Meet Pella KÃ¥german, the co-director of ANIARA

One of the more unique titles at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival is the science-fiction epic ANIARA, co-directed by Pella Kågerman and Hugo Lilja. Made with modest means and a surplus of ingenuity, ANIARA is based on a 1956 epic poem by Swedish Nobel Prize winner Harry Martinson and details what happens after we destroy our planet and seek refuge elsewhere. Harrowing and sobering in its portrait of what human beings are capable of, ANIARA constantly surprises. It’s part of a string of intelligent, off-genre pictures from Sweden — such as Ali Abbasi’s Cannes hit Border, also screening at this year’s Festival — which are built around issues and which ask probing, disturbing questions.

Meet Imogen Thomas, the director of Emu Runner

Blending social realism with touches of lyricism, Imogen Thomas’ engaging debut feature Emu Runner follows a nine-year-old girl growing up in the isolated community of Brewarrina, Australia. When Gem’s (Rhae-Kye Waites) young mother dies unexpectedly, she copes with the loss by bonding with a wild emu, while her father struggles to keep his family of three children together. As Gem connects with her ancestors’ totem animal — a male emu rearing its chicks — her behaviour attracts the attention of an over-eager social worker who may misinterpret grief for parental neglect.