PLEASE NOTE: To better estimate attendance for these events, we ask that you register for each meeting of this group.

January 30- Kahaani, India, 8.1, 2 hours 2 minutes

Kolkata is abuzz with the preparations for the annual Durga Puja festival, as seven months pregnant Vidya Bagchi steps off the airplane from London. Her first stop is the local police station to file a missing person report. Weeks ago, her husband Arnab arrived in India for a job assignment. The first two weeks, they talked daily on the phone, and then without explanation, his calls stopped. Everywhere Vidya turns, no one can remember Arnab. There is no trace of him at the guest house or his workplace. But Vidya will not give up her search. Somewhere in Kolkata she will discover the dangerous truth.

February 27- The Loneliness of a Long Distance Runner, 7.5, 1 hour 44 minutes

A rebellious youth, sentenced to a boy's reformatory for robbing a bakery, rises through the ranks of the institution through his prowess as a long distance runner. During his solitary runs, reveries of his life and times before his incarceration lead him to re-evaluate his privileged status as the Governor's prize runner.

March 26- The Concert, France 7.5, 1 hour 59 minutes

Thirty years ago, Andrei Simoniovich Filipov, the renowned conductor of the Bolshoi orchestra, was fired for hiring Jewish musicians. Now a mere cleaning man at the Bolshoi, he learns by accident that the Châtelet Theater in Paris invites the Bolshoi orchestra to play there. He decides to gather together his former musicians and to perform in Paris in the place of the current Bolshoi orchestra. As a solo violin player to accompany his old Jewish or Gypsy musicians he wants Anne-Marie Jacquet, a young virtuoso. If they all overcome the hardships ahead this very special concert will be a triumph.

April 30- Central Station, Brazil, 8.0, 1 hour 50 minutes

Dora, a dour old woman who hates customers and calls them 'trash,' works at a Rio de Janeiro central station writing and mailing letters for customers. Josue is a 9-year-old boy who never met his father. His mother is sending letters to his father through Dora. When she dies in a car accident, Dora takes Josue on a trip to find his father.

May 28- Ma Vie En Rose (My Life in Pink), 7.5, 1 hour 28 minutes

Ludovic is a transgender girl who is coming out. She talks of marrying her neighbor's son and can not understand why everyone is so surprised about it. Her family and neighbors struggle with her actions.

June 25- Whale Rider, New Zealand, 7.5, 1 hour 41 minutes

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.