Sacred Hearts

Abandoned by her family, Kya raises herself all alone in the marshes outside of her small town. When her former boyfriend is found dead, Kya is instantly branded by the local townspeople and law enforcement as the prime suspect for his murder.

While exploring the neighboring woods, 13-year-old John discovers an unfinished bunker — a deep hole in the ground. Seemingly without provocation, he drugs his affluent parents and older sister and drags their unconscious bodies into the bunker, where he holds them captive. As they anxiously wait for John to free them from the hole, the boy returns home, where he can finally do what he wants.

When a girl takes up acting classes to find a semblance of self, she soon finds out that she has more within her than previously thought.

A controlling father’s attempts to ensure that his two children succeed in high school backfire after his son experiences a career-ending sports injury. Their familial bonds are eventually placed under severe strain by an unexpected tragedy.

Adolescents in the amphibious situation between child and adult try to cope with their emotions and their environment. Right there they would need limits, a foothold and hope and yet they signalize the opposite. Between loss, extinct love, parental problems and their own needs the parent generation tries to understand or at least to save something.

A coming-of-age film about celebrity worship, love and disillusionment set in the Los Angeles YouTube community.

Iara, a girl who is about to come of age, dreams of seeing the ocean, but lives in Rio Grande do Norte's countryside with her mother, a woman who's dreams were swallowed by the waves and who fears of losing her daughter.

Matti and Niila, growing up in the mid-sixties in the harsh and conservative environment of a Finnish-speaking part of Tornedalen in Swedish Laponia, close to the Finnish border. Their big dream is to become rock stars. In the present the now grown-up Matti feels guilt for the death of his drug-addicted rock star friend Niila.

In the slums of Rio, two kids' paths diverge as one struggles to become a photographer and the other a kingpin.

Starting her senior year in high school, Sara doesn't have many friends and is caught between an overbearing mother, and a more understanding father. With uneasiness at school and tension in the household, Sara escapes to smoke in a little alley alone – that is – until Andrea, a new classmate, arrives. A close friendship develops to all that can see, but behind closed doors, an intimate relationship unfolds, which, when discovered, throws everything into disarray.

The outskirts of Turin. Celeste, Giorgia and Letizia are three young women as different as they come, but all are linked by a common element: as cisgender women, they are guests in the ballroom scene. A subculture originally born within the African American and Latine LGBTQ community of New York, it is now quite present in Italy as well. It is precisely here that the three women have found a safe space where they can be masters of their own bodies without judgement, prejudices, or provocation. They are about to embark on a journey that will make them grow up and reflect on choices they must make for themselves: while Giorgia is increasingly rooted to her city, Celeste and Letizia are preparing to leave. A year-long coming-of-age story that uncovers dreams, desires, doubts, and the will to fight and to keep on living.

Javier chats online with a girl called sofi_dark, a mysterious girl who indulges in a subtle game of perversions. As the relationship grown, he wants to meet her in person. He begins to desperately look for her through the city, until a series of photographs that he discovers on the Internet disrupts his plans.

Shy girl Miriam is waiting to celebrate her 15th birthday and she wants to invite her guy. So far they’ve only chatted online, and the anticipated blind date only complicates things.

Aparajito picks up where the first film leaves off, with Apu and his family having moved away from the country to live in the bustling holy city of Varanasi (then known as Benares). As Apu progresses from wide-eyed child to intellectually curious teenager, eventually studying in Kolkata, we witness his academic and moral education, as well as the growing complexity of his relationship with his mother. This tenderly expressive, often heart-wrenching film, which won three top prizes at the Venice Film Festival, including the Golden Lion, not only extends but also spiritually deepens the tale of Apu. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 1996.

Oskar Matzerath is a very unusual boy. Refusing to leave the womb until promised a tin drum by his mother, Agnes, Oskar is reluctant to enter a world he sees as filled with hypocrisy and injustice, and vows on his third birthday to never grow up. Miraculously, he gets his wish. As the Nazis rise to power in Danzig, Oskar wills himself to remain a child, beating his tin drum incessantly and screaming in protest at the chaos surrounding him.

Bruno wanders through the city in search of affections he has never known.

Only a few girls practice the art of parkour – running and somersaulting over rooftops, free-climbing up rusted scaffolding and leaping from one wall to the next. Laura takes it all in her stride. Though as she wildly races through the streets of Prague, her thoughts are running wild too. She has a crush on Luky, but he doesn‘t show much interest in her. Laura‘s parents live apart, and her mother is desperately looking for someone new. Jealousy, misunderstandings with her best friend – Laura‘s life is full of confusion. Sometimes, when she can‘t take it anymore, fantasy worlds evolve. When hope and fear push through the cracks of reality, it gets harder to keep her life in balance.

SARAH is a short film centered around Ayla and her best friend Sarah as they discuss summer plans, specifically, Ayla's "sweet seventeen". All is well until Sarah doesn't pick up Ayla's messages anymore when they are supposed to hang out. As Ayla's birthday nears, the more upset she becomes with Sarah. When the day arrives, Ayla finds herself celebrating her birthday without Sarah and leads to her final straw, spending her seventeenth birthday alone.

STRANGER is a coming-of-age short film that focuses on two neighbors reconciling before one of them goes off to college in Chicago. It is based on a true event that occurred the last day that I was in town before I moved to college. The two characters, Max and Cass, discuss their past together after not talking for years, realizing that they have changed as young adults and miss hanging out but cannot because Cass is leaving while Max stays in town to fix cars. With this last interaction, they get to say goodbye officially on a good note.

An exploration of the human psyche, Blue takes the viewer on a journey alongside its main character, through the mundanity of life itself, while he discovers his identity while his heart and his mind feels so Blue. A tour de force from debut filmmaker and author Sameer Monn, Blue is a study on the struggles, on the hopelessness of depression, the edge of the cliff, and the power of the human heart to persevere, grow and heal from our darkest days.