Finnish director Juho Kuosmanen’s Arctic road movie portrays an archeology enthusiast and a brusque Russian miner sharing a second-class cabin on a long train trip after the fall of the Soviet Union.

Egyptian Omar El Zohairy’s serio-comedy Feathers won the Nespresso Grand Prize at Critics’ Week, the Cannes Film Festival’s series that is dedicated exclusively to first and second films.

Based on André Carl van der Merwe’s autobiographical novel of the same name, the plot revolves around two gay men, Nicholas van der Swart and Dylan Stassen, and their struggles (both internal and external) to come to terms with their homosexuality amidst a rigid and repressive social order.