My Top Film Festival movies in 1996

Following the death of her adoptive parents, a successful young black optometrist establishes contact with her biological mother -- a lonely white factory worker living in poverty in East London.

Benoit Blanc loves living, he loves women, he loves daring. He is a famous businessman who suffers from stomach-ache. Fabiolini, a would-be actor, is a policeman and he too suffers from the same sickness. The two man face suffering in opposite ways: Benoit Blanc is optimistic while Fabiolini, always unsure of himself, is persuaded he is seriously ill. The two men meet by chance while doing a gastroscopy and become friends. After having known their real different conditions, they will change and will understand better their lives. Around them, other people, women and men, will see their lives changed, by chance, by love or solely by the life stream.

A nun, while comforting a convicted killer on death row, empathizes with both the killer and his victim's families.

A car crash victim suddenly finds himself turned on by car accidents and becomes involved with an underground sub-culture of like-minded souls.

Minnesota car salesman Jerry Lundegaard's inept crime falls apart due to his and his henchmen's bungling and the persistent police work of the quite pregnant Marge Gunderson.

In Lyon, where many are unemployed, Marie is a prostitute who loves her work: she's thoughtful and exuberant toward clients old and young, slim or flabby. One night, a homeless man sleeps in the foyer of her apartment house; she gives him a hot meal, then a place on the floor to sleep by her radiator, then she offers herself. She falls in love, giving him new life, clothes, a place to live. When he grouses that he must bar hop while she uses the flat for her work, she finds them a larger flat. He grows restless, seducing a manicurist and pressing her to prostitution. He's arrested for procuring, so Marie must decide what to do; he, too, must face the consequences of his choices.

Oilman Jan is paralyzed in an accident. His wife, who prayed for his return, feels guilty; even more, when Jan urges her to have sex with another.

The recession hits a couple in Helsinki.

Rich Mr. Dashwood dies, leaving his second wife and her three daughters poor by the rules of inheritance. The older two daughters are the title opposites.

A seven-year-old girl adopts a vow of silence in protest when her quarrelsome parents grow increasingly hostile to one another.

A mobster travels from Florida to Hollywood to collect a debt and discovers that the movie business is just as sleazy as the Miami underworld.

In a future world devastated by disease, a convict is sent back in time to gather information about the man-made virus that wiped out most of the human population on the planet.

After her mother commits suicide, a young woman travels to Italy in search of love, truth and a deeper connection with herself.

Neil Jordan's historical biopic of Irish revolutionary Michael Collins, the man who led a guerrilla war against the UK, helped negotiate the creation of the Irish Free State, and led the National Army during the Irish Civil War.

After the funeral of one of their own, a criminal family decides to embark on an emotionally unnerving journey in an attempt to exact bloody revenge.

A young priest crusades against organized crime in his Naples neighbourhood but falls in love with a 13-year old boy. It's the chance the gangsters were waiting for to get rid of the thorn in their side. Will they be able to force the boy to accuse the priest of sexual harassment and have his reputation destroyed?

Set in the fictional Dublin suburb of Barrytown, Bimbo is a baker who loses his job after being made redundant. Bimbo then acquires the help of his best friend, Larry, to set up a successful burger van.

Stig, a 15-year-old student, is attracted to the beauty of Viola, his 37-year-old teacher, and she, drawn to his youth and innocence, feels that he is a God-sent relief for her drunken and miserable husband.

The classic Shakespearean play about the murderously scheming 15th-century king is reimagined in an alternative setting of 1930s England as clouds of fascism gather.

1987, love in time of war. Bus driver George Lennox meets Carla, a Nicaraguan exile living a precarious, profoundly-sad life in Glasgow. Her back is scarred, her boyfriend missing, her family dispersed; she's suicidal. George takes her to Nicaragua to find out what has happened to them and help her face her past.

A pair of kidnappings expose the complex power dynamics within the corrupt and unpredictable workings of 1930s Kansas City.

The exiled royal doctor to King Charles II devotes himself to helping Londoners suffering from the plague, and in the process falls in love with an equally poor woman.

The brief life of Jean Michel Basquiat, a world renowned New York street artist struggling with fame, drugs and his identity.

Truth and fiction collide when sexual obsession leads to betrayal. A voyage of discovery realigns subject, object and victim - things are not always as they seem.