Synopsis

Donghwa (Ha Seongguk), a thirty-something poet, is committed to living a life of beauty and simplicity. One afternoon, he drives his girlfriend Junee (Kang Soyi) to her parents’ home just outside of Seoul. There, he meets her father (played by Hong Sangsoo mainstay Kwon Haehyo) for the first time—a generally affable goofball who develops a strange fixation for Donghwa’s car. A quick spin around the block leads to an invitation to dinner and a chance to meet the rest of the family. A lazy afternoon slips into a drunken evening, and everything starts to unravel as Donghwa’s idealistic confidence begins to fray.

A bitterly comic fable about life, art, and the desire to live simply, What Does That Nature Say to You is a rich and revealing character portrait. Festival mainstay Hong Sangsoo (By the Stream) deploys his trademark long takes and keen narrative intuition to chart the comeuppance of his quixotic protagonist.

Synopsis

Julia, Tobias, and their eleven-year-old daughter Marielle seem like the perfect family. The parents have high-powered corporate jobs and a stylish home complete with a designer kitchen. Yet beneath this bourgeois facade, trouble is brewing. When a friend at school slaps Marielle on the playground, she inexplicably develops telepathic powers, gaining the ability to see and hear everything her parents do—even when she’s not in the room. Under a state of constant surveillance, the parents’ patience is put to the test, and cracks in their marriage emerge. Through their daughter, they begin to engage in a series of manipulative games, leading to increasingly awkward and absurd situations.

Clever, incisive, and darkly funny, What Marielle Knows careens toward an unforgettable end as the fretting parents must do whatever they can to strip their daughter of her psychic abilities. From this absurd premise, director Frédéric Hambalek builds a hilarious and scathing satire of upper middle-class family life.

Synopsis

From Oscar winner Chloé Zhao, Hamnet tells the powerful story of love and loss that inspired the creation of Shakespeare’s masterpiece, Hamlet.

Synopsis

From the twisted mind behind All Jacked Up and Full of Worms comes a raucous, Chicago-set riff on ’70s sexploitation films. Writer-director Alex Phillips returns to the Festival with this stunning 16mm thriller following Liam, an unassuming bike-courier and sex worker in Chicago delivering whatever will satisfy his clients’ appetites—until they start turning up dead. A trail of taboo encounters and gruesome crime scenes paint Liam as the primary suspect, making him wanted in more ways than he’d anticipated. Framed by a serial killer and pursued by a pair of deranged cops, all while trying to maintain his lascivious livelihood, Liam’s simple life of on-demand pleasure turns into a conspiratorial nightmare.

Playful and gory yet full of heart, Anything That Moves blends salacious sex and social critique into a thrilling exploration of the darker sides of desire.

Synopsis

After falling from the sky and accidentally landing in 2075, adolescent time traveler Arco is shocked to find a world in peril and seemingly on the brink of collapse. Soon after, he encounters 10-year-old Iris, a lonely and isolated girl being raised by her trusted robot caretaker Mikki. Buoyed by her newfound friendship with the mysterious boy in the rainbow suit, Iris’s outlook begins to change. Banding together, the unlikely duo, with Mikki in tow, sets out to help return Arco to his peaceful, idyllic future—and to save Iris’ environmentally ravaged home.

With his charming full-length debut, French illustrator, graphic novelist, and animator Ugo Bienvenu crafts a warm, uplifting tale that possesses an undeniable visual splendor recalling the great work of Japanese master Hayao Miyazaki. An engaging sci-fi inflected fantasy and a love letter to the power of the imagination, Arco offers an uplifting look at the power of kinship and camaraderie to affect change, both on a personal level and in the larger world.