My top 25 of SIFF 2005

"Hawaii, Oslo" is the story of a handful of people who cross one another's paths without necessarily knowing one another, during the hottest day of the year in Oslo. Frode and Milla are having their first child, whom they are told will not live long. Bobbie-Pop, a faded singer, tries to commit suicide. Leon, an institutionalized kleptomaniac, is waiting for the arrival of Åsa, with whom he has a 10-year deal to get married. Leon's brother Trygve fetches Leon from the institution to celebrate his birthday, but Tryge actually plans to use this leave from prison to run away. And the angel Vidar, Leon's best buddy at the institution, sees things no one else can see and just might be able to save everyone.

A transient young man breaks into empty homes to partake of the vacationing residents' lives for a few days.

La Nuit de la Vérité is situated in an imaginary West African country. After ten years of civil war between the government army of the Nayak, led by 'Le président', and the Bonande rebels led by Colonel Theo, there is some sign of peace negotiations. But not everyone is in favor of peace and one can feel the tension. The night of truth starts with a festive dinner, but the village idiot Tomoto always seems capable of ruining the attempts for peace with violence and provocation.

Santiago, a retired soldier who fought for his country, Peru, find it hard to adjust back to society while dealing with PTSD and family problems.

In this film, told almost entirely in iambic pentameter, She is a scientist in a loveless marriage to Anthony, a devious politician. He is a Lebanese doctor in self-imposed exile, working as a chef in a London restaurant. They meet at a banquet and fall into a carefree, passionate relationship. But the contempt He perceives as a Muslim immigrant to the UK causes him to break up with She, offering little in the way of explanation, and return to his homeland. She drags his reasons out of him little by little and tries to sympathize. Keenly feeling the loss of his love, She flies to Havana to sort things out on the beach and in the cabarets. She sends him a ticket, but harbors no illusions that He will join her in this Caribbean melting pot.

A young Muslim woman living in Britain campaigns for the release of her immigrant husband from his detainment in a holding centre.

After she ends up in prison and loses custody of her son, a woman struggles to assimilate outside her former life and remain clean long enough to regain custody of her son.

After reuniting with his mother in Ho Chi Minh City, a family tragedy causes Binh to flee from Viet Nam to America. Landing in New York, Binh begins a road trip to Texas, where his American father is said to live.

This film is a restrained, yet thoroughly engaging, study of a female post office worker's emotional life.

A moving true story about volunteers protecting antelope against poachers in the severe mountains of Tibet.

One day, when Sabah least expects it, she falls in love with the wrong man. She's Muslim, he's not. Unbeknownst to her family, she goes on a whirlwind affair before both culture and love collide.

Two brothers must negotiate changing roles and shifting family dynamics when one is sent to war in Afghanistan.

In Majdal Shams, the largest Druze village in Golan Heights on the Israeli-Syrian border, the Druze bride Mona is engaged to get married with Tallel, a television comedian that works in the Revolution Studios in Damascus, Syria. They have never met each other because of the occupation of the area by Israel since 1967; when Mona moves to Syria, she will lose her undefined nationality and will never be allowed to return home. Mona's father Hammed is a political activist pro-Syria that is on probation by the Israeli government. His older son Hatten married a Russian woman eight years ago and was banished from Majdal Shams by the religious leaders and his father. His brother Marwan is a wolf trader that lives in Italy. His sister Amal has two teenager daughters and has the intention to join the university, but her marriage with Amin is in crisis. When the family gathers for Mona's wedding, an insane bureaucracy jeopardizes the ceremony.

Reda, a young French-Moroccan guy and his old father drive from the south of France to Mecca in order for the father to do his pilgrimage. At first distant, they gradually learn to know each other.

Two 12-year-old Chilean children from different social classes become friends in 1973. They both discover each other's world as political tensions in their country increase.

Saint Ralph is the unlikely story of Ralph Walker, a ninth-grader who outran everyone's expectations except his own in his bold quest to win the 1954 Boston Marathon.

Palestine 1914. One morning in July, Soliman, a young Palestinian Christian, and Jacob, his Jewish friend, begin to build a house in Beit-Sajour, in the Judean hills, with stones brought from Beit-Yala, while the apparent stillness of the place is interrupted by bursts of violence that anticipate the future days of the war.

Lina, a young girl in war-torn Beirut, finds an ally and friend in Sihan, her domineering aunt's maid. Sihan shows Lina what her life could be like, but tests the girl's limits when she asks her to help plot her escape from the city.

After a series of bad relationships, a man orders a mail order bride and receives more than he bargained for.

A con-team couple (Andy Lau & Rene Liu) head west after taking a city businessman for his BMW. But an encounter with a naive young carpenter travelling home with his life savings challenges their fate as thieves.

Erken, a boy of 12, living with his mother is visited by a hunter. Erken steals the latter's horse and his gun to hold up a shop. Now a fugitive, the hunter gives Erken a choice: to go to prison or live with him in the mountains.

Elderly Dastaguir and his newly deaf 5-year-old grandson Yassin hitchhike and walk, but mostly walk, as they make their way to the coal mine where Dastaguir's son Murad works. Dastaguir must tell Murad that the rest of their family were all killed in a recent bomb attack.

Spanning 24 hours, "Heights" follows five New Yorkers challenged to choose their destiny before the sun comes up the next day.

Two men meet in downtown Bogotá; one is missing a leg, the other is a "silletero," a man who carries people around for money. Each character bears the burden of a bitter past life.

David is a twenty-five-year-old with few prospects for the future and spends his days with petty criminals at an inner-city gym. When the police find drugs at the gym, David makes a drastic decision in order to see his dying father.