Hubert Bals Fund

After the rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan and the restriction of women in public life, a preteen girl is forced to masquerade as a boy in order to find work to support her mother and grandmother.

Yessica is a rebellious girl who forms an unlikely friendship with quiet schoolmate Miriam. Yessica's home life is ruled by her brutal stepfather and her amoral stepbrother, Jorge, while Miriam shares a calm, loving household with her mother. The girls' friendship is shattered after Jorge arranges to have one of his friends rape Yessica.

Deaf-mute Sergey enters a specialized boarding school for the deaf-and-dumb. In navigating through the school's hierarchy, he encounters a corrupt underbelly of criminality, known as The Tribe. By participating in several robberies, he gets propelled higher into the organization, when he meets one of the Chief’s concubines Anya, and unwittingly breaks all the unwritten rules of the group.

A detailed look at the gradual decline of Shenyang’s industrial Tiexi district, an area that was once a vibrant example of China’s socialist economy. But industry is changing, and the factories of Tiexi are closing. Director Wang Bing introduces us to some of the workers affected by the closures, and to their families.

Amalia is an adolescent girl who is caught in the throes of her emerging sexuality and her deeply held passion for her Catholic faith. These two drives mingle when the visiting Dr. Jano takes advantage of a crowd to get inappropriately close to the girl. Repulsed by him but inspired by an inner burning, Amalia decides it is her God-given mission to save the doctor from his behavior, and she begins to stalk Dr. Jano, becoming a most unusual voyeur.

After the theft of his motorcycle, Lucio bums aimlessly around Buenos Aires drifting from one arcade and record store to the next, indulging in short chats with friends and, more often, setting out onto the streets alone.

A wandering peddler separates from his fellow salesman and becomes involved with criminals in the jungle.

A suspense thriller about a reporter from Miami who travels to Ecuador in pursuit of a serial killer known as the "Monster of Babahoyo."

A young gay man, identified as a writer, encounters a local policeman, who arrests him for public cruising in a park. The policeman is more than professionally curious about the young man, who seems to have the cop's number and suddenly kisses him.

Santiago, gay single father, has reached a tipping point in his life. Reeling from a bitter breakup, he is facing the impending departure of his daughter Laila, with whom he shares a close yet emotionally charged relationship. As the fear of being alone threatens to swallow him whole, his behavior becomes increasingly erratic. Over the course of a chaotic summer divided between Argentina and Brazil, Santiago must learn to let go of Laila so each can find their own freedoms.

María, a 17-year-old Kaqchikel Maya, lives with her parents on a coffee plantation at the foot of an active volcano. She is set to be married to the farm's foreman. But María longs to discover the world on the other side of the mountain, a place she cannot even imagine. And so she seduces a coffee-harvester who wants to escape to the USA. When this man leaves her behind, María discovers her own world and culture anew.

A camera crew travels through Thailand asking villagers to invent the next chapter of an ever-growing story. A TV-obsessed boxer, a group of schoolkids, a lonely rubber-tree tapper and feuding food vendors all add to a tale that includes witches, tigers, surprise doublings, and impossible reversals.

Araf is the story of Zehra and Olgun whose lives are caught in a vacuum. The world in which they live and work is a place of throwaway culture and constant change. They too are waiting for a chance to change and escape from their empty, monotonous lives.

Two interconnected stories in the 1930s, one set in Berlin, the other in Palestine: Mania Vilbouchevich Shohat (1880-1961), called Tania, a Russian Jew and revolutionary, goes from Minsk to Palestine to live on a collective. She promotes feminism and laments a shift in the men from self-defense to aggression. Her friend, Else Lasker-Schuler (1869 - 1945), expressionist poet and German Jew, is in Berlin, writing, caring for her son, watching Hitler's movement take power. She goes to Jerusalem and imagines a park for Arab and Jew. Her poems, voiced from within, capture her experience. The film meditates on the violence at the root of Israel's birth: of the Nazis and of the Zionists.

A couple of friends work for a taxi driver to rob his passengers, but they feel like they're getting ripped off. They decide to plan their own robberies, but they are amateurs and things don't go too well. One of the youths, Cordoba, whose girlfriend Sandra is pregnant, just wants to get enough cash so they can leave Argentina and get to Uruguay to start a new life. He and his friends plan one last robbery, but things don't go as planned.

Delia, a young Romanian girl, comes to Bucharest with her parents to collect a prize she has won in a contest organized by a soft-drinks company. The prize is a beautiful new car. All Delia has to do now is appear in front of the camera in a commercial. All goes well until it becomes clear that Delia and her parents have very different ideas about what to do with the new car. Meanwhile, the contest's sponsor needs a radiant prize-winner with a gleaming smile. A wicked satire and a psychological portrait of a society perverted by its slavery to capitalism and consumerism

Fourteen-year-old Mira wants to spend New Year’s Eve with her friend Lera. Initially, her stepfather disagrees. But, after a tense family dinner, she is given permission.

Two men and a woman happen to meet in a bar. We learn from their conversations both the intriguing and banal details of their lives. But is anyone really telling the truth?

Filmed from 1995 to 1997 in Havana, New York, Los Angeles, Morelia and Mexico City, it tells the story of Yuliet, a Cuban teenager, and Fabiola Quiroz, a Mexican model, who, with humor and frankness, surrounded by quirky supporting characters, show us that the absence of their parents, deprivation and adversity made them stronger.

After his wife's death, a vallenato singer from Majagual, Sucre, decides to quit music and return his allegedly cursed accordion to his master. He is joined by Fermín Morales, a teenage boy who admires him and wishes to follow his footsteps. Together, they start a journey throughout several towns in Northern Colombia to Taroa, in La Guajira desert, where the singer's master supposedly lives.