The Pā Boys

Con... fusione

The fourth Thingy from Daniel Hutchings spends the day in a fictional Northen city in the UK, following the lives of three ambitious strangers as they intersect through the game of basketball. See this city from the inside out! From the skyscrapers to the countryside! From the bus to the tram and back again! From the crowded city streets of everyone going about their day to the silent suburbs in broad daylight! See how each character spend their day and the little victories they try to win! But they won’t know what a win means until they’re in the 5th QTR and neither will you!

Branko has been a truck driver for only a few months, a choice that is quite understandable, given that he now earns three times as much as he did as a schoolteacher. But everything has a price, which is not always quantifiable in terms of money. As children we were told: “work ennobles man”. But here the opposite seems true: it is Branko, with his efficiency, his obstinacy, his good will, who ennobles a job that grows more and more alienating, absurd and enslaving.

A young and affluent couple become fatally entangled in their own wish-fulfillment world.

A boy and his brother run away from home and hitch cross-country, with help from a girl they meet, to compete in the ultimate video-game championship.

An emotional journey of a former school teacher, who writes letters for illiterate people, and a young boy, whose mother has just died, as they search for the father he never knew.

When an arranged marriage brings Ada and her spirited daughter to the wilderness of nineteenth-century New Zealand, she finds herself locked in a battle of wills with both her controlling husband and a rugged frontiersman to whom she develops a forbidden attraction.

A family loaded with quirky, colorful characters piles into an old van and road trips to California for little Olive to compete in a beauty pageant.

On the east coast of New Zealand, the Whangara people believe their presence there dates back a thousand years or more to a single ancestor, Paikea, who escaped death when his canoe capsized by riding to shore on the back of a whale. From then on, Whangara chiefs, always the first-born, always male, have been considered Paikea's direct descendants. Pai, an 11-year-old girl in a patriarchal New Zealand tribe, believes she is destined to be the new chief. But her grandfather Koro is bound by tradition to pick a male leader. Pai loves Koro more than anyone in the world, but she must fight him and a thousand years of tradition to fulfill her destiny.

Paul (Macfadyen), a prize-winning war journalist, returns to his remote New Zealand hometown due to the death of his father, battle-scarred and world-weary. For the discontented sixteen-year-old Celia (Barclay) he opens up a world she has only dreamed of. She actively pursues a friendship with him, fascinated by his cynicism and experience of the world beyond her small-town existence. But many, including the members of both their families (Otto, Moy), frown upon the friendship and when Celia goes missing, Paul becomes the increasingly loathed and persecuted prime suspect in her disappearance. As the violent and urgent truth gradually emerges, Paul is forced to confront the family tragedy and betrayal that he ran from as a youth, and to face the grievous consequences of silence and secrecy that has surrounded his entire adult life.

It is New Zealand 1959. Teen swimmer Alex Archer has to battle set backs, intense rivalry and personal tragedy in her bid to win selection for the 1960 Olympic Games in Rome.

By chance, Louise and Kaspars meet on a trip to celebrate Midsummer’s Eve. She’s running away from annoying neighbours and general sense of pointlessness; he’s running away from a failing marriage. They’re both young, talented, and lost; they both want to become artists; they’re both unsure how to go on about their lives. Maybe that’s why their shared trip turns into a strange, sometimes funny and sometimes complicated journey through a relationship over the course of three years.

A young Finnish woman escapes an enigmatic love affair in Moscow by boarding a train to the arctic port of Murmansk. Forced to share the long ride and a tiny sleeping car with a larger than life Russian miner, the unexpected encounter leads the occupants of Compartment No. 6 to face major truths about human connection.

It all starts with a bang. The car breaks through the crash barrier and falls off the bridge. The lights go out. After that, he is not able to see anymore. His optic nerve is severed, from now on the young stage-director Jakob is blind. His life will change and nothing will ever be the same. Jakob cannot handle the idea of never being able to see again and screams at the only woman who is able and willing to help him, Lily. A rehabilitation teacher, she helps the blind deal with the darkness. Lily has been living with it since birth, she too is blind.

German journalist Philip Winter has a case of writer’s block when trying to write an article about the United States. He decides to return to Germany, and while trying to book a flight, encounters a German woman and her nine year old daughter Alice doing the same. The three become friends (almost out of necessity) and while the mother asks Winter to mind Alice temporarily, it quickly becomes apparent that Alice will be his responsibility for longer than he expected.

A woman in her sixties embarks on a journey through the western United States after losing everything in the Great Recession, living as a van-dwelling modern-day nomad.

Based on the autobiographical work of New Zealand writer Janet Frame, this production depicts the author at various stage of her life. Afflicted with mental and emotional issues, Frame grows up in an impoverished family and experiences numerous tragedies while still in her youth, including the deaths of two of her siblings. Portrayed as an adult by Kerry Fox, Frame finds acclaim for her writing while still in a mental institution, and her success helps her move on with her life.

An aging truck driver finds smuggled money and becomes involved with a hijacking crowd.

Running on Empty (German: Der Lebensversicherer) is a 2006 German drama film directed by Bülent Akinci. It was entered into the 28th Moscow International Film Festival where Jens Harzer won the award for Best Actor.

A slightly sinister but charming young man falls in with a young mother and daughter and her boyfriend on a camping holiday and leads them astray.