Adapted from the critically acclaimed Off-Broadway show by actor-writer Robert Galinsky, The Bench is an exploration of the often-unheard stories of people living on the streets of Los Angeles.
Social & External
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In Seattle, a young immigrant faces love, loyalty, and identity dilemmas. A weekend retreat meant for introspection turns eerie, forcing her to address her future against a backdrop of trauma and cultural dislocation.
Young and innocent maid Elina is persuaded into forgetting her childhood sweetheart Uolevi, and to marry Klaus Kurki, a local nobleman with money and influence. An ideal match according to her family and the greedy parish priest, but all is not as it seems: Kurki is a vicious man, tormented by the spirit of his last wife.
Life for a single mom in Los Angeles takes an unexpected turn when she allows three young guys to move in with her.
County Durham, England, 1984. The miners' strike has started and the police have started coming up from Bethnal Green, starting a class war with the lower classes suffering. Caught in the middle of the conflict is 11-year old Billy Elliot, who, after leaving his boxing club for the day, stumbles upon a ballet class and finds out that he's naturally talented. He practices with his teacher Mrs. Wilkinson for an upcoming audition in Newcastle-upon Tyne for the royal Ballet school in London.
Derek Vineyard is paroled after serving 3 years in prison for killing two African-American men. Through his brother, Danny Vineyard's narration, we learn that before going to prison, Derek was a skinhead and the leader of a violent white supremacist gang that committed acts of racial crime throughout L.A. and his actions greatly influenced Danny. Reformed and fresh out of prison, Derek severs contact with the gang and becomes determined to keep Danny from going down the same violent path as he did.
London, 1929. Frank Webber, a very busy Scotland Yard detective, seems to be more interested in his work than in Alice White, his girlfriend. Feeling herself ignored, Alice agrees to go out with an elegant and well-mannered artist who invites her to visit his fancy apartment.
A transgender woman takes an unexpected journey when she learns that she had a son, now a teenage runaway hustling on the streets of New York.
Held in an L.A. interrogation room, Verbal Kint attempts to convince the feds that a mythic crime lord, Keyser Soze, not only exists, but was also responsible for drawing him and his four partners into a multi-million dollar heist that ended with an explosion in San Pedro harbor – leaving few survivors. Verbal lures his interrogators with an incredible story of the crime lord's almost supernatural prowess.
After two American prisoners are killed by guards in the act of escaping from a German POW camp in World War II, barracks black marketeer J.J. Sefton is suspected of being an informer.
A tormented jazz musician finds himself lost in an enigmatic story involving murder, surveillance, gangsters, doppelgängers, and an impossible transformation inside a prison cell.
Many loosely connected characters cross paths in this film, based on the stories of Raymond Carver. Waitress Doreen Piggot accidentally runs into a boy with her car. Soon after walking away, the child lapses into a coma. While at the hospital, the boy's grandfather tells his son, Howard, about his past affairs. Meanwhile, a baker starts harassing the family when they fail to pick up the boy's birthday cake.
A former Secret Service agent grudgingly takes an assignment to protect a pop idol who's threatened by a crazed fan. At first, the safety-obsessed bodyguard and the self-indulgent diva totally clash. But before long, all that tension sparks fireworks of another sort, and the love-averse tough guy is torn between duty and romance.
The story of three women searching for more potent, meaningful lives. Each is alive at a different time and place, all are linked by their yearnings and their fears. Their stories intertwine, and finally come together in a surprising, transcendent moment of shared recognition.
A man wanders out of the desert not knowing who he is. His brother finds him, and helps to pull his memory back of the life he led before he walked out on his family and disappeared four years earlier.
A hack screenwriter writes a screenplay for a former silent film star who has faded into Hollywood obscurity.
Oliver doesn’t have a family so he steals one.
Imprisoned in the 1940s for the double murder of his wife and her lover, upstanding banker Andy Dufresne begins a new life at the Shawshank prison, where he puts his accounting skills to work for an amoral warden. During his long stretch in prison, Dufresne comes to be admired by the other inmates -- including an older prisoner named Red -- for his integrity and unquenchable sense of hope.
Disciplined Italian composer Antonio Salieri becomes consumed by jealousy and resentment towards the hedonistic and remarkably talented young Salzburger composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
In the last days of 1999, ex-cop turned street hustler Lenny Nero receives a disc which contains the memories of the murder of a prostitute. With the help of bodyguard Mace, he starts to investigate and is pulled deeper and deeper in a whirl of murder, blackmail and intrigue.
Ben Sanderson, an alcoholic Hollywood screenwriter who lost everything because of his drinking, arrives in Las Vegas to drink himself to death. There, he meets and forms an uneasy friendship and non-interference pact with prostitute Sera.
An optimistic, talented teen clings to a huge secret: she's homeless and living on a school bus. When tragedy strikes, can she learn to accept a helping hand?
An aimless young man who is scalping tickets, gambling and drinking, agrees to coach a Little League team from the Cabrini Green housing project in Chicago as a condition of getting a loan from a friend.
A woman watches time pass beside the suitcases of her ex-lover (who is supposed to come pick them up but never arrives) and a restless dog who doesn't understand that his master has abandoned him.
The evil Iago pretends to be friend of Othello in order to manipulate him to serve his own end in the film version of this Shakespeare classic.
A Los Angeles journalist befriends a homeless Juilliard-trained musician, while looking for a new article for the paper.
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.
A young woman lives a life filled with bad choices. At a young age she marries and has a child--with an abusive thief who quickly ends up in prison. Left alone, she takes up with the guy's mate, another thief, who seems to give her some happiness but who also ends up locked up. She then takes up with a series of seedy types who offer nothing but momentary pleasure--if that.
A wealthy couple from the Pacific Palisades discovers homeless young lovers have moved into their home.
A disillusioned, angry university graduate comes to terms with his grudge against middle-class life and values.
After Margaret, a divorcée living in Dublin, loses her teenage son, she develops an unorthodox relationship with Joe, a homeless youth. Their tentative trust is threatened by his involvement with a violent gang and the escalation of her ex-husband's grieving rage.
James and his three closest lifelong friends go on an ill-advised trip to the stunning coastal area of Barafundle Bay in West Wales. What follows is a touching and comical adventure dealing with friendship, heroism and love.
A couple lose their home and later discover the husband has been diagnosed with a terminal illness as they embark on a year long coastal trek.
In the 1970s, aimless teenager Greg Laurie searches for all the right things in all the wrong places until he meets Lonnie Frisbee, a charismatic hippie/street preacher. Together with local pastor Chuck Smith, they open the doors of a languishing church to an unexpected revival.
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.
A young man with a bright future suffers a near-fatal accident and recreates his new life with the help of an unlikely animal friend.
International art dealer Ron Hall must befriend a dangerous homeless man in order to save his struggling marriage to his wife, a woman whose dreams will lead all three of them on the journey of their lives.
After he refuses to disavow his faith, a devout Christian student must prove the existence of God or else his college philosophy professor will fail him.
Divine G, imprisoned at Sing Sing for a crime he didn't commit, finds purpose by acting in a theatre group alongside other incarcerated men in this story of resilience, humanity, and the transformative power of art.
A poor, struggling South Carolinian mother and daughter face painful choices with their resolve and pride. Bone, the eldest daughter, and Anney her tired mother, grow both closer and farther apart: Anney sees Glen as her last chance.
Italian immigrant Francesca Cabrini arrives in 1889 New York City and is greeted by disease, crime, and impoverished children. Cabrini sets off on a daring mission to convince the hostile mayor to secure housing and healthcare for society's most vulnerable. With broken English and poor health, Cabrini uses her entrepreneurial mind to build an empire of hope unlike anything the world had ever seen.