Best Feature Film

CARAMEL Lebanon. Produced by Anne-Dominique Toussaint
In Beirut, five women meet up at a beauty salon, a highly colourful and sensual microcosm. Layale loves Rabih, but he is a married man. Nisrine is Muslim and her forthcoming wedding poses a problem: she's no longer a virgin. Rima is tormented by her attraction to women. Jamale is refusing to grow old. Rose has sacrificed herself to look after her older sister, Lili. Between haircuts and sugar-waxing with caramel, the women at the salon share intimate and liberated conversations about men, sex and motherhood.

NIGHT BUS (Autobus-E Shab) Iran. Produced by Mehdi Homayounfar
Night Bus, a black-and-white war drama, travels back to the Iran-Iraq conflict of the mid-1980s, when a young private is forced to transport 38 Iraqi prisoners-of-war to their home base in a half-dilapidated bus. The obstinate and slightly irascible driver must pilot the vehicle through a dangerous lay of land, packed with mortar shells and explosive mines. Uninterested with wartime heroics, the film denounces the senselessness of the conflict, which pitted ordinary men from two closely related nations against each other at the behest of fanatical leaders.

OPERA JAWA Indonesia. Produced by Garin Nugroho, Simon Field, and Keith Griffiths
Opera Jawa, rich in symbols and mysticism, is about a man and wife, Setio and Siti, who live in a small village and earn their living selling earthenware pots. Ludiro, a rich man who controls trading activities using various forms of violence, also lives in the village and, like Setio and Siti, is a former dancer in wayang orang, the traditional Javanese dance-drama. Setio and Siti’s life takes a turn for the worse when their earthenware business goes bankrupt. Ludiro, who has always been in love with Siti, tries to seduce her. Without realising it, the three former dancers enter into a triangle of conflict that mirrors the conflict in the episode Sinta Obong/The Abduction of Sinta that they used to perform in the wayang orang version of the Ramayana story.

SECRET SUNSHINE (Miryang) Republic of Korea. Produced by Kim In-Soo, Lee Chang-Dong and Hanna Lee.
When her husband passes away in an automobile accident, Shin-ae and her son, Jun, relocate down south to her late husband’s hometown of Miryang. Despite her efforts to settle down in this unfamiliar and much too normal place, she finds that she can’t quite fit in. She opens a new piano academy and makes attempts to mingle with neighbors, but nothing works.

TAKVA: A MAN’S FEAR OF GOD (Takva) Turkey. Produced by Sevil Demirci Çakar
Humble introvert, Muharrem lives a solitary and meager existence of prayer and sexual abstinence, adhering strictly to the most severe Islamic doctrines. His extraordinary devotion attracts the attention of the leaders of a rich and powerful Istanbul religious group and they offer him an administrative post as rent collector for their numerous properties. Now, thrown into the modern outside world, Muharrem must deal with the dilemmas and temptations arising at the intersection of religion and economic interests. His inner peace is unnerved by the torment of seductive images, the witnessing of hypocritical attitudes and by the fact that he himself has become proud, domineering and even dishonest. With the balance of his devotion now upset, his fear of God begins to eat away at his senses.