Future Frames: Ten New Filmmakers To Follow

Fifty-year-old Saila doesn’t wake up after a class reunion in the most comfortable position. A long-forgotten former classmate is in bed with her, and despite the fact that he’s enjoying their morning together, she’d rather suppress the entire situation. While toned with humor and tenderness, the encounter after so many years also reveals disappointment and a hangover of moral dimensions.

Like a modern utopia, an unusually beautiful structure surrounded by the wilds of nature serves as the location for an encounter between two women. One seeks peace and relaxation, the other is creating an acoustic installation that intrudes upon the motionless calm. Frustration over this unplanned-for cohabitation grows and the differences between dream and reality begin to blur.

A young Ukrainian couple plan their getaway to Germany. It’s 2003, four years before Slovakia integrates into the Schengen Area. The Slovak-Ukrainian border is controlled by smugglers and human traffickers – Martin and Denisija have no idea of the traps that await them. They only have each other but they are willing to sacrifice much to fulfill their dream.

Two women plying the world’s oldest profession meet on a deserted road. Their employment motivations and experience, however, differ greatly. One knows the street inside out, the other is just discovering the secrets of professional prostitution. This lightly comic film presents women we often notice but rarely understand.

Lammert lives in a village by the name of Kropsdam. Lammert raises pigeons and his best friend is Frieda. He doesn’t have much else, and as long as he avoids the misfortune of getting mixed up with a company that builds wind turbines, then everybody likes him just fine. And then no one does. Kropsdam doesn’t forgive and the inhabitants know how to make that abundantly clear.

An offer of a job as a prison educator could help unemployed teacher Jakub resolve a difficult family situation. His father-in-law exacerbates his already low self-confidence, and the man most certainly imagined a different kind of son-in-law. The claustrophobic feelings Jakub experiences at the prison, however, lead him to a single question: Does he want to control others the rest of his life or be controlled by them?

Mala and Jure live in Ljubljana. They see their present existence as temporary. They’ll forget about work and their apartment when the longed-for moment arrives: the day they leave Slovenia and set out for Germany to find “something better.” But Mala is expecting a baby and it looks like it’s time to start realizing that the temporary may be permanent.

A young filmmaker struggles to defend a film about her own life. Director Liene Linde plays a director who struggles for the right to shoot a film, screen it before an audience, and not back down even one inch concerning what she wants to express. Employing humor and understanding, she comments on the lives of contemporary young women, but also on the challenges of making a movie.

The first day of school is generally a happy occasion full of expectation, but little John experiences it somewhat differently. His 11-year-old brother Mika unexpectedly turns up to help him with the challenges he’ll have to face in the coming years. They have a different kind of family, and Mika does everything he can to prevent it from affecting his little brother.

Their mother’s death becomes the grim pretext for estranged siblings to reunite. Ana and Niko are having trouble reconnecting, and words just seem to get in the way. Then something seemingly insignificant from the past helps them break down the barrier dividing them, and they remember how it was when each other’s presence brought them joy.