Somewhere in Europe

A haunting docudrama hybrid, Luxembourg’s submission for Academy Awards consideration conveys a transcendent tragedy that director Cruchten (BOYS ON THE RUN) underlines unforgettably with a striking use of masks and eerie puppet figures. An unnamed man (Stévenin) narrates the downward trajectory of his life from beyond the grave, from delinquency to the string of fateful decisions and foolhardy moves that tied him inextricably to the opiate that was the elusive love of his life. (Gene Siskel Film Center)

Jake De Long is one of the top computer programmers in the world. Hiding in an abandoned warehouse in Luxembourg, he is working on a secret website to be launched soon. As he does, he is warned that the police have discovered his whereabouts and are about to storm in. He manages to escape and fly back to Canada, where his colleague Valérie is waiting for him to get on with their life mission: the kidnapping of four very influential personalities.

The story beginns on 24 October 1962, at the height of the Cuban missile crisis. The Second World War with its hardships and bombs...

For most people, a wedding signifies a hopeful beginning, but then, Catherine and Christian aren't most people. She is a spoiled rich girl with an insatiable desire for the low and degraded side of life. Christian is without any resources, inner or outer, and caters to Catherine's every whim, even when she sends him out in the middle of their wedding reception to score some heroin for her. Their wedding is the starting point for their relentless downward spiral into the most brutally senseless lives imaginable, in this stylishly filmed exploration of the dark netherworld of the human spirit.

When Jessy burns down his adoptive parents garage he is put into a youth prison. There he meets Roark another troublemake with whom he escapes and ends up in deserted woodlands. On their way they meet Rain, a girl that flees from her militia-captain Father. Together and with the Militia on their trail they try to escape in the hope of finding somewhere to make a new start of their lives.

This film does not deal with Chernobyl, but rather with the world of Chernobyl, about which we know very little. Eyewitness reports have survived: scientists, teachers, journalists, couples, children... They tell of their old daily lives, then of the catastrophe. Their voices form a long, terrible but necessary supplication which traverses borders and stimulates us to question our status quo.

This standard slice-of-life drama is about Dju Dibonga (Richard Courcet), a young man who leaves his home on Cabo Verde, an island of Portuguese dependency off the coast of Africa, to go to Luxembourg and search for his father. Far from his home village and unfamiliar with the large city, the young black man forms an unlikely friendship with a down-and-out white policeman whose only consolation in life is found at the bottom of a bottle. Their developing companionship forms the main focus of this movie directed by Pol Cruchten.