When a Chinese-Canadian college student returns home to Toronto, she visits a Hong Kong cafe she frequented during her childhood. Through eating the food, she is suddenly able to relive suppressed memories of her deceased grandmother. Now she must confront their multifaceted relationship and her own identity to find her peace.
Crotchety retired doctor Isak Borg travels from Stockholm to Lund, Sweden, with his pregnant and unhappy daughter-in-law, Marianne, in order to receive an honorary degree from his alma mater. Along the way, they encounter a series of hitchhikers, each of whom causes the elderly doctor to muse upon the pleasures and failures of his own life. These include the vivacious young Sara, a dead ringer for the doctor's own first love.
VI
Three stories are intertwined in a land, Friuli, in the North-East of Italy, which extends along a triple border. The stories of Irene, a Carnian, Christian girl; Pavel, Ukrainian and Jewish; Mehdi, Iranian and Muslim. Udine. A beautiful city, but one that is perceived as cold and inhospitable by emigrants. Pavel and Mehdi are illegal immigrants, who share an apartment - and concerns about social matters - in the “ghetto” of Via Roma. In love with Pavel, Irene tries to help them, but her surge of solidarity goes perhaps too far, and she regrets it. Mehdi lives obsessed with an ancient guilt: his fragile soul is attracted to Evil. Predestination and moral choice. Two alternatives? Subjection to freedom of Good or Evil. What will the protagonists choose?
The ideal comfortability of a kitten is taken away by a man impersonating as such. Refusing to stop until the owner gives full surrender.
Brahim is a young man, and secretly gay. At his mother’s birthday party, tensions around his unaccepted sexuality become unbearable. Brahim flees the oppressive family home into the night, where a terrible encounter awaits...
After their plane crashes, an older man and a young woman survive 49 days lost in the Yukon.
In 1964 Bronx, two Catholic school nuns question the new priest's ambiguous relationship with a troubled African-American student.
Bobby Griffith was his mother's favorite son, the perfect all-American boy growing up under deeply religious influences in Walnut Creek, California. Bobby was also gay. Struggling with a conflict no one knew of, much less understood, Bobby finally came out to his family.
In their finely appointed Connecticut home, Agnes and Tobias have grown used to the imperfection and fragility of their marriage. Quietly nursing their grief over the death of their son, they get by well enough together. Agnes' boozy sister wanders in and out, and they allow anxiety-stricken friends to move into an upstairs room. But, when their daughter, Julia, shows up announcing her fourth divorce, long-repressed emotions come to the surface.
Following his son Gabriel’s death, Jorge travels from conservative Bolivia to New York City to confront Gabriel’s boyfriend Sebastian. While the two battle over Jorge’s inability to accept his son, Sebastian channels his grief into a bold new play in honor of his lost love, in which Gabriel’s inner turmoil is transformed into an eye-popping gay fantasia.
Lucas Simons, an 11-year-old filmmaker, is obsessed with death after the loss of his brother. When Lucas accidentally captures a mysterious presence in one of his films, he inadvertently becomes a YouTube phenomenon, and must learn to live life in the spotlight while also learning how to once again start living life to its fullest.
Just outside of the Malian city of Timbuktu, now occupied by militant Islamic rebels who impose the Sharia on civilians and inconvenience their daily life, a cattleman kills a fisherman.
A headstrong young girl in Afghanistan, ruled by the Taliban, disguises herself as a boy in order to provide for her family.
A deeply religious young woman spends one powerful evening reconnecting with a long-lost parent, who now makes a living as a sex worker in Jakarta.
Hanging out with friends, smoking a lot, spinning bottles and kissing, making mistakes, playing, refusing to accept, dreaming with open eyes - life as a teenager can be overwhelmingly beautiful and difficult at the same time. In her debut, the Ukrainian director composes a deeply emotional and multi-layered portrait of a generation whilst seamlessly flowing between the fictional and the documental.
Two short stories set in Edo during the Shogun era. The first, during a time when Christians are persecuted vehemently, Iori falls in love with a young Christian girl. When she and her family are captured during a raid, his sadistic master takes her as his personal slave to torment Iori. The second follows Sutezo who, forced to serve the barbarous master of a brothel in order to repay his debts, befriends a young girl. Together, they both escape and struggle to get by on scams and petty theft.
Robbie Levinson and Trey McCoy suddenly encounter intolerance and hostility at the hands of their new neighbor, Chris Boyd, the son of a fundamentalist preacher.
Longing for acceptance, a neurodivergent boy taunts the boundaries of his best friend: his brother.
After winning yet another battle, Jorge is decorated as the new captain of the army, and now finds himself faced with his greatest challenge, whether to be faithful to his faith or succumb to the excesses of Emperor Diocletian.