrigues. But her investigation brings her face to face with a difficult emotional and ethical decision. Eva, just back from maternity leave, is juggling work and family obligations when she discovers that her partner Iñaki is hiding something fundamental to their future as a couple. Carmen, the most experienced of the three, observes and tapes Sergio's marital collapse but can't see her own marriage is dead. While working at the detective agency run by Valbuena, these three surveillance specialists often invade others' privacy but are clueless about confronting their own secrets. All three will have to cross the thin line dividing public and private matters, bringing their own issues to light in order to solve more than just their professional cases.

The Legend Of Flying Cyprian

Director: Mariana Cengel-Solcanská
Cast: Marko Igonda, Pawel Malaszynski, Aleksandr Domogarov, Radoslav Brzobohatý
Running Time: 1 Hour 48 Minutes
Language:: Slovakian
Classification: P13
Synopsis: Just as the snow has begun to fall, a horseman arrives at the courtyard of an eremitic monastery. He reads a royal decree abolishing all monastic orders in all of Austria-Hungary. Prior to that, an ill man was found one day at the gate to the hermitage. As he has no name, they call him Cyprian. Cyprian's wretched and painful past has left its mark on him by paralyzing his body and soul, making it impossible for him to live a normal life. Looking for meaning in things becomes his only purpose in life, and the hope that he will one day find it is all he has left. Only in the monastery does Cyprian first see the value of love, goodness and compassion. As a demonstration of humility and sacrifice, he vows to remain silent until the end of his life. Just when Cyprian seems to have finally found his place and reconciliation, his lifestyle is abolished, so he dons a pair of wings and climbs the hill to subject himself to a trial by ordeal...

What Is A Man Without A Moustache

Director: Hrvoje Hribar
Cast: Leon Lucev, Zrinka Cvitešic, Ivo Gregurevic
Running Time: 1 Hour 49 Minutes
Language:: Croatian
Classification: P13
Synopsis: Tatjana and Miljenko are a young married Croatian couple living in Germany. Miljenko is killed when he falls while working on a construction site and his employer pays a financial settlement to his young widow. Tatjana then moves back to the rural countryside of Croatia where the couple first met. There she meets Father Stipan, an alcoholic Catholic priest of the local rundown church. Tatjana uses the settlement money to make a romantic purchase of the hill where Miljenko proposed to her only to make a small fortune when a local developer discovers precious minerals in the hill and pays her handsomely for it. Tatjana becomes a target for new prospective suitors, including her husband's brother Marinko. Tatjana falls in love with the troubled priest and offers most of her money to him so that the church can be repaired and the parish does not go bankrupt, causing Father Stipan to be torn between choosing to accept Tatjana's money for the church or her love.

Memory Lane

Director: Mikhaël Hers
Cast: Thibault Vinçon, Dounia Sichov, Lolita Chammah
Running Time: 1 Hour 38 Minutes
Language:: French
Classification: 18
Synopsis: One summer, seven 25-year-old friends get together to spend a few days in the town they grew up in. They all have their own reasons to be there: some are still living in the town, others have returned for family reasons or to find the traces of lingering adolescence, while others think that they will perhaps find love... While the days drift by beneath the deep August sky, each person has the intuition that these shared moments are perhaps the last...

In A Better World

Director: Susanne Bier
Cast: Mikael Persbrandt, Trine Dyrholm, Markus Rygaard
Running Time: 1 Hour 53 Minutes
Language:: English / Arabic / Swedish / Danish
Classification: 18
Synopsis: Anton is a doctor who commutes between his home in an idyllic town in Denmark, and his work at an African refugee camp. In these two very different worlds, he and his family are faced with conflicts that lead them to difficult choices between revenge and forgiveness. Anton and his wife Marianne, who have two young sons, are separated and struggling with the possibility of divorce. Their older, ten-year-old son Elias is being bullied at school, until he is defended by Christian, a new boy who has just moved from London with his father, Claus. Christian's mother recently lost her battle with cancer, and Christian is greatly troubled by her death. Elias and Christian quickly form a strong bond, but when Christian involves Elias in a dangerous act of revenge with potentially tragic consequences, their friendship is tested and lives are put in danger. Ultimately, it is their parents who are left to help them come to terms with the complexity of human emotions, pain and empathy.

Dear Alice

Director: Othman Karim
Cast: Danny Glover, Tuva Novotny, Stefan Sauk, Regina Lund, Ulf Brunnberg, Peter Gardiner
Running Time: 1 Hour 33 Minutes
Language:: English / Swedish
Classification: 18
Synopsis: Four very different lives become interweaved during what seems like an ordinary day. Franzis Namazi is a newly arrived immigrant from Gambia to Sweden. He is about to give up on his little store selling African art. Karin Carlsson-Said is a lawyer who is about to enter a new important step in her career as a lawyer. Her husband, Moses, must send money to his hospitalized father in Uganda, but there are problems with the transaction and has issues with keeping up his work as a Social Worker. Bosse is the TV star who finds out he has been fired off his own show and finds his young wife with another man, Håkan is a charming celebrity with an alcohol problem and now once again needs help from his lawyer Karin Carlsson-Said.

I Am Fishead

Director: Misha Votruba, Vaclav Dejcmar
Cast: Peter Coyote
Running Time: 1 Hour 20 Minutes
Language:: Czech
Classification: U
Synopsis: It is a well-known fact that our society is structured like a pyramid. The very few people at the top create conditions for the majority below. Who are these people? Can we blame them for the problems our society faces today? Guided by the saying "A fish rots from the head," two filmmakers set out to follow that fishy odour. What they found out is that people at the top are more likely to be psychopaths than the rest of us. Broken into three parts, our search for the fishead starts in New York City, on Wall Street, where a big chunk of the world power is concentrated. Through interviews with renowned psychologist Professor Philip Zimbardo, leading expert on psychopathy Professor Robert Hare, former President of Czech Republic and playwright Vaclav Havel, authors Gary Greenberg and Christopher Lane, Professor Nicholas Christakis, among numerous other thinkers, the film delves into the world of psychopaths and heroes and revealed shocking implications for us and our society.

Simon And The Oaks

Director: Lisa Ohlin
Cast: Bill Skarsgård, Helen Sjöholm, Jan Josef Liefers, Stefan Gödicke
Running Time: 1 Hour 57 Minutes
Language:: Swedish
Classification: P13
Synopsis: Simon, a small, dark-haired and bookish young boy, enjoys an idyllic rural childhood in Sweden, as the shadow of World War II descends over Europe. Although raised by loving and principled working class parents, he feels that he is different. When he finds out that he is adopted, he sets of on a search to discover his roots and ultimately, his true self. "Simon And The Oaks" is based on renowned author Marianne Fredriksson's best seller with the same title.

Stationspiraten

Director: Michael Schaerer
Cast: Scherwin Amini, Vincent Furrer, Max Hubacher, Nicolas Hugentobler, Stefan Kurt
Running Time: 1 Hour 30 Minutes
Language:: German
Classification: U
Synopsis: Five adolescent boys share a very peculiar neighbourhood: the cancer ward of a hospital. Four of them have cancer and the fifth one is waiting for his diagnosis. Although sharing a somewhat similar fate, it does not make them equals. Each and every one of the boys has his own personal baggage to carry along with the deadly disease. They cope with their life-threatening situation through their joy of living. Friendship and experience play an important role for adolescents. But they become indispensable when their "formative years" are spent in pyjamas and hooked up to pipes. The five 'pirates' lend each other support. They band together and bravely face an uncertain future. Together they will conquer life.

Automatic For The People

Director: Jan Vejnar
Cast: Michal Kern, Jakub Spalek, Petr Lnenicka, Olga Spatova
Running Time: 32 Minutes
Language:: Czech
Classification: U
Synopsis: A short film about a man who works in an office environment serving his colleagues beverages and is very frustrated for not being noticed. However, the reason is that, he works inside a vending machine.

Almanya

Director:Yasemin Samdereli
Cast: Vedat Erincin, Lilay Huser, Rafael Koussouris, Aylin Tezel
Running Time: 1 Hour 37 Minutes
Language:: German
Classification: U
Synopsis: "Who or what am I really: German or Turkish?" This is what six-year-old Cenk Yilmaz asks himself when neither his Turkish nor his German schoolmates choose him for their football team. To cheer him up a little, his 22-year-old cousin Canan tells him the story of her grandfather Huseyin, who came to Germany in the early 1960s as a guest worker and later fetched his wife and children so they could be in "Almanya" with him.

The White Space

Director:Francesca Comencini
Cast: Margherita Buy, Gaetano Bruno, Giovanni Ludeno
Running Time: 1 Hour 36 Minutes
Language:: Italian
Classification: U
Synopsis: Maria, an Italian teacher in a Naples school, has an unexpected pregnancy and a premature delivery, leaving her emotionally overwhelmed, until she learns to live again for her vulnerable child. Maria, after parting with her man, starts to live alone just waiting to know her son's destiny, between the birth and the death.

The Italian Key

Director: Rosa Karo
Cast: Gwendolyn Anslow, Joana Cartocci, Leo Vertunni
Running Time: 1 Hour 35 Minutes
Language:: English
Classification: U
Synopsis: A romantic fairy tale about a 19-year-old orphan girl who, as her sole inheritance, gets an antique key that unlocks both an old Italian villa and the secrets of her family history.

The Border

Director: Martin Kopp
Cast: Martin Hofmann, Vladimír Dlouhý, Ljuba Krbová
Running Time: 29 Minutes
Language:: Czech
Classification: U
Synopsis: Martin Kopp directs this short drama film about several men who are desperate to illegally cross the borders between Czechoslovakia and West Germany.

Crusade In Jeans

Director: Ben Sombogaart
Cast: Joe Flynn, Stephanie Leonidas, Emily Watson, Michael Culkin
Running Time: 2 Hours 5 Minutes
Language:: English
Classification: P13
Synopsis: Dolf is a 15-year-old boy from Rotterdam who plays for the junior national football team. Dolf and his team are playing an important championship game against the Belgian team in the German city of Speyer, but they lose because of Dolf. Disheartened, Dolf decides to go back in time one day to replay the match since his mother works in a research centre in Rotterdam where a time machine has been developed. The activation of the system alarms the guards and in his haste Dolf accidentally enters the password instead of the destination date, and consequently travels to the year 1212. After being attacked by vagabonds and being saved by a girl named Jenne, Dolf joins Jenne in the Children's Crusade, where he applies his modern-day knowledge to save the lives of many children. However, his knowledge also leads to accusations of witchcraft...

Exchange

Director: Nicolae Margineanu
Cast: Aliona Munteanu, Cosmin Selesi, Rodica Ionescu
Running Time: 1 Hour 40 Minutes
Language:: Romanian
Classification: P13
Synopsis: Emil is just another Romanian worker left unemployed during the country's transition to a market economy. Like many others before him, he decides to start a new life abroad, where his work force would be appreciated. But such a dramatic move requires serious funds, in hard, cold, green foreign currency. Jobless in a small Romanian town, he sells everything in order to emigrate to Australia. Once in Bucharest, a crook leaves him penniless. In order to get his money back, he is capable of anything. All the more so when he realizes there is nothing to get back...

The World Is Big And Salvation Lurks Around The Corner

Director: Stefan Komandarev
Cast: Miki Manojlovic, Carlo Ljubek, Hristo Mutafchiev, Ana Papadopulu
Running Time: 1 Hour 45 Minutes
Language:: Bulgarian
Classification:
Synopsis: In a small provincial town in Bulgaria during the 1980s, factory worker Vasil 'Vasko' Georgiev has problems with the local communist agent who wants Vasko to spy on his father-in-law Bai Dan's activities and report them. Bai Dan is the local King of Backgammon and is accused by the local authorities as having an illegal business of producing hand-made backgammon sets. Facing a moral dilemma, Vasko decides to move beyond the Iron Curtain to Western Europe with his wife Yana and his son Aleksander 'Sashko'. Fast forward to Germany, year 2007. Sashko and his parents are on their way to Bulgaria for the first time after moving. But they suffer a severe car accident in which Vasko and Yana die. Sashko is taken to a hospital with amnesia. His grandfather Bai Dan decides to go to Germany and try to help Sashko restore his past. Sashko is forced by his grandfather to leave the hospital and to start a journey with him on a tandem bicycle that takes them back to Bulgaria and Sashko's past.

Pina

Director: Wim Wenders
Cast: Regina Advento, Malou Airaudo, Ruth Amarante
Running Time: 1 Hour 43 Minutes
Language:: German
Classification: P13
Synopsis: The documentary shares the art of the great German choreographer Pina Bausch who died in the summer of 2009, inviting the viewer on a visually stunning journey of discovery into a new dimension which leads right onto the stage of the legendary Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch ensemble and - together with the dancers - beyond the theater, into the city and into the surrounding industrial landscape of Wuppertal, the city that was the home and center of Pina Bausch's creative life for more than 35 years.

On The Footsteps Of Marie Curie

Director: Krzysztof Rogulski
Cast: Elisabeth Duda, Erick Deshors, Judyta Turan, Jerzy Rogulski
Running Time: 1 Hour 20 Minutes
Language:: English
Classification: U
Synopsis: Young, beautiful, and born in an occupied country which disappeared from the map of Europe, she was a woman who loved men, children and science. Reserved yet ambitious, she rushed headlong into the world of science hitherto reserved to men. The only woman winner in 100 years, she won a Nobel Prize in two different scientific domains. How do scientists see her today? What made her unique? How have women's positions changed? We followed in Marie Curie's footsteps to answer these questions, talking to possible future winners of the Nobel Prize, and giving a faithful picture of the wonderful adventure of her life.

Twin Sisters

Director: Ben Sombogaart
Cast: Thekla Reuten, Nadja Uhl
Running Time: 2 Hours 17 Minutes
Language:: Dutch
Classification: U
Synopsis: The film tells the story of twin German sisters Lotte (Thekla Reuten) and Anna (Nadja Uhl), separated at a young age. After the death of their parents, they are "divided" between quarreling distant relatives, one being raised in the Netherlands and the other in Germany. As well as a national difference, they also undergo a sharp class differentiation. Lotte is raised by a rather affluent, middle-class intellectual family in Amsterdam, and Anna by a poor Catholic peasant family in a backward area, where in the 1930s the Nazi Party seems to offer young people the only chance of social mobility. During their teens the two girls seek to keep in contact, despite numerous and mounting obstacles, but the cataclysmic events of World War II and the Holocaust sweep them in opposite directions.

A Second Childhood

Director: Pupi Avati
Cast: Fabrizio Bentivoglio, Francesca Neri, Serena Grandi
Running Time: 1 Hour 40 Minutes
Language:: Italian
Classification: U
Synopsis: Lino Settembre and his wife Chicca lead a tranquil married life without any serious problems. They are satisfied with their careers. He is the sports editor at the Messenger and she is a professor of medieval languages at the Universita' Gregoriana. The only true disappointment in their 25 years of marriage has been the lack of children. They used the situation to strengthen their marriage instead of letting it become real problem. But now, in a totally unexpected way, they are presented with a big issue: Lino is having some really serious memory problems that worsen little by little, until it eventually interrupt the routine of their daily lives and activities both at home and at work. At first both Lino and Chicca decide to laugh it off, but the problem manifests itself more and more until, after careful attention and in-depth medical exams, they receive the diagnosis of degenerative brain disease that is destroying his brain...

A Distant Neighbourhood

Director: Sam Garbarski
Cast: Pascal Greggory, Jonathan Zaccaï, Alexandra Maria Lara, Léo Legrand
Running Time: 1 Hour 38 Minutes
Language:: French
Classification: U
Synopsis: Thomas, fifty years old and a father, arrives by accident in the town where he grew up. While spending some time in silent contemplation at his mother's grave he feels faint and collapses. When he comes to, his body seems different and his mother's name is no longer engraved on the tombstone. Having returned forty years into the past and now an adolescent once again, he decides to "go home" to try to comprehend what drove his father to abandon them that year and to try to prevent this mysterious disappearance. But can we modify our past by reliving it again?

A Road To Mecca: The Journey Of Muhammad Asad

Director: Georg Misch
Cast: Muhammad Asad, Samuel Honigman, Martin Goldenberg
Running Time: 1 Hour 33 Minutes
Language:: English / German
Classification: U
Synopsis: In the early 1920s Leopold Weiss, a Jew born in Lemberg, travelled to the Middle East. The desert fascinated him, and Islam became his new spiritual home. He left his Jewish roots behind, converted to Islam and changed his name to Muhammad Asad. He became one of the most important Muslims of the 20th century, first as an advisor at the royal court of Saudi Arabia, and later translating the Koran into English. Asad was also a co-founder of Pakistan and its ambassador to the UN. The director follows his fading footsteps, leading from the Arabian desert to Ground Zero. He finds a man who was not looking for adventures but rather wanted to act as a mediator between East and West. "A Road To Mecca" takes this opportunity to deal with a heated debate which is currently becoming more and more important.

I Have To Sleep, My Angel

Director: Dejan Acimovic
Cast: Karlo Barbaric, Natasa Dorcic, Goran Grgic, Vera Zima
Running Time: 1 Hour 40 Minutes
Language:: Croatian
Classification: U
Synopsis: A family drama set in the former Yugoslavia in the early 1970s. A nine-year-old boy lives what seems to be a perfectly normal life in a flat with his parents and grandparents. His family includes people of different origins, denominations, beliefs and influences. His father is a doctor and Croatian, his mother is Serbian, his grandfather is an old-time communist revolutionary and his grandmother is devoutly religious. The boy's father leaves the family, coming back to visit his son from time to time. He is soon involved in a relationship with a woman he once knew, while the boy's mother also tries to start a relationship with somebody new. Faced with his parents' separation the boy spends more and more time outside his home. He starts hanging out with a girl named Lucija whose father is an opponent of the regime, which can only bode ill.

The Illusionist

Director: Sylvain Chomet
Cast: Jean-Claude Donda, Eilidh Rankin
Running Time: 1 Hour 20 Minutes
Language:: French
Classification: U
Synopsis: From the man behind "Triplets of Belleview" (2003), comes the story of a dying breed of stage entertainer, who had his thunder stolen by emerging rock stars. Forced to accept increasingly obscure assignments like working in fringe theatres, garden parties and bars, a French illusionist finds himself out of work and travels to Scotland, where he meets a young woman. Their ensuing adventure changes both their lives forever.

Morgen

Director: Marian Crisan
Cast: András Hatházi, Yilmaz Yalcin, Elvira Rimbu
Running Time: 1 Hour 40 Minutes
Language:: Romanian
Classification: P13
Synopsis: Nelu, a man in his forties, works as a security guard in a local supermarket in the Romanian border town of Salonta. His life is uneventful: fishing at dawn, work during the day, and home with his wife in the evening. They live alone in the outskirts of the town and their main problem is repairing the old roof of their farmhouse. One morning, while fishing, Nelu meets a Turkish man trying to evade capture by the border guards. Nelu takes the stranger to the farmhouse, desperate for help, gives him some dry clothes, food and shelter, although he does not really know how to help him cross the border. When his wife discovers the foreigner living in the cellar she insists he get rid of him, but he puts him to work on his dilapidated farm instead. The Turkish man keeps insisting Nelu take all his money and help him reach Germany. Eventually, Nelu takes the money and promises he will help him cross the border the next day, reassuring him with the one word he knows in German: "morgen".

The Orange Girl

Director: Eva Dahr
Cast: Mikkel Bratt Silset, Harald Thompson Rosenstrøm, Annie Dahr Nygaard, Emilie K. Beck, Rebekka Karijord
Running Time: 1 Hour 21 Minutes
Language:: Norwegian
Classification: U
Synopsis: Georg lives with his mother Veronika in Oslo. On his 18th birthday, he receives a thick letter from his father, Jan Olav, which his father wrote just before he died, when Georg was only six years old. He takes the letter on his journey to the mountains where he meets Stella on the train. In the letter, his father asks Georg a fundamental existential question: What's the point of living when we're going to die anyway, maybe even when life is at its best? But before Gerog is allowed to answer, his father wants to tell him a story about the Orange Girl he met in 1982. Based on the best-selling author Jostein Gaardner's novel, "The Orange Girl" interweaves the story of Georg's budding love with his father's philosophical legacy.

Releases according to CinemaOnline.