Over the course of 24 breathless hours in New York City, twentysomething Feña (electrifying newcomer Lío Mehiel) must contend with an onslaught of aggravations, surprise encounters, and emotional choices. First-time director Vuk Lungulov-Klotz has confidently and lovingly constructed a day in the life of a young trans man with precision and sensitivity.

Lee Kang-sheng, best known for his indelible starring roles in the films of Tsai Ming-liang over more than 30 years, holds the screen with his customary stoic vulnerability as a man who has returned to the island province of Hainan after a long stint in prison and is endeavoring to reconnect with his former girlfriend.

In his trenchant, consistently surprising portrait of malaise pushed to near absurdity, debut feature filmmaker Umut Subasi tells the stories of a small group of interconnected millennials aimlessly grasping for love, work, friendship, and financial stability in Istanbul.

An original and gripping vision set in the rigid, cutthroat environment of high school in contemporary Thailand, Sorayos Prapapan’s first film takes a hard, highly entertaining look at the options open to young people in a dictatorial world.

In this assured and gripping thriller set in northern Tunis, young detective Fatma (Fatma Oussaifi) investigates a disturbing series of connected deaths—all of them apparent suicides by self-immolation—while combating misogyny in her own profession and larger political pressures.

With his gentle, unhurried, but compelling style, French director David Depesseville takes a largely observational approach to the story of young Samuel (Mirko Giannini), a traumatized orphan on the cusp of teenagehood trying to adjust to life with his new, rural foster family.

Both a coming-of-age morality tale and a riveting political thriller, the feature debut by Indonesian critic turned filmmaker Makbul Mubarak follows the dangerous downward spiral of an 18-year-old housekeeper’s son who falls under the spell of a retired military general running for local office.

In this invigorating observational documentary, Kinshasa-born, French-raised filmmaker Alain Kassanda captures the words and emotions of students at the University of Ibadan in southwestern Nigeria, presenting spirited debates over power imbalances and heated discussions around ethnicity, feminism, and gender.

Franz Rogowski plays a Belarusian emigrant making his way through Poland before arriving undocumented in Paris, where he ends up placed for training in the French Foreign Legion. During service, his fate becomes intertwined with that of a Nigerian villager mounting an insurgency against the French oil companies.

Marina is a woman in her early thirties who has been stricken with a strange malady: her face has changed. Melisa Liebenthal’s film is a wryly comic examination of the meaning of human identity.

In a remote, rustic house tucked in the snowy Finnish woods, a family gathers for a Christmas that’s anything but idyllic. In her debut, Tia Kouvo expertly depicts the forced togetherness and claustrophobia of the holiday and, perhaps even more unsettling, what happens when everyone has to go back to their normal routines.

In her first feature, acclaimed video artist Fox Maxy uncorks a deluge of images captured and created over nearly 10 years, drawn from her personal archives and evoking through recalled words and rhyming images the experience of trauma and recovery.

Draginja (a remarkable Ksenija Marinkovic) is a door-to-door vacuum cleaner vendor whose reality is shaken when she happens upon a dead body while on her rounds. Set in a depressed yet vividly evoked working-class Belgrade, the haunting Have You Seen This Woman? is an inquiry into the malleability of identity and the invisibility of daily living.

Garnering acclaim and accolades around the world, this transgressive and humane drama about the relationship between a young husband and his new boss, a transgender exotic dancer, bravely interrogates expectations around gender and sexuality in contemporary Pakistan.

In this sprawling, award-winning domestic drama, Saeed Roustaee constructs an engrossing narrative about the trauma of intergenerational conflict and financial struggle set amidst the economic uncertainty of contemporary Tehran.

Set in the emotional hinterlands of loss and mourning yet attuned to the beautifully off-kilter cadences of life, Graham Foy’s high school drama gives exceptionally original treatment to the fragility and resilience of youth.

In this kaleidoscopic view of a city from dawn to dusk, filmmaker Ariadine Zampaulo guides us through Mozambique’s capital, Maputo, where different lives intermingle easily amid the director’s illuminating, distinct approaches to and ideas about cinematic poetry. Screens with Clara Anastácia and Gabriela Gaia Meirelles’ Escasso (Scarce).

The unpredictable anxiety of life under authoritarian rule is brilliantly dramatized in this realist breakthrough from Romanian director Alexandru Belc, which follows 17-year-old high schooler Ana (Mara Bugarin) over one tense, emotionally ravaging day and night in 1972.

In her poetic and galvanizing essay film, Milisuthando Bongela has constructed a multilayered and thought-provoking inquiry into history and identity. Through five distinct chapters it evokes the experience and after-effects of growing up amidst apartheid in South Africa.

Set in the foreboding, vividly realized environs of a rural village in Ukraine, this visually bold feature debut from Dmytro Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk follows the tragic downward spiral of a devoted family man and former smuggler who has returned home after working abroad and finds that freedom isn’t easily won.

A magical coming-of-age story that is also perhaps the tale of a haunting, Russian-born, Melbourne-raised filmmaker Alena Lodkina’s enigmatic spell of a movie centers around a film student named Eva (Nathalie Morris) who develops a close bond with mercurial performance artist Mia (Hannah Lynch).

First-time writer-director-star Juraj Lerotić has constructed a gripping, ever-intensifying drama, based on events from his own difficult family history, about a young man desperately trying to save and care for his suicidal brother over the course of 24 hours.

In his eccentric, shape-shifting breakthrough, set in 1974 Angola, Carlos Conceição vaults between genres and modes with audacity, constantly reinventing this reflection on historical tyranny and the metaphysical effects of war.

In her enormously poignant follow-up to The Chambermaid, director Lila Avilés tells an emotionally expansive family drama from the perspective of a 7-year-old (the marvelously naturalistic Naíma Sentíes), as her mother and extended relatives prepare for the birthday party of the girl’s father, who has been ill.

Includes Aqueronte, 48 Hours, Center, Ring, Mall, Civic, and Human Nature.

Includes The Spiral, Chomp It!, Jitterbug, Serafina, and The Kidnapping of the Bride.