Set during the time of Saddam Hussein's dictatorship in Iraq, this film uses a road movie with three father and son musicians to portray the lives of Kurds living in Iran and Iraq. There is joyful music, much farcical humor, and finally scenes of tragedy and horror as the men cross snow bound mountains to find the father's former wife.

A young man struggles against social pressures in a small town in Iceland. Life is elsewhere, but there is no way to get there. Winter scenes heighten the bleak environment. Fascinating character study with a surprise ending.

Set in 1949 in a village in a remote province, this dark political satire from Mexico uses the aspirations of a new mayor to prove once again that power corrupts.

This award-winning film from Spain deals bravely with the subject of domestic abuse. With fine performances, it avoids melodrama and many cliches and stereotypes in order to permit the audience to gain a deeper understanding of the psychology of abuse.

French director Bertrand Tavernier brings his distinctive touch to this crime drama set in Louisiana bayou country, based on a novel by James Burke. Tommy Lee Jones heads up a stellar cast.

A film noir from France that draws on several classics of the genre while immersing the viewer in a wonderfully and creepily entertaining mystery that involves, among many things, a wife who may or may not be dead.

A blending of genres, this bittersweet film from Norway is a buddy film and a romantic comedy. Two billboard hangers move in with an agoraphobic third man, and life for the three 20-somethings proceeds normally until they become the subject of a reality TV show.

This poetic film (with a poetic title) from Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami finds a photographer from Tehran in a Kurdish village waiting mysteriously for an old woman to die. Beautifully photographed with comic moments involving cell phone reception in the village's hilltop cemetery.

A vampire film from Sweden, set in the dead of a 1980s winter, with just enough creepiness and unexpected twists and turns to entertain and leave you with a wry, knowing smile at the end.

Based on writer/poet Blake Morrison's memoir, this film from England portrays a conflicted father-son relationship, remembered as the elder man dies of cancer. Moving and lovingly told.

This low-keyed, slice of life film from France follows the experience of a young man thrust back into the family business by the illness of his father. There he takes over the delivery van rounds to customers in the surrounding villages and matures as a result. Well performed and beautifully photographed.

Israeli director Eran Riklis retells a story based on actual events concerning a Palestinian woman whose lemon grove is threatened when a cabinet minister takes up residence in a nearby West Bank settlement. Wonderful performance by Hiam Abbass.

Powerful WWII-era film set in Luxembourg, by German director Volker Schlondorf. A priest who is a prisoner in Dachau is sent back home and given 9 days to persuade his bishop to support the nazification of the church. There he confronts a former seminarian who uses a hellish logic in an attempt to overcome his resistance. Excellent performances. Based on the journal of a camp survivor.

Absorbing and unusual animated documentary by Israeli director Ari Folman, who recalls his suppressed memories of Israel's invasion of Lebanon and a massacre of Palestinian refugees.

Kurdish director Hiner Saleem sets this bleakly humorous story in an Armenian village in the depths of winter. It's a vision of post-Soviet life, where unemployment is widespread, money is scarce, and vodka helps warm the soul. In a cockeyed world where quirky is the norm, a widower and a widow begin a tentative relationship.

French-Lebanese director Philippe Aractingi takes his cameras into war-torn South Lebanon, following two fictional characters in a very real world of bombed-out devastation. The result is a shocking and compelling docudrama, where nonprofessional supporting actors play themselves in the tenuous aftermath of 33 straight days of bombing and shelling.

This British thriller ramps up the tension from the first frame and doesn't take off the pressure for a second. Lorraine Stanley is terrific as a London prostitute who gets involved in some nasty business involving a runaway girl and a wealthy client.

This powerful allegory, made in Italy, has all the intensity of an in-your-face thriller shot with the immediacy of documentary-style camerawork and editing. Quite simply, a Palestinian family has their house taken over by a small platoon of Israeli soldiers. The father will not yield in the face of this outrage - the story is in the reactions of his children.

This film by German director Doris Dörrie is a thoughtful and moving exploration of grief as it is experienced by a widower whose life has long been a dull routine and is now transformed into a journey to recover what has been lost in the death of his wife - a journey that takes him to Tokyo.

Set in the 1960s, this enjoyably sentimental film from Argentina is about a precocious 9-year-old boy who is puzzled by the absence of his divorced parents and befriends one of his dad's girlfriends.