Director: Niki CaroWriter: Niki Caro, Witi IhimaeraStars: Keisha Castle-Hughes, Rawiri Paratene, Vicky HaughtonSummary: On the east coast of New Zealand, the Whangara people believe their presence there dates back a thousand years or more to a single ancestor, Paikea, who escaped death when his canoe capsized by riding to shore on the back of a whale. From then on, Whangara chiefs, always the first-born, always male, have been considered Paikea's direct descendants. Pai, an 11-year-old girl in a patriarchal New Zealand tribe, believes she is destined to be the new chief. But her grandfather Koro is bound by tradition to pick a male leader. Pai loves Koro more than anyone in the world, but she must fight him and a thousand years of tradition to fulfill her destiny. Written by berkeley

Director: Jeong-hyang LeeWriter: Jeong-hyang LeeStars: Seung-ho Yoo, Eul-boon Kim, Hyo-hee DongSummary: Seven-year-old Sang-woo is left with his grandmother in a remote village while his mother looks for work. Born and raised in the city, Sang-woo quickly comes into conflict with his old-fashioned grandmother and his new rural surroundings. Disrespectful and selfish, Sang-woo lashes out in anger, perceiving that he has been abandoned. He trades his grandmother's only treasure for a video game; he throws his food and he throws tantrums. When Sang-woo's mother finds work and finally returns for him, Sang-woo has become a different boy. Through his grandmother's boundless patience and devotion, he learns to embrace empathy, humility and the importance of family. Written by Sujit R. Varma

Director: Cary Joji FukunagaWriter: Cary Joji Fukunaga, Uzodinma IwealaStars: Abraham Attah, Emmanuel Affadzi, Ricky AdelayitorSummary: Follows the journey of a young boy, Agu, who is forced to join a group of soldiers in a fictional West African country. While Agu fears his commander and many of the men around him, his fledgling childhood has been brutally shattered by the war raging through his country, and he is at first torn between conflicting revulsion and fascination Depicts the mechanics of war and does not shy away from explicit, visceral detail, and paints a complex, difficult picture of Agu as a child soldier. Written by Bennie Carden

Director: Phillip NoyceWriter: Doris Pilkington, Christine OlsenStars: Everlyn Sampi, Tianna Sansbury, Kenneth BranaghSummary: Western Australia, 1931. Government policy includes taking half-white, half-Aboriginal children from their Aboriginal mothers and sending them a thousand miles away to what amounts to indentured servitude, "to save them from themselves." Molly, Daisy, and Grace (two sisters and a cousin who are fourteen, ten, and eight) arrive at their Gulag and promptly escape, under Molly's lead. For several days they walk north, following a fence that keeps rabbits from settlements, eluding a native tracker and the regional constabulary. Their pursuers take orders from the government's "Chief Protector of Aborigines", A.O. Neville, blinded by Anglo-Christian certainty, evolutionary world view, and conventional wisdom. Can the girls survive? Written by <jhailey@hotmail.com>

Director: Vincent Paronnaud, Marjane SatrapiWriter: Marjane Satrapi, Vincent ParonnaudStars: Chiara Mastroianni, Catherine Deneuve, Gena RowlandsSummary: In 1970s Iran, Marjane 'Marji' Statrapi watches events through her young eyes and her idealistic family of a long dream being fulfilled of the hated Shah's defeat in the Iranian Revolution of 1979. However as Marji grows up, she witnesses first hand how the new Iran, now ruled by Islamic fundamentalists, has become a repressive tyranny on its own. With Marji dangerously refusing to remain silent at this injustice, her parents send her abroad to Vienna to study for a better life. However, this change proves an equally difficult trial with the young woman finding herself in a different culture loaded with abrasive characters and profound disappointments that deeply trouble her. Even when she returns home, Marji finds that both she and homeland have changed too much and the young woman and her loving family must decide where she truly belongs. Written by Kenneth Chisholm (kchishol@rogers.com)

Director: Byambasuren Davaa, Luigi FalorniWriter: Byambasuren Davaa, Batbayar DavgadorjStars: Janchiv Ayurzana, Chimed Ohin, Amgaabazar GonsonSummary: Springtime in the Gobi Desert, South Mongolia. A family of nomadic shepherds assists the births of their camel herd. One of the camels has an excruciatingly difficult delivery but, with help from the family, out comes a rare white colt. Despite the efforts of the shepherds, the mother rejects the newborn, refusing it her milk and her motherly love. When any hope for the little one seems to have vanished, the nomads send their two young boys on a journey through the desert, to a a backwater town in search of a musician who is their only hope for saving the colt's life. Written by TNS

Director: Joel ZwickWriter: Nia VardalosStars: Nia Vardalos, John Corbett, Michael ConstantineSummary: Toula Portokalos is 30, Greek, and works in her family's restaurant, Dancing Zorba's, in Chicago. All her father Gus wants is for her to get married to a nice Greek boy. But Toula is looking for more in life. Her mother convinces Gus to let her take some computer classes at college (making him think it's his idea). With those classes under her belt, she then takes over her aunt's travel agency (again making her father think it's his idea). She meets Ian Miller, a high school English teacher, WASP, and dreamboat she had made a fool of herself over at the restaurant; they date secretly for a while before her family finds out. Her father is livid over her dating a non-Greek. He has to learn to accept Ian; Ian has to learn to accept Toula's huge family, and Toula has to learn to accept herself. Written by Jon Reeves <jreeves@imdb.com>

Director: Gurinder ChadhaWriter: Jane Austen, Paul Mayeda BergesStars: Martin Henderson, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, Nadira BabbarSummary: A Bollywood-style update of Jane Austen's classic tale, in which Mrs. Bakshi is eager to find suitable husbands for her four unmarried daughters. When the rich single gentlemen Balraj and Darcy come to visit, the Bakshis have high hopes, though circumstance and boorish opinions threaten to get in the way of romance. Written by Anonymous

Director: Megan Mylan, Jon ShenkStars: Santino Majok Chuor, Jarrid Geduld, Peter Kon DutSummary: Lost Boys of Sudan is a feature-length documentary that follows two Sudanese refugees on an extraordinary journey from Africa to America. Orphaned as young boys in one of Africa's cruelest civil wars, Peter Dut and Santino Chuor survived lion attacks and militia gunfire to reach a refugee camp in Kenya along with thousands of other children. From there, remarkably, they were chosen to come to America. Safe at last from physical danger and hunger, a world away from home, they find themselves confronted with the abundance and alienation of contemporary American suburbia. Written by Anonymous

Director: Pepe DanquartWriter: Heinrich Hadding, Pepe DanquartStars: Andrzej Tkacz, Kamil Tkacz, Elisabeth DudaSummary: Srulik, an eight-year-old boy, flees from the Warsaw ghetto in 1942. He attempts to survive, at first alone in the forest, and then as a Christian orphan named Jurek on a Polish farm. Throughout his ordeal, his Jewish identity is in danger of being lost. The story is based on the bestseller by Uri Orlev. Written by Anonymous

Director: Ron FrickeWriter: Ron Fricke, Mark MagidsonSummary: Without words, cameras show us the world, with an emphasis not on "where," but on "what's there." It begins with morning, natural landscapes and people at prayer: volcanoes, water falls, veldts, and forests; several hundred Balinese Hindu men perform kecak, the monkey chant. Indigenous peoples apply body paint; whole villages dance. The film moves to destruction of nature via logging, blasting, and strip mining. Images of poverty, rapid urban life, and factories give way to war, concentration camps, and mass graves. Ancient ruins come into view, and then a sacred river where pilgrims bathe and funeral pyres burn. Prayer and nature return. A monk rings a huge bell; stars wheel across the sky. Written by <jhailey@hotmail.com>

Director: Nisha PahujaWriter: Nisha PahujaStars: Pooja Chopra, Manasvi Mamgai, Marc RobinsonSummary: Ruhi Singh is a small town girl with big city dreams. She sets off to Bombay to win the title of Miss India--a launching pad to fame and a surefire way to stand out in a country of 1.2 billion people. Just hours from the Miss India beauty boot camp is another training ground for girls--that of the Durga Vahini, a Hindu nationalist group exclusively for women. Here we meet Prachi Trivedi, a young, fearsome drill sergeant training Indian girls to fight against Western culture, Islam and Christianity by any means necessary including violence. Gliding back and forth between the action of the two camps, the dreams and conflicts of India and young Indian women are laid bare-- the two opposing worlds aren't as far away from each other as they seem. Written by Storyline Entertainment

Director: Eric WaltonWriter: Army Armstrong, Steven GorelickStars: John Page, Helena Norberg-HodgeSummary: How we can learn about ecological solutions from an ancient culture? Ladakh, or Little Tibet, is a wildly beautiful desert land high in the western Himalayas. It is a place of few resources and an extreme climate. Yet, for more than a thousand years, it has been home to a thriving culture. Then came development. Now the capital Leh, has issues of pollution, unemployment, inflation, and greed. 1993

Stars: CCH Pounder, Alan Goodman, Joseph Graves Jr.Summary:

Director: Mark HaslamWriter: Mark HaslamStars: Mark HaslamSummary: When the filmmaker reclaims a common xenophobic epithet and begins a series of journeys back to his birthplace of Calcutta he is not sure what he is looking for, or even if he wants to document the experience. He reluctantly gives in to compelling forces that draw his camera out of the bag to document glimpses of South Asia that do not match up with any guidebooks. But that is not all that is let out of the bag. Paralleling the physical journeys are daunting emotional and psychological treks into his personal history. Reflecting along the way on centuries-old traditions that predetermine many life paths, and colonial ideologies that erase all that is not white, his journeys start to take on a more intimate texture.

Director: Lasse HallströmWriter: Steven Knight, Richard C. MoraisStars: Helen Mirren, Om Puri, Manish DayalSummary: The family of talented cook, Hassan Kadam, has a life filled with both culinary delights and profound loss. Drifting through Europe after fleeing political violence in India that killed the family restaurant business and their mother, the Kadams arrive in France. Once there, a chance auto accident and the kindness of a young woman, Marguerite, in the village of Saint-Antonin-Noble-Val inspires Papa Kadam to set up a Indian restaurant there. Unfortunately, this puts the Kadams in direct competition with the snobbish Madame Mallory's acclaimed haute cuisine establishment across the street where Marguerite also works as a sous-chef. The resulting rivalry eventually escalates in personal intensity until it goes too far. In response, there is a bridging of sides initiated by Hassan, Marguerite and Madame Mallory herself, both professional and personal, that encourages an understanding that will change both sides forever.. Written by Kenneth Chisholm (kchishol@rogers.com)

Director: Gurinder ChadhaWriter: Gurinder Chadha, Guljit BindraStars: Parminder Nagra, Keira Knightley, Jonathan Rhys MeyersSummary: A comedy about bending the rules to reach your goal, Bend It Like Beckham explores the world of women's football, from kick-abouts in the park to freekicks in the Final. Set in Hounslow, West London and Hamburg, the film follows two 18 year olds with their hearts set on a future in professional soccer. Heart-stopping talent doesn't seem to be enough when your parents want you to hang up your football boots, find a nice boyfriend and learn to cook the perfect chapatti. Written by Anonymous

Director: Chris EyreWriter: Sherman AlexieStars: Adam Beach, Evan Adams, Irene BedardSummary: Young Indian man Thomas is a nerd in his reservation, wearing oversize glasses and telling everyone stories no-one wants to hear. His parents died in a fire in 1976, and Thomas was saved by Arnold. Arnold soon left his family (and his tough son Victor), and Victor hasn't seen his father for 10 years. When Victor hears Arnold has died, Thomas offers him funding for the trip to get Arnold's remains, but only if Thomas can also go with him. Thomas and Victor hit the road. Written by Anonymous

Director: Mira NairWriter: Sooni Taraporevala, Jhumpa LahiriStars: Kal Penn, Irrfan Khan, TabuSummary: While traveling by train to visit his grandfather in Jamshedpur, Calcutta born, Bengali-speaking Ashoke Ganguli meets with fellow-traveler, Ghosh, who impresses upon him to travel, while Ashoke is deep into a book authored by Nicholai Gogol. The train meets with an accident, and after recuperating, Ashoke re-locates to America, settles down, returns home in 1977 to get married to aspiring singer, Ashima, and returns home to New York. Shortly thereafter they become parents of a boy, who they initially name Gogol, and a few years later both give birth to Sonia. The family then buy their own house in the suburbs and travel to India for the first time after their marriage. The second time they travel to India is when Gogol and Sonia are in their late teens, and after a memorable visit to Kolkata and then to the Taj Mahal, they return home. Gogol falls in love with Maxine Ratliff and moves in with her family, while Ashoke spends time traveling, and Sonia moves to California, leaving Ashima... Written by rAjOo (gunwanti@hotmail.com)

Director: Ron HowardWriter: Vanessa Taylor, J.D. VanceSummary: A man recalls his life growing up in the Midwest with Appalachian values.

Director: David GelbStars: Jiro Ono, Yoshikazu Ono, Masuhiro YamamotoSummary: In the basement of a Tokyo office building, 85 year old sushi master Jiro Ono works tirelessly in his world renowned restaurant, Sukiyabashi Jiro. As his son Yoshikazu faces the pressures of stepping into his father's shoes and taking over the legendary restaurant, Jiro relentlessly pursues his lifelong quest to create the perfect piece of sushi. Written by anonymous

Director: Tim WolochatiukWriter: Jason ShermanStars: Rene Batson, Taya Ayotte Bourns, Alice DanoSummary: For over 130 years till 1996, more than 100,000 of Canada's First Nations children were legally required to attend government-funded schools run by various Christian faiths. There were 80 of these 'residential schools' across the country. Most children were sent to faraway schools that separated them from their families and traditional land. These children endured brutality, physical hardship, mental degradation, and the complete erasure of their culture. The schools were part of a wider program of assimilation designed to integrate the native population into 'Canadian society.' These schools were established with the express purpose 'To kill the Indian in the child.' Told through their own voices, 'We Were Children' is the shocking true story of two such children: Glen Anaquod and Lyna Hart. Written by EV Staff