Bella Vista

In her first feature, Vera Brunner-Sung shows in calm, unembellished scenes a period in the life of a woman who gives English lessons to immigrants. She recently came to a small town in the Missoula valley in Montana, where she leads an isolated existence.
In order to escape her restricting surroundings, she explores the nearby landscape, where she finds more signs of alienation. All this time, she keeps up appearances for her classes, until finally it is her students who hand her the key to a new start.
The stunning landscape around Missoula, where the director also lives, plays an important role in this modest drama about a woman at a crossroads in her life, appropriately filmed from winter to spring. She has swapped her familiar environment for these remote parts and taken on temporary work that offers no security or permanence whatsoever. Like her students, she makes efforts to feel at home - but that requires a great desire to adapt and innovate. (International Film Festival Rotterdam)