Social & External
The people behind it
Jessica A. Olvera
After accidentally shooting a stranger in the woods, a drug-addled veteran is forced to confront the problems in his life as he attempts to flee town. He’s cashed-in too many favors already and is stalled at every turn as his life begins to violently intersect with Lola - a recently recovered addict who was in the woods that morning and knows what he did.
A man inherits his estranged father’s prized possession — a derelict porno theatre — in Kire Paputts’ second feature, about gentrification and finding love and compassion in unlikely places.
When an old friend brings filmmaker Enrique Goded a semi-autobiographical script chronicling their adolescence, Enrique is forced to relive his youth spent at a Catholic boarding school. Weaving through past and present, the script follows a transvestite performer who reconnects with a grade school sweetheart. Spurred on by this chance encounter, the character reflects on her childhood sexual victimization and the trauma of closeting her sexual orientation.
At an elite, old-fashioned boarding school in New England, a passionate English teacher inspires his students to rebel against convention and seize the potential of every day, courting the disdain of the stern headmaster.
"Taniel" looks at the last months of poet Taniel Varoujan's life, who was murdered in the Armenian Genocide of 1915. The film's narrative is heard in poetry and seen through Film Noir images.
19 year old Isaiah Wright lives for basketball and video games. A year out of high school, he has no job, no plans, and no idea how to be a man. At odds with his single mother Cynthia, Isaiah is given an ultimatum – to step up or move out. Feeling the pull from his friends and the push from his mom, Isaiah is hired by Moore Fitness, unaware of how the owner will personally impact his life. With the prayers of his mother and unexpected guidance from his new mentor, Isaiah is forced to deal with his past, sacrifice his selfishness and discover how God might have a greater purpose for his life.
A short student film about life through the eyes of an assassin stalking his prey, using the poem The Tyger by William Blake.
70-something Melanie invites her once young and idealistic hippie friends for a long-overdue reunion where everyone is told they have inherited the cabin where they once lived together in a commune fifty years earlier.
A student in her final year of high school battles a silent illness, which she hides from her mother, as she continues to be quietly overwhelmed by the pressures of family, peers and society.
A man who is fascinated with patterns and symbols discovers his one true path to enlightenment.
The residents of Ho Chi Minh City face modernization amid widespread poverty. A retired American Marine arrives on a search for his daughter, whom he abandoned at the end of the Vietnam War. Elsewhere, a cyclo driver falls for a troubled prostitute and schemes to raise money so he can spend time with her. Additionally, a young women begins harvesting lotuses for a writer suffering from leprosy, and a child trinket seller loses his traveling case.
After being dumped by her lover, Pepa finds her life and the lives of those around her spiraling out of control in a deliciously chaotic series of events.
Eager to escape a life of confinement in the refugee camps of Western Sahara in Algeria, Mariam flees into the desert to join the army, naively believing herself to be the Joan of Arc who will save her country from occupation.
Care worker Shoo, who is haunted by a personal tragedy, is sent to a remote village to care for an agoraphobic woman, who fears both her neighbours and the Na Sídhe – sinister folkloric entities she believes abducted her decades before.
Book one in the Phoenixes Ashes Series
In Tasmania’s wilds, engineers Misha & Myaree face eerie disturbances, unraveling their mission. Misha’s mind frays; Myaree hears ancestral echoes of a brutal past. Reality & supernatural blur, threatening survival in a land where history’s scars whisper.
A prom queen-to-be must break free from her small town’s ominous legacy of prom queens who die after their crowning.
A reluctant leader heads up a team of seven Christians intent on smuggling Bibles to underground churches in a future America where the Bible is illegal and danger is around every corner.
About the life and work of the poet Sergei Yesenin, his connection with his native country, its people and nature. Childhood, love, painful searches for his place in the new, revolutionary Russia — everything found a place in Yesenin's lyrics. Frames illustrating Yesenin's poetry and poems are side by side in the film with episodes of the poet's biography: the film reflects the days of his stay in America, World War I, revolution and village round dances, a daring uncle, a wise mother...
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.
Tells the parallel stories of nine-year-old Carlitos and his mother, Rosario. In the hopes of providing a better life for her son, Rosario works illegally in the U.S. while her mother cares for Carlitos back in Mexico.
Years after her son's suicide, a woman longs to confront both the past and a friend of his who took his business idea.
More interested in partying and flirting with young musicians than work, veteran rock journalist Ellie Klug has one last chance to prove her value to her magazine’s editor: a no-stone-unturned search to discover what really happened to long lost rock god, Matt Smith, who also happens to be her ex-boyfriend. Teaming up with an eccentric amateur documentary filmmaker, Ellie hits the road in search of answers.
A psychotherapist helps a law student cope with schizophrenia in one of five interconnected tales dealing with mental illness.
Feeling awkward and isolated, an imaginative and strong-willed teenage girl runs away from home with an older punk rock drifter.
Young teen girl Xiu Xiu is sent away to a remote corner of the Sichuan steppes for manual labor in 1975 (sending young people to there was a part of Cultural Revolution in China). A year later, she agrees to go to even more remote spot with a Tibetan saddle tramp Lao Jin to learn horse herding.
In order to be reinstated to the bar and recover custody of her daughter, a hotshot lawyer, now in recovery and on probation, must take on the appeal of a woman wrongfully convicted of murder.
In a suburban landscape, the lives of several families interlace with loss, despair and personal crisis. Esther Gold has lost focus on all but caring for her comatose son, Paul, and neglects her daughter and husband. Lawyer Jim Train is devoted to his career, not his family. Helen Christianson wants to find a new spark in life, while Annette Jennings tries to rebuild hers.
A film about existence from the perspective of 20 nameless black females. Each of the women portray one of the characters represented in the collection of twenty poems, revealing different issues that impact women in general and women of color in particular.
Jackie Justice is a mixed martial arts fighter who leaves the sport in disgrace. Down on her luck and simmering with rage and regret years after the fight, she's coaxed into a brutal underground fight by her manager and boyfriend Desi and grabs the attention of a fight league promoter who promises Jackie a life back in the Octagon. But the road to redemption becomes unexpectedly personal when Manny - the son she gave up as an infant - shows up at her doorstep. A triumphant story of a fighter who reclaims her power, in and out of the ring, when everyone has counted her out
Agnes and her two sisters struggle through a day in a home overrun by gamblers, thieves, and johns.
Suffering from a severe case of depression, toy company CEO Walter Black begins using a beaver hand puppet to help him open up to his family. With his father seemingly going insane, adolescent son Porter pushes for his parents to get a divorce.
A woman embarks on a journey alone across the United States after fleeing from her violent husband.
Thomas Montgomery, a married father of two young daughters, gets seduced by the world of online gambling and chat rooms where a virtual romance and sexual obsession ultimately leads to the murder of an innocent man.
A drama set in the American South, where a precocious, troubled girl finds a safe haven in the music and movement of Elvis Presley.
A mother and her teenage daughter must confront Death when it arrives in the form of an astonishing talking bird.
When lapsed Jew and former cardiologist Harry suddenly decides to spend his retirement as a pig farmer in Nazareth, Israel, the move deeply shocks his family and his new neighbours. Back in New York, Harry’s ex-wife Monica is trying to manage the lives of their adult children, Annabelle and David, as well as her own.
Ana and her two best friends, Maria and Paula, navigate life in their oppressive countryside village. Whilst their families struggle in the poppy fields harvesting opium, the girls try to grow alongside the creeping terror of their cartel oppressors.
When seventeen-year-old Hannah stumbles upon a website about Thinspiration--an online community devoted to anorexia as a life choice--she becomes an obsessive follower of the site founder, ButterflyAna. By the time Hannah's family realizes what is happening and get Hannah the help she needs, the disease has fully taken hold and Hannah is refusing to eat. Will this family be able to exorcise the demon of anorexia from their lives?
