The Spark

Dave, nineteen, has just graduated high school, with his three friends: the comical Cyril, the warm hearted but short-tempered Moocher, and the athletic, spiteful but good-hearted Mike. Now, Dave enjoys racing bikes and hopes to race the Italians one day, and even takes up the Italian culture, much to his friends' and parents' annoyance.

Ye Xiang Lun, a talented piano player is a new student at the prestigious Tamkang School. On his first day, he meets Lu Xiao Yu, a pretty girl playing a mysterious piece of music.

In 1971, five college buddies from the University of Texas embark on a final road trip odyssey across the Mexican border before facing up to uncertain futures, in Vietnam and otherwise.

The life of Al Roberts, a pianist in a New York nightclub, turns into a nightmare when he decides to hitchhike to Los Angeles to visit his girlfriend.

One summer, a French teenager who has been living with his mother in the city moves in with his estranged father’s family in the countryside, where he clashes with his stepmother.

A framed man escapes prison and takes a wealthy woman's Jaguar with her in it. After she tries to escape numerous times, they begin to develop feelings for each other, and enter a road race that ends in Mexico.

In 2008, during the last month of summer before high school begins, an impressionable 13-year-old Taiwanese American boy learns what his family can't teach him: how to skate, how to flirt, and how to love your mom.

This short film is made for the "Chopin-Pletnev" disc which marked Mikhail Pletnev's debut as a pianist on Deutsche Grammophon. In the film, we witness Mr. Pletnev's journey, starting from him on his way to studio, through his performance of Chopin's Etude Op. 25 No. 7 in C sharp minor "The Cello" and the process afterwards. One is struck repeatedly by Pletnev's crystalline arpeggiations, the velocity of his passage work, his singing tone, his rhythmic suppleness, and, above all, the grandeur of his sound.

While living in America, a Cambodian teenager finds home inside the water of his high school pool.

Apu and his family have moved away from the country to live in the bustling holy city of Benares. As he progresses from wide-eyed child to intellectually curious teenager, eventually studying in Kolkata, we witness his academic and moral education, as well as the growing complexity of his relationship with his mother.

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.

In 1973, 15-year-old William Miller's unabashed love of music and aspiration to become a rock journalist lands him an assignment from Rolling Stone magazine to interview and tour with the up-and-coming band, Stillwater.

At a village railway station in occupied Czechoslovakia, a bumbling dispatcher’s apprentice longs to liberate himself from his virginity. Oblivious to the war and the resistance that surrounds him, this young man embarks on a journey of sexual awakening and self-discovery, encountering a universe of frustration, eroticism, and adventure within his sleepy backwater depot.

A couple of high school graduates spend one final night cruising the strip with their buddies before they go off to college.

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.

For young Parisian boy Antoine Doinel, life is one difficult situation after another. Surrounded by inconsiderate adults, including his neglectful parents, Antoine spends his days with his best friend, Rene, trying to plan for a better life. When one of their schemes goes awry, Antoine ends up in trouble with the law, leading to even more conflicts with unsympathetic authority figures.

In Los Angeles, a colorful assortment of bohemians try to make sense of their intersecting lives. The moody Dark Smith, his bisexual girlfriend, her lesbian lover and their shy gay friend plan on attending the wildest party of the year. But they'll only make it if they can survive the drug trips, suicides, trysts, mutilations and alien abductions that occur as one surreal day unfolds.

On the day of his grandma’s funeral, 17-year-old Red faces multi-generational demons in this surreal horror film exploring colonial trauma and Black family histories.

Like tears in the rain, water is the metaphor for growing pains and so much more in these four tales about young boys coming to terms with a host of emotions for the very first time. These polished productions and festival favourites are brought to you by a host of talented directors from across Germany, Denmark, France and the Netherlands. The short films are: Ocean [Océan] (2013); Go Daan Go! [Daan Durft] (2014); The Boy in the Ocean (2016); Beach Boy (2011).