Exquisite performances by Tom Courtenay (Geoff) and Charlotte Rampling (Kate) in this portrait of a marriage seen from the vantage point of its impending 45th anniversary make Andrew Haigh’s film a revelation in every way. When Geoff receives a letter saying that his late girlfriend’s body has been found frozen into a glacier in the Swiss Alps after a fall in the 1960s, the bedrock of his marriage is shaken. As previously untold details of his earlier relationship are gradually revealed, Kate and Geoff circle the questions, spoken and unspoken, that an image frozen in the past brings up. It’s like a chamber piece performed by two actors on top of their form, with a subtlety and insight both moving and poignant. Based on a short story, it brings to mind Joyce’s The Dead. Appropriately, Courtenay and Rampling were each rewarded with Best Actor awards at the 2015 Berlinale.

“See the same old faces, look at the same old skies. See them all with brand new eyes.” A treasure trove of shorts from around the world, all about women and directed by women. A woman has an unexpected encounter when camping in Clara Aranovich's Primrose (US 2015, 5 min). In Charlotte Schiøler's By Any Means A-veilable (France/Denmark 2014, 17 min), an apartment hunter goes to unusual lengths to find the perfect flat. A high school girl faces her classmates the day after a graphic picture of her goes viral in Pippa Bianco's Share (US 2015, 11 min). First dates can be minefields of decorum and double standards in Rory Uphold’s Traction (US 2015, 5 min). In Parisa Barani's powerful Ablution (Iran/Canada/US 2015, 16 min), a religious fundamentalist finds her beliefs at odds with her family and environment. And Emily Towers has a few surprises in store when she depicts an awkward reunion as a daughter and dad celebrate Father's Day (US 2015, 16 min).

"Don't be shy, you've been here before. Pull your shoes off, lie down, and I will lock the door." Love, desire, and impulse are indulged and denied in this playful set of international shorts. A hermetic loner sparks an unlikely connection with a free-spirited neighbor in Deborah Attoinese's Snail (US 2014, 13 min). A simple late-night hookup in a car turns into an adventure in voyeurism for a young couple in Tian Guan's unpredictable Drama (China/US 2014, 11 min). Cultural differences threaten to undermine a marriage proposal in Marcelo Mitnik's charming In the Clouds (Argentina 2014, 20 min). One mishap after another follows a waitress on an unforgettable work night in Joey Ally's acerbic Minimum Wage (US 2015, 15 min). And when disaster strikes, a fantasy-prone woman reevaluates her relationship with her psychoanalyst in Heather Jack's humorously apocalyptic Let's Not Panic (US 2015, 11 min). This is an ideal date night collection for the romantic in all of us.

"I enjoy procrastinating 'cause I'm busy while I'm waitin', doodlin' away." An international reel of 15 shorts designed for a child’s delight, but guaranteed to entertain adults too. In fact, a meeting of the generations takes place in Bunny New Girl (Australia 2015, 6 min), The Broken Wand (US 2015, 3 min), In the Forest (US 2015, 4 min), Niéta

"I don't know where to turn, don't know what to do. I'm walking on thin ice." Kids—some criminal, others merely resourceful—face a variety of hurdles in these captivating shorts. A high school underground cheating network risks exposure by its own school paper in Nick Weiss-Richmond and Rachel Cole's Big Cheat (US 2014, 16 min). A young African boy has his hands full trying to make ends meet for his family in Richard Card's vibrant Zawadi (Kenya/US 2014, 13 min). A children's birthday party is the source of sinister doings in David A. Bornstein's tragicomic A King's Betrayal (US 2014, 9 min). The apprentice to a desperate door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesman decides to call on an unusual customer far off their normal route in Kate Marks's mystical Miracle Maker (US 2014, 13 min). And a pre-teen Bonnie and Clyde go on a very stylish crime spree in Fidel Ruiz-Healy's love letter to '60s cinema, A Band of Thieves (US 2015, 14 min).

"A most unusual colouring book. The kind you'll never see. Crayons ready?" This year’s animated shorts program encompasses stop-motion, hand-drawn, and CG techniques with a rambunctious cast of wickedly macabre and sardonic characters. Kicking off the titillating ride, Mirror in Mind (Seung Hee Kim, Korea 2014, 2 min) explores the inner mind with unique experimentation, followed by the vengeful Edgar Allan Poe tale, The Cask of Amontillado (William Joyce & Joe Bluhm, US 2014, 10 min). Submarine Sandwich (PES, US 2014, 2 min) yarns a tasty hero, while Eggplant (Yangzi She, US 2015, 8 min) masters his mixed-bag emotional face. In Palm Rot (Ryan Gillis, US 2015, 8 min), a mysterious crate ruins an old crop duster’s day, followed by rusty machinery yearning for the sun in Golden Shot (Gökalp Gönen, Turkey 2015, 9 min). Unholy light is shed in Day 40 (Sol Friedman, Canada 2014, 6 min), a satirical take on Noah’s Ark. Finishing the program is the Bay Area premiere of legendary visual effects

"So as you go to find yourself, don't look too hard, you may pass yourself by." These true-life tales begin with A Passion of Gold and Fire (Belgium 2014, 6 min), Sébastien Pins’ touching profile of a beekeeper who worries about the future of his hive. In Nicholas Cole’s The House Is Innocent (US 2015, 12 min), Tom and Barbara discover their new home has a notorious past. Marathon (US 2015, 9 min), by Theo Rigby and Kate McLean, introduces us to an Ecuadorean immigrant whose dream is to run in the New York City Marathon. Chris Siracuse’s delightful Found (US 2015, 9 min) profiles an Oakland-based artist who finds purpose by turning junk into imaginative kinetic sculptures. With Meg Smaker’s Boxeadora (US 2014, 16 min), we follow one woman’s quest to become Cuba's first female boxer and achieve Olympic glory. In Jim Bird: Portrait of an American (US 2015, 4 min), Nik Kleverov takes us on a trip to Alabama to meet a man who makes sculptures out of large hay bales. Douglas Gautraud’s My M

"Like a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheel, never ending or beginning on an ever-spinning reel." Time and reality are fractured with lives changed and perceptions altered in these memorable shorts. A mother in a housing project has a date with destiny when two soldiers come to call on her in Moon Molson's powerful The Bravest, the Boldest(US 2014, 16 min). Ollie Verschoyle’s examination of interconnectedness takes a riff on Proust in his sweetly mysterious Madeleine(UK/US 2015, 10 min). A grocery store trip is an exercise in empathy for an elderly couple in Lee Briggs' Baby (US 2014, 7 min). Early morning can be the best time for ruminations on God and produce in Jonathan Patch's funny and observant Deep Breakfast (US 2015, 7 min). And a man is caught in an insidious time loop from which he must escape or die trying in Tali Barde's inventive DOT (Germany 2014, 27 min).

Young people get their first taste of curating a film program with our annual youth reel, a collection of short youth-produced films culled from over 100 entries and chosen by teens, aged 13-16, taking part in the Young Curators program, a part of CFI Education's Summerfilm program. Students take a comprehensive look at films and filmmaking for five days with mentoring from 19 industry artists, then go on in the next week to jury the reel. Shorts

The recent US Supreme Court decision upholding same-sex marriage rights may have settled the matter in the public realm, but in the bitterly contentious arena of American churches, the issue is far from over. This gripping documentary plays out like a courtroom drama as it charts the years-long struggle of Frank Schaefer, a Pennsylvania minister in the United Methodist Church, who was defrocked after officiating at his son’s same-sex wedding. Schaefer’s case, told here with raw candor by participants on all sides of the issue, moves from a small-town squabble over a controversial local pastor into an agonizing, church-wide referendum pitting traditionalists against reformers. Throughout his trials—both literal and spiritual—Schaefer’s clear-eyed sense of spiritual duty remains unshaken, even as his career prospects and faith in his church are severely tested. The film chronicles both his family’s personal struggle and the drama of a mainstream church facing sea change

A Gypsy slave has run away from his Romanian master circa 1835; a constable (Teodor Corban) and his slow-witted son (Mihai Comanoiu) are hired to find him and bring him back. The duo heads out across the Ottoman Empire, encountering everyone from anti-Semitic holy men to trash-talking merchants (“May you be three days away from death, including yesterday!”). When they find the lad and return him to his “owner,” things take an unexpected turn. Part Eastern-European Western and part Jarmusch road movie, Radu Jude’s gorgeous black-and-white opus—Romania’s Best Foreign Language Oscar® contender—proves that the Romanian New Wave has not yet fully crested. Unlike the intimate post-Ceausescu dramas that have made the country a world-cinema hotspot, this old-school epic plays out on a huge historical canvas. But like those socially conscious contemporary classics, Jude’s exploration of the distant past offers a biting commentary on the here and now.

Approaching his 88th birthday, Marcel Ophuls’ legacy as a filmmaker, a witness to history, and the conscience of Europe is assured. He assumes the mantle of mischievous raconteur in this peripatetic, unexpected autobiography that combines anecdotes, conversations, and loads of clips from vintage movies in a seductive whirl. The son of the great German-Jewish director Max Ophuls (La Ronde), Marcel was five when the family fled Germany for France and then California. He inevitably gravitated to the movie business in France, directing Jeanne Moreau and Jean-Paul Belmondo in Banana Peel (1963) before finding his path as a documentarian with The Sorrow and the Pity (see page xx). Moreau and Frederick Wiseman are among the peers who join Ophuls on camera, but he’s less interested in revisiting his career than recounting stories of his childhood in Europe and young adulthood in Hollywood. An entertaining capstone to a stellar career, Ain’t Misbehavin' is a treat fo

Child soldiers risk their lives to ferry their commander’s newborn baby to safety in director José Luis Rugeles’ tense drama. The children are part of a band of leftist guerrillas battling right-wing paramilitaries in the Colombian jungle. Thirteen-year-old Maria; her boyfriend, Mauricio; Afro-Colombian Byron; and Yuldor, a scrawny preteen, face constant danger in trying to protect an infant whose very cries could alert the enemy to their presence. The pressure on Maria is even greater as she tries to hide her own pregnancy from her comrades. In her screen debut, Karen Torres makes palpable Maria's terror, tenderness, and determination, while Rugeles’ camera captures both the claustrophobia and lush beauty of the jungle. No mere war drama, Rugeles and writer Diego Vivanco made Alias Maria to draw attention to the plight of the thousands of children—according to Human Rights Watch—recruited to fight in Colombia’s decades-long civil strife.

This timely documentary is a story of three people: Gracie Mei Huntsman, a teenager whose adoptive father’s job takes her back to the nation where she was abandoned to an orphanage at birth, the victim of China’s one-child policy and preference for boys; newly appointed US Ambassador to China Jon Huntsman, Jr., who inherits the job at a time of rising tensions between the two countries; and Chen Guangcheng, a blind lawyer whose activism led to China putting him under house arrest and who now seeks US asylum. China itself becomes a fourth character, a world superpower engaged in a volatile relationship with its western counterpart, the United States. In her feature documentary debut, director Vanessa Hope’s foreign-policy and prior filmmaking experience in China, comes into play as she gracefully weaves the disparate strands of her characters’ stories into an exciting and constantly changing saga of politics, ideology, identity, and high-stakes diplomacy.

The long-lost film of Aretha Franklin’s biggest-selling 1972 live album, Amazing Grace, is an extraordinary homage to a brilliant talent. For two nights, the Queen of Soul went to church—Los Angeles’ New Temple Missionary Church—to record what some cite as the greatest album ever. But the film of those electrifying performances, intended for release on a double bill with Superfly, was abandoned and remained unfinished until 2008: With instructions and the blessing of then-ailing director Sydney Pollack, Alan Elliott stepped up to finish the project. In Amazing Grace, Franklin’s breathtaking performance, supported by the Reverend James Cleveland and the Southern Baptist Community Choir, is like seeing a time capsule that captures the dynamism of that moment. To hear that extraordinary voice, to witness the grace and spirit of Aretha’s brilliant talent, upfront and personal, on screen, is a revelation. What once was lost, now is found and it’

A family adventure that mixes Honey, I Shrunk the Kids slapstick with heartfelt bonding between a lonely boy and his grieving father and sister, The Amazing Wiplala is a winning tale based on a popular Dutch children’s book. Nine-year-old Johannes is adrift after losing his mother. His sister treats him like a pest; his father is distracted and absent. A bump in the night leads Johannes to discover a tiny intruder who has magical powers (though he is decidedly not a leprechaun). Chaos ensues as “Wiplala” demonstrates his prowess at zapping others down to his own four-inch size. Trouble is he can’t reverse the spell, and once the whole family is miniaturized, they’re launched on a slapdash odyssey that takes them from Amsterdam’s treacherous streets to the top of the Royal Palace. Wiplala and Johannes band together to save the day, learning to harness the true magic of believing in oneself. Ages 7+. In Dutch, with English subtitles read aloud.

Crafted from events in his mother’s life, master filmmaker Barbet Schroeder (Barfly, Reversal of Fortune) revisits his decades-long cinematic examination of moral culpability and the complexities of human nature. In Amnesia, Martha, a mysterious German expat (iconic Marthe Keller, Marathon Man, Dark Eyes) conducts her solitary life far from Ibiza’s 1990s club scene. Having left the Heimat before the War, she refuses to speak her native tongue, drive a VW, or play the musical instrument she mastered as a girl. Her young neighbor Jo, an aspiring club DJ (Max Riemelt, The Wave, MVFF 2008), begins to break through her barriers with his boyish curiosity and growing desire until the arrival of Jo’s father (Bruno Ganz in a masterful performance) calls Martha’s past and present into question with surprising and revelatory results. Amnesia is a profound cross-generational exploration of historical memory and morality, set against the stark