Ky Nam Inn
Leon Le
Vietnam. 2025. 140 min

Ten years after the war, Saigon is still in the midst of reconstruction. Widowed Ky Nam runs a small restaurant in a communal housing complex, where residents share a central courtyard and know every detail of each other’s lives. She has adopted and is raising Su, a French–Vietnamese mixed-race child. One day, Khang, a young man translating Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince into Vietnamese, moves into the unit upstairs. With his privileged background and natural charm, it is only natural that he draws the attention of those around him. Yet from the very first day, Khang finds himself gradually drawn to Ky Nam, who once saved him from a crisis. The highlight of this film, which evokes the tenderness of a romantic watercolor painting, is the late sequence in which the two walk through the streets of Saigon all night, enacting a dreamlike farewell ritual. Carried along by the young man’s narration, the scene leaves their shared story suspended in an eternal present.

Hard Shell
Majid Reza Mostafavi
Iran. 2024. 112 min

Leila who is a young talented tightrope walker, has been banned from performing due to the threat of fanatics, extremists and religious government people to close the circus just because of her artistic movements during her performance in tightrope walking and the way she dresses, and since then she has become a clown in an old circus owned by her father. Samir who is a teenage boy, has fallen in love with Leila and instead of going to school, he wanders away from his parents and roams the circus.
At the same time as the political and economic problems in Iran rises day by day ; Siamak who is Samir’s father and he is an calm and honest hardworking person , after many years of working in different jobs, has just starts working as a foreman in a donkey breeding farm and he has dream of owning a roadside restaurant…

Minimals in a Titanic World
Philibert Aimé
Rwanda, Germany, Cameroon. 2024. 81 min

Let off with a warning for aggression, dancer and aspiring musician Anita returns from prison to perform at her bar, where she learns about the sudden death of her boyfriend, Serge. While close friends process the shock, Anita finds solace in the company of Serge’s roommate, Shema. As she wrestles with the difficult final memories of her boyfriend, Anita must negotiate her bond with Shema while trying to break out on her own as an independent songwriter. Set in current-day Kigali, Philbert Aimé Mbabazi Sharangabo’s radiant, richly detailed feature debut trains its attention on a generation of upwardly mobile youth grappling with anxieties around love, death and self-actualization. With grace and generosity, he allows his characters to float about in a state of flux, not knowing what they want or can dare to. Despite our intimacy with her dreams and frustrations, Anita retains her essential spiritual mystery, her response to grief and bereavement never explained away. With keen attention to colours, textures, music and moods, Minimals in a Titanic World crafts an emotionally resonant portrait of friendship frayed by the weight of loss.

Wanderer
Mikhail Shevchuk
Russia. 2024. 131 min

On the threshold of a young teacher, Anya, living in a small seaside town, one day a wanderer appears who calls himself her husband Artyom, who has gone missing. How does this man know everything that only Artyom knew?

Cinema
Umesh Bagade
India. 2024. 104 min

Anand a voluntarily retired teacher, has started a movement to show films to school children in remote villages. Taking seriously the power of film as a medium and its impact on children, Anand continues to work to promote film literacy despite public opposition. Anand and his Children’s Film Club have been running an innovative initiative to teach children through cinema for the last 10 years. Noticing his work, a young filmmaker named Omkar meets Anand to make a documentary of his work. Through the process of making the documentary, Anand’s struggle to bring the right cinema to these children is highlighted. One day, while showing a movie in a school in a remote village, suddenly the lights go out and the children get to see only half of the movie. There Anand meets 9 year old boy named Ankur who is very talkative, mischievous and intelligent. While talking, Ankur tells the story of a half-watched movie.from here things take an interesting turn and the story goes straight to “Hollywood” in America. The journey, which started out of love for the medium of cinema takes different turns and takes travelers along to create a bridge to connect two different ends together.

Pyre
Vinod Kapri
India. 2024. 110 min

A melancholic ballad of an undying love in a dying land.

In the Himalayan Mountain range, a rural village loses its inhabitants to the city’s allure while an elderly couple, Padam Singh and Tulsi, live in desolate isolation. Their days are filled with routine and occasional humour as they mask their loneliness. Their son’s absence gnaws at them, and when a letter arrives promising his return, it reignites their hearts with joy and anticipation. However, the reunion does not unfold as expected, shattering their hopes. As the film climaxes, the spectator is confronted with a more rueful plight, deeply engaging the audience’s empathy.

This film powerfully explores the pain of abandonment, the endurance of hope, and the heartache of unfulfilled promises. The film’s haunting and deeply emotional nature, in line with the director’s auteurist style, will captivate you and keep you emotionally invested until the end.