The Birthday Rat

From the Gulag Archipela... During the autumn of 1989 the director visited the territory of the USSR in search of the places where Polish citizens sent to labor camps had been executed. His route was marked out by diaries of former prisoners and the deportation chronology.

Sketches on Living Skin The titular “obrazki” (ENG: pictures) are both prison tattoos and wounds inflicted on sons by their abusive fathers and stepfathers. Such a son is the protagonist of the film. After many years, he meets his biological, previously unknown, father.

Jeepers Creepers 5 The fifth installment in the Jeepers Creepers franchise.

Si Vos Te Vas Six teenagers spend a day at a summer house waiting for a group of girls. Competitiveness and small aggressions are common currency but the danger of their childish attitude threatens them at every moment.

Happy FKN Sunshine A teenager growing up in a poor industrial town struggles to create a better life through music.

Oh, Butterfly! An imaginary cassette tape repeats a famous piece of music in self-referential loops.

Building Archaeology The documentary Building Archeology (jiànzhú kǎo) (2011) considers the more recent past. It’s made up of three vignettes about different buildings in Beijing: a museum, an abandoned hospital, and a detention center. The latter two vignettes are especially interesting. In the second, a woman wanders around the ruins of a hospital built in a week to deal with the 2003 SARS outbreak. The third concerns a former prisoner, tracing out a map of the detention center where he was held in 2011.

Broken Line

A Man in Trouble Wang Yang has an interview today. However, a series of abrupt and absurd interludes, such as cockroachs that suddenly appear, the phone that he can't get rid of, ceaseless music, and mysterious phone calls, keep popping up to prevent him from leaving the house. The veracity of this story is immediately doubted after he tells his brother about all of this, but he believes that everything that happens to him is real...

The Dog Ate a Boy Tan Dongdong, aged 16, rode a motorcycle for a living. On his way to get back his ex-girlfriend Lin Qing, Tan Dongdong accidentally got acquainted with hair salon girl Wu Xiaoxia. After learning that Lin Qing had left with another man, Tan Dongdong gradually developed feelings for Wu Xiaoxia. At Tan Dongdong’s request, Wu Xiaoxia agreed to give up her job as a prostitute in the hair salon. However, when Tan Dongdong found out that Wu Xiaoxia had violated the agreement, he chose to take revenge…