Almond: My Voice is Breaking

Meena, a 12-year-old living in a mining village in the English Midlands in 1972, is the daughter of Indian parents who've come to England to give her a better life. This idyllic existence is upset by the arrival in the village of Anita Rutter and her dysfunctional family.

Jim Morris never made it out of the minor leagues before a shoulder injury ended his pitching career twelve years ago. Now a married-with-children high-school chemistry teacher and baseball coach in Texas, Jim's team makes a deal with him: if they win the district championship, Jim will try out with a major-league organization. The bet proves incentive enough for the team, and they go from worst to first, making it to state for the first time in the history of the school. Jim, forced to live up to his end of the deal, is nearly laughed off the try-out field--until he gets onto the mound, where he confounds the scouts (and himself) by clocking successive 98 mph fastballs, good enough for a minor-league contract with the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. Jim's still got a lot of pitches to throw before he makes it to The Show, but with his big-league dreams revived, there's no telling where he could go.

Blue-collar Paulie prepares for fatherhood and his forthcoming wedding to Sue by hanging out with his groomsmen. Brother Jimbo, cousin Mike, and his pals fill the reunion with drinking, boys-will-be-boys antics and a few unexpected personal confessions. But, when the bonding devolves into accusations and regret, Paulie has to decide whether he's ready to tie the knot and take this big step into adulthood.

Julia always said that her upbringing as a biological child in a foster family was a happy time. But something is wrong. In The Foster Family, we follow director Julia's journey back in time, where she, together with her parents Ewa and Lennart and the foster child Patrik, recollect the shocking events that changed their lives over thirty years ago. The children are at the center of this strong, touching and warm documentary about a system where you can love, but not too much.

The two 15-year-old girls Zoe and Asal are best friends. They are spending their last summer holidays together before the earnestness of life begins. But this summer their friendship is put to the test by the arrival of a backpacker whose name is Kai.

Jo's world is thrown into utter disarray when her wife Amanda passes away and she starts chasing a dream that she and Amanda had once shared - starting a family together. Jo asks her late wife's brother, Jamie, to be her sperm donor and craziness ensues.

A group of high school friends reunite in their hometown for the funeral of an old buddy, 'Bender'; they will spend a weekend struggling to accept that Bender escaped what they can't — adulthood.

Bia just turned eighteen. The end of the year is coming and also the ACTs. People at school and Bia’s parents are pressuring her to decide which graduation she will apply for. Bia doesn’t want to do anything.

At the age of 8, Vaselinetjie is taken away by the Welfare and send to the orphanage. It's a strange, hard, dangerous world of rebel children, fierce house mothers,friends, first loves and where she finally finds true self-acceptance.

In this quiet, naturalistic dramatic short, six-year old Sarah grapples with understanding mortality after the sudden death of her older brother, David. With the help of her family, she gradually learns how to process his passing and cope with her grief. Written, produced, and directed by Jackie Rivet-River, this short film for Encyclopaedia Britannica Films was awarded the Silver Hugo prize at the Chicago International Film Festival, as well as 12 additional awards internationally.

A coming of age story of members of a Nahal group, volunteering in a kibbutz named "Kissufim" ("Yearnings" in Hebrew), on the outskirts of the Gaza strip in the 70s, who meet with the hardships of love, sexuality, morality and responsibility near the end of their military service and the beginning of their civilian adult lives.

Marta is a romantic and a loser in school. She shares a room with her sister Kasia and grandma, who tells her granddaughters insurgency stories instead of fairy tales. In the room behind the wall, the parents - Tadek and Elżbieta - live their married life. He is an intelligent constantly humiliated by the state, he also makes his own moonshine after work and silently envies his prosperous brother in law. She is the leader of the "Solidarity" union at work, with the need for freedom and a dream to get out of Poland. The real adventure for the family starts when they manage to get their dream orange Fiat 126p. Ela and Tadek discover their appetite for trading and trips abroad, and the growing Marta will fall in love for the first time.

At fourteen years of age, Tomás is entering adolescence, that time in your life in which not only do you have to face physical and emotional changes, but in which there are also memories that start taking more traumatic forms. That is why he continuously visits a psychiatrist, why he acts a bit weird. He is a bit of a hermit, bearing, as much as he can, the extreme normalcy of his family, who are dying for summer to arrive so they can go to a time share at the beach, while Tomás wants to escape… to the moon.

The film follows different stages in the life of Sofía, a young girl born in Argentina of Chinese descent. From her childhood to her adulthood, she's conflicted by the clash and fusion of both her cultures, all while facing a strenuous relationship with her mother Jia, who places concerns and demands on her.

The lives of a group of young Chicago men, as seen through the eyes of one of them, a writer.

Josh is a young boy who feels neglected and misunderstood at home. Preparing to run away, he chances across an old diary once kept by his grandfather. Leafing through the yellowed pages, Josh discovers that Grandpa went through many of the same childhood travails that he is enduring at that moment. Armed with a renewed understanding of and appreciation for his elders, Josh decides to stick around for a while and see how things develop.

Based on personal memories and experiences of childhood, set in and around a Glasgow housing scheme. A triptych of moments of reflection and loss in one girl's childhood and adolescence.

It's the day before Grace Fitzgerald's 18th Birthday - aka the last day of her childhood. Desperate to have one last 'golden' day, Grace and her best friend, Bella, skip school to have an adventure.

Inspired by true experiences of grief, girlhood, and growing up, Jessie Barr’s SOPHIE JONES provides a stirring portrait of a sixteen-year-old. Stunned by the untimely death of her mother and struggling with the myriad challenges of teendom, Sophie (played with striking immediacy by the director’s cousin Jessica Barr) tries everything she can to feel something again, while holding herself together, in this sensitive, acutely realized, and utterly relatable coming-of-age story.

When the double wedding takes two daughters away from the old man at once, the youngest, now the only one left, in outraged spirit promises never to leave her father, but soon she too is departing for a new home. Then comes a cold hard fact of life. The son-in-law claims his right to make a home alone for his wife. In his bitterness and anger, the father denies them both the house. Several years later the lonely old man meets at the gate a babe in arms. When he learns whose baby it is, heart hunger craves another sight, and sought, brings with it the only natural result.