AMBIENTES

The calm of the jungle is invaded.

Puppets made of pliable material, impart the following message : your companion should be a worthier person than yourself so that he can impart knowledge and virtue to you.

At various points in its history, tiny St. John's Island was where Singapore's colonial founder Sir Stamford Raffles docked his ship upon arrival, a quarantine centre for immigrants and pilgrims returning from Mecca, a penal colony for political detainees and secret society leaders, and a sleepy holiday resort. Unlike its neighbouring islands, however, St. John's was never fully developed. It occupies an in-between space, the vestiges of its history scattered around the land. Its indeterminacy stands in sharp contrast to Singapore, where land use is meticulously planned to fulfil economic and social functions. In this film, St. John's Island - otherwise known as 'Bukit Orang Salah', a nickname coined by the people who were quarantined there - becomes a site of and for reflection, prompting questions about our history, heritage and identity.

The oppressing life of a father and his son with a tragic ending and what can happen if a dream suddenly comes true.

By land, by air, and by sea, viewers can now experience the struggle that millions of creatures endure in the name of migration as wildlife photographers show just how deeply survival instincts have become ingrained into to the animals of planet Earth. From the monarch butterflies that swarm the highlands of Mexico to the birds who navigate by the stars and the millions of red crabs who make the perilous land journey across Christmas Island, this release offers a look at animal instinct in it's purest form.

The screen is divided again and again until the picture arranged in ever changing strips bursts into whirring dynamic.

Mariana must sacrifice her dog Frida after violently beating it for having destroyed her recently deceased son's toys. The pet's death helps Mariana accept and overcome the loss of her son.

Carlos, a man haunted by his past, plunges into an existential crisis that leads him to day-to-day apathy due to the loss of a child, an act that condemns a declining marriage and continuous desolation.

Crossing hills and streams, a muleteer determined to find the murderer of his father, will discover that in revenge the weakest can be the fiercest.

Amelia arrives at the hospital, her father is dying. Her frustration and pain keep her on her feet.

At her young age, Juana has two great responsibilities: preventing her older sister from fleeing the house and passing on the secret of making bricks to her younger sister.

In 1929, during the Cristiada, Ranulfo, captain of the Cristero army, kept a federal prisoner, whom he tortured and threatened. At another time, Eugenio, captain of the federal army, rebukes and mocks the faith of a group of Cristeros peasants who are weak but not defenseless.

August 1914. Europe has mobilised. The Imperial German Army has executed its Schlieffen Plan, has ploughed through Belgium, and is now deep in France. The British Expeditionary Force is seeing its first action against the Germans. Skirmishes in open countryside are common, and both sides are still learning how a modern war could and should be fought. Two soldiers, one English, one German, both with lives and lovers at home they would rather not have left, find themselves facing each other, alone. Alone, except for the French girl, Françoise…

On Christmas Eve, an old miser named Ebenezer Scrooge is visited by the spirit of his former partner, Jacob Marley. The deceased partner was in his lifetime as mean and miserly as Scrooge is now and he warns him to change his ways or face the consequences in the afterlife.

A teenager's infatuation with the new bad boy at school leads him onto a dark path.

Adapted from "Vehi-Ciosane ou Blanche-Genèse," this short drama portrays a Senegalese village thrown into crisis by the pregnancy of a young girl, revealing deeper patterns of moral and social breakdown.

Accepting the potentialities of the medium to manipulate both time and space, Broughton brings past and present head-on as he regards with adult feelings his childhood family and friends. Grown-ups romp like children, and by their magnified infantilism playfully underscore such basic traits as sadism, sensuality, arid egocentricity. (Melbourne International Film Festival)

In sunny suburbia, a loud-mouthed Jewish mom incessantly nags and humiliates her shy gay teenage son, who she calls her 'Boychick'. Meanwhile, in the classroom, Boychick can't stop ogling a hunky classmate. If only Boychick had the courage to face up to his desires. As if by magic, along comes his idol, pop star Ashley Hart, to give him the hip-strutting, hair-flicking confidence he craves.

The short film depicts the life of a boy who is constantly sexually abused by his father. Leonardo Miggiorin brilliantly plays the role of this boy, who belongs to a poor and unstructured family.

Animated short.