Films in Debate
Riveting films that amplify, scrutinise, argue and surprise.
Debate strand supported by
Debate gala
-
Capernaum
Dir Nadine Labaki | Lebanon
Acclaimed Lebanese filmmaker Nadine Labaki delivers her most assured and affecting work yet with this astonishing and heart-wrenching depiction of life in the shadows.
Feature films
-
An Impossible Love
Dir Catherine Corsini | France
Rising star Virginie Efira headlines Catherine Corsini’s powerful, moving drama about how the torments of love are carried on from generation to generation.
-
Angelo
Dir-Scr Markus Schleinzer | Austria-Luxembourg
The powerful story of Angelo Soliman, a forced Europeanised African who makes his way through Viennese society in the early 18th century without ever belonging.
-
Dear Son
Dir-Scr Mohamed Ben Attia | Tunisia-Belgium-France-Qatar
When Sami begins to suffer migraines, his parents’ concern for their withdrawn son increases. Their anguish forms the unnerving backbone of Mohamed Ben Attia’s astute drama.
-
Donbass
Dir-Scr Sergei Loznitsa | Germany-Ukraine-France-Netherlands-Romania
This disturbing new film from Sergei Loznitsa (My Joy, In the Fog) examines the civil conflict in Ukraine through the prism of black humour and the absurd.
-
A Family Tour
Dir Ying Liang | Taiwan-Hong Kong (SAR of China)-Singapore-Malaysia
The personal cost of life in political exile is explored in this delicate drama about a controversial director and her family.
-
Freedom Fields
Dir-Scr Naziha Arebi | Libya-UK-Netherlands-USA-Lebanon-Qatar-Canada
Charting six years of Libya’s nascent women’s football scene – a journey never short of obstacles – Freedom Fields celebrates the determination of an incredible team.
-
Girls of the Sun
Dir-Scr Eva Husson | France
Golshifteh Farahani gives a soulful performance as a battalion leader in Eva Husson’s (Bang Gang, LFF 2015) rousing tribute to female Kurdish fighters.
-
House of My Fathers
Dir-Prod-Scr Suba Sivakumaran | Sri Lanka
A surreal and disturbing tale centred on two divided villages in a civil war where women are unable to conceive and a remedy is desperately sought.
-
I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians
Dir-Scr Radu Jude | Romania-Czech Republic-France-Bulgaria-Germany
Radu Jude, the celebrated director of Aferim!, Scarred Hearts and The Dead Nation, returns with another controversial and illuminating foray into the darker side of Romania’s history.
Read more about I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians
-
The Kindergarten Teacher
Dir-Scr Sara Colangelo | USA
Maggie Gyllenhaal gives a career-best performance as a kindergarten teacher who finds herself in an ethical quagmire after discovering the poetic talents of a precocious student.
-
Non-Fiction
Dir-Scr Olivier Assayas | France
Juliette Binoche and Guillaume Canet lead the cast in Olivier Assayas’ latest film, which is a wryly comic look at the quandaries of the publishing world.
-
Rosie
Dir Paddy Breathnach | Ireland
A moving and fiercely gripping response to Ireland’s current housing crisis, Rosie tells the story of a Dublin family seeking a roof for the night.
-
Shock Waves – Diary of My Mind
Dir Ursula Meier | Switzerland
This true crime drama from Ursula Meier is a searingly complex moral maze that lingers long in the mind.
-
The Spy Gone North
Dir Yoon Jong-bin | South Korea
How was a South Korean spy, codenamed ‘Black Venus’, able to ingratiate himself with the highest ranks of the DPRK, including Kim Jong-il himself?
-
Styx
Dir Wolfgang Fischer | Germany-Austria
A woman’s solo sailing journey turns into a deadly serious ethical dilemma in this unusual and taut political allegory.
-
This Teacher
Dir Mark Jackson | USA
A reunion between two childhood friends goes awry in this disquieting portrait of a young Muslim woman visiting New York for the first time.
-
Touch Me Not
Dir-Scr Adina Pintilie | Romania-Germany-Czech Republic-Bulgaria-France
Romanian director Adina Pintilie’s Berlin Golden Bear winner is a bold, quietly provocative drama about one woman struggling with her fear of intimacy.
-
Unsettling
Dir-Prod Iris Zaki | Israel-UK
When a documentary filmmaker interviews young Israelis about their settlement in the West Bank, the results are an urgent film of revealing and sometimes challenging conversations.
-
Utøya – July 22
Dir Erik Poppe | Norway
Unfolding in real time in a single, devastating 72-minute take, Erik Poppe delivers a harrowing reconstruction of the massacre of 69 young people by Anders Behring Breivik.
-
The Vice of Hope
Dir Edoardo De Angelis | Italy
This is a gritty, gripping and ultimately uplifting depiction of a woman desperately striving to escape a life of vice and criminality.
-
Yours in Sisterhood
Dir-Prod-Scr Irene Lusztig | USA
Women across the US give voice to letters sent by readers to a feminist magazine in the 1970s, in this galvanizing and elegantly assembled documentary.
Short films programme
-
A World of Conflict
Conflicts are all around us – in our families, communities and in the world. Local and international stories reveal the effect of how interconnected our lives have become.
