Tel Aviv, Summer 1989. Boaz, a beautiful and alluring linguistics student, receives anonymous, male written love letters, that undermine his sexual identity and interfere on his peaceful life with his beloved girlfriend.

Taking his inspiration from the biggest scandal in Japan’s police history, Kazuya Shiraishi has created a massive and sinister crime epic about the grand forces of corruption that brings to mind the best of Kinji Fukasaku’s yakuza movies (​Cops vs. Thugs among others). Starting in 1970s Hokkaido like a nervous Japanese Starsky & Hutch–​chan, the film charts the moral descent of Detective Moroboshi (Go Ayano) over three decades. Green in years but already hard‐grained and ready to play rough, the young cop quickly gets a bit too cozy with the other side of the law when his senior colleague Murai (Pierre Taki) teaches him the ropes and ruts of the police business. Soon, he swaggers and rants through the streets of Sapporo a lean, mean, sex‐crazy bully, indistinguishable from a yakuza. Burning with the same blaze as the hard‐boiled classics of yore, ​Twisted Justice scorches away the sleekness and macho self‐congratulation of the genre. ​

Jack is an internet gambler living in NYC. After the death of his roommate, he becomes fixated on Scarlet – a cam girl from San Francisco. His obsession reaches a boiling point when fantasy materializes in reality and Jack sees Scarlet on a rainy NYC Chinatown street.

An American missionary is gradually seduced by a courtly warlord holding her in Shanghai.

We meet ornithologist Anna in 1994 just as genocide is raging in Rwanda, perpetrated by the majority Hutus against the Tutsis. Anna manages to save the daughter of a colleague whose family has been murdered, and she takes her to Poland. But the woman returns to Rwanda to visit the graves of her loved ones. The director originally worked on the movie with her husband Krzysztof Krauze (My Nikifor – Crystal Globe, KVIFF 2005), but after his death in 2014 she eventually finished this challenging picture alone.

6 strangers wake up inside a room garnished with weapons and are forced to kill each other or watch someone they care deeply about die.

Aragorn is revealed as the heir to the ancient kings as he, Gandalf and the other members of the broken fellowship struggle to save Gondor from Sauron’s forces. Meanwhile, Frodo and Sam bring the ring closer to the heart of Mordor, the dark lord’s realm.

The film is a lyrical exploration of a particular family situation and the human relationships within it. Devoid of any moral judgment, the eye of the director studies the boundaries of human behaviour and explores how far an individual can go, driven by love and the spirit of survival. Andrea Pallaoro was born in Trento but at the age of 17 moved to California to study filmmaking. His short film Wunderkammer was presented at the Sundance Film Festival. This year he brings his first feature-length film to the Orizzonti section.

A young Parisian woman begins a sordid affair with a middle-aged American businessman who lays out ground rules that their clandestine relationship will be based only on sex.

The evolving formats of home video chronicle the life of a young girl, Mackenzie, from birth to womanhood as she experiences the highs and lows of life alongside her childhood best friend, Lucas. As Mackenzie’s struggle with depression worsens over the years, she’s forced to find the will to fight alongside the people who love her most.

This movie is a brutal look at coming of age in a city whose citizens have been famished by brutality and sin for centuries. It is said that the night sky of Mumbai has been forever haunted – hiding the beautiful twinkling stars by the curse of countless lives lost in a ruthlessly expanding city. The film, soaked in the fog of these ancestors, explores what it takes to grow up in a deprived community, looking to satiate the hunger of one’s soul. Enacted by two young souls, The film is a director’s masterpiece.

Based on the true story of teenager James Burns who goes from a suburban street gang to a maximum-security prison cell surrounded by hardened criminals. He turns his life around in prison thanks to the unexpected friendship he forms with a convicted murderer who becomes his mentor.