When a shy girl, secretly in love with her rocker-grrl housemate, meets an unbalanced heiress on the run, anything could (and does) happen in BRUSHFIRES, the latest production from Chicago-based film group Split Pillow. As the three women negotiate the dangerous relationships among them, the seven women directors weave a sensual tale of suspense. Drawing inspiration from the poem by Jessica Wilbur and the surrealist parlour game, The Exquisite Corpse, each director selected a word or phrase on which to base her segment, and the seven chapters of the film bear their individual marks. This impressive experiment in filmmaking emerges as a sensitive tale of young desire, loss, and love's confusion.
Roberto is one of those men to whom simulation has become the greatest art. He is an unmoved, inscrutable, mysterious man. But the truth is that Robert feels an intimate, deep tedium. The boredom of those who have already exhausted all the pleasures of life. The only thing still surprising him is the fact that nothing surprises him anymore. One evening he has an overwhelming encounter with a woman. For his own bewilderment, he discovers the sublime horrors in which the woman has sank.
A drama centered on the relationship between a painter who's losing his sight and a maid in a Mexican brothel.
Zephyr, a strong-willed adolescent girl, spends her summer vacation with her grandparents in the mountains, waiting for her mother to come and take her back home. Her mother finally shows up, but only to say farewell before going far away places for a voluntary position. But Zephyr is determined that she will not let her mother ever leave her again.
Emilka meets the slightly-older Maciek out at a club one night. He shows Emilka—who was brought up by a single mom—a whole new world filled with desire, passion, restlessness and rebellion. The girl moves in with him and at first everything seems just perfect, but gradually Emilka discovers her separate identity, and starts to grow apart from him. When her dream of becoming a singer comes true, Maciek feels threatened. A toxic love game begins, full of lust and jealousy.
As the closest-guarded secrets of a troubled family gradually begin to emerge from the shadows, a desperate mother struggles to bring the ones she loves together in this family drama starring Kate Nelligan and Ron Silver.
In a tiny after-hours club, Nina Simone finds a way, for one moment, to be free.
Suzanne has been a prostitute for 15 years. She has her turf, her regular johns, her freedom. One day, young African prostitutes settle nearby. Suzanne is threatened.
After getting laid off, young single-mom Beth finds herself living in her car and struggles to hide her homelessness from her estranged brother Ben.
An experimental re-telling of the last days of the Romanov sisters.
Released from prison with terminal cancer, Max tries to reconnect with his estranged daughter and the grandson he’s never known. When his daughter’s abusive, drug-addicted ex-husband reappears, Max’s violent past comes back to haunt them all.
A fiction-film told through a female documentarian's lens, as she manipulates the story of an unemployed Polish actress living in London.
Thea und Nat
A woman who is unfairly institutionalized at a Paris asylum plots to escape with the help of one of its nurses. Based on the novel 'Le bal des folles' by Victoria Mas.
Henia will give anything to mend her broken past and find her mother, from whom she has been separated since the conflict between Morocco and Algeria during the Black Demonstration of 1975. After being given an opportunity to assist an elderly blind man, she accepts the offer and eventually finds herself agreeing to marry him. For Henia, this is a chance to get the necessary papers for her return to Algeria. For the old man, it’s a chance to start over. For his son, it is a disgrace.
A hot summer weekend in Buenos Aires. Jorge and Mabel spend their last hours together as a couple in their family home that has already been sold.
A young drug-addled writer approaching the bottom of his descent submits to two months of agonizing detox at a treatment center in Minnesota.
Set in 1973 and inspired by true events, 'Wild About Harry' follows the havoc wreaked in a teen girl’s life when she discovers that her widowed father is gay. Alternately comic and tragic and anchored by an impressive ensemble cast, the film captures both the freedoms and the homophobia of the time – all set against the backdrop of small town America on Cape Cod. British widower Harry Goodhart decides to make a fresh start and moves with his teenage daughters to Cape Cod in 1973. But Harry can't leave behind the secret that threatens to tear his family apart. Adjusting to their new lives proves difficult for the girls when they discover that the connection between their dad and his partner is more than just a working relationship.
Wu is in her mid-twenties and lives with her mother in a traditional one-story house in one of Beijing’s hutongs. Both consider themselves to be writers, but success has so far eluded them. The fact that Wu is supported by a divorced, elderly man helps the women through lean periods. Their unhealthily close relationship is characterized by reproaches and quibbling; only during meals do they appear to lay down their verbal weapons. The situation escalates when both Wu and her mother hit an emotional low.
While participating in a rehabilitation program training wild mustangs, a convict at first struggles to connect with the horses and his fellow inmates, but he learns to confront his violent past as he soothes an especially feisty horse.