Social & External
The people behind it
方以炘
导演
吴鲁阳
Shirley Yeung Sze-Kei
Hitsujido Honpo, an established Japanese-style sweets company known for its traditional flavours and reliability, has maintained a modest popularity. To win a new segment of customers, it has embarked on new business development. The leader of this team of five young employees is 28-year old Kudo Mayuko (Takahata Mitsuki). Mayuko was headhunted by the current CEO Okazaki Kengo (Maruyama Tomomi), for her achievements in her previous job. However, she struggles with the difficulty of new business development and pressures within the company. One day, a “new” 68-year-old employee Niimoto Kazuo (Kusakari Masao) is assigned to be Mayuko’s subordinate all of a sudden. She is dumbfounded to learn that he is 40 years her senior and even feels anger. Mayuko is confronted with the question of whether he should do the old job he was proud of? Or a new job as a brand new employee, and assumes the role of mentor.
The film tells a story about an alienated poet in a small town and his relationship with three women.
Every Music Theory class, Mark and Boris playfully taunt each other in the back row. One day, during a listening session of Tchaikovsky's "Swan Lake," the teenagers' customary teasing unveils a deeper truth about their feelings for one another.
A poor couple wants to buy a pearl necklace with their own money.
Winter, Friday. A group of young university students leave for a weekend in São João da Cruz to celebrate their promotion to the prestigious Academic Life Association (AVA). The young people's fun turns to terror when, at night, on Praia da Cruz beach, a hazing ritual is taken to the extreme.
Anna and her rebellious daughter Lena live on the outskirts of Riga. Lena skips school and falls into dangerous circles. When her best friend dies of an overdose and Lena narrowly survives, they have to flee abroad to escape the police. They find refuge with Anna's cousin in Switzerland. But Lena's resistance jeopardises their new start.
A group of 4 teenagers go camping in an isolated forest. Soon, strange events and increasingly disturbing behavior jeopardize their stay. As one after another disappears or descends into paranoia, they realize that the threat may be closer than they imagined...
Throughout the months of summer, an apparition will appear to mourn the sun and roam the earth seeking the last of her warmth. It's his eternal journey and never ending elegy of the sun.
A self-made man divorces his wife who becomes a typist and warns him his second wife may leave him too.
A Cockney fishmonger's daughter weds a bart who loses his all on a trotting race.
A less than ideal arrangement turns unexpectedly healing when a working, single mother is forced to call her absent father for a last minute babysitting request.
Louise has been a widow for years and teaches literature in a high school. She divides all her time between books and her son, Martin, who still lives with her. During a family lunch, she meets Martin's best friend, Stanislas, a young painter of Russian origin, who is studying at the Beaux-Arts and whose talent promises a brilliant career. Louise is still finding Stanislas very attractive and already the young man is madly in love with her. All it takes is a little something to bring the two lovers together in the same passionate embrace. Informed by his mother, Martin pretends to be delighted by this unexpected rapprochement between the two beings he loves the most. His rage bursts, however, during the family meeting that Louise has organized to make her affair with Stanislas official.
When a progressive, midwestern pastor's life is threatened by extremists, she must answer to a gang of interrogating FBI Agents as she reels from the trauma of terrorism. "The Pulpit: Prelude" is about small town politics and the challenges faced by progressive leadership. The film sheds light on the violence and prejudice in a variety of faith communities and the challenges of seeking help from institutions like law enforcement. Inspired by a True Story, this short film is a prelude to a feature-length Thriller of the same name. "THE PULPIT" will return.
The Russian Descendant of the Snow Leopard is based on a famous Kirghizian folktale. Apparently the Kirghizian folks had plenty of time to tell this story: to print a full synopsis would result in a novelette. Essentially, the story involves a proud group of highland hunters called the Snow Leopards, who in order to survive a brutal winter must request help from the Lowland people. The price for this assistance is the hand of the Snow Leopard's daughter, who is promised in marriage to a wealthy Lowland trader. During the Springtime wedding celebration, the trader becomes fascinated by a stranger who wins all the athletic contests. This "male" contestant turns out to be a woman, who has arrived to seek freedom for her imprisoned husband. The subsequent romance between the trader and the beautiful stranger results in disaster and bloodshed for both the Snow Leopards and the Lowlanders.
The culturally isolated, nomadic Seburi people of western Japan are the subject of this tragedy about a few of the community's members who especially experience difficulties as modern Japan encroaches on their world. The setting is World War II, and conflicts have already arisen when the military police come to take Seburi men away into the army. Still following their own customs that can be harsh at times, and are particularly cruel to women (women must give birth alone and unaided, a woman's adultery is punished by burying her up to her neck in the earth and then leaving her for days), the Seburi are mainly treated with fear and animosity by the non-Seburi townspeople of the region. Along with the hardships arising from cultural clashes, nature's own vagaries present other challenges to the Seburi -- who still lived in tents until the 1950s. Winter avalanches and snowstorms cause as much havoc as the tensions engendered by the slow encroachment of the modern world.
The seeming hopelessness of combatting an all-powerful government that will not tolerate political dissension is the focus of this excellent historical drama set in the mid-19th century in Hungary. In the opening scenes, Hungary has just lost its bid for independence from Austria and a Magyar officer, unable to bear the tragedy of defeat and what it means, says an affectionate good-bye to his beloved horse and then shoots the animal and himself. Two years later, Ferenc (Gyorgy Cserhalmi) is trying to eke out a living for his wife and her family -- and at the same time avoid any hint of sympathy for Hungarian independence because the Secret Police are everywhere. Just as life seems to be going well, Ferenc's former commanding officer (Lajos Oze) arrives and begins discussing revolution again -- a futile pursuit at this point in time. The next day, Ferenc is thrown into an insane asylum and everyone else is arrested as well.
This somewhat superficial historical drama is about the 1525 Peasants' War in Germany when the lower classes rebelled against oppressive conditions imposed by the clergy and nobility and then committed many acts (including atrocities) that did not morally set them far apart from the people they were fighting. It was a time of upheaval: Martin Luther (1483-1556) had broken away from the Catholic Church, calling for reform, and Anabaptists in Germany, like Thomas Munzer fought on the side of the peasants (opposed by Luther). This complex age and its political and religious turmoil are summed up in a story about an attack on a small monastery whose monks used a forged document to confiscate some land from the peasants. When their wrong-doing is revealed by the monk who forged the document in the first place, the peasants attack.
David Trueman is a young doctor who dreams of going to South America to practice medicine among the disenfranchised. Arriving in Bolivia, he encounters enough corruption and oppression to drive him away from his dreams and into the drug scene. Disillusioned and escaping to the U.S., he meets Mary, a young heroin addict who shares his angst. As the two commiserate, their bleak outlook lightens, promising a glimmer of hope for the both of them.
A pair of twin brothers from East L.A. choose to live their lives differently and end up on opposite sides of the law.
In the Chinese town of Fuyang, four brothers go about their day-to-day lives, their destinies shaped by love and challenges.
In New York City, a young girl is caught in the middle of her parents' bitter custody battle.
When Tragedy Strikes three Families, their Destiny forces them on a coverging path and mercy as the challenges of their fate could also resurrect their beliefs
West Philadelphia basketball star Sergio Taylor deals with the pressures of fame while his brother and sister have their own issues with ambition.
A jazz musician seeks refuge from a lynch mob on a remote island, where he meets a hostile game warden and the young object of his attentions.
Rory is an ambitious entrepreneur who brings his American wife and kids to his native country, England, to explore new business opportunities. After abandoning the sanctuary of their safe American suburban surroundings, the family is plunged into the despair of an archaic '80s Britain and their unaffordable new life in an English manor house threatens to destroy the family.
An uninterrupted rehearsal of Chekhov's 'Uncle Vanya' plays out by a company of actors. The setting: their run-down theater with an unusable stage and crumbling ceiling. The play is shown act by act with the briefest of breaks to move props or for refreshments. The lack of costumes, real props and scenery is soon forgotten.
While serving life in prison, a young man looks back at the people, the circumstances and the system that set him on the path toward his crime.
South America, 1960. A lonely and grumpy Holocaust survivor convinces himself that his new neighbor is none other than Adolf Hitler. Not being taken seriously, he starts an independent investigation to prove his claim, but when the evidence still appears to be inconclusive, Polsky is forced to engage in a relationship with the enemy in order to obtain irrefutable proof.
Dr. Alan Stone breaks new ground for treatment of the mentally ill through an experiment on three paranoid schizophrenic patients who believe they are Jesus Christ.
Michael is a 24-year-old who has cerebral palsy and long-term resident of the Carrigmore Residential Home for the Disabled, run by the formidable Eileen. His life is transformed when the maverick Rory O'Shea moves in.
American retired Judge Randall Nemes and his hired gun, Gaspar, track down a con man posing as a priest in a small Colombian town only to be thrown off-course by a scrappy 16-year-old girl intent on reuniting with her sister in the United States.
Years after her boyfriend left her for the big city and promised to bring her there after he’s settled down, a Chinese woman sets out on a journey to be reunited with him.
Evangelist Carlton Pearson is ostracized by his church for preaching that there is no Hell.
A sweeping drama set in the chaotic aftermath of the US invasion of Iraq, where the life of top UN diplomat Brazilian Sérgio Vieira de Mello hangs in the balance during the most treacherous mission of his career.
Gentle and broken, a homeless man fights others on video for money but soon finds comfort in an unlikely friend and the lost diary of a young girl.
The relationship of a couple who meet by chance in New York City is put to the test when they encounter a life or death circumstance.
Mahree Bok lives on a farm in South Africa. Her father is a policeman who cannot hide his joy when activist Steve Biko is caught by the South African authorities. Piper Dellums is the daughter of a US congressman from California and who lives in a nice home in Washington DC. When Mahree is chosen to spend a semester at the Dellums' house, she doesn't expect that her host family would be black. Nor do her hosts suspect that she is not a black South African.
Clara and her two sons escape from her abusive husband with little more than their car and plan to start over in New York. After the car towed away, the family meets Alice, who gets them into an emergency shelter. While stealing food at a Russian restaurant called ‘Winter Palace’, Clara meets Marc, who has been given the chance to help the old eatery regain its former glory. The ‘Winter Palace’ soon becomes a place of unexpected encounters between people who are all undergoing some sort of crisis and whom fate has now brought together.
