Category Archives: – Official Section –

The Temperature of the Universe (Viktor Sharimov) Russia

The Temperature of the Universe
Viktor Sharimov
Russia. 2025. 93 min

Set in a remote picturesque Astronomy village, where scientists investigate the cosmos undisturbed by the hustle and bustle of the city, the story navigates the characters through a breakup to an unlikely romance. The film is a story of separation and reunion that unfolds in a remote astronomers’ village in the Caucasus (filmed in Nizhny Arkhyz, home to real-world observatories). The isolated, quiet setting allows the characters to reflect on life without the noise of the city, exploring themes on the boundary between science, human relationships, and the vastness of the cosmos.

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The Unopened Letter (Byambasuren Batdelger) Mongolia

The Unopened Letter
Byambasuren Batdelger
Mongolia. 2026. 111 min

Genden loved his son as a piece of his own flesh and blood, yet he had no choice but to send him off to war. He lived only for the hope that his only child on this earth would return alive and well. Upon hearing the news that his son had become a war hero, Genden was overjoyed and spoke proudly of it to everyone he met.
Soon after, a tragic letter arrived stating that his son had been killed on the front lines. The locals, afraid to deliver the bitter news, avoided the old man. Searching for someone to read the letter aloud, Genden finally had a neighbor’s little girl read it, bringing him face-to-face with the heartbreaking news. However, Genden refused to believe that he had lost the only child he had raised so preciously. Amidst this, he summons a man named Galsan to court to demand justice for his biological son’s life. Having just been struck by the harsh blow of separation, he thus finds himself entangled in a matter of life and death.
But soon, a rumor spreads that one of the soldiers thought to be dead has survived and is returning home. Hearing this, Genden hurriedly sets off for the brigade center. Will the hope deep within his soul be extinguished, or will it blaze anew?

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Ungrateful Beings (Olmo Omerzu) Chequia, Slovenia, Poland

Ungrateful Beings
Olmo Omerzu
Chequia, Slovenia, Poland, Slovakia, Croatia, France. 2025. 110 min

David takes his two children on holiday to the Adriatic Sea, hoping to hold their fractured bilingual family together. His 17-year-old daughter, Klara, struggling with an eating disorder, falls in love with a local boy, Denis. When he is accused of murder, David rushes the children back home. Klára’s condition spirals, landing her in hospital. The only thing uniting her parents is their need to save her. And desperate times call for desperate measures.

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Nina Roza (Genevieve Dulude) Canada, Italy

Nina Roza
Genevieve Dulude de Celles
Canada, Italy, Bulgaria, Belgium. 2026. 103 min

Mihail left Bulgaria in the 1990s after the death of his wife and raised his young daughter, Roza, alone in Montreal. Far from his homeland, he established himself as a specialist in French and contemporary art. Now, he is commissioned by a collector to authenticate the work of an eight-year-old girl, Nina, who is living in a Bulgarian village and whose paintings have gone viral online. Mihail hesitates but eventually agrees to undertake the journey. Meeting Nina shakes him deeply. The disarmingly mature child reminds him of Roza at the same age. During his stay in Bulgaria, he gradually makes his peace with the ghosts of his past while trying to unravel the mystery behind Nina: is she truly the author of her work? Has someone helped her? What gives him the right to disrupt her happy life? Somewhere between the past and the present, the tangible and the symbolic, Mihail’s journey becomes a cathartic one which highlights the intricate relationships between life, art and human beings. Sometimes, the journey matters more than the destination.

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Porshi (Chandrasish Ray) India

Porshi
Chandrasish Ray
India. 2025. 100 min

Like any other metropolitan city, Kolkata is a mix of diverse people. Bappa works as a supervisor in a movers-and-packers company owned by Ratan, his boss, who is almost torment personified. Bappa’s girlfriend, Monika, is running around the city in pursuit of a government job she has already cleared but has not yet received the offer letter for. Choto, a 22-year-old truck driver working under Bappa, is a village boy struggling to discover his own sense of right and wrong amid the bustle of this grey city. Siuli is a homemaker, raising two children and dealing with a drunken husband, never having imagined that her life would be trapped within the claustrophobia of four walls.
We are all neighbours – Porshi (in Bengali) – to one another in some way or the other. We never know when we cross paths with a neighbour whose face we may not even recognize. Porshi (Neighbours, in english) is a palette of independent colours who never realized that, together, they could form a rainbow.

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The Muralist (Sengedorj Janchivdorj) Mongolia

The Muralist
Sengedorj Janchivdorj
Mongolia. 2025. 116 min

Baya, a weather-worn muralist who spent his glory years in Europe, has drifted back to Ulaanbaatar with nothing but a rickety rooftop tent, a box of fading paints and Dolingor, the stray that shadows his every step. Each dawn he rappels down an abandoned Soviet-era factory wall, splashing mythic Mongolian landscapes across the crumbling concrete while a sardonic red balloon—equal parts conscience and comic Greek chorus—floats overhead.
When city officials announce the site will be bulldozed for a turkey farm, Baya digs in, certain this mural will be his life’s summa. His only allies are Tömö, a curious herder boy who’s never owned a crayon, and Kazu, a Japanese photo-journalist whose lens turns Baya’s anonymity into sudden global intrigue. Their fragile coalition clashes with bureaucrats and developers, but the deeper fight is inside Baya: a decades-old guilt over the wife and daughter he abandoned for art.
Drawing on surreal realism and long, breathing takes that keep us at the artist’s elbow, director J. Sengedorj weaves Mongolia’s gritty urban present with its shamanic inner world. The Muralist becomes a hymn to imagination’s stubborn survival—whether in spray-painted saints, a boy’s first charcoal line, or the quiet forgiveness that can still bloom on a ruined wall.

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The Last Summer (Renfei Shi) China

The Last Summer
Renfei Shi
China. 2025. 90 min

Days before China’s life-defining College Entrance Exams, top student Li Zhizhi’s world fractures when she sees her father with a pregnant woman. In shock, she accidentally knocks an ashtray off the balcony, striking a five-year-old girl playing downstairs.
Caught between the victim’s grieving family and her parents’ crushing expectations, Zhizhi buries her guilt—along with her anger at what she believes is her father’s betrayal. But the truth cuts deeper.

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Summer´s Camera (Divine Sung) South Korea

Summer´s Camera
Divine Sung
South Korea. 2025. 83 min

After her father passed away, Summer stopped taking photos.
One day, she falls for Yeonwoo, the school’s soccer star, and takes her picture with her late father’s camera. When she develops the film, she finds mysterious photos of her father’s high school lover. In these photos, Summer uncovers a secret about her father. Will she be able to pursue her first love and uncover her father’s hidden truth?

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Ky Nam Inn (Leon Le) Vietnam

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.

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Raindrops on A Roof (Zhou Jiali) China

Raindrops on A Roof
Zhou Jiali
China. 2025. 106 min

Single mother Shi’ning visits a ‘spiritual salon’ out of curiosity and joins a group activity that promises to erase the past. At first glance, only Shi’ning seems to be obsessively attached to the loss and trauma she, her three siblings, and her mother experienced. But in reality, everyday life is often harsh for her mother and younger brother Shi’an as well. Ordinary images, such as an orange sock hanging on the clothesline, a wardrobe where a child hides, a stripped mannequin, or an old sweater trigger painful reminders of both personal and historical trauma for this family. Zhou Jiali’s feature debut Raindrops on a Roof suggests that what matters is not cutting out memories like burning photographs but bringing pain into the open and facing one another—much like the family working together to restore their mother’s cheap, shrunken sweater.

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