Scales of Justice
I am Najoom age 10 and Divorced
A little girl walks into a court room, looks at the judge straight in the eye and tells him: « I want a divorce. »
In Yemen, where there is no age requirement for marriage, ten-year-old Nojoom is forced to marry a 30-year-old man. The dowry offers the family a small income and one less mouth to feed. A legitimate and acceptable arrangement for all, except for Nojoom who will soon see her life take a turn for the worse.
A beautiful plea for all these girls forced into womanhood too soon and for their right to a life on their own terms.
Run
Run is running away… He has just killed his country’s Prime Minister. Therefore he had to take the face and clothes of a madman wandering throughout the town for months. His life returns to him in flashes: his childhood with master Tourou, when he dreamt of becoming a rainmaker, his incredible adventures with Greedy Gladys and his militia past as a Young Patriot in Ivory Coast’s political and military conflict. Run has not chosen all of these lives. He stumbled into them, escaping from one life to another. This is why he is called Run.
Alias Maria
Maria, a 13-year-old guerrilla soldier, is given a mission to complete along with 3 other soldier-kids: bring the commander’s newborn baby to safety in a neighboring town. But nobody knows the secret she is hiding: Maria is pregnant, and having a child is forbidden in the guerrilla. During the mission her secret is revealed and she runs away to avoid being forced to abort. Through Maria’s eyes we experience the devastating results of Colombia’s armed conflict: towns ravaged by massacres, peasants trapped in the cross-fire, parents who have lost their children, and kids trying to grow up normally amid the carnage. Thanks to a new instinct born inside her, Maria will find the strength to look for a new life.
Lady Grey
Ten years after the end of apartheid, a sense of unease and dread still permeates a South African community at the foot of the Drakensberg mountains, where an unsolved massacre from years before continues to haunt the villagers. In this fraught milieu, Estelle (Sibongile Mlambo) fights to maintain her spirited sense of self, while carrying for the mentally incapacitated Mattis (Jeremie Renier), and sleeping with the powerful British landowner Angus (Liam Cunningham) for money. The brutish Angus bullies his beautiful and bewildered wife Olive (Emily Mortimer) and exploits the neediness of his day laborers, including Samuel (Peter Sarsgaard), who is raising a young son after the death of his wife.
Maintaining a fragile peace is a French mission, continuing to work for reconciliation between the black and white residents. It’s in the harshly beautiful killing fields of the Great Escarpment, however, that a final reckoning for all characters will arrive. – Jaie Laplante
Partisan
Alexander is like any other kid: playful, curious and naive. He is also a trained assassin. Raised in a
hidden paradise, Alexander has grown up seeing the world through the eyes of his father, Gregori. As Alexander begins to think for himself, creeping fears take shape and Gregori’s idyllic world unravels.
Foreign Body
A dashing young Italian in Poland finds himself caught between two women – a novitiate nun and a ruthless corporate ladder-climber – in this provocative vision of contemporary Poland from master filmmaker Krzysztof Zanussi.
