Pietà

Sin and Redemption

Taking a short-cut home from work, high-schooler Billie Simms is raped. Not only does the incident cause an unwanted pregnancy that damages her college expectations, but it also outrages her smugly religious father who pressures her to give up the baby.

The Butterfly Lifts the Cat Up

David Storm learned 10 years ago that he has MS. For this reason and without telling her he leaves his girlfriend, Linda. Now he lives alone and only his brother, Anton, has much contact with him.

Supernova

Meis is fifteen, lives in the back of beyond and aspires to a grand and stirring life, but all that happens is the passing of the time, waiting for the next car to run into the front of the house.

Moral

The episodically connected lives of four college friends unfold throughout the incipient martial law years, as they struggle to define their sexual and professional desires and how best to attain them.

The Pinkie

Since they were both five, Ryosuke has been stalked by Momoko - the ugliest girl in the village. Her love for Ryosuke is so boundless that she has her face surgically altered to suit his taste - but still he wants nothing to do with her. Ryosuke goes in for fleeting romance - for example, with the girlfriend of a gangster boss. But when he finds out about their affair, he has Ryosuke's little finger hacked off. Magically, the finger falls into Momoko's hands, and she uses it to clone Ryosuke, so she can finally have him (or almost him) for herself. And this is just the first five minutes of Lisa Takeba's short-but-powerful feature debut. Just like in her previous short films, the director - who cut her teeth in the advertising world and as the writer of a video game - throws a lot of genres and techniques into the mix: from science fiction to gangster films, from hospital eroticism to animation. Hectic and absurd, but with its heart in the right place. © IFFR

The Great Invisible

Penetrating the oil industry's secretive world, The Great Invisible examines the Deepwater Horizon disaster through the eyes of oil executives, explosion survivors and Gulf Coast residents who were left to pick up the pieces when the world moved on.

10,000 Saints

A sweeping multigenerational story set against the backdrop of the raw, roaring New York City of the late 1980s; adoption, teen pregnancy, drugs, hardcore punk rock, the unbridled optimism and reckless stupidity of the young—and old—are all major elements in this heart-aching tale of the son of diehard hippies and his strange odyssey through the extremes of late 20th century youth culture.

The Promise

Lisa's husband, Bill, abuses her. With her sister's encouragement, she takes their three kids and leaves her husband. Bill keeps interfering with Lisa's attempts at a new life. She gets an order of protection against him, but the police can't do anything else to help her. One night Bill breaks into Lisa's apartment and shoots her. As she dies in the hospital, Lisa asks her sister to promise to take care of her three children. The sister takes the kids into her home, but Bill is still on the loose, an ever present threat.

On Suffocation

A dialogue-free film about an execution described in two scenes.

Someone You Love

Someone You Love is a story about world famous singer-songwriter Thomas Jacob who lives in Los Angeles. He is a successful man with a lot of burned bridges. After years abroad Thomas travels back to Denmark to record a new album. There his estranged daughter Julie suddenly turns up with his 11-year-old grandson, Noa. Soon, Thomas is forced to take care of the boy. Against all odds the two of them slowly begin to connect through music. But disaster strikes, forcing Thomas to realize he has to make a choice that will change his life forever.

A Second Chance

Detectives and best friends Andreas and Simon lead vastly different lives; Andreas has settled down with his beautiful wife and son; while Simon, recently divorced, spends most of his waking hours getting drunk at the local strip club. But all that changes when the two of them are called out to a domestic dispute between a junkie couple, caught in a vicious cycle of violence and drugs. It all looks very routine – until Andreas finds the couple's infant son, crying in a closet. The usually collected policeman finds himself confronted with his own powerlessness and is shaken to his core. As Andreas slowly loses his grip on justice, it suddenly becomes up to the unruly Simon to restore the balance between right and wrong.

American Joyride

A down on their luck couple from South Georgia go on the run to get the money to repay a gambling debt, and decide to film their escapade, in hopes of selling their 'reality movie' to Hollywood for a quick buck. However, the danger becomes very real when their misguided foray into drug dealing does not go as planned, and they quickly find out they are in over their heads.

40 Days of Silence

This is a passage between two faces, each the same, yet different. Bibicha’s face first appears in the dark, her eyes open and expression impassive, only her heavy breathing betraying the strain she feels. She will withstand the strain and take the vow of silence, retreating to her grandmother’s house for the 40 days to pass. The house and the landscape outside at least offer Bibicha certain sensory distractions: the taste of honey, the texture of a wall, an eye-catching bedspread, the view out over a sea of cloud, water fizzling on the stove. But it is not just her under strain, as her aunt’s frantic text messaging, her grandmother’s rueful acknowledgement of the stories of marital strife on the radio and her little cousin’s illegitimate status bear witness to. Four generations of women in the complete absence of men, yet all marked by their presence, the similarity of their fates blurring together different times and customs.

Opportunus

In House

Pilar shares his quiet home in the country of Peru with Consuelo, Milagro and Tuna. The daily routine of this house is interrupted by a call from his daughter who will visit her along with her ​​granddaughter and newborn great granddaughter. For one night these three generations of mothers have to live under the same roof.

A Darkness Swallowed

“A Darkness Swallowed opens on a pair of faded photographs showing an old dented car, one with a child standing beside it and the other without. Speaking in voice-over, Bromberg references a past event, one that will forever haunt her although it occurred before her birth. The film then sinks downward, dipping below the surface of the rational world to mine the seemingly infinite layers of the past stored within the fleshy entrails, chalky bones, sinewy spider webs and gnarled ligaments of both the body and the Earth. Noises – of clanging metal, bells, heartbeats and jazz music, to name only a few – combine to create a dense sound environment, a seemingly immense, three-dimensional space for contemplation." – Holly Willis, L.A . Weekly

O'er the Land

A meditation on freedom and technological approaches to manifest destiny.

Tryouts

After being rejected from cheerleading tryouts because of her headscarf, Nayla, a teenage Muslim American girl, will have to find her own way to follow her dream without compromising her beliefs.

Girltrash: All Night Long

The story of five girls and one epic night. The girls will find love, lust, girl-fights, rock and roll, and a whole lot of stoned sorority girls.