In 1961, a 60 year old taxi driver stole Goya’s portrait of the Duke of Wellington from the National Gallery in London. It was the first (and remains the only) theft in the Gallery’s history. What happened next became the stuff of legend.

A man arrives in the city upon news of a potential terrorist strike in Italy. He is Japanese foreign diplomat, Kosaku Kuroda, and he’s here under orders of his supervisor at the Foreign Ministry, Hiroshi Kataoka (Kiichi Nakai), to aid in the safeguarding of Japanese citizens. Kuroda’s main contacts at the Japanese embassy consist of Ambassador Kikuhara, Counselor Nishino, and fellow diplomatic envoys Haba and Tanimoto. All are busy preparing for the visit of Japanese Foreign Minister Kawagoe due to arrive for the high-profile G8 foreign minister’s meeting. Meanwhile, somewhere on the festively-lit streets of the city, a young Japanese girl has suddenly gone missing. Is it an abduction simply for ransom? Or could it be a prelude to terror?

A tight-knit team of FBI investigators, along with their District Attorney supervisor, is suddenly torn apart when they discover that one of their own teenage daughters has been brutally murdered.

After suffering a family tragedy, Mack Phillips spirals into a deep depression causing him to question his innermost beliefs. Facing a crisis of faith, he receives a mysterious letter urging him to an abandoned shack deep in the Oregon wilderness. Despite his doubts, Mack journeys to the shack and encounters an enigmatic trio of strangers led by a woman named Papa. Through this meeting, Mack finds important truths that will transform his understanding of his tragedy and change his life forever.

Through good times and bad, Stella and Delilah have always had each other. Now, Stella’s so busy building a life that she’s forgotten how to really live. But Delilah is about to change all that. What starts as a quick trip to Jamaica, end as an exhilarating voyage of self discovery as Stella learns to open her heart and find love – even if it’s with a man 20 years her junior.

The second film from Aarón Fernández is a Spain-Mexico-France co-production already screened as part of Films in Progress at the 60th edition of the Festival. On the desolate coast of Veracruz, young Sebastián, 17, has to run his uncle’s motel single-handed, renting rooms by the hour. That’s how he meets Miranda, a regular customer who goes there to wait for a lover who often arrives late, sparking a fleeting game of seduction between the two.

The teenager and skateboarder Alex is interviewed by Detective Richard Lu that is investigating the death of a security guard in the rail yards severed by a train who was apparently hit by a skate board. While dealing with the separation process of his parents and the sexual heat of his virgin girlfriend Jennifer, Alex writes his last experiences in Paranoid Park with his new acquaintances and how the guard was killed, trying to relieve his feeling of guilty from his conscience.

Christmas blogger and aspiring photographer Hannah Reed just got the assignment of a lifetime; visit a charming town and Christmas wonderland called Christmas World in Alaska which will allow her to photograph the Northern Lights and maybe finally get published in her favorite nature magazine.

Vulgar is about a man who is a children’s clown but has not been getting much luck lately. He lives in a cheap apartment which he can’t even afford. Bums are constantly sleeping in his run down car and crashing on his lawn. He has a nagging mother who lives in a nursing home, and his best friend is a moocher. One day he comes up with the idea to become a bachelor clown.

A woman finds a man in a box in front of her home and takes him in. She jokingly says she wants to keep him as her pet since the man reminds her childhood dog. The man agrees. Later the woman discovers that the man is a dance prodigy. Complications arise when her old flame from college appears.

When two poor greasers, Johnny, and Ponyboy are assaulted by a vicious gang, the socs, and Johnny kills one of the attackers, tension begins to mount between the two rival gangs, setting off a turbulent chain of events.

Assigned to accompany two priests on a mission to convert the court of Kublai Khan to Christianity, Marco Polo is abandoned in the mountains when the priests, doubting the very existence of China, turn back. Polo eventually pushes bravely forth alone toward the fabled country where he is accepted as an envoy into Khan’s court. Marooned on the far side of the world, Polo, accompanied by his servant, Pedro, advances as a Mongol grandee for twenty extraordinary years. What he eventually brings back with him to the West is a chronicle that changed history forever.