Sweet fruit soon takes on a bitter taste in this powerful indictment of exploitation on Spanish strawberry farms. We follow the arduous journey of a combative Moroccan woman who migrated to Spain hoping for a fresh start. Together with colleagues she starts a protest that takes her from the fields all the way to the courtroom. A moving portrait of sisterhood.

In the deeply personal, poetic documentary Memory, Crimea-born filmmaker Vladlena Sandu seeks to deal with the war trauma from her Chechen childhood. She longs to transform fear into love using the power of imagination as her weapon, rooted in her memories and directed towards a future for children. A haunting, evocative and almost mythical feature-length debut.

The German social drama I Understand Your Displeasure conveys how working in the cleaning sector is far from spotless. Up close, you experience the hellish workdays alongside the overburdened Heike (an impressive lead performance by 59-year-old debutante Sabine Thalau) as her breathing space shrinks ever further, like a ticking time bomb. Realistic and relevant.

In 1930s Shanghai, the layered friendship between Lysanne and Marlène unfolds as their bond evolves over time. In her directorial debut Ombres de soie, Mary Stephen creates a sensual film essay on identity and belonging, exploring the tension between East and West while questioning fixed ideas about culture, gender and colonial legacies through a poetic feminist lens.

In a village on the border between Lebanon and Syria, two women are forced to leave their home to help quell a blood feud in their community. They face an uncertain future, shaped by a legacy of revenge. This lyrical debut film, shot without a script and with a cast of untrained actors, incisively explores the role of women in times of tension and unspoken conflict.

French director Sébastien Lifshitz returns to Film Fest Gent with a portrait of 82-year-old Claude Loir, a former porn actor and early figure in the gay liberation movement. Drawing on Loir’s autobiography, the documentary traces a life shaped by his determination to embrace pleasure and freedom in France of the late 1960s and early 1970s.

A mad genius or a genius madman? Director Mariano Llinás delves into the life of his beloved master, Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges, one of the greatest literary icons of the 20th century. But how do you capture a writer who could conjure entire worlds with a single sentence? Part detective film, part road movie, over five hours long and unmistakably Llinás.