Director: Jennifer Sims.
A man has an enticing encounter in a library...

Director: Alberto Masliah.
ERNESTO (36) arrives at Trelew, Argentina, from Germany, where he had been living since he was three years old. His grandparents had taken him to Germany after his parents disappeared during the military dictatorship. Now, Ernesto has returned for the first time to his native country to take charge of the negotiations his grandfather had been conducting with an Argentine wool company, until his recent death. When Ernesto arrives at the airport, memories of his last moments with his parents come flooding back. These disorganized and incomprehensible flashbacks affect him to the point of causing him to faint. Once in the hotel room, he goes to the scheduled meeting. There he meets MR. OSCAR QUIROGA, one of his grandfather’s oldest friends. He gives him a picture in which Quiroga himself appears with Ernesto’s grandparents and father, then a little boy. This is the first photograph he has ever seen of his father, because his grandparents, afraid of hurting him, had concealed his parents’ past in Argentina from him. In the picture he can also see a country house that he had never heard of before and which belonged to his grandparents called “Schafhaus.” The following day, Ernesto is supposed to come back to Germany, but he can’t take his flight due to a pilots’ strike. With the excuse of selecting the wool bales he has bought, Ernesto rents a car and drives south to the Patagonia, but his real goal is to find the place shown in the picture. In the car he finds a children’s book telling the story of a little sheep called Anita who travels back home. Unknowingly, Anita’s story will lead him to his goal. On the way, Ernesto has an accident and seeks help at a nearby gas station. There he meets FLOR, the owner, and ÉRICA who lives in a motor-home near the gas station. Erica is a divorced anthropologist and mother of MARTÍN, a teenager. Because of his accident, Ernesto is forced to live with them, and little by little he begins to open up, and tells them his story. As Ernesto and Martín feel so closely identified with each other, they soon become friends. With Érica, instead, tension begins to build up, due to the mutual attraction they gradually start to feel. This brings Ernesto into trouble with GERARDO, the town’s mechanic and Érica’s boyfriend. During his stay in the town, Ernesto puts his wool selection meetings to good use –he does everything he can to try to find “Schafhaus.” Later on, he runs into a mysterious MAPUCHE OLD LADY who deeply moves him when she calls him by his father’s name. Ernesto sees in her the chance to find what he is looking for, but everybody persuades him to forget all about it, as they say the woman is mentally deranged. Having finished his negotiations, and without any hope of finding the place, Ernesto starts planning to go back to Germany. But one day, to his surprise, he notices the children’s story found in the car mentions the place he has been looking for and therefore could be the key to “Schafhaus.” So Ernesto decides to pay a visit to the story writer, GEORGINA, without suspecting she was a good friend of his mother’s. This knowledge shakes Ernesto’s whole existence. It’s only then when he is able to reconstruct his memories of the last moments he shared with his parents. Georgina, who has been in touch with Ernesto’s grandfather for the last thirty years, gives him the keys to “Schafhaus.” In the end, Ernesto goes to the place he has been looking for. It is there, in his grandparents’ country house, the place where his father grew up, where Ernesto finally reconstructs his own story.

Director: Ferenc Moldovanyi.
“Expanding upon themes he explored in Children: Kosovo 2000 (SDFF 24), Ferenc Moldoványi’s latest documentary is at once hypnotically beautiful and acutely disturbing. Shot over a two-year period in four countries on four continents—Ecuador (South America), Mexico (North America), Democratic Republic of Congo (Africa), and Cambodia (Asia)—Another Planet unfolds as a cinematic tone poem in the tradition of Koyaanisqatsi, exposing the unequal distribution of wealth around the world as a major humanitarian crisis. Framed by pastoral sequences in which a Tarahumara shaman imparts a dream of paradise on earth, the film moves quickly and seamlessly between the lives of seven children inextricably linked by their shocking and tragic experiences of daily exploitation and abuse. We meet lonely, aimless urchins, barely eking out a living on the streets. We see child laborers toiling in brick factories, garbage dumps, and brothels, only to be beaten when business is down. And perhaps most harrowing of all, we get to know the child soldiers of Congo as they are turned into killing machines. Throughout this journey, Moldoványi’s unwavering vision reminds us of the eternal coexistence of beauty and horror all over the world. Informed by the haunting cinematography of Tibor Máthé as well as Tibor Szemzö’s ethereal soundtrack, Another Planet crosses cultural boundaries to forge a commentary on the human condition as damning as it is open-ended.” 31st Starz Denver International Film Festival Official Catalogue "This globe-spanning film hits hard on many levels—visually, intellectually, emotionally. Beautifully shot in Ecuador, Mexico, Africa and Asia, Moldoványi’s film presents images that sparkle in the eye even as they punch you in the heart. Moldoványi introduces us to children in Cambodia, Ecuador, Mexico and the Democratic Republic of Congo, each of whom is struggling to survive. Working long hours, often in dangerous and dirty conditions, these children show us a side of existence that many have never seen or even imagined. While many in the US hold childhood as a special and protected time of nurtured innocence, this film reminds us all that for many children life is a brutal and precarious game of survival. With subjects that include children scavenging dumps for recyclables, child soldiers and child sex workers, this film offers a sympathetic and unblinking eye. The children themselves are our strongest storytellers, and they open up to Moldoványi’s camera to give us their own perspective. Their frankness astonishes as they talk matter-of-factly about their jobs and the consequences of not earning. The children either are at the mercy of adults—often the parents who force them to work and beat them when they don’t earn enough—or have been abandoned by adults altogether. While the film is not a gentle journey, it imagines a better world, a greater one. The filmmaker relies on your humanity and empathy to be moved by these children, while never directly suggesting a call to action. This film offers an unprecedented opportunity to explore another planet, a trip definitely worth taking." SILVERDOCS: AFI/Discovery Channel Documentary Festival