Together with Kamen Kalev’s more recent but equally outstanding production Eastern Plays (2009), Bulgarian director Stephan Komandarev’s The World Is Big and Salvation Lurks Around the Corner puts the country on the cinematic roadmap of Europe.

Part of the nascent renaissance in Bulgarian cinema, exemplified most prominently by Stephan Komandarev’s Oscar contender The World Is Big and Salvation Lurks Around the Corner (2008), Kamen Kalev’s new film Eastern Plays offers a much-needed fresh take on the modern Eastern European experience.

Raw, bold and frenetically charged, Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire’s French drama Johnny Mad Dog is a film about child soldiers fighting a civil war in an unnamed African country one would likely have high hopes for.

Following in the footsteps of Philippe Claudel’s recent French drama about an ex-convict’s readjustment to civil life I’ve Loved You So Long (2008) and Lee Chang-dong’s South Korean take on the tragic aftermath of a kidnapping Secret Sunshine (2007), Troubled Water (DeUsynlige) is a challenging and deeply humanist work that deals with many themes comprising the essential foundations of the modern psyche.