Cinematic Concerns

First of all, the parentheses are part of the title.

Obviously I wanted to watch the film, as so many of my guy friends seemed to fall into such intoxication by sighing how much "they could so relate to the character/movie". (Remember the townspeople in the climactic ending of Perfume? Like that.) Which I always said was weird, coz I read the script two years ago and while it's a good script I didn't think it was THAT brilliant.

I suppose I should say: unsurprisingly, the movie didn't grab me as much (though it's definitely a nice little movie). Coz I've never been in a relationship.

Still, that's not really the point I wanted to elaborate about. It's this:

Earlier in the film, Tom tries to state his case that he believes in the One True Love, while Summer dismisses that notion. Which, of course, is an embellishment of what the Narrator said at the very beginning of the movie. It boils down to the fact that romance in the movie world holds dear the idea of the One True Love, that everyone only has one person they can partner with completely ... which in modern reality can be considered absurd. And I had thought that the reason why the movie is so heavily embraced is because it is one love story that dares to say, no, reality is such that the One True Love doesn't exist. Not like that. Hence, the "anti-love story" label. (Which doesn't actually make sense. You guys have all been fooled by film critics fond of using phrases like anti-love story or anti-romcom.)

Which the film is sort of doing, I mean, I knew the outcome in the end by virtue of having read the screenplay.

That is, until Summer says, "I just woke up one day and I knew ... what I was never sure of with you."

It's one of the high emo points of the movie – Tom, of course, has been wanting to know what went wrong all this time, and there's his answer. And thus, the answer to all the once-heartbroken guys out there who all said they could relate to the film. BUT, that line also CONFIRMS the idea of the One True Love.

So in fact, (500) Days Of Summer is not a romantic film that gives a rebellious middle finger to the generic Hollywood idea of romance, it's just depicting a love story of the guy that isn't the One True Love; for the girl, it meant we missed the One True Love story by one guy; for the guy, it meant that his One True Love obsession is confirmed. (But notice that doesn't mean Autumn is the One True Love.)

Which means that people are still delusional suckers for this kind of romance.

First, creativity is not the same as "intelligence". Says one scholarly review:

Many studies recognize creativity as cognitive ability separate from other mental functions and particularly independent from the complex of abilities grouped under the word intelligence. Although intelligence - the ability to deal with or process large amounts of data - favors creative potential, it is not synonymous with creativity.

Creativity involves the ability to synthesize. Einstein captured it nicely when he called his own work "combinatory play". It is a matter of sifting through data, perceptions and materials to come up with combinations that are new and useful. A creative synthesis is useful in such varied ways as producing a practical device, or a theory or insight that can be applied to solve a problem, or a work of art that can be appreciated.

Creativity requires self-assurance and the ability to take risks. In her comprehensive review of the field, The Creative Mind, Margaret Boden writes that creativity

involves not only a passionate interest but self-confidence too. A person needs a healthy self-respect to pursue novel ideas, and to make mistakes, despite criticism from others. Self-doubt there may be, but it cannot always win the day. Breaking generally accepted rules, or even stretching them, takes confidence. Continuing to do so, in the face of scepticism and scorn, takes even more.

Small wonder that the creative ethos marks a strong departure from the conformist ethos of the past. Creative work in fact is often downright subversive, since it disrupts existing patterns of thought and life. It can feel subversive and unsettling even to the creator. One famous definition of creativity is "the process of destroying one's gestalt in favor of a better one". And to the economist Joseph Schumpeter, the "perennial gale of creative destruction" was the very essence of capitalism:

in capitalist reality as distinguished from its textbook picture, it is not [price] competition which counts but the competition from the new commodity, the new technology, the new source of supply, the new type of organization ... competition which commands a decisive cost or quality advantage and which strikes not at the margins of the profits and the outputs of the existing firms but at their foundations and their very lives.

The economic historian Joel Mokyr puts it even more bluntly in the preface to his landmark book The Landmark of Riches, a sweeping study of technological creativity from classical antiquity through the Industrial Revolution. Drawing upon Schumpeter's famous distinction between the typical "adaptive response" and the disruptive and innovative "creative response", Mokyr writes:

Economists and historians alike realize that there is a deep difference between homo economicus and home creativus. One makes the most of what nature permits him to have. The other rebels against nature's dictates. Technological creativity, like all creativity, is an act of rebellion.

Yet creativity is not the province of a select few geniuses who can get away with breaking the mold because they possess superhuman talents. It is a capacity inherent to varying degrees in virtually all people. According to Boden, who sums up a wealth of research: "Creativity draws crucially on our ordinary abilities. Noticing, remembering, seeing, speaking, hearing, understanding language, and recognizing analogies: all these talents of Everyman are important". While the capacity to synthesize vast amounts of information and wrestle with very complex problems can be an advantage, Boden argues, genius can also cut both ways. "These rare, individuals, then, can search - and transform - high-level space much larger and complex than those explored by other people. They are in a sense more free than us, for they can generate more possibilities than we can imagine. Yet they respect constraints more than we do". Later, she adds:

The romantic myth of "creative genius" rarely helps. Often it is insidiously self-destructive. It can buttress the self-confidence of those individuals who believe themselves to be among the chosen few (perhaps it helped Beethoven to face his many troubles). But it undermines the self-regard of those who do not. Someone who believes that creativity is a rare of special power cannot sensibly hope that perseverance, or education, will enable them to join the creative elite. Either one is already a member, or will never be. Monolithic notions or creativity, talents, or intelligence are discouraging in the same way. Either one has got "it" or one hasn't. Why bother to try if one's efforts can lead only to a slightly less dispiriting level of mediocrity? ... A very different attitude is possible for someone who sees creativity as based in ordinary abilities we all share, and in practised expertise to which we can all aspire.

Even though much about the creative process seems strange and elusive, there does appear to be a consistent method underlying it. Many researchers see creative thinking as a four-step process: preparation, incubation, illumination and verification or revision. ... Anyone who's done creative work of any kind will recognize the steps. Indeed, more of us today do precisely this sort of work, and that, for instance, is why so many of us are moving to irregular work schedules: The alternating periods of different kinds of mental activity require it.

Creativity is multidimensional and experiential. The psychologist Dean Keith Simonton, a leading scholar in his field, writes, "creativity is favored by an intellect that has been enriched with diverse experiences and perspectives". It is "associated with a mind that exhibits a variety of interests and knowledge". Thus the varied forms of creativity that we typically see as different from one another - technological creativity (or invention), economic creativity (entrepreneurship) and artistic and cultural creativity, among others - are in fact deeply interrelated. Not only do they share a common thought process, they reinforce each other through cross-fertilization and mutual stimulation. And so through history practitioners of the different forms of creativity have tended to congregate and feed off one another in teeming, multifaceted creative centers - Florence in the early Renaissance; Vienna in the late 1800s and early 1900s; the many fast-growing creative centers across the United States today.

Stimulating and glamorous as it may sometimes be, creativity is in fact work. Both Thomas Edison and George Bernard Shaw liked to say that genius is 90 percent perspiration and 10 percent inspiration. Or as the journalist Red Smith once said of the demands of his craft: "There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at the typewriter and open a vein." Here we have an inventor, a playwright and a sportswriter sounding a common theme: The creative ethos is built on discipline and focus, sweat and blood. As Boden observes,

a person needs time, and enormous effort, to amass mental structures and to explore their potential. It is not always easy (it was not easy for Beethoven). Even when it is, life has many other attractions. Only a strong commitment to the domain - music, maths, medicine - can prevent someone from dissipating their energies on other things.

Creativity can take a long time - there are many stories of great mathematicians and scientists mulling a problem for months or more, to be finally "illuminated" while stepping onto a bus or staring into a fireplace - and even this apparent magic is the result of long preparation. Thus Louis Pasteur's famous dictum: "Chance favors the prepared mind."

Moreover, it has been observed that because of the all-absorbing nature of creative work, many great thinkers of the past were people who "formed no close ties": They had lots of colleagues and acquaintances, but few close friends and often no spouse or children. In fact, muses the psychiatrist Anthony Storr, "if intense periods of concentration over long periods are required to attain fundamental insights, the family man is at a disadvantage". Quoting the famous bachelor Isaac Newton on his process of discovery - "I keep the subject constantly before me, and wait till the first dawnings open slowly by little and little into the full and clear light" - Storr notes that "if Newton had been subject to the demands of a wife for companionship or interrupted by the patter of tiny feet, it would certainly have been less easy for him".

Creativity is largely driven by intrinsic rewards. Surely some creative people are driven by money, but studies find that truly creative individuals from artists and writers to scientists and open-source software developers are driven primarily by internal motivations. In a study of motivation and reward, Harvard Business School psychologist Teresa Amabile observed, "Intrinsic motivation is conducive to creativity, but extrinsic motivation is detrimental. It appears that when people are primarily motivated to do some creative activity by their own interest and enjoyment of that activity, they may be more creative than when they are primarily motivated by some goal imposed upon them by others."

Although creativity is often viewed as an individual phenomenon, it is inescapably a social process. It is frequently exercised in creative teams. Even the lone creator relies heavily on contributors and collaborators. Successful creators have often organized themselves and others for systematic effort. ...

Furthermore, creativity flourishes best in a unique kind of social environment: one that is stable enough to allow continuity of effort, yet diverse and broad-minded enough to nourish creativity in all its subversive forms. Simonton finds creativity flourishing in places and times marked by four characteristics:

"domain activity, intellectual receptiveness, ethnic diversity [and] political openness."

In a study of the history of Japanese culture - a culture that has been "highly variable in its openness to outside influences - Simonton found that "those periods in which Japan was receptive to alien influx were soon followed by periods of augmented creative activity".

... When one takes the long view of human history, Mokyr writes, one sees that

technological progress i like a fragile and vulnerable plant, whose flourishing is not only dependent on the appropriate surroundings and climate, but whose life is almost always short. It is highly sensitive to the social and economic environment and can easily be retrieved.

To the economist Paul Romer, not only is creativity inherent in humans, it is literally what distinguishes us, economically, from other species:

We produce goods by rearranging physical objects, but so do other animals, often with remarkable precision. Birds build nests, bees build hives, and we build guns and cars. ... Where people excel as economic animals is in their ability to produce ideas, not just physical goods. An ant will go through its life without ever coming up with even a slightly different idea about how to gather food. But people are almost incapable of this kind of rote adherence to instruction. We are incurable experimenters and problem solvers.

Indeed it was a "different idea about how to gather food", the agricultural idea, that launched the beginnings of modern human society. It was experimenting and problem solving - proceeding in fits and starts over many centuries, then building rapidly since late medieval times - that led to a series of revolutionary scientific discoveries, followed by waves of practical invention. "We are not used to thinking of ideas as economic goods," writes Romer, "but they are surely the most significant ones that we produce. The only way for us to produce more economic value - and thereby generate economic growth - is to find ever more valluable ways to make use of the objects available to us."

... A good idea, like the concept of the wheel, "can be used over and over again" and in fact grows in value the more it is used. It offers not diminishing returns, but increasing returns. ... Human creativity itself is being widely harnessed on a truly massive scale and promulgated as never before.

... The ultimate intellectual property - the one that really replaces land, labor and capital as the most valuable economic resource - is the human creative faculty.

To some degree, Karl Marx had it partly right when he foresaw that workers would someday control the means of production. This is now beginning to happen, although not as Marx thought it would, with the proletariat rising to take over factories. Rather, more workers than ever control the means of production because it is inside their heads; they are the means of production. Thus, the ultimate "control" issue is not who owns the patents that may result, nor is it whether the creative worker or the employer holds the balance of power in labor market negotiations ... it is how to keep stoking and tapping the creative furnace inside each human being.

(Excerpt from "The Creative Ethos", The Rise of the Creative Class by Richard Florida.)

Every single review of this movie tends to see the reviewer listing with glee (whether they liked the film or not ... usually not) all the different directions writer-director Richard Kelly puts this movie through. You see, the premise of the film is about an old, disfigured man who drops in on an innocent family (Cameron Diaz and James Marsden) with a box with a button unit on it: press it and someone dies while they get a cool million ... or the offer expires.

The film though (list coming ... list coming ... wait for it ... see how excited the audience is to read the list ... yes, my point exactly, movie reviewers are conformist RETARDS) involves disfigurement, NASA and its Project Viking Mars program, God and/or aliens, water, Jean-Paul Sartre and definitions of hell, nosebleeds, shady government agencies, and more than one moral dilemma. The movie also occasionally reminds one of Close Encounters Of The Third Kind and Invasion Of The Body Snatchers. The way it is filmed and sound-designed harkens back to 70s horror films: distractingly overbearing high-pitched scary music, usage of zoom-ins rather than dolly-tracking, etc.

There are also a couple of mentions of Arthur C. Clarke's eloquent 3rd law of prediction:


Yes, it twists the brain in many ways and expects you to hold many ideas across multiple disciplines of science (or rather, science fiction concepts), literature (Clarke and Sartre) and philosophy (theology and ethics) in your head, and it never answers them anyway. This is all happening alongside a tense, dreary story that puts you in a moderately uncomfortable mood without once letting up, unless you let go.

And there it is. I think most Malaysian audiences will shuffle into the film and out scratching their heads ... and then call the movie stupid or nonsensical, or something. If they felt that the movie was smarter than them, at least I can respect that. I don't know, perhaps it's unfair, but I tend to think most Malaysian audience members are dumb. Try seeing what I see at the cinema ticket counter queues, every single time, then maybe you'd understand a little.

(By the way, this applies similarly to other countries. Like the Americans. See some of their reviews/comments? Stupid.)

Essentially, as a proxy measure of your intelligence, the earlier in the film's running time that you walk out (or switch out of the movie), the lower your IQ. Not true, of course, but that's how I like to think of it.

I would have written a proper review of what I thought, but FlickFilosopher here basically said what I said.

The thing to remember, if you're one of those who keep questioning why are the people behaving strangely and talking strangely ("not like real people oso ... acting so char wan ah"), is to let go of all that and realise that this is a "what if" story.

The thing that is hypocritical on my part, is that another filmmaker who similarly doesn't provide any conclusive ending to his movies is Austrian filmmaker Michael Haneke, and I have very much disliked his films ... and yet I find myself strangely drawn to this one. (Oh right, forgot to mention, no you don't get a lot of questions answered in the end. Though the main plot is resolved.)

Having said that, if Kelly had managed to take all those loose ends he fashioned around the core plot, and string them into a cohesive, intellectually and narratively satisfying ending, this movie would have leapt straight into my Top 10 of 2009 list and, depending on how happy I am in the end, maybe occupy the top spot. But alas, such an ending demands the utmost of ingenuity that is rare even among good screenwriters/filmmakers.
The trailer made the film a lot more exciting than it seems (though it also indicated a lot of scenes were missing from the final movie), all the better to get the dumbasses into the seats so that director Richard Kelly can justify to the studios why he should continue to be given low-millions budgets to make more mind-bending, intellectual movies. While the dumbasses curse outside the cinemas, at least sophisticated, intellectual types (or pretenders like me) will weave our way through the madding crowd and walk away with smiles on our faces.

How Good I Think The Film Is: 7/10
How Much I Liked It: 7.5/10

PS – The irony is I hated Donnie Darko.

... It has struck me that the demographics of the leisure activity bicycling are almost obscenely skewed. Nearly every rider I meet on my journeys is a graduate student, professor, transplant surgeon, corporate lawyer, engineer, entrepreneur or something similar. Why is the sport so Creative Class? It can't be the expense. Although some bikes, like my titanium model, are pricey, an adequate machine can be had for much less. Bicycles cost little to maintain and nothing to ride. They are far less expensive than motorcycles.

Again I think the answer lies in aspects of the sport that appeal to the creative ethos. Bicycling is multidimensional. A long ride combines physical exertion and challenge, release, exploration and communing with nature. As you focus on pedaling you get into a rhythm and flow, losing track of whatever was on your mind, dumping into garbage. The mind's shelves are cleared for restocking while the body, the crucial infrastructure that sustains the mind, is reinvigorated. Sensory inputs are exquisite, for without the speed and roar of a motorized vehicle, you can really see and hear the world. Because you're breathing deeply, you can smell the world - damp earth in the countryside, fresh leaves and grass. There is also the "I'm doing it" factor: The joy for instance of moving as fast as it is possible for a human to move under his or her own power, upward of 30 mph on level ground, 50-plus downhill; the joy of conquering one of Pittsburgh's long hellish hills. Think too of the nature of the act of powering a bicycle. The up-and-down pumping of the legs, translated into the smooth rotation of the wheels, is very similar to the mesmerizing, almost mystical mechanism by which our beloved internal-combustion engine works. ... To climb onto a bicycle and become the engine is a ... creative experience.

(Excerpt from "The Experiential Life", The Rise of the Creative Class by Richard Florida.)

Still Sore About ...

... the fact that I did not get a chance to watch the Korean political comedy 굿모닝 프레지던트 (Good Morning President), despite three attempts to do so.


On The Themes Of The Films

The films that I saw this time share many similar themes, including warfare and its effects on soldiers and civilians, narratives that cross borders and the increasingly transnational nature of filmmaking, the emotions of travelling to a foreign land and the meeting of different cultures (where language and understanding can no longer be taken for granted).

In particular, I made the seemingly trivial mistake of selecting too many war films or films set during wartime; twelve out of thirty-four! Fact is I do enjoy such films, but on Day 3 I was telling Winter In Wartime director Martin Koolhoven that his was the fourth WWII movie I saw in two days; I realised then what a folly it was, and I began to get more and more mentally tired. Ultimately, half of the dozen war films are set during WWII; other wars featured include the War in Afghanistan, the Georgian-Abkhazian conflict, the Korean war, etc.


On Arthouse vs Mainstream

Ideally, one oughtn't complain about sitting through arthouse films at film festivals; that's like their natural breeding grounds, the only place where arthouse films can feel safe. On the other hand, part of the reason why I came to Pusan was because there were enough movies that fall between the two extremes of mainstream and pure arthouse that I like, and so I can generally avoid the films that I won't be able to stomach.

This year, however, it was a bit of an obligation to watch all the Malaysian films playing there. There were eight in total, but two of them have already been released in Malaysia and I've seen them (Geng and Talentime) and I have no time nor desire to re-watch them. There's 15Malaysia, of course, which I've already seen, but until the film fest, not yet on the big screen and never all at once.

So I have to watch the other five (one is The Blue Mansion, which is a Singaporean co-production). And some of them were near-torturous to sit through. Not to say the Malaysian indie films were the only ones like that; this year's Cannes offerings were surprisingly dull as well, considering the fact I thoroughly enjoyed last year's Cannes-winning films. (Would do well to be more selective in the future, depending on the Cannes juries.)

But coming back to the subject, and allowing myself to be frank and possibly politically incorrect. I think I am echoing a lot of Malaysians in wondering: what the heck is the point to all these Malaysian independent films that uses languid-pacing, that contains near-zero narrative content, that insists on mise-en-scene over other filmic elements, that is obsessed with subtlety and ambiguity and symbolism and obscure metaphors, that LOVES to have characters pause between 5-15 secs between each dialogue line?

I don't get it, and filmmaker friends like Swifty (... actually, so far just him, haven't really talked to the others) will always come back to the answer "of course not, and you will never get it". But really, why not?

That is not to say that these films are not Malaysian enough or don't reflect Malaysian culture, which is absurd. (Not reflecting Malaysian psyche, probably yes. But we can talk about that.) And I am wary of sounding like the kid at the playground sneering, "You can't play at this sandbox." It is more a sense of exasperation, more like, "What the heck is that kid doing drawing alien symbols on the sand?"

What I would like is to understand why is it that Malaysian cinema cannot find the middle ground between terrible, damn-near-unwatchable mainstream Malay and Chinese movies* (at least to me and people like me), and insomnia-curing (if we're lucky) independent films that veer towards the arthouse and the supposedly intellectual that just comes across as pretentious (... at least to me and people like me)?

* The atrocious Kinta and is one such example; others include the recent Lembing Awang Pulang Ke Dayang and Sayang You Can Dance.

See, people will, at this point, recite the typical cliché of "but film preferences are subjective". Which is technically true, nothing flawed with that statement. But you don't make movies for individuals, you make movies either for your self, or for an imagined and collective audience, complete with generalisations and stereotypes.

So are all Malaysian independent films made for the filmmakers' own satisfaction only? Probably not. So what is going on? To win awards? Partly yes – why not? – but it's not fair to say that is their sole reason to make movies. And Malaysian filmmakers are somewhat successful in the international film festival arena ... except look closer and you'll see just two film festivals that seem to like us to a suspiciously amenable degree: Rotterdam and Pusan. Sure, we've won awards from various other film festivals here and there. Pn Yasmin (bless her soul) has won awards from Berlin and Tokyo, among others. But I've been informed that – to paraphrase – some European film critics hate Malaysian films to the core ... for (and you may find this surprising) the same reason we dislike them: slow, boring, devoid of meaning and pretentious.

Or perhaps, to evoke Occam's Razor, the simplest explanation is that they make it to share it with people like them, unquestionably a minority, who simply go by different wavelengths when it comes to appreciating films, and those wavelengths seldom intersect those of the rest of us?

(By the way, how you read that statement depends on your worldview, how your graph of a set of individual's preferences would look like. I don't personally see two thick strands of waves on the graph. Wait, it's easier to use the scatter diagram – there are points scattered across the entire graphic space, but there is one major clump and one smaller clump at opposite quadrants, but less concentration of points in the rest of the graphic space.)

Are Malaysian indie films earning any benefits for Malaysian cinema? I can think of one: international exposure. But is that good enough, for all the (little) amount of money and (lots of!) struggling effort poured into making them? Someone convince me, please.

Now for mainstream Malaysian movies. People, it would be heartening if we see local filmmakers TRY to make good films. There is room for Senario movies; they are the exact equivalents to the Scary Movie franchise in Hollywood, dumbfuck movies made for a substantial audience that makes it profitable. Sure, many fuckwitted Malaysian movies are cheap and thus profitable (and as soon as you say that, David Teo comes to mind). Let us not bear any ill-will towards those who are out to make some bucks, and whose stated objective in making movies never was and never has been quality filmmaking.

But come on! So far the only ones making anything remotely watchable are Khabir Batia and Afdlin Shauki (did I miss out anyone?). If you ask whether I am demanding Hollywood level filmmaking ––

Yes. I am.

Not the part about the ginormous budgets and the light-years-ahead visual effects craft. The part about good drama, does not even have to be complex or complicated, just simple, good drama. Or funny Manglish comedies (or funny Malay comedies, for that matter ... okay I'm thinking of something that I have not seen before). Please don't even DARE attempt an explosive action film, because we are not capable. (Besides, our relatively uneventful history and moderately oppressive government and censorship offers little in the way of conflict and drama to hang and build our stories on.) But thrillers? Suspense? We can do that! Mystery? Horror we're doing, you say. Sure, they suck, and they're not scary enough. Malaysian horror stories can be extremely terrifying; I've read some of those stories when I was young. Where are they?

It's not even about film school, no film school. Or maybe it is. When I criticise the rare Malaysian film that I see, they often fail in EVERY SINGLE DEPARTMENT. I'm talking direction, scripting, acting, production design, sound, music, cinematography, editing/pacing (!!) ... which robs away and leaves behind not a single iota of entertainment value. By whose measuring stick, you ask? Well, by mine, based on the entire body of movies I've seen internationally (yes, Hollywood-heavy, but not exclusively Hollywood either), and yes, based on my basic film school training.

You can say that's biased, and it is. Of course it is. But what do you think - what are your preferences/concerns/philosophy?


On Pusan

I wrote down on my notes halfway through my time there that "the hours feel shorter but the days feel longer".

I probably won't go back next year, or in the near future. Unless I'm invited for some (currently imaginary) reason and/or I get to go for free. It's been fun, but diminishing returns has set in.

The following are the films I saw at the film festival, click on the film titles and it will take you to the review. Yes, I reviewed every one of the films I saw. No, I don't have photographic memory; a notebook accompanies me at every screening and I scribble my notes in the dark.

1. New York (India, set in USA)
2. Чингисийн Хоёр Загал | The Two Horses Of Genghis Khan (Mongolia, produced by Germany)
3. 15Malaysia (Malaysia)
4. 遗情 | Woman On Fire Looks For Water (Malaysia)
5. Réfractaire | Draft Dodgers (Luxembourg)
6. Karaoke (Malaysia)
7. Balibo (Australia, set in Timor-Leste)
8. The Blue Mansion (Singapore, Malaysia)
9. Nedodržaný Sľub | Broken Promise (Slovakia, Czech Republic)
10. Ленинград | Leningrad (Russia)
11. 心魔 | At The End Of Daybreak (Malaysia)
12. 理发店的女儿 | My Daughter (Malaysia)
13. Oorlogswinter | Winter In Wartime (The Netherlands)
14. Les Beaux Gosses | The French Kissers (France)
15. The Waiting City (Australia, set in India)
16. 작은 연못 | A Little Pond (South Korea)
17. John Rabe (Germany, set in China)
18. City Island (USA)
19. Cole (Canada)
20. לבנון | Lebanon (Israel)
21. Opium War (Afghanistan)
22. God Lives In The Himalayas (Nepal, co-produced by India)
23. Miss Kicki | 霓虹心 (Sweden, Taiwan)
24. Das Weisse Band – Eine Deustche Kindergeschicte | The White Ribbon (Germany)
25. Oceanworld 3D (United Kingdom)
26. გაღმა ნაპირი | The Other Bank (Georgia)
27. 南京！南京！ | City Of Life And Death (China)
28. Happy Ever Afters (Ireland)
29. My Dog Tulip (United Kingdom, produced by USA)
30. Cairo Time (Canada, set in Egypt)
31. Bright Star (United Kingdom)
32. 淚王子 | Prince Of Tears (Taiwan)
33. Artimos Šviesos | Low Lights (Lithuania)
34. 风声 | The Message (China)