Luxembourg City Film Festival 2024: vote for the Audience Award

When asked what drives someone to search for the truth, Lieutenant Papauran responds that he might just want to keep inflicting pain on himself. Faced with President Duterte’s bloody murders and brazen lies, he continues his struggle to solve a fifteen-year-old case amidst an ash-laden landscape and an impenetrable lake. It has become a burden he can barely handle, yet he must carry on.

After finishing high school, five teenagers from small town Oregon embark on one final adventure. Crammed into a van, they make it their mission to drive somewhere where they have never before set foot: the Pacific coast, 500 kilometers away. Their plan: “F**k it.” Along the way, they encounter outsiders from the American West and discover that they can shape the direction of their own lives.

In 1980s London, Maria and her mother spend evenings on the street in search of trash, collecting tinfoil, chalk, and food scraps to add to the piles of other found treasures crowding their home. Their lives are messy yet magical, but an accident soon separates the two. Flash forward to 1994: Maria is now an energetic and awkward teenager under the care of a kindly foster mother when Michael, himself a former foster child, comes to visit. Their friendship quickly descends into visceral madness.

One hot and stormy summer by a popular lake, seventeen-year-old Purdey and her younger brother Makenzy walk the line between experiencing adolescence, finding love and fending for themselves. While Purdey works as a cleaner in a hotel complex, Makenzy earns money by robbing tourists. With a fractured home life leaving them to their own devices, they must learn to support each other in a surprisingly tender journey that chronicles what feels like the last summer of their youth.

After giving birth to a stillborn child, Robin’s breasts begin to produce milk. Unable to throw it away, Robin takes the unusual decision to donate the milk. But finding someone to donate it to proves more difficult than expected, and the milk starts to clutter her freezer, her relationship, and her life.

Suellen works as a toll booth attendant outside of São Paulo while her queer son, Antonio, uploads flamboyant videos online. Ashamed of the videos and ridiculed by her colleagues, Suellen is distraught by her son’s sexual orientation. When a coworker suggests that Antonio should seek help from a foreign pastor-guru who runs a conversion therapy program, Suellen raises money to cover the program’s expensive fees by helping criminals target the wealthy commuters passing through her toll booth.

In a small Transylvanian town, Vera works as a zoo veterinarian. As she grapples with a shaky marriage that never recovered from the tragic loss of a newborn, Vera dedicates herself to the animals as a coping mechanism. A pet tiger is relocated to the zoo on the same day that a shocking discovery is made about her husband, and Vera enables the tiger’s escape. Realizing her mistake and on the verge of a nervous breakdown, she sets out with a team to locate the animal before it wreaks havoc.

A series of snapshots featuring ordinary Iranians as they navigate the cultural, religious, and institutional constraints imposed on them by various social authorities, from schoolteachers to bureaucrats. These stirring vignettes, humorous and affecting, capture the spirit and determination of people amidst adversity, offering a nuanced portrait of a complex society.