Us And Our Friends

In the poverty-stricken favelas of Rio de Janeiro in the 1970s, two young men choose different paths. Rocket is a budding photographer who documents the increasing drug-related violence of his neighborhood, while José “Zé” Pequeno is an ambitious drug dealer diving into a dangerous life of crime.

17-year-old Jem Starling struggles with her place within her Christian fundamentalist community. But everything changes when her magnetic youth pastor Owen returns to their church.

Get ready to explore a dizzying confection of Swedish life and love spanning all shades of the gay experience, from childhood confusion to a teen's coming out, a trio of friends in a three-way relationship, a mother trying to connect with her deaf son and a heterosexual ghost from a homosexual past. The 7 short films are: Coming Out [Komma ut] (2011); Polly (2017); Filip (2015); No Breaks [När bromsvajern släpper] (2008); The Memory of You [Minnet av dig] (2015); Distances [Bortom] (2014); Stockholm Daybreak [Gryning] (2013).

Oskar Matzerath is a very unusual boy. Refusing to leave the womb until promised a tin drum by his mother, Agnes, Oskar is reluctant to enter a world he sees as filled with hypocrisy and injustice, and vows on his third birthday to never grow up. Miraculously, he gets his wish. As the Nazis rise to power in Danzig, Oskar wills himself to remain a child, beating his tin drum incessantly and screaming in protest at the chaos surrounding him.

Juha, 12, class clown in the suburb of Sävbyholm, Sweden. To be funny is the only thing he is good at and all he wants is to fit in the social peckingorder at school. When Juha as an adult performs the show – My Life As A Comedian- to sold out theatres and tells the horrid and funny stories from his childhood to the audience he gets an unexpected visit from an old friend from school which makes him return to Sävbyholm and deal with his past.

Cairn is a dark film on adolescence in which the main character Johan (11) faces a moral dilemma after having started playing a seemingly innocent prank. The story unfolds on a l level in the turbulent transition between childhood and adulthood.

At times of changing gender roles, a tinder date encourages young Leonid to live his own definition of "masculinity". A current reflection on love, sexuality and role models.

Ina, an introverted 11-year-old immigrant, finds herself captivated by Petra, a new classmate coming from the same country as her. Faced with the newcomer’s indifference towards her, Ina embarks on a desperate quest for connection in a world oscillating between dream and reality.

Lasse is an old racist who has lives in an apartment block filled with a selection of refugees and immigrants. Kamal is a 16-year old boy who's fed up in his life in Finland, and dreams of moving to Nairobi to live with his father. Only problem is that he doesn't have the money to buy the ticket.

Matti and Niila, growing up in the mid-sixties in the harsh and conservative environment of a Finnish-speaking part of Tornedalen in Swedish Laponia, close to the Finnish border. Their big dream is to become rock stars. In the present the now grown-up Matti feels guilt for the death of his drug-addicted rock star friend Niila.

The young Harold lives in his own world of suicide-attempts and funeral visits to avoid the misery of his current family and home environment. Harold meets an 80-year-old woman named Maude who also lives in her own world yet one in which she is having the time of her life. When the two opposites meet they realize that their differences don’t matter and they become best friends and love each other.

A reserved student gets thrown into the mysterious drug culture hidden beneath his high school.

In a youth correctional facility, Joe is preparing his return to society. But William’s arrival turns his desire for freedom into desire of another kind. Behind fences and cell walls, passions begin to play havoc with the need for liberty.

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.

After moving to a new town, troublemaking teen Jim Stark is supposed to have a clean slate, although being the new kid in town brings its own problems. While searching for some stability, Stark forms a bond with a disturbed classmate, Plato, and falls for local girl Judy. However, Judy is the girlfriend of neighborhood tough, Buzz. When Buzz violently confronts Jim and challenges him to a drag race, the new kid's real troubles begin.

When two poor Greasers, Johnny and Ponyboy, are assaulted by a vicious gang, the Socs, and Johnny kills one of the attackers, tension begins to mount between the two rival gangs, setting off a turbulent chain of events.

The streets of the Bronx are owned by '60s youth gangs where the joy and pain of adolescence is lived. Philip Kaufman tells his take on the novel by Richard Price about the history of the Italian-American gang ‘The Wanderers.’

After learning that a boy their age has been accidentally killed near their rural homes, four Oregon boys decide to go see the body. On the way, Gordie, Vern, Chris and Teddy encounter a mean junk man and a marsh full of leeches, as they also learn more about one another and their very different home lives. Just a lark at first, the boys' adventure evolves into a defining event in their lives.

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.

Expecting the usual tedium that accompanies a summer in the Catskills with her family, 17-year-old Frances 'Baby' Houseman is surprised to find herself stepping into the shoes of a professional hoofer—and unexpectedly falling in love.