Flipping from intimate and intricate visual language into full blown song and dance numbers, like subtle verses and exploding choruses, this bunch of PÖFF films dig deep for feelings and understanding them.

Can little boys, like wild animals, straighten out to grown up men? Men who will sooner or later make all those girls (made of sugar, spice and all things nice) turn bitter? Is rushing toward the inevitable sour end of love better in the end than the eternal gloom of this prosaic unfulfilled life we try to untangle ourselves from every day?

These and many other questions about the possibility of true love are answered frame-by-frame by a selection of the best of indie films this year, in which the PÖFF Lifetime Achievement Award-winning cinematographer Alar Kiviloo and, among others, Selena Gomez's "Gallery of Broken Hearts" fit.

All Eyes Off Me
Nov. 14, Sunday at 9:15 p.m., Coca-Cola Plaza

We’re in Tel Aviv. Danny is looking for Max at a party to tell him he's expecting a baby boy. Max, however, has already found a new girlfriend, Avishag, whose crazy sexual fantasies he is trying his best to satisfy. Things do not turn out exactly as the woman planned, so Avishag seeks a way out with the many-times-older Dror, whose dog she cares for.

Young Israeli director Hadas Ben Aroya explores what intimacy is and how our desires and inconsistencies are reflected in sexuality. "All Eyes Off Me" premiered in Berlin's Panorama section and is her second feature film, portraying a generation of self-conscious young people in Israel who want to test the limits of their freedom at all costs, without realizing what they might end up with. The actors perform fearlessly and authentically, the atmosphere is intense with intimacy and vulnerability. But how liberal are we really?

On Our Way
Nov. 20, Saturday at 8:30 p.m., Coca-Cola Plaza
World premiere

It is difficult for any newcomer to make a film for the first time as a screenwriter and director. Already acclaimed as a young actress, Sophie Lane Curtis has made a varied, multifaceted 3-part indie debut. The structure of the non-chronological story spans five timelines and two countries.

Henry, coming of age, is struggling with his first feature film screenplay, "On Our Way." Faced with memories of his early childhood and boyhood, he goes back to a painful past where both parents were still alive. Henry meets his charming muse in Rosemary, who flirts without kissing, and inspires the boy to create something meaningful together.

Micheál Richardson, who plays his male lead, is the son of Liam Neeson and the late Natasha Richardson. Henry, as played by Richardson, longs sadly behind his mother, who is played by the actress' cousin Daisy Bevan (daughter of Joely Richardson). Grandma Vanessa Redgrave joins her husband Franco Nero to make the family sphere bizarrely perfect.

Me and the Beasts
Sunday, Nov. 21, at 6:45 p.m., Coca-Cola Plaza
World premiere

After regrettably leaving his band due to both personal and political tensions, a Venezuelan musician is trying to lay the groundwork for his solo project. From the third world, as a millennial child, he seeks balance in his daily life, feeling the emotional tensions of entering a new creative phase, as well as the pain points of a nationwide crisis.

Debut director Nico Manzano, who is also a cinematographer and has a wealth of experience in filming music videos, portrays the musician's creative process and how the artist should focus only on his work (and the world) from a very personal perspective.

The director creates a visually stunning and enchanting story that, on the one hand, tries to diagnose the loneliness problems of our modern generation and at the same time talks about the extreme conditions of socio-political strife in rural areas. The unpredictable ride, speeding up and slowing down, leads the audience to meet new and unexpected friends.

My Parents' Divorce
Wednesday, Nov. 24 at 9:15 p.m., Coca-Cola Plaza
International premiere. With Romy Trajman and Marielle Sade

Romy was a teenager when her parents divorced. She has not met his father since. She was raised by her mother, with whom she has a very close relationship: not only personal, but also professionally creative. As an adult young woman, she is troubled by the question of why her parents divorced. Together with her friend Anaïs, she goes to her father in Brussels, but the answers are not easy to hear.

A Thousand Hours
Thursday, Nov. 25, at 8:45 p.m., Coca-Cola Plaza
With Carl Moberg and Morten Lindemann Olsen

Anna and Thomas' bandmate shouldn't have died, and Anna shouldn't have kissed Thomas. Nor should she have burned all her bridges and moved to Berlin. And surely Thomas should not have appeared in Berlin unexpectedly, just at the moment when Anna had started to really move on with her life. But music always finds a way.

The Danish indie film "A Thousand Hours" is a cinematic and positively melodramatic soundtrack for a whole generation of dreamers: the confused, the lost and those burning with life. Carl Moberg, a graduate of the Skurup Folk High School in Sweden, considers the combination of image and music and the feeling and stories that music tell of to be the deepest of artistic experiences. His first feature film is about musicians and with a soundtrack written by a number of young Scandinavian artists.

The Broken Hearts Gallery
Friday, Nov. 26 at 7:30 p.m., Apollo Kino Solaris

In Natalie Krinsky's romantic film “The Broken Hearts Gallery”, Lucy (Geraldine Viswanathan) is a very bright, 20-year-old art gallery assistant in New York who assigns a little too much emotional meaning to everything. After separating from her newest companion, she decides to set up a Broken Hearts pop-up exhibition, which brings together all the items she received during the relationship. The exhibition finds fame and encourages all romantics to move on.

The film will be presented within the framework of PÖFF in connection with the publication in Hollywood of the biography of Alar Kivilo, cinematographer and winner of the 2020 PÖFF Lifetime Achievement Award.