World Cinema
Live in the moment with these movies from around the world. A comparative study of modern film, SIFF’s World Cinema program illuminates the diversity of the now across countries and continents.
100 Sunset
Canada | 2025 | 99 min. | Kunsang Kyirong
An introverted teen in a Tibetan diaspora section of Toronto bonds with a mysterious, like-minded woman who just moved in, leading to a slow-building conflict over money and missing objects within the insular community.
Amrum
Germany | 2025 | 93 min. | Fatih Akin
Twelve-year-old Nanning learns of his parents’ hideous convictions and their Nazi past in this sea-shot, boy’s-eye view of the upheaval on a North Sea island in the last days of World War II.
Another World
Hong Kong | 2025 | 111 min. | Tommy Ng Kai Chung
A harrowing, arrestingly rendered epic of revenge and redemption that announces director Tommy Kai Chung Ng as a massive new voice in the world of animation.
Balandrau, Where the Fierce Wind Blew
Spain | 2026 | 116 min. | Fernando Trullols
On December 30, 2000, friends climbing Mount Balandrau get caught in a sudden blizzard. Visibility vanishes, winds roar, and survival becomes a fight against the mountain’s deadliest storms.
Becoming Human
Cambodia | 2025 | 99 min. | Polen Ly
In this award-winning debut, Polen Ly presents a meditative story about a guardian spirit of an abandoned Battambang cinema who must decide whether to become a homeless spirit after the building’s demolition or become human again.
Black Burns Fast
South Africa | 2026 | 96 min. | Sanduela Asanda
At an elite South African boarding school, scholarship student Luthando has mastered the art of invisibility until the arrival of free-spirited Ayanda upends her straight-laced existence.
Body Blow
Australia | 2025 | 99 min. | Dean Francis
Danger and desire go hand-in-hand as a musclebound young cop goes undercover in Sydney’s gay scene, only to fall for an alluring twink fatale, in Dean Francis’ explicit and campy neo-noir that refracts the erotic thriller through an unapologetically queer lens.
Burn
Japan | 2026 | 103 min. | Makoto Nagahisa
When runaway teen Ju-Ju is embraced by a tribe of misfit youths in Kabukicho, she finds belonging for the first time — until betrayal and despair twist her haven into a prison. From the director of We Are Little Zombies.
Camp
Canada | 2025 | 111 min. | Avalon Fast
Haunted by tragedy, a young woman finds unlikely refuge at a Christian summer camp…until her new friends and their dangerous magic change everything.
Case 137
France | 2025 | 116 min. | Dominik Moll
When a 20-year-old protester is shot in the head by the police, wholly unprovoked, during demonstrations in Paris, it’s up to Stephanie, a dedicated officer in the internal affairs unit, to deliver justice.
The Condor Daughter
Bolivia | 2025 | 109 min. | Alvaro Olmos Torrico (Quechua)
Clara, a young Quechua midwife blessed with sacred songs, dreams of becoming a singer. When she leaves her Andean village, the balance of life begins to falter, and Clara must decide between following her dreams or embracing her ancestral duty.
Cotton Queen
Germany | 2025 | 94 min. | Suzannah Mirghani
In a Sudanese cotton village where the matriarch is rumored to have killed a British general, teenage Nafisa must decide what she owes her grandmother’s legacy and what she’s willing to burn down to claim her own.
Deadline
Taiwan | 2026 | 118 min. | Kiwi Chow
A strict and expensive private academy trains leaders. All students suffer from relentless studying and testing to gain them a place in future work. But one threatens suicide if exams are not cancelled.
En Route To
South Korea | 2025 | 105 min. | Yoo Jaein
A boarding student with a secret to hide steals from her hustling roommate to buy black‑market abortion pills; a scheme to reclaim the cash becomes a heartwarming tale of female solidarity in this Berlin-premiered dramedy.
Franz
Czech Republic | 2025 | 127 min. | Agnieszka Holland
How do you make sense of Franz Kafka? With fictional interviews with Kafka’s friends and family and thrilling plunges into his fiction, Franz does not explain, but playfully and inventively explores the man and his work.
The Friend’s House is Here
Iran | 2026 | 95 min. | Hossein Keshavarz, Maryam Ataei
Pari and Hanna are best friends and active participants in Tehran’s vibrant underground arts scene. But the risk of running afoul of the government is omnipresent, forcing difficult decisions.
The Furious
Hong Kong | 2025 | 113 min. | Kenji Tanigaki
After the daughter of Wang Wei (Xie Miao) is kidnapped by a criminal network and he receives no help from the corrupt police, Wei sets out on a rampage to find her in this explosive martial arts showdown.
The Garden We Dreamed
Mexico | 2026 | 100 min. | Joaquín del Paso
A Haitian family migrating through Mexico becomes entangled in illegal logging. Amid fleeting stability and the forest’s quiet beauty, they confront violence, survival, and destruction, testing their hope for a place to call home.
Gaua
Spain | 2025 | 96 min. | Paul Urkijo
Fleeing her husband, Kattalin encounters three old women exchanging idle gossip that soon transmutes into sinister supernatural stories. As each tale is told, Kattalin finds herself becoming intimately entangled within their dark events.
Happy Birthday
Egypt | 2025 | 92 min. | Sarah Goher
Eight-year-old Toha has big plans; she wants to throw her friend Nelly a birthday party. But the differences between them will make this a challenge in ways she may not fully understand.
Hen
Germany | 2025 | 96 min. | György Pálfi
A runaway hen finds refuge in a crumbling Greek taverna and bears witness to a human-smuggling operation. Hen proves motherhood looks the same across species. If you think this is a goofy movie about a chicken, you couldn’t be more wrong.
Hijra
Saudi Arabia | 2025 | 114 min. | Shahad Ameen
Sitti is on a pilgrimage to Mecca with her two rebellious granddaughters, Sarah and Janna. But everything changes when one of the granddaughters goes missing.
Hold Onto Me
Cyprus | 2026 | 102 min. | Myrsini Aristidou
Iris never knew her father, who left when she was a baby. But one day he comes back and Iris is smitten. Can he live up to her expectations?
It Would Be Night in Caracas
Mexico | 2025 | 97 min. | Mariana Rondón, Marité Ugás
Set in Caracas during the 2017 protests, this gripping thriller follows a woman trapped in a city consumed by repression and chaos. When loyalists seize her apartment, she goes into hiding and begins a desperate plan to escape.
Iván & Hadoum
Spain | 2026 | 103 min. | Ian de la Rosa
Amid the sprawling greenhouses of Almeria, trans man Ivan and migrant Hadoum share an unexpected, electric connection. But when Ivan rises to become her boss, passion collides with power and prejudice, revealing the fragile boundaries between love, identity, and class.
Lady
United Kingdom | 2025 | 95 min. | Samuel Abrahams
In this absurdly hilarious mockumentary, a young filmmaker agrees to film the behind-the-scenes vanity project of the obnoxiously entitled Lady Isabella, only for something unseen and quite strange to happen.
Mārama
New Zealand | 2025 | 83 min. | Taratoa Stappard (Māori)
Mārama, Taratoa Stappard’s feature debut, is an anti-colonial horror story confronting oppression while honoring the strength and resilience of Māori women.
Maspalomas
Spain | 2025 | 115 min. | Aitor Arregi, Jose Mari Goenaga
After a stroke while vacationing in Maspalomas, Vicente—played by 2026 Goya Award winner Jose Ramon Soroiz—is placed in a nursing home where he’s forced back into the closet, confronting a fight for freedom he thought he’d already won.
Meadowlarks
Canada | 2025 | 91 min. | Tasha Hubbard (Cree)
In Meadowlarks, Tasha Hubbard explores Sixties Scoop trauma through four reunited siblings in Banff, balancing warmth and tension in an intimate, dialogue-driven story grounded in land and memory.
Murder in the Building
France | 2026 | 104 min. | Rémi Bezançon
A crime writer and his film professor partner become caught up in a real-life mystery of their own when they witness a crime in the apartment across the courtyard of their Paris apartment building.
Power Ballad
Ireland | 2026 | 98 min. | John Carney
When Rick (Rudd), a past-his-prime wedding singer, meets fading boy-band star Danny (Jonas), the two bond over a late-night jam session. But when Danny turns one of Rick’s songs into the hit, Rick sets out to reclaim the recognition he believes he deserves.
Primavera
Italy | 2025 | 110 min. | Damiano Michieletto
Inspired by Antonio Vivaldi’s nearly three decades at the Ospedale della Pieta, where orphaned girls performed from behind screens and convent walls, this dramatic story follows Cecilia—a gifted young virtuoso who refused to be silenced.
Promised Sky
Tunisia | 2025 | 95 min. | Erige Sehiri
A community of Ivorian women navigating the complexities of migrant life in Tunisia are forced to make difficult decisions when they rescue an orphaned girl from a shipwreck.
The Red Hangar
Chile | 2026 | 81 min. | Juan Pablo Sallato
In the aftermath of the 1973 Chilean coup d'etat, an Air Force logistics officer is ordered to convert a hangar into a detention and torture center. As repression tightens, he is forced to confront obedience, loyalty, and the moral cost of a nation descending into dictatorship.
Renoir
Japan | 2025 | 118 min. | Chie Hayakawa
A coming-of-age story following a tomboyish 11-year-old girl whose intellectual father is dying of cancer and mother at her wits’ end. The courageous girl seeks adventures, some involving the paranormal.
The Restoration at Grayson Manor
Ireland | 2025 | 90 min. | Glenn McQuaid
When a spoiled Irish playboy loses his hands, his controlling mother replaces them with mechanical ones — operated entirely by his murderous subconscious.
Roid
Bangladesh | 2026 | 109 min. | Mejbaur Rahman Sumon
Each time Shadhu tries to leave his wife behind, a fruit drops from the palm tree, and she finds her way back. Mejbaur Rahman Sumon’s Roid is part folk tale, fable, and something harder to name.
Salvation
Turkey | 2026 | 120 min. | Emin Alper
In a historical moment when an “us versus them” mentality is fueling polarization around the world, director Emin Alper grapples with this issue in a timeless tale with real-world resonance.
Shape of Momo
India | 2025 | 115 min. | Tribeny Rai
After quitting her job in Delhi, Bishnu returns to her Himalayan village, only to find the women around her still bound by the same expectations. Change, it turns out, is harder than she thought.
Silent Friend
Germany | 2025 | 146 min. | Ildikó Enyedi
Award-winning director Ildiko Enyedi delivers another mesmerizing visual tale, set across three time periods at a historic German university, united by a gingko tree.
The Songbirds' Secret
France | 2025 | 77 min. | Antoine Lanciaux
Embark on a rollicking adventure guided by mysterious songbirds as 9-year-old Lucie uncovers family secrets when she joins her archaeologist mother on a castle dig site.
Sons of the Neon Night
Hong Kong | 2025 | 124 min. | Juno Mak
An elite cast of Hong Kong action legends assemble for this sprawling, mega-budget thriller that hearkens back to the wildly ambitious, hyper-stylized crime cinema that put Hong Kong filmmaking on the international map.
Strange River
Spain | 2025 | 105 min. | Jaume Claret Muxart
Sixteen-year-old Didac spends a summer cycling along the Danube with his family. When a mysterious boy appears, new emotions stir, subtly shifting family dynamics and guiding Didac through a transformative journey of first love and self-discovery.
Sundays
Spain | 2025 | 117 min. | Alauda Ruiz de Azúa
At 17, Ainara faces a life-changing choice: after high school, she considers becoming a nun. Her decision unsettles her family, especially her aunt, who fears it means losing freedom. This Goya Award standout explores the fragile balance between faith and skepticism.
Tell Everyone
Finland | 2026 | 112 min. | Alli Haapasalo
On a remote island where troublesome women are sent to be forgotten, an emotionally charged struggle for liberation unfolds in a dazzlingly beautiful and deeply moving historical drama.
Three Goodbyes
Italy | 2025 | 124 min. | Isabel Coixet
After years together, Marta and Antonio are undone by an argument that should have amounted to nothing. When Marta’s loss of appetite turns out to be about more than heartbreak, everything she thought she knew about her life comes into question.
Three of a Kind
Denmark | 2026 | 98 min. | Charlotte Brodthagen
In Charlotte Brodthagen’s tender yet spiky debut feature, a mother and daughter’s cozy Christmas is upended when their estranged grandmother shows up at their cabin.
Trial of Hein
Germany | 2026 | 122 min. | Kai Stänicke
When a man comes ashore on a remote island claiming to be the native son who left long ago, the mistrustful inhabitants of the fishing village hold a formal, three-day trial to determine his identity.