Nocturnal Animals

Whisper of the Heart

Shizuku lives a simple life, dominated by her love for stories and writing. One day she notices that all the library books she has have been previously checked out by the same person: "Seiji Amasawa."

Drifting

A lost and lonely artist drowns in a collection of her dreams in search of her estranged sister.

Lift Off

Past/present story of a young man who lives in a fantasy world of aeronautics to escape a more challenging reality.

A Winter to Remember

When we first meet Lucia she is withdrawn and isolated from her friends and family, dealing with anxiety attacks and a legion of secrets. But when she meets bright and carefree Olivia, Lucia seizes the opportunity to break out of her shell and live the life she was afraid to admit she wanted.

Kinanthi

Still Breathing

Two lost souls: she a con-artist in L.A.; he a puppeteer in San Antonio have the same dream linking each with the other. He travels to L.A. to find this woman he has become obsessed with. She resists, afraid of his kooky ideas until she travels with him to San Antonio and meets his wise grandmother. Story of two disparate people linked by "fate" gets increasingly interesting as it rolls along.

Caged Heat

A young woman is convicted on drug offenses and sent to a women's penitentiary run by a repressed and oppressive female warden. When the prison's sadistic doctor begins conducting illegal "therapeutic" experiments on the inmates, the ladies plot their revenge.

Beautiful Dark

After an unspeakable tragedy, Theo struggles to reconcile with the loss of his youngest daughter. Overwhelmed by a series of vivid dreams, he must try to accept her death if he is to become the loving father and husband he once was.

This Woman Is Not a Car

A depressed wife and mother whose reality is starting to fracture into fantasy, drives her children to the beach. On the return journey she stops at a service station to fill up with petrol. Four mechanics eye her off and, as one of them walks towards her car, a full-blown erotic fantasy develops.

Gólyakalifa

A baron has recurring nightmares of being a dock worker on the run.

Introduction to Another Life

A writer with a writer's block is tormented by his lack of inspiration. His girlfriend shows up and talks to him about his writing and her father. After she leaves, her father, an ex officer of the military and ex communist party member, rings the doorbell. After a tense introduction, the father starts to retell his life in order to try to explain why he did things that his daughter hates him for. It is not clear if writer's girlfriend and her father are part of writer's fiction, memories or reality.

Paperhouse

A young girl lost in the loneliness and boredom of reality finds solace in an ill boy, whom she can visit in a surreal dream world that she drew in her school composition book.

From the Life of the Marionettes

An account of the events before and after a murder committed by a disturbed businessman in a strained marriage, and what led him to perform such a shocking act.

The Double Hour

A chambermaid and a former cop meet at a speed dating event and a romance develops. But during a romantic getaway things suddenly take a turn for the worse when her mysterious past is revealed.

Pink Narcissus

An outrageous erotic poem focusing on the daydreams of a beautiful boy prostitute who, from the seclusion of his ultra-kitsch apartment, conceives a series of interlinked narcissistic fantasies populated by matadors, dancing boys, slaves, and leather-clad bikers.

Long Live Death

At the end of the Spanish civil war, Fando, a boy of about ten, tries to make sense of war and his father's arrest. His mother is religious, sympathetic to the Fascists; his father is accused of being a Red. Fando discovers that his mother may have aided in his father's arrest. Sometimes we witness Fando imagining explanations for what's going on; sometimes we see him at play, alone or with his friend Thérèse. Oedipal fantasies and a lad's natural curiosity about sex and death mix with his search for his mother's nature and his father's fate. Will Fando survive the search?

The Eve

Simon is an eight-year-old boy who seems to have everything from life. He’s a handsome child, he’s rich yet unhappy. He senses that there’s something wrong with his life and this leads him to wander off thanks to his fervid imagination. His greatest wish is to leave the materialistic world behind since he isn’t fond of it. That’s why the only present he wants for Christmas is for Santa Claus to take him away to live in his fairyland toy factory. At the same time, a secret that his family has been keeping for a long time suddenly comes to the surface and it is feared that the worst might happen soon. The expectation for the stroke of midnight on the night before Christmas is transformed into reality for everyone on the eve of something truly different. Something terrible that might happen.

AVE MARA. Ignosce mihi et ama.

Mara—the spirit of the night, the weaver of darkened dreams—pressed upon my chest as sleep held me captive. My memory. In the haze of a dream, I saw those I loved, their faces bathed in an otherworldly glow. The nightmare was not the shadows nor the fear they whispered, but the cruel certainty of waking—of losing them to the morning light

Blind Wives

A woman with a taste for expensive clothing has four nightmares. An impoverished disabled girl sells her hair, a trapper finds he has an unfaithful wife, the wife of a dying weaver finds she cannot work the loom, and a model harassed by her boss is driven to murder.