Freakin' Beautiful World

Fourteen-year-old drug dealer Johnny is in a home for young people. When he learns that he cannot go home at weekends any longer, he asks one of his customers, famous successful actor Antony, to be his weekend guardian.

A student's increasingly intimate line of questioning causes his interview with a local horror host to take a vulnerable turn.

These five award-winning coming of age short films offer a glimpse of how boys and young men tackle life's difficult desires: confronting one's demons, understanding sexual relationships, gaining the respect of one's father, or simply running away from it all. This is only the start of their complex formative years, where not every question has an answer, and not every answer makes sense. The short films are: Boys [Pojkarna] (2015); Ioana (2015); Kiem Holijanda (2017); Picnic [Piknik] (2015); Tomer & Elias [Tomer en Elias] (2016).

Caleb, a South Florida teen, loves his camera, his weed and his grandmother. On the eve of his high school graduation, everything changes when he's exposed to HIV. While he waits three months for his results, Caleb finds love in the most unlikely of places.

Tommy Price is the leader of a gang of young thugs interested in thrills, hot rods and girls. His friends bet him he can't make it with 17-year-old Rosemary Clinton. Their date turns out badly and her parents forbid her to see him again. They keep meeting, and the relationship changes him to the extent that he plans on going to college and changing his life, which delights his parents.

Max "Adlersson" Herzberg, 20 years of age, from Dresden decided not to spend his life working. Ever since, he reviews knives and other products, unboxes limited fan editions of mainly gangsta rap albums, gives talks about himself, drinks, swears and bawls in town, humiliates others, cracks borderline jokes and crosses every boundary he sees - Max is a YouTube creator and makes a decent living off of it. Most of Max's friends have their own channels on YouTube, some even quite successfully. Max and his gang are dubious role models but without a doubt, they are celebrities of their generation having more than 300.000 active fans. Is Max a violence-glorifying influencer with far-right tendencies or a usual adolescent, just trying to find himself and happens to be born into a time where the lines between private life and public self-display are blurring? He might be both, possibly without being overly aware of it.

15 year-old Lyz, a high school student in the French Alps, has been accepted to a highly selective ski club whose aim is to train future professional athletes. Taking a chance on his new recruit, Fred, ex-champion turned coach, decides to make Lyz his shining star regardless of her lack of experience. Under his influence, Lyz will have to endure more than the physical and emotional pressure of the training. Will Lyz’s determination help her escape his grip?

After one of their own is murdered, a family of drug dealers in rural Pennsylvania will risk everything to find those responsible...even if it means losing everything in the process.

Lonnie and Rick seem to be complete opposites, at first glance. A survivor of suicide, Lonnie is introverted and ill at ease around her parents, Lois and Harvey. Rick, meanwhile, is sunny and charismatic. But appearances can be deceiving, as their families learn when the teens begin a romance. Upset about Lonnie's influence on Rick, his parents forbid the pair to see each other -- with tragic consequences.

A 17-year-old high-school senior marries a 20-something law student who works as a waiter. Who said marriage was bliss?

All her life, an overweight girl has been ignored by her rich and attractive mother. But when the ugly duckling becomes a swan, she turns into a world-class tease, exacting her revenge by seducing her mother's boyfriend...

A New York teacher indulges a mad high school poet who sees himself as a mythic hero.

In the metropolitan city of Hamburg, illegal immigrant Chernor, an openly gay African youth with blond hair, makes his money by dealing drugs and dreams of one day living in Australia. Baran, meanwhile, is a Kurdish bicycle delivery boy living in constant fear of deportation, who keeps his past in a video camera. The two form a bond when they meet, and their shared struggles to survive soon develop into a relationship that is threatened when Baran loses his job.

Three young men try to escape the reality of their everyday lives and succeed in ways they had least expected.

Juliette, 15, is the only child of an eminent judge and has had the best of education in the best of schools. Her father is in the limelight because he’s been chosen to preside over one of the most important trials of the past 10 years: the case of Réal Lamontagne, a notorious criminal accused of killing a child. Roméo, 17, is the son of the accused. Even though they come from diametrically opposed universes, Juliette and Roméo fall for each other.

A well-off couple adopt a 16-year-old boy from an orphanage in West Berlin, but their attempts to help him assimilate into his new surroundings fail. The repressive tolerance of the well-educated adoptive parents is just too much for the mischievous young boy.

At an international school in Jakarta, a philosophy teacher challenges his class of twenty graduating seniors to choose which ten of them would take shelter underground and reboot the human race in the event of a nuclear apocalypse.

'Sparke' Thorton, a lad with a penchant for trouble, is sent to live with his Uncle and Aunt Bolt in Indiana after his Aunt Henrietta Bolt dies. Though he's not happy about the arrangement at first, his love of horses and his affection for a young filly that he plans to race make life bearable. He also finds romance with tomboyish 'Char' Bruce who shares his love for horses.

Youth In Trouble is the ninth edition to Boys On Film, the world's most successful short film series. This compilation features eight complete films: Bretten Hannam's "Deep End" starring Bailey Maughan, Gharrett Patrick Paon, and Denis Theriault; Caru Alves de Souza's "Family Affair" starring Cláudia Assunção, Kauê Telloli, and Ney Piacentini; James Cook's "Together" starring Lucas Hansen, Ben Owora, and Stuart Evans; Carlos Montero's "Easy Money" starring Mario Casas, Ales Furundarena, and Christian Mulas; Grant Scicluna's "The Wilding" starring Reef Ireland, Luke Mullins, and Shannon Glowacki; Dee Rees's "Colonial Gods" starring Cornell John and Said Mohamed; Benjamin Parent's "It's Not a Cowboy Movie" starring Malivaï Yakou, Finnegan Oldfield, and Garance Marillier; and Stéphane Riethauser's "Prora" starring Tom Gramenz and Swen Gippa.

In a future where water is scarce, a farmer defends his land and hopes to rejuvenate his parched soil. However, his daughter's boyfriend schemes to steal the land for himself.