JDIFF Review – The Salt of the Earth

Wim Wenders teams with Juliano Ribeiro Salgado to take a look back over the life and career of photographer Sebastião Salgado, who has travelled the world for over 40 years, documenting humanity.

JDIFF Review – A Little Chaos

Sabine de Barra (Kate Winslet) is a landscape gardener with grand designs, designs which she submits to André Le Notre, the man who is designing the gardens at Versailles for King Louis XIV. When Sabine is awarded a project at Versailles, she finds herself not only dealing with jealous and spiteful competitors, but the demons from her past and some new friends.

JDIFF Review – The Falling

Abbie (Florence Pugh) and Lydia (Maisie Williams) are best friends, and each other’s voice of friendship and reason at the strict school they attend. Although they do almost everything together, Abbie is worldly in a way Lydia is not, and after tragedy strikes, Lydia finds herself at the centre of a mysterious fainting epidemic that befalls the school.

JDIFF Review – Clouds of Sils Maria

Maria (Juliette Bioche) finds herself facing the fact that she is growing older when she is approached to star in the same play that made her famous as a 20 year old actress, only this time she is to play the part of the older woman, and allow a younger actress to play the role she made famous. Struggling to learn her lines and to find a place where she belongs in her career, Maria’s frustrations become evident as she argues with her personal assistant Valentine (Kristen Stewart).

JDIFF Review – Dennis Rodman’s Big Bang in Pyongyang

In early 2014, former NBA star Dennis Rodman took a troupe of his peers to North Korea to compete against the national team for Kim Jong-un’s birthday. The North Korean leader and Rodman had been unlikely friends for some time, but Rodman’s attempt to ‘open the door’ between the closed off nation and the US created a scandal around the world. For the first time, director Colin Offland tells the truth about what happened when one of America’s most flamboyant sports stars went to a closed off nation in the name of sports.

JDIFF Review – Force Majeure

Not long into their skiing holiday, a family find themselves staring at potential disaster in the shape of an avalanche. Although physical disaster is avoided, it is not long before the family’s patriarch Tomas (Johannes Bah Kuhnke) finds his reaction to potential danger is under scrutiny, and the family dynamic is shaken to its core.

JDIFF Review – Meet Me in Montenegro

While travelling to Berlin to meet the potential star of his latest film, Anderson (Alex Holdridge) deliberately seeks out Lina (Linnea Saasen), a woman he had a holiday romance with several years before, a romance that was abruptly cut short in Montenegro. As the two reconnect, it seems there is a time limit on their new found relationship, until both are forced to choose between what they have worked for, and what they truly want in their lives.

JDIFF Review – A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night

In the Iranian town of Bad City, the lonely, cruel and desperate townspeople are unaware that there is a vampire in their midst. Clad in a hijab and riding a skateboard, The Girl (Shiela Vand) stalks the residents and exists in solitude, until she meets the lonesome Arash (Arash Marandi).

JDIFF Review – Hardkor Disko

Marcin (Marcin Kowalczyk) is intent on murder. When he arrives at his intended victims’ home, however, they are not there. Rather than admit defeat, Marcin worms his way into the family home through the daughter of the house Ola (Jasmina Polak), and wins the affections of her parents, before acting on his deadly intentions.

JDIFF Review – Sorrow & Joy

Johannes (Jakob Cedergren) returns home one unremarkable evening, he discovers that his entire life has been turned upside down. As he and his wife Signe (Helle Fagralid) try to come to terms with a tragic death, Johannes looks back over their relationship, and wonders whether his actions could have caused his misfortune.