Shirley is a woman who wants to be in control of everything. Working as a librarian in a public school, a firm "Sshhh!" from her makes the students tremble in fear. But in her family, her unwarranted intervention in the lives of her children and their families keeps her emotionally detached from them. Realizing that she has lost the command she once had, she goes to New York to reunite with Mark , her estranged gay son who is now suffering from colon cancer. But Shirley doesn't know this and living with Mark in New York comes with a cost. She has to live with her son's lover Noel who is an illegal immigrant. Everything is going right until circumstances forces Shirley to go back to the Philippines. Now that she's back with her family, she realizes that something is wrong she is not happy.
Shouting Secrets is a hopeful and heartwarming, universal story taking place in a present day Native American family. It's a story that is at once about the constancy and the fragility of love, as well as the importance of family.
Masha is in an overwhelming relationship with Luuk, father of two and separated. Nothing seems to stand in their way until Luuk turns incurably ill, leaving Masha without status.
In Kouroussa, his native village, little Baba lives happily, between Madou, his father, a gifted mechanic, Kouda, his sweet mother, and his gang of pals. Kouroussa is a wonderful place where Baba learns about life. But like all little boys Baba grows and now he is old enough to continue his studies in Conakry. He must say farewell to his village and cross all Guinea to the capital city of Guinea to live with his uncle.
A young hip-hop artist who, having had enough of the hopelessness of trying to live off a musician’s earnings in Zambia, decides to head for the States to chase the American dream.
Shun and Nagisa first meet and fall in love during their first year of high school. While Shun is graduating from university, Nagisa tells him that he doesn't see a future for them. Despite Shun's strong feelings, they go their separate ways. Years later, Shun is now a store owner, living alone in a rural area. Out of the blue, Nagisa arrives with his six-year-old daughter, Sora. Spending time together, Shun realizes he still harbors feelings for Nagisa. Can Nagisa reconcile with his feelings for Shun, which have been there all along?
Natalie allows her classmate Jeff, who ran away from home after a fight with his stepfather, to stay at her place while her father is away on a business trip. Natalie soon starts dating Jeff's friend James Casey, who isn't as faithful as she thinks, while her best friend Polly falls in love with baseball player Zoo Knudsen.
To overcome the emotional scars of her own past, Vanessa Fullerton recounts her mother Serena's extraordinary life - and tragic death. Serena marries a dashing U.S. colonel, relinquishing her family's fortune. When her husband dies, an impoverished Serena struggles to care for her young daughter until noted photographer Vasili catapults Serena to fame. But Vasili hides a dangerous secret, a secret that leaves a painful legacy.
After discovering her father put their house up for his bail bond and then disappeared, 17-year-old Ree Dolly must confront the local criminal underworld and the harsh Ozark wilderness in order to to track down her father and save her family.
The powerful story of love and loss that inspired the creation of Shakespeare's timeless masterpiece, Hamlet.
An English-German filmmaking couple retreat to Fårö for the summer to each write screenplays for their upcoming films in an act of pilgrimage to the place that inspired Ingmar Bergman. As the summer and their screenplays advance, the lines between reality and fiction start to blur against the backdrop of the Island's wild landscape.
20 short films about human rights.
French colonists in Africa, several months behind in the news, find themselves at war with their German neighbors. Deciding that they must do their proper duty and fight the Germans, they promptly conscript the local native population. Issuing them boots and rifles, the French attempt to make "proper" soldiers out of the Africans. A young, idealistic French geographer seems to be the only rational person in the town, and he takes over control of the "war" after several bungles on the part of the others.
A Russian emigre prides himself on the way he's molded himself into a real Yankee in the USA, though the world he lives in, New York's Lower East Side in the late 19th century, is almost exclusively populated by other Jewish immigrants. When his wife finally arrives in the New World, however, she has a lot of assimilating to do.
The seven short films making up GENIUS PARTY couldn’t be more diverse, linked only by a high standard of quality and inspiration. Atsuko Fukushima’s intro piece is a fantastic abstraction to soak up with the eyes. Masaaki Yuasa, of MIND GAME and CAT SOUP fame, brings his distinctive and deceptively simple graphic style and dream-state logic to the table with “Happy Machine,” his spin on a child’s earliest year. Shinji Kimura’s spookier “Deathtic 4,” meanwhile, seems to tap into the creepier corners of a child’s imagination and open up a toybox full of dark delights. Hideki Futamura’s “Limit Cycle” conjures up a vision of virtual reality, while Yuji Fukuyama’s "Doorbell" and "Baby Blue" by Shinichiro Watanabe use understated realism for very surreal purposes. And Shoji Kawamori, with “Shanghai Dragon,” takes the tropes and conventions of traditional anime out for very fun joyride.
Rain is a spirited 14-year old who, after the death of her grandmother, seeks out her estranged mother in the big city of Nassau. Her dreams of a loving reconciliation are quickly shattered when she meets Glory, a scarred, proud, guarded woman bearing no resemblance to the mother she had hoped for.
The Dumpster Kid is an artistic creation: in every story society forces her to learn something. But she, fully grown from the moment of her birth, unquestionably learns more than is called for. This extra knowledge, which is not wanted by society, regularly brings her into danger. Dumpster Kid dies in each story, and across each genre. Her stories are set in a whole range of different time periods. What is a Dumpster Kid?
In a forgotten pocket of Southern Ohio where American manufacturing and opportunity are drying up, a determined young woman finds a ticket out when she is accepted to college. Alongside her older brother, Ruth Avery joins a dangerous scrap metal crew in order to pay her way. Together, they spend one brutal winter working the scrap yards during the day and stealing valuable metal from the once thriving factories by night. With her goal in sight, Ruth finds that the ultimate cost of an education for a girl like her may be more than she bargained for, and she soon finds herself torn between a promising future and the family she would leave behind.
When her babysitter doesn’t show, a single mother is forced to leave her precocious five-year-old daughter with the girl’s estranged father for a long weekend.
Little Pu spends a summer in Norrland with all his relatives. He and his brother get to hear the story about the watchmaker who hung himself, learns to shoot with a bow and follow his father on a bicycle trip.