Minnie and Quinn were both born in London on New Year’s Day, in the same hospital, one minute apart. Thirty years later — and very different people — they find themselves thrown together again in the same city on New Year’s Eve.

This colourful, music-filled and sensual melodrama based on early stories by Maxim Gorky tells the fatal love story between the beautiful and rebellious girl Rada and the handsome horse thief Zobar. The story is set in early 20th century Bessarabia, now part of Moldova, then belonging to the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Vietnam veteran Billy Ray Lancing, a former CSA agent who now works on a wildlife refuge in Northern Alaska, has been exchanging letters in a pen-pal relationship with Irina Morawska, a 13-year-old orphaned girl in Poland that he’s helping out financially. When the letters suddenly stop coming, Billy heads to Poland to figure out why — only to discover that the orphanage that Irina was staying in, which is financed by honest — and unsuspecting — good-intentioned Samaritans, is a cover for a human trafficking network.

Shelby is about to quit her job as a rocket engineer when her daughter becomes convinced that her Scrooge-like boss, Evan, is the Christmas Prince from a story Shelby invented years ago.

Angie wonders what her life would be like if she had married a former boyfriend who became a famous sportscaster. She takes the train home to spend Christmas with her family and inexplicably finds herself 10 years in the past. With the advice of the train’s enigmatic conductor, Angie has the chance to revisit that Christmas and learn what — and who — is truly important to her.

Princes who have been turned into Dwarfs seek the red shoes of a lady in order to break the spell, although it will not be easy.

A woman facing eviction just before Christmas who must navigate budding romantic feelings for a handsome billionaire when she takes a job nannying for his two children right before Christmas.

With high school graduation right around the corner, Takumi Fujiwara has a lot on his mind and a lot to prepare for. Everything becomes even more complicated when Takumi is offered a spot on Ryosuke Takahashi’s elite Kengai Racing Team, which seeks to assemble the greatest racers in the Gunma area for a tour of Japan’s mountain passes. Before he can accept however, Takumi feels the need to settle the score with the Lancer Evo driving Emperor team, defend his downhill-racer crown against the son of his father’s greatest rival, and finally settle things with his unfaithful girlfriend Natsuki.

Mia, an ex-prostitute, is trapped in a loveless marriage with the abusive Quan (Sunny Pang, who also stars in Headshot in this year’s Festival lineup), a butcher who runs a roast meat shop. When she meets sensitive funeral director Wu, their passion for one another escalates into an affair. But the path to true love is fraught with jealousy, forcing someone to make a deadly move.

Upon settling in the countryside village of La Escapa, Nat accepts a disturbing sexual proposal by neighbour Andreas, paving the way for a self-consuming passion.

A traveling architect meets an old friend from his student years; the pair realize their connection has always been a romantic one.

Between New York City and the far north of Norway, an American painter and a Russian émigré find each other in the Arctic circle. Together under a sun that never sets, they discover a future and family that they didn’t know they had.