Mrs. Merritt Leslie, who was in France, had already watched several heavyweight works that were to be judged when she received the copied DVD.
These included a film from a Middle Eastern director about a protagonist who ends up in prison because of debt and intersects with his autistic son and girlfriend, a film about a father who keeps committing crimes in search of his missing son, and a film about a woman, trapped in a long journey in a train compartment with a miner from Eastern Europe due to an extramarital affair.
Most of these films focused on human nature, familial bonds, the self, and crime, possessing the style of artistic films.
Moreover, the majority of these films were not from Europe and America but rather from Middle Eastern, Eastern European, South American, and other non-developed countries. These directors painted their homelands with a mysterious hue; films saturated with primal wilderness and foreign landscapes dominated.
