A record-setting 61 countries submitted films for consideration in this year s race. Only five will advance.
Synopsis: France s baldly discriminatory attitude toward the North Africans who fought on her behalf in WWII is brought to the screen in a $16 million multinational production.
U.S. distrib: Weinstein Co.
Synopsis: Burman s fatherhood trilogy is capped with this personal study of a thirtysomething Buenos Aires lawyer in his roles as father and son.
U.S.
distrib: IFC First Take
Synopsis: The first feature shot entirely in the Australian Aboriginal language of Ganalbingu is a story-within-a-story that relates a cautionary tale involving jealousy and revenge.
U.S.
distrib: Palm Pictures
Synopsis: A gambling addict ends his losing streak in a chance encounter with a woman; the film has six alternate conclusions.
Sales: Bavaria Film Intl.
Synopsis: A daughter in a lower-middle-class family in Dhaka must support her troubled family by working as a prostitute.
Synopsis: Troch s debut pic revolves around the hit-and-run killing of a child in a close-knit village outside Brussels.
Synopsis: With her daughter wanting to get a discount on a school trip using proof of her father s wartime martyrdom, a Sarajevo mom hesitates, afraid of revealing a darkly held truth.
Cinema, Aspirins and Vultures
Synopsis: A German fleeing World War II and a man escaping an oppressive drought in his province join up to screen films in rural Brazil.
U.S. distrib: Global Film Initiative
Synopsis: Across 40 years of Communist and post-Communist rule in Bulgaria, pic explores the lives of three mothers from separate generations facing bleak decisions.
Synopsis: An 8-year-old Hindu widow is sent to live in an ashram with other widows who, in strict adherence with Hindu texts, are condemned to the same outcast fate.
U.S.
distrib: Fox Searchlight
Synopsis: A man and a woman meet at a party, have sex and chat, revealing hidden aspects of themselves.
Synopsis: During the late Tang Dynasty, the emperor s plot to poison the empress unleashes tragedy and civil war among his sons. Stars Chow Yun-fat and Gong Li.
U.S. distrib: Sony Pic Classics
Synopsis: When a Colombian army platoon battling narco-guerrillas finds the enemy s stash of $40 million, the temptation to take the booty themselves proves too great to resist.
Synopsis: Fable-like retelling about Croatian national hero and poet Marin Drzic, who falls in love with the woman helping him flee from his numerous enemies.
Synopsis: The life of Afro-Cuban jazz legend Benny More is traced from his rise in the 50s through his fall after the revolution.
Synopsis: Blending storytelling elements of Edgar Allen Poe with the character of the Marquis de Sade, pic observes the surreal fate of the son of an insane asylum inmate when he encounters the marquis himself.
U.S. distrib: Zeitgeist Films
Synopsis: The director of an Indian orphanage returns to his native Denmark to ensure a major donation and encounters startling revelations.
U.S. distrib: IFC Films
Synopsis: Adaptation of Alaa Al Aswany s novel about a mix of rich and poor characters living in a grand old Cairo apartment building that has seen better times.
Synopsis: A provincial woman s experience as a waitress in a venerable bistro on Paris showbizzy Avenue Montaigne has an unexpected impact on her famed customers. Stars Cecile de France, Claude Brasseur, Valerie Lermercier, Albert Dupontel and Sydney Pollack.
U.
S. distrib: ThinkFilm
Synopsis: An East German playwright becomes the object of electronic surveillance by a cold, methodical Stasi agent who slowly grows sympathetic to his subject.
Synopsis: Village fable about a fun-loving high school principal and the uptight army commander who blows into town.
Stars George Corraface.
Sales: CL Prods.
Synopsis: Hamlet is liberally reimagined in this drama set during the 10th century, when an empress tries to protect her family s interests by forming a controversial marriage.
Ziyi Zhang stars.
Synopsis: Twenty-one years in the life of a Hungarian gymnast, from training under a sadistic coach to working as a member of Cirque du Soleil.
Prizes: Hungarian Film Week (film, director, cinematography, editing, Gene Moskovitz award of foreign critics, audience award); Karlovy Vary (East of West Award - special mention)
U.
S. distrib: Strand Releasing
Synopsis: Somber ensemble drama in black-and-white observes the intertwining lives of a struggling mom and her son, the son s schizophrenic best friend and a debt collector estranged from his underworld community.
Sales: The Works Intl.
Synopsis: A young Brit filmmaker recruits four Delhi U. students for a docudrama about freedom fighters in colonial-era India.
U.
S. distrib: UTV Motion Pictures
Synopsis: Dramatized in three segments, three woman from different backgrounds wrestle with polygamy.
Synopsis: A widow s efforts to run a truck-stop diner near the Iran-Turkey border become a lesson in stifling patriarchy.
Sales: Magrytte Films Intl.
Synopsis: During the early phase of the U.S.
invasion of Iraq, doctors and patients survive the bombing of an asylum and venture into Baghdad s streets.
Synopsis: Moving from rural Sicily to third-class steerage to Ellis Island, this tripartite tale of a family s journey from the Old World to the New propels them from a superstitious past into a colder-eyed modernity.
U.
S. distrib: Miramax
Synopsis: An unlikely group of young women and their teacher form a troupe performing Hawaiian dances, helping to revive spirits in a declining mining town.
Synopsis: Heroic 18th-century story of local tribes who rally around the young Mansur to defeat the occupying Mongol enemy.
Kazakh-language pic has a cast including Jason Scott Lee and thousands of extras.
U.S.
distrib: Weinstein Co.
Synopsis: A ruthless potentate agrees to spare the lives of two performing clowns when they make him laugh, but the king s attraction to one of them quickly complicates matters.
Prizes: Grand Bell Awards (film, director, screenplay, actor, supporting actor, new actor)
Synopsis: A young man returns to his mountain village with his French fiancee (Natacha Regnier), but he s too intimidated by the elders to tell them the news.
Synopsis: Members of a loosely organized dance troupe take a road trip to Lebanese villages to perform their innovative work and encounter long-lost friends and memories along the way.
Sales: Fantascope Prods.
Synopsis: Doc about children trying to cope with leukemia in a hospital in the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius.
Synopsis: After the official end of the Spanish Civil War, a little girl tries to escape a bloodthirsty army commander (Sergi Lopez) by completing three fantastical tasks.
U.S.
distrib: Picturehouse
Synopsis: A motley crew of musicians form an orchestra in the hope of performing a symphony in London s Royal Albert Hall.
Sales: Video Star Prods.
Synopsis: In this adaptation of the novel by Lil Bahadur Chhetri, a villager who s fallen into debt must leave his home and migrate.
Synopsis: A Jewish Dutch woman (Carice van Houten) gets involved with the underground resistance during WWII and infiltrates the upper echelons of the Gestapo.
Synopsis: Two aspiring novelist friends in Oslo struggle with their craft, madness and romantic angst.
Sales: Nordisk Film Intl.
Synopsis: In an Andean village during Good Friday weekend, the mayor s pretty daughter falls in love with an outsider.
U.S.
distrib: Film Movement
Synopsis: The preteen gay son of a family of crooks is befriended by a nice cop, testing his family loyalties.
U.S.
distrib: Unico Entertainment
Synopsis: A hard-luck 19-year-old in an old mining town tries to support his Ukrainian emigre girlfriend, but a life of debt-collecting and illegal boxing matches is dragging him down.
Synopsis: Three-part narrative tells the parallel stories of two brothers using their drug trade earnings to support their grandmother, a single mom fighting for her job and a mother trying to save her teen son from drug addiction.
Synopsis: In 1989 Bucharest, Eva and her boyfriend Alex create an uproar at school when they accidentally knock over a plaster bust of Ceausescu.
Sales: Pyramide Intl.
Synopsis: Russian box office victor, based on actual events, tracks raw recruits through grueling basic training to arrival in the war zone in Afghanistan in 1989 and on to a climactic battle with tragic consequences.
Synopsis: A hard-working Madrid mom (Penelope Cruz) must get on with life as she covers for her daughter s accidental killing of her nasty husband.
Prizes: Fipresci (film of the year); Cannes (actress, screenplay); Valdivia (audience award)
U.S. distrib: Sony Pictures Classics
Synopsis: Five friends in their 20s who have grown up together in a small west coast Swedish town realize their lives are changing as they spend one last summer together.
Synopsis: After a spell in jail, a woman stays in the southern port of Kaohsiung with a tough older woman who runs a girly bar.
Synopsis: Dramedy about a young man who is tormented by a karma-laden man in red who tells him he must pay for sins committed in his previous life.
Sales: R.
S. Prods.
Synopsis: A vendor selling homemade ice cream in a small town faces obstacles when his longtime customers start buying mass-market brands.
Synopsis: An orphan with dreams of a ballet career becomes a victim of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant catastrophe, but her fortunes seem to turn when she s treated at a U.S. hospital.
Synopsis: A streetwise girl tries to elude a dogged cop investigating a murder, while her musical gifts elicit support from an idealistic music teacher.
Synopsis: True story, set in a mountainous region of northern Vietnam, of a resentful woman s memories of her two mothers.
Sales: Vietnam Media Corp.
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