Resilience, faith and humour prove to be powerful weapons in these stories of systemic injustice, retribution, and social and cultural isolation.

(NULL), David Gesslbauer, Michael Lange | Germany

Round and round and round she goes, where she’ll stop, nobody knows — especially for one girl who finds her routine becoming a vicious circle in this delightfully unique vision of a trip around the wheel of life.

8 bullets, Frank Ternier | France

This feverish, suspenseful mixed-media animation follows a grief-stricken French expat in Taipei who obsessively tracks down the man he believes is responsible for killing his family.

Aïssa, Clément Trehin-Lalanne | France

Aïssa, a young Congolese woman living illegally in France, must lie about her age in order to stay in French territory. Through the coldly scrutinizing lens of a medical examination, director Trehin-Lalanne probes the deeply personal implications of territorial boundaries that dictate the legality of an individual.

Boogaloo and Graham, Michael Lennox | Northern Ireland/United Kingdom

Jamesy and Malachy are over the moon when their soft-hearted dad presents them with two baby chicks to care for. Raising their tiny charges, declaring themselves vegetarian and dreaming of running a chicken farm, the two boys are in for a shock when their parents announce that big changes are coming to the family.

Newborns, Megha Ramaswamy | India

A hauntingly beautiful documentary that follows female survivors of acid attacks, who bravely defy the trauma and fear that will always accompany them.

Persefone, Grazia Tricarico | Italy

In this dark fable rendered in golden, sun-kissed images, a young diver on the coast of the Adriatic in southern Italy finds another kind of natural wonder amidst the bounty of the sea: a beautiful woman. As his strange romantic obsession grows, he withdraws ever further into silence.

The Shove, My Sandström | Sweden

It’s an eye for an eye in this absurdist comedy in which Tobias, a bouncer at a local bar, is caught shoving a drunk and disorderly patron and is sentenced to a retributive shove in return, at an unspecified date and time. Paranoia steadily sets in as Tobias awaits his punishment, fearful expectation haunting his every moment.

Skinner, Gábor Fabricius | Hungary

In economically depressed Budapest, to avoid being evicted from your home means you need to evict others — and Tibi, a hardcore bouncer with a conscience, soon finds that he must turn against his own to save himself. Skinner takes a raw, incisive look at how the global financial crisis transforms the life of the disenfranchised into brutal gladiatorial combat.