Even though the protagonist of the Canadian Femme De L'Hotel is a female filmmaker, one would think twice before suggesting that this effort by Swiss-born director Lea Pool is autobiographical. Paule Baillargeon portrays a well-known director who returns to her home town of Montreal to film a high-budget musical drama. At her hotel, Paule has a brief but unsettling encounter with a suicidal elderly woman (Louise Marleau). This element of the plot is briefly forgotten as we get to know the actors in Paule's current project. Then she meets the old lady again, and with mounting incredulity Paule discovers that the actual events in the woman's life mirror the fictional events in the director's film.
Lizzie's best friend, Andie, becomes pregnant and offers to give the baby to her. Lizzie's husband, Peter, reluctantly goes along with being the child's father, and Andie moves into the guest room for the remainder of the pregnancy.
A man becomes a bookie after losing his job as a day trader.
After discovering his wife's infidelities, Gerry leaves London to look after his deceased brother's business and family in Singapore. Discovering a foreign world of opportunity that had not existed before gives Gerry a chance at starting over by slipping into his brother's life - both emotionally and physically. However, leaving his wife and child behind in the UK is not so easy as Gerry must choose between becoming his brother's alter ego 'Mister John' or returning to London to face his failing relationship.
Three siblings ingeniously avoid being sent off to a children's home while their solo-mother serves a short sentence in a prison for shoplifting. Rather than have the news leak out and have to be escorted off with the eccentric welfare officer, they invent a 'never present' dad who is looking after them.
After the death of her mother, Anne makes a shocking discovery: an old photograph casts doubt on her origins and leads her to discover a mysterious uncle who lived with her parents after the war. As she lifts the lid on a long forgotten family secret, the young woman learns that her mother once succumbed to an amorous passion that was as intense as it was short-lived...
Alexey and Valentina met in the tourist camp on Seliger, and after two weeks they celebrated their wedding. Returning to the family, the young couple faced the first difficulties. Both parents didn't like the willfulness of the young - and there were problems with housing. They started a constant quarrels. The young soon agreed that their wedding was premature ...
Anna, 50 years old, moves into her new house. Rooms are full of boxes which contain a lot of things and plenty of memories. Anna has lived many lives and her past comes out of these boxes. Her parents surely, but also her children and their fathers, the living and the dead. In this breakneck period of her life, time is running faster and faster and Anna takes a run-up to face the past and try to go towards the future. And, maybe, to manage to still believe in love?
An aging Hong Kong couple move to Australia with their two youngest sons. They stay with a daughter who has already begun a successful career. Meanwhile their eldest daughter lives in Germany and their eldest son remains in Hong Kong. The film explores the different ways the family members cope with isolation and alienation.
In this "inside look" at French filmmaking, Marechal - who is a has-been director - a producer, Vito Catene and Camile Dor, a big-name actress, have agreed to make a film about drugs, but don't have a story, financing, or any of the other elements needed to make it. This doesn't stop them; they cobble together the financing and begin shooting anyway. The producer is very fond of the leading actress, and when she gets hooked on drugs for real in the course of shooting what he feels to be a farcical imitation of a film, he gives up his shares in the film and heads off for the back of beyond (Zanzibar) to lick his wounds. To add insult to injury, the film winds up being a critical and commercial success.
Norm, an aimless writer, witnesses the murder of rock video star Madelaine X and feels guilty, as he did nothing to prevent it. At Madelaine’s funeral, he meets a mysterious woman in black with unexplained connections to the deceased singer.
A Greek-Irish sailor becomes friends with a 10-year-old sampan girl while his freighter is docked in Hong Kong.
A passionate and unpredictable film about three characters in love, Les Sauf-conduits explores the tenuous balance between friendship and romantic love. When three friends set out to break the world’s egg-tossing record, their relationships become increasingly entangled and complicated. In her arresting first film, director Manon Briand crafts poetic images that are striking, fresh and occasionally quirky, and elicits uncannily natural performances from her actors. Les Sauf-conduits garnered several awards on the festival circuit, including the award for Best Canadian Short Film at the 1992 Festival of Festivals (now the Toronto International Film Festival®) and Golden Sheaf Awards for Best Director and Best Film at the Yorkton Film Festival.
The pain, the weakness, the silence, the despair. These are some of the feelings faced by a couple lost in drugs. Nights can be seen as the story of people who made mistakes in life, but who still continue to seek happiness. It is about the despair of hopeless lives. The characters are, from the beginning, thrown into an empty and sterile world of indifference. In this true no-man's-land, João and Teresa are confronted with their precarious existence. They are broken pillars of a love that has become silent and painful, they share everything: the house, the drugs, the emptiness and the deprivations of their lives. To make the situation even more dramatic, Teresa falls ill. João does everything to help her, betting on his love for her. He, too, an addict, knows how to ease the pain of his beloved. But unfortunately this help also requires extra money, which forces João to prostitute himself, accelerating his process of destruction and his path to a tragic end.
An emotional goodbye between longtime best friends begins an unexpected love affair, putting two marriages and many friendships at stake.
Penelope is forced to marry Jonathan but there is no attraction between the two. As a matter of fact, Jonathan is more interested in spending time with the butler than with his wife. Penelope finds a way of reuniting with the love of her life and manages to hire him as the gardener. Two secret affairs in one household soon lead to major scandalous situations.
When the groom's oldest friend, Cole, finds out his best friend, Jason, is getting married, he escapes from the institution he has been incarcerated in and makes a surprise visit to serve as the best man. Something does not seem right between bride, Gretchen, and groom. None of their friends seem to fully support the marriage and have secrets of their own. Unresolved about their relationship and endlessly obsessed with the groom, Cole stirs up everyone and everything, making it a weekend to remember.
The lives of six roleplaying gamer friends are thrown into upheaval when one of them enlists to go to Iraq. A geek movie without the self-loathing.
A poetic road trip through Pulitzer prize-winning CK Williams' life over the course of 40 years.
Behind the scenes of a porn shoot, the actors are practicing various positions. The rumour is that one of the girls is doing a double anal, an advanced routine that requires someone extremely tough. A startling film about workplace intrigue, set at a decidedly different place of work.