"Do you ever wonder why you're here?"
Two friends, plagued by bouts of 'existentiality', begin to doubt their existence and spiral into trying to find what life is truly about.
Social & External
Unknown Role
Jakob arrives at the Institute Benjamenta (run by brother and sister Johannes and Lisa Benjamenta) to learn to become a servant. With seven other men, he studies under Lisa: absurd lessons of movement, drawing circles, and servility. He asks for a better room. No other students arrive and none leave for employment. Johannes is unhappy, imperious, and detached from the school's operation. Lisa is beautiful, at first tightly controlled, then on the verge of breakdown. There's a whiff of incest. Jakob is drawn to Lisa, and perhaps she to him. As winter sets in, she becomes catatonic. Things get worse; Johannes notes that all this has happened since Jakob came. Is there any cause and effect?
The stage emulates life and compresses it, setting free skills learned over lifetimes in brief but dazzling displays for the amusement and judgment of others. For the performers, it is the ultimate risk, and some will rise while others must fall. Nowhere is this truer than at the Seisho Music Academy, where music, dance and real weapons all come into play in the creation of the next great Star. Karen and Hikari’s destinies have been linked since a childhood promise, but their journeys here have taken very different paths. Now, after Hikari leaves, Karen must discover who she is without her opposite, while Hikari must rediscover her own course. Nor are they the only girls who must reassess and change if they want to achieve their dreams, as the dance, magic, and swordplay continue!
Antoine - a grieving loner - spends his days in a cafe on Place Clichy watching people. Every day, he sees a woman he calls Albertine get out of the subway and go to the movies. Today, he takes it upon himself to talk to her. Thus began Antoine's down-going.
"A socially anxious college student reluctantly heads to a party attempting to make new friends. Nande Walters directs “Who Are You Really?”, an experimental portrait of insecurity characterized by a raw, youthful energy. Anya walks into the room and immediately feels like everyone is judging her. Eventually she strikes up a conversation with a young man, but neither really knows what to say and it doesn’t go anywhere. After struggling through the awkward night, she’s surprised to learn that an extroverted friend didn’t fare much better. Walters is only 19 years old, one of the youngest we’ve ever featured on NoBudge, and her film is the work of an artist still learning her craft but she clearly knows the feeling she’s after and captures it with pops of style and a touching closing monologue." -Kentucker Audley
A recently divorced man and an emotionally devastated widow begin a love affair.
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?
An inspirational speaker becomes reinvigorated after meeting a lively woman who shakes up his mundane existence.
Peter and Katherine Witner are Southern California super-yuppies with great jobs but no center to their lives. When they both lose their jobs and begin marital infidelities, their solution is to start their own business together. In order to find meaning to their empty lives, they follow various New Age gurus and other such groups. Eventually, they hit rock bottom and have to make some hard decisions.
A serial killer and the detective who tracked him down find themselves in an unexpected stalemate.
Three couples and a lonely friend visit an isolated escape room in the middle of the desert run by a mysterious Ukrainian performance artist.
London, England. Mike, a fifteen-year-old boy, gets a job in a bathhouse, where he meets Susan, an attractive young woman who works there as an attendant.
A woman looking for her kidnapped son finds one of the men who took him.
Nick is desperate, holed up in a cheap hotel, suffering from an ulcer and convinced that a local mob boss wants him killed. Terrified, he calls Mikey, his friend since childhood and a fellow gangster. So begins a long night…
Two strangers visit the penthouse of a recently deceased lover, only to find themselves learning more about each other.
A musical odyssey about generational trauma and the retreat of humanity into itself.
Eleven-year-old Yekta lives in a crumbling island mansion with her strict aunts and ailing grandfather, yearning for her absent mother. As dreams and surreal visions shape her solitude, she sets out in search of a mythical seagull with a child’s head.
An Editor recounts the diaries of a failed film production as they attempt to construct a new narrative from the remaining footage.
Canceled short film.
Two young female friends are spending summer days together while one of them is going through personal changes. In the course of their everyday conversations, deeper layers of yearning are slowly revealed to us.
After having her identity stolen, a woman, and her son's pregnant girlfriend, bond together on a surreal journey as they attempt to track down the perpetrators.
A deeply religious black ex-con thwarts the suicide attempt of an asocial white college professor who tries to throw himself in front of an oncoming subway train, 'The Sunset Limited.' As the one attempts to connect on a rational, spiritual and emotional level, the other remains steadfast in his hard-earned despair. Locked in a philosophical debate, both passionately defend their personal credos and try to convert the other.
A theater director struggles with his work, and the women in his life, as he attempts to create a life-size replica of New York inside a warehouse as part of his new play.
A bureaucrat interviews five souls to decide which of them will be given a life on Earth. But he soon faces an existential challenge of his own.
In this extraordinary story of an ordinary man, Charles 'Chuck' Krantz experiences the wonder of love, the heartbreak of loss, and the multitudes contained in all of us.
Waking Life is about a young man in a persistent lucid dream-like state. The film follows its protagonist as he initially observes and later participates in philosophical discussions that weave together issues like reality, free will, our relationships with others, and the meaning of life.
94-year-old Eleanor Morgenstein tries to rebuild her life after the death of her best friend. As a result, she moves back to New York City after living in Florida for decades.
"Conversations with God" is the true story of Neale Donald Walsch that inspired and changed the lives of millions. The journey begins after he unexpectedly breaks his neck in a car accident and loses his job.
A college professor travels to New York City to attend a conference and finds a young couple living in his apartment.
Nothing is as it seems when a woman experiencing misgivings about her new boyfriend joins him on a road trip to meet his parents at their remote farm.
On the French island of Mont Saint-Michel, Jack, a failed presidential candidate, Tom, a poet and Sonia, a physicist, engage in an intellectual conversation about politics, philosophy and life over the course of a single day.
Mike, a rough sleeper in London, is trapped in a cycle of self-destruction as he attempts to turn his life around. Along the way, he encounters unexpected chances for a fresh start.
A man and woman are drawn together, entangled in the lifecycle of an ageless organism. Identity becomes an illusion as they struggle to assemble the loose fragments of wrecked lives.
In the near future, Cameron Turner is diagnosed with a terminal illness. Presented with an experimental solution to shield his wife and son from grief, he grapples with altering their fate in this thought-provoking exploration of love, loss, and sacrifice.
John LeTour is a recovering drug user who suffers insomnia and still deals to a high-end New York clientele, even though he’s trying to move on from the business. John’s professional midlife crisis becomes something more acute — and dangerous — when he re-encounters an old flame while a string of seemingly drug-related murders rocks the city.
Augusta, Georgia, United States, June 3, 2017. After running some errands, Reality Winner returns home, where she is approached by two men.
On a post-apocalyptic Earth, a robot, built to protect the life of his dying creator's beloved dog, learns about life, love, friendship, and what it means to be human.
A little girl is taken on a mind-bending tour of her distant future.
Boston is being terrorized by a series of seemingly random murders of women. Based on the true story, the film follows the investigators path through several leads before introducing the Strangler as a character. It is seen almost exclusively from the point of view of the investigators who have very few clues to build a case upon.
In a seemingly perfect community, without war, pain, suffering, differences or choice, a young boy is chosen to learn from an elderly man about the true pain and pleasure of the "real" world.
A true story of politics and art in the 1930s USA, centered around a leftist musical drama and attempts to stop its production.
