Jia Zhao

A devoted soldier of the Taliban's ideology that has shaped his destiny since birth, Samim (23) struggles between the alluring promises of martyrdom and the mundanity of his daily existence as a husband and farmer. Samim's younger brother, Rafi (14), idolizes his big brother as he navigates the confusion of adolescence, leaving behind playfulness to enter a world shaped by decades of military intervention and resulting radicalization.

In a quiet forest, a sign warns of radiation hazard. “Is this the past or the future?” muses the masked figure who appears like a kind of ghost in nuclear disaster areas. At a time when nuclear power may be re-emerging as an alternative to fossil fuels, this calmly observed and compelling tour takes us to places that may serve as a warning.

Blocks of white marble from a Greek quarry are shipped to China, where sculptors turn them into Hellenistic-style statues and columns. The leftover grit is processed into fridge magnets and other souvenirs, which are returned to Europe and sold to Chinese tourists.

A cinematic and conceptually inventive film that explores the haunting memories of Asia’s late 20th-century modernization through the large-scale export of wigs during the Cold War. Yet, in every wig resides a ghost from the imperial past.

An illegal immigrant is reminded of his origin by the melodies of an instrument of his birthplace Bumiyan, Afganistan. However, the musician playing the instrument claims that the melodies aren't from Bumiyan, but from Kurdistan. But where is Kurdistan?

An elegiac documentary following virtuosic clarinettist and composer Kinan Azmeh, a Damascus-born musician living in exile, as he attempts to find meaning and purpose after the outbreak of war in Syria. A profound exploration of the role art can play in forging identity and community.

The film is a sobering, intimate and warm account of daily life in Kabul during the silent intervals between suicide bombings. The bombings that happened, and those that will, define life for the film's characters; a father who works as a bus driver, and two young boys whose policeman father is away due to murder threats.

In the rural Liangshan Mountains, 14-year-old Qihuo and her friends embark on a road trip to find a skirt for her traditional menarche rite of passage.

Afghani refugee Ali and his brother have just arrived in Turkey where, surrounded by many other refugees, his family tries to build a new life. The boys earn their living shining shoes. When one day their spot has been taken, their fragile existence and dreams of a better future hang by a thread.

The efforts of Suzanne, originally from China, to help refugees in her adopted homeland of Greece unfold like a tragicomedy.