Four friends (a background actor, a documentarian, a homeless musician, and a virgin) descend into a life-awakening 24 hours that involve excess drinking, prostitutes, a sage-like lounge singer and psychedelic drugs.
This coming-of-age story features our heroine Addie who is about to turn 30. Everything a good girl is supposed to do, she's done it. So why isn't it working? At what point is it no longer noble, but stupid, to continue doing the right thing if it's only making her miserable.
Grappling with the complexities of mental health and trauma in a digital age that feels isolating and overwhelming, a young person embarks on a surreal journey of self-discovery, navigating the raw truths of adolescence in an attempt to find a place in the world.
Winter and summer, day and night, life and dreams. Lucid is all about duality. Anxious and awkward in real life, Everett decides to make a change. After coming across studies in the art of Lucid dreaming, Everett hopes to improve his inept social skills. Will having full control of his dreams help him feel complete? Find out in the second feature-length film imagined by Nate Ross & Daniel Walker: Lucid.
Anything’s Possible is a delightfully modern Gen Z coming-of-age story that follows Kelsa, a confident high school girl who is trans, as she navigates through senior year. When her classmate Khal gets a crush on her, he musters up the courage to ask her out, despite the drama he knows it could cause. What transpires is a romance that showcases the joy, tenderness, and pain of young love.
A sci-fi fantasy adventure of a young boy whose life changes forever when a mysterious visitor lands from nowhere into his backyard to warn him of an impending invasion.
England, 1897. Abraham Van Helsing receives a letter from his former student Dr John Seward requesting his urgent assistance in the northern town of Whitby, where his fiancée Lucy is showing all the signs of vampirism. Van Helsing follows the bloody trail to the coffin of Count Dracula himself. Van Helsing is a fresh take on the legend of Dracula through the eyes of his greatest enemy.
Fourteen-year-old drug dealer Johnny is in a home for young people. When he learns that he cannot go home at weekends any longer, he asks one of his customers, famous successful actor Antony, to be his weekend guardian.
Late summer of 2007, South of Brazil. Joana, 13, wants to find out why her great-aunt Rosa died at 70 without ever having dated anyone. Encouraged by her friend Carolina, Joana starts an investigation about Rosa’s past. As she confronts the values of her community, Joana realizes that all the women in her family have a secret, while something hidden inside her also reveals. She plunges into her imagination to find answers while a large wind power plant is being built in their small town.
In a decaying rural community in Southern Ontario, Evan, an isolated, narrow-minded teen starts a new job at a run down, decrepit bait shop that is being primed to be sold as land for a sub-division. Upon arriving for his first shift, Evan discovers that his supervisor is the pink haired, outspoken Ross. Through their tedious job the two slowly grow closer, and Evan happens upon Ross' rich but strenuous inner world, involving himself, his sister, and the shadowy figure of his boss' ultra macho son. As a result, Evan's worldview and biases are challenged as he navigates the cataclysmic changes happening in his small town.
A futuristic sci-fi western take on the iconic character.
These five award-winning coming of age short films offer a glimpse of how boys and young men tackle life's difficult desires: confronting one's demons, understanding sexual relationships, gaining the respect of one's father, or simply running away from it all. This is only the start of their complex formative years, where not every question has an answer, and not every answer makes sense. The short films are: Boys [Pojkarna] (2015); Ioana (2015); Kiem Holijanda (2017); Picnic [Piknik] (2015); Tomer & Elias [Tomer en Elias] (2016).
A maladjusted dad is trying to heal in an experimental therapy group called Infinite Beginnings. Meanwhile, his nonbinary kid is getting close with an older man. Their relationship feels both dreamy and concerning—depending on whose watching.
The 12-year-old German boy, Mathias, discovers his sexuality on a sailing boat in Denmark. Surrounded by water, trapped on the boat with his parents, who still treat him like a child, his desire is to get on land to have new experiences.
Nine-year-old Daan is really excited about taking up swimming when he discovers his mother's old swimming medals in the attic. When his school teacher encourages him to join the nearest local swimming club, Daan finds out that his mother is definitely not amused. She is afraid that Daan inherited her cardiac problems. Despite his mothers fears, Daan doesn't wait and starts training behind her back.
Caleb, a South Florida teen, loves his camera, his weed and his grandmother. On the eve of his high school graduation, everything changes when he's exposed to HIV. While he waits three months for his results, Caleb finds love in the most unlikely of places.
In her last year of secondary school, a bright Indonesian student is determined to pursue her education and resist getting married, despite the expectations of her community.
Like tears in the rain, water is the metaphor for growing pains and so much more in these four tales about young boys coming to terms with a host of emotions for the very first time. These polished productions and festival favourites are brought to you by a host of talented directors from across Germany, Denmark, France and the Netherlands. The short films are: Ocean [Océan] (2013); Go Daan Go! [Daan Durft] (2014); The Boy in the Ocean (2016); Beach Boy (2011).
On a rooftop, surrounded by clouds and concrete, two friends find a space to spend their last day together. They look back on their childhood and share new laughs before embarking on their life journey.
SWEAT follows the last three days of a friendship between two girls. Marion and Elisa live in a quiet village in the countryside that offers them very little. They roam their rural surroundings, go to parties, watch videos, swim in the lake and fight. Angry about the accustomed, they develop new, unexpected power. And start to act it out.