Exercices spirituels

El wakes to her Mother's voice and begins to see her body separating from herself, as through cascading visions of El’s past and future, she walks towards a memory of her Mother that seeps in from her dreams and calls her back into a place she is afraid to return to.

Semi-retired Michigan lawyer Paul Biegler takes the case of Army Lt. Manion, who murdered a local innkeeper after his wife claimed that he raped her. Over the course of an extensive trial, Biegler parries with District Attorney Lodwick and out-of-town prosecutor Claude Dancer to set his client free, but his case rests on the victim's mysterious business partner, who's hiding a dark secret.

On the London Underground, a young man relives past traumas as he endures the sensory overload of rush hour, only to look up and see a young woman at the end of the carriage going through the same PTSD symptoms. Their recognition of each other's condition allows them a moment of peace before the train jolts them back into reality and she disappears at the next platform.

In 1986 Terri had a hit record. Still touring - same tune, same band - she longs for new material, but Paul her guitarist and boyfriend, can't see it. When teenage musician Jack can, she flees her gig on Canvey Island for a one night adventure, and finds her voice at last.

In the everyday life of the bus, the world still hopes to find warmth.

Heyst, a hermit on his own tropical island, plays unwilling host to red-headed stowaway Alma. Danger looms...

Rubber Duckie is the story of Jesse and Daniel, who on a blazing summer afternoon, are consumed with boredom and push their own limits and boundaries. This leaves us begging the question; is it simple boredom or insatiable innate appetite for more?

Das Messer

Mia, an ex-prostitute, is trapped in a loveless marriage with the abusive Quan (Sunny Pang, who also stars in Headshot in this year’s Festival lineup), a butcher who runs a roast meat shop. When she meets sensitive funeral director Wu, their passion for one another escalates into an affair. But the path to true love is fraught with jealousy, forcing someone to make a deadly move.

A circus' beautiful trapeze artist agrees to marry the leader of side-show performers, but his deformed friends discover she is only marrying him for his inheritance.

When a group of idealistic young men join the German Army during the Great War, they are assigned to the Western Front, where their patriotism is destroyed by the harsh realities of combat.

Two angels, Damiel and Cassiel, glide through the streets of Berlin, observing the bustling population, providing invisible rays of hope to the distressed but never interacting with them. When Damiel falls in love with lonely trapeze artist Marion, the angel longs to experience life in the physical world, and finds — with some words of wisdom from actor Peter Falk — that it might be possible for him to take human form.

For young Parisian boy Antoine Doinel, life is one difficult situation after another. Surrounded by inconsiderate adults, including his neglectful parents, Antoine spends his days with his best friend, Rene, trying to plan for a better life. When one of their schemes goes awry, Antoine ends up in trouble with the law, leading to even more conflicts with unsympathetic authority figures.

A chemical analyst, finds himself under unbearable pressure from the environment he chose to live in. Which leads him to a drastic change, for self-acceptance.

Val is a century old vampire, but in human terms, she can barely pass for twenty. After what feels like an eternity spent at her family home in the northern reaches of the UK, she’s now ready to embark on a new chapter at university. However, the long trip down south soon turns frosty as grieving mother Vera struggles to come to terms with her little girl flying the nest.

Moody, edgy and unrelieved: the duplicity of desiring one’s double.

"Sugar" is an elegiac short film directed by filmmaker, Michael Patti. Michael sought to tell a story of grief, patience, the overwhelming aspects of parenthood and the understanding that we are all connected. "Sugar" a stirring, wistful visual meditation on relationships.

Confused, in a haze of consciousness and intolerance, five fragile souls enter an eerie dimension. This journey forces an artist, junkie, an unapologetic queer, a racist cop and a forged reverend to confront their own demons. In the waiting room, a trickster deity illuminates the shadows hiding within each subject. Piece by piece, each person realizes the darkness they've left behind.

A TV decorator returns to his small Arizona town for his 20 year class reunion with his boyfriend in tow and discovers that his former classmates are not exactly as they seem.

Newspaper magnate Charles Foster Kane is taken from his mother as a boy and made the ward of a rich industrialist. As a result, every well-meaning, tyrannical or self-destructive move he makes for the rest of his life appears in some way to be a reaction to that deeply wounding event.