Quotes of the Day

In less than a year, the European Union will be ten countries bigger. With research showing that nearly half of the British population can't name even one of the countries in line to join the E.U., the Foreign and Commonwealth Office has been looking for ways to increase awareness of the expansion. One initiative is the New Europe Film Season, which devotes screen space in Brighton, Edinburgh and Liverpool to the best in cinema the candidate countries have to offer. Last year, the season's debut, the organizers made the mistake of spreading the program across generations, with several of the films over five years old-a good indication of what used to be, but not of what is to come. This year they've got it right with a batch of films, all made in the past two years, each one a mark of talent that European cinema should be proud to welcome into the fold.

Aptly enough, three of the films ride on themes of migration and the need to belong. The offbeat drama Good Hands, a co-production between Estonia and Latvia, follows a woman on the run from the law who cons her way into a small-town family and finds happiness amongst the town's honest, oddball residents. With hints of Aki Kaurismäki and David Lynch, the film is a charming, if disjointed, look at unconditional acceptance.

That's something the lead couple in the Czech film Brats are hoping to find for their two adopted Roma boys when they move to the country from Prague. In lesser hands, the realization that intolerance isn't just a city trait could have been an excuse for melodrama. Instead, director Zdenek Tyc bestows the family with patience, dignity and a tough sense of humor, making this the most tender and loving film about hate to come out in a long time.

While Good Hands and Brats are about settling into new surroundings, Romania's Occident is about leaving old ones. Three characters are looking for escape in one way or another — Luci wants out of his dead-end life and his aunt's spare room, Michaela needs to leave Romania so she can become a poet and The Colonel is running from his wife into the arms of the school headmistress — and only find it when they stop looking. As their relationships to each other slowly make sense through flashbacks and false endings, the film is sometimes poignant, often hilarious (on the first day of Luci's new job in "publicity" his boss hands him a beer bottle costume and sends him to the mall), always brilliant. Smarter and more sophisticated than most of what swallows up multiplex screens today, Occident puts director Cristian Mungiu firmly in the "ones to watch" list.

Comedy is one of the trickiest genres to get right, but Turkish filmmakers seem to be a dab hand at mixing universal humor with the specificity of life in their home country. Last year, Turkey's endearing Raindrops was one of the highlights of the season. This year it's Vizontele, a film about how the introduction of television in the 1970s draws a schism through the citizens of a small village. Leading a cast of quaint caricatures (the grumpy melon vendor, the crooked cinema owner) is Yilmaz Erdogan — also the film's director — whose town loon Crazy Emin makes a surprisingly sweet third reel hero. Gentle, warm and true to its roots, no wonder Vizontele was a massive box office hit back home.

The season may be weighted in favor of laughs, but dramas don't get much darker than they do here. Blind Spot, from Slovenia, explores the intricacies of familial love as a teenage girl traps her heroin-addict brother in a room, forcing him to go cold turkey. As the girl, Manca Dorrer is captivating, and filmmaker Hanna A.W. Slak shows a real knack with lighting and slick camera work, resulting in a stunning and intriguing film from an unexpected source. That kind of dynamic is missing from The Lease (Lithuania), which uses a recently divorced woman's move into her own apartment as an allegory for the illusions of freedom. Mired in post-Soviet malaise and cursed with a hurried, unlikely surprise ending, this is the only weak link in a season filled with promise.

• JUMANA FAROUKY
• A season of film from countries in line to join the E.U. shows a bright future for European cinema