In lieu of prison, Lyle, a violent adolescent, is placed in a juvenile mental institution where he encounters a group of equally troubled teens. This motley crew—abused, sexually confused, violent, and yet hanging on by their grit and anger—becomes Lyle's last lifeline as he fights to find meaning in a world that seems to defy understanding.
Erika Kohut, a sexually repressed piano teacher living with her domineering mother, meets a young man who starts romantically pursuing her.
A series of interrelated stories that bring Nena, Sean and Alan together. Alan, gentle and insecure, yearns for acceptance and connection. Vibrant yet guilt-ridden, Nena embarks on a quest for redemption and self-discovery as she battles with her inner demons while bereaved Sean lingers and struggles to conquer his depression.
When 13-year-old Tracy befriends Evie, the most popular girl in school, her life is turned upside down as Evie introduces her to a world of sex, drugs, and money. But it isn’t long before Tracy’s new lifestyle begins to take a heavy toll on her and her family.
Starting his new job as an instructor at a New England school for the deaf, James Leeds meets Sarah Norman, a young deaf woman who works at the school as a member of the custodial staff. In spite of Sarah's withdrawn emotional state, a romance slowly develops between the pair.
A man, alone in a bathroom, gets ready to go out. He's stopped in his tracks when he trips on his bathroom scale. Desperate to rid his body's imperfections, he decides to weigh himself, to devastating consequences.
The true story of the frightening, lonely world of silence and darkness of 7-year-old Helen Keller who, since infancy, has never seen the sky, heard her mother's voice or expressed her innermost feelings. Then Annie Sullivan, a 20-year-old teacher from Boston, arrives. Having just recently regained her own sight, the no-nonsense Annie reaches out to Helen through the power of touch, the only tool they have in common, and leads her bold pupil on a miraculous journey from fear and isolation to happiness and light.
This documentary-drama hybrid explores the dangerous human impact of social networking, with tech experts sounding the alarm on their own creations.
When Albert Stockwell comes home from work one day he finds a note from his wife of 15 years, Nancy, saying she has gone to see friends. After waiting several days, Albert realizes that his wife is missing. Nancy has met her salvation on the Internet in the form of Louis Farley. Nancy and Louis, both wounded souls, take comfort in one another through e-mail, pictures, and promises of perverse sexual encounters.
A committed dancer struggles to maintain her sanity after winning the lead role in a production of Tchaikovsky's "Swan Lake."
Meg is a gifted but emotionally scarred 18-year-old who finds solace in writing poetry. Mr. Auster, her English teacher, recognizes her talent and encourages her to enter a national poetry contest. As tension at home escalates and Meg struggles to find a way to get to the poetry finals in Florida, Auster's role in her life becomes increasingly complex.
Charlie Davis is a young woman recently released from a Minnesota psychiatric ward following a suicide attempt. After a move across the country to Tucson, Charlie tries to piece her life back together among a band of artists and musicians while dealing with the trauma of childhood abuse, self-harm, and homelessness. A toxic relationship with a local musician and the reappearance of a friend from the psych ward threaten the delicate life she’s putting together.
Unfolding over the course of one very eventful day in his life, at 17-year-old preacher’s kid Henry's afternoon birthday pool party, the guests include an assortment of grown-ups from the family church, as well as Henry’s secular and religious teen friends — including the closeted young Logan, who clearly has eyes for Henry.
A deaf 4-year-old girl named Libby lives in a world of silence until a caring social worker teaches her to use sign language to communicate.
An elderly Jewish woman, who was a teenager during the outset of the Holocaust and was forced to choose between her own life and her younger brother's, still lives with the guilt until she finally shares her nightmare experience with her own adult daughter.
A spate of robberies in Southern California schools had an oddly specific target: tubas. In this work of creative nonfiction, d/Deaf first-time feature director Alison O’Daniel presents the impact of these crimes from an unexpected angle. The film unfolds mimicking a game of telephone, where sound’s feeble transmissibility is proven as the story bends and weaves to human interpretation and miscommunication. The result is a stunning contribution to cinematic language. O’Daniel has developed a syntax of deafness that offers a complex, overlaid, surprising new texture, which offers a dimensional experience of deafness and reorients the audience auditorily in an unfamiliar and exhilarating way.
In seclusion at La Quinta del Sordo, Goya confronts illness, memories, and haunting visions, exorcising his demons through the Black Paintings —sacrificing peace, sanity, and self to immortalize his torment.
A man battles with different sides of himself in this colorful and catchy one-man musical directed by Henry MacLean and Jordan Gustafson
A 16-year-old boy who spend summer with his grandparents falls in love with an older young man but when tragedy strikes, he falls into a dark hole of self-harm, lust, and loneliness.
Sangaile, a 17-year-old spending the summer at her parents’ lakeside villa, becomes drawn to a free-spirited girl she meets at a nearby aeronautical show. As they grow closer, she begins to confront her fears and embrace a connection that encourages her to pursue her passion for flight.