New Directors Competition

When a developer offers to buy her family’s land in a village outside Cairo, pregnant Amal dreams of a very different kind of life in the big city.

Over 24 hours, an unlikely connection forms between a woman catfished by her penpal lover and the prisoner on parole who isn’t who he claimed to be.

In this elegiac, emotionally rich drama, empty-nesters Erika and Mauro must navigate relationships and desires anew, as they face an unfamiliar future.

A Congolese teen refugee in Bangui fights to protect his family and hold onto his musical dreams through rap amid growing civil precarity.

In this keenly observed drama, a filmmaker returns home to lead a workshop with a childhood friend, but the exercise illuminates the growing distance between them.

Home from studying in Europe, Elsa returns to Costa Rica to find her family in disarray and feels compelled to help those who have no desire to be saved.

A filmmaker returns home to Iran to shoot a new project—one in which male actors are costumed in headscarves and skirts—in this razor-sharp comedy.

An introspective German exchange student searches for meaning and kinship over a transformative year in newly post-9/11 New Mexico.

In coastal Haiti, a fiercely independent sex worker and an evangelical preacher’s son navigate desire, Vodou roots, and rigid religious dogma.

When Izaquiel falls for the mysterious fisherman Jeremias, the two journey into the heart of the mangroves to seek justice for encroaching violence.

While reluctantly caring for her dying mother, Lali finds a new purpose when she joins a band of misfit thieves who steal religious artifacts.

Filmmaker Bruno recalls the hazy memories from his eleventh year, reconciling his budding queerness with his father’s diagnosis with HIV.

When thief Kasia discovers a man’s body while on a job, a scam to collect his life insurance money becomes something more in this elusive mystery.