La adopción

Well-heeled and eager to create a family, Spanish couple Natalia (Nora Navas, Goya Award-winning actress for Black Bread) and Daniel (Francesc Garrido, The Sea Inside) travel to Lithuania to realize their dreams of becoming adoptive parents. Things don't work out as smoothly as anticipated, and they find themselves unknowingly stepping into a nightmarish world of thwarted expectations, unending shakedowns, and the whims of an indifferent government. With the clock ticking and an unbearable pressure exposing the cracks in their marriage, Daniel and Natalia must navigate a cold and brutal bureaucracy in order to survive as a couple, and hopefully make it out as a family. Writer (along with Alejo Flah) and director Daniela Fejerman (My Mother Likes Women) crafts this tense, absorbing emotional roller-coaster rooted in her own personal experience threading through the maze of international adoption. Bolstered with a terrific turn by Larissa Kalpokaite as a bureaucrat whose intentions are never clear, Awaiting is at once a searing family drama and a truly unforgettable thriller. (Seattle International Film Festival)