Lessons

Land of empty promises

The Edge of Heaven

The lives of six German-Turkish immigrants are drawn together by circumstance: An old man and a prostitute forging a partnership, a young scholar reconciling his past, two young women falling in love, and a mother putting the shattered pieces of her life back together.

Secret Sunshine

Shin-ae moves to her recently late husband’s hometown. Despite her efforts to settle in this unfamiliar and too-normal place, she finds that she can’t fit in. After a sudden tragedy, Shin-ae turns to Christianity to relieve her pain, but when even this is not permitted, she wages a war against God.

Stripper

When 13-year-old Cricket walks past the local strip club with his friends, nothing can prepare him for who they see walking into work: his mom. With rumors starting to spread, Cricket must take matters into his own hands to clear his mom's name and prove that she isn't a stripper.

The Marvelous Misadventures of the Stone Lady

Tired of being a banal architectural ornamental, a sculpture runs from the Louvre to confront real life on the streets of Paris.

Je te tiens

It is the road trip of a mother and her daughter through strange worlds. The daughter wants to kill herself and the mother will try to talk her out of it.

Olla

After answering an ad on a dating website for Eastern European women, Olla leaves Ukraine and heads to French suburbia to move in with Pierre, who lives with his elderly mother. However, the suburbia cannot temper her desires, and nothing goes as expected.

Closure

After a big break up from a codependent relationship, Hayley goes through depression feeling like she's going to die alone. After being invited to a party by one of her friends, she has to decide if she can live the rest of her life without closure.

Tainted Love

A former couple are forced to work together one last time. As sparks start to reignite, their mission turns into a deadly reckoning with the past.

Traffic

An exploration of the United States of America's war on drugs from multiple perspectives. For the new head of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, the war becomes personal when he discovers his well-educated daughter is abusing cocaine within their comfortable suburban home. In Mexico, a flawed, but noble policeman agrees to testify against a powerful general in league with a cartel, and in San Diego, a drug kingpin's sheltered trophy wife must learn her husband's ruthless business after he is arrested, endangering her luxurious lifestyle.

A Christmas Carol

Miser Ebenezer Scrooge is awakened on Christmas Eve by spirits who reveal to him his own miserable existence, what opportunities he wasted in his youth, his current cruelties, and the dire fate that awaits him if he does not change his ways. Scrooge is faced with his own story of growing bitterness and meanness, and must decide what his own future will hold: death or redemption.

Sinner

In a dystopian future where the world has devolved into a pre-industrial state, the Purists rule supreme. The Purists blame technology for all the world’s past ills, and have deemed it to be inherently sinful. A handful of Companions, human-like artificial intelligence, have managed to make it through the apocalypse. They survive the only way they can –by hiding in plain sight.

Floating Melon

A journey of passion, a bitter night. Xiao Cheng ask for help to resolve a big trouble, the guy with whom he spend the afternoon is dead on his bed from the effect of a drug, not something the Chinese authorities look kindly on.

The Red Card

Sam, an outsider in her high school, is finally invited to the most secretive party of the year, but when the party spirals out of control, Sam is confronted by a disturbing side of her date and her peers that she never expected.

Frantic Attempts

Matthias is going on a weekend course of self-discovery called “My Value on Earth,” which was an expensive gift from his girlfriend. The course is supposed to help him deal with his chronic inability to finish things that he’s started. But before Matthias leaves, his girlfriend springs a surprise on him: he’s going to be a father. And so he hopes to use the weekend, which he has no real desire to go on, to answer new and pressing questions. The “alternative” therapist, however, doesn’t inspire much trust. The tragicomedy Frantic Attempts takes aim at the field of personal development, in particular, dubious therapists who offer quick fixes. After all, what if we should answer our existential questions ourselves instead of trying to find answers from others?

Americano

On the eve of deportation, a refugee hacker fights for a chance at the American dream after he is betrayed by a politician using him to sway public opinion.