Germany ’09 – 13 Short Films About the State of the Nation

Theres and Kenneth are both young when they first meet whilst on holiday. They fall in love but are unable to prevent themselves from losing each other. Thirty years later, in another country, another couple: Ariane leaves her husband David because she no longer loves him. The paths they both take lead them to Kenneth and Theres.

Shirshendu Mukhopadhyay's famous tale of 3 generations of women & their changing position in society,seen in relation to a box of jewels, handed down from one generation to the next. A film by Aparna Sen.

Lacey is a girl of about ten. On a lazy day, she watches some TV, rides her bike in front of her house, then explores a field across from her front door. A shirtless man pets her dog. She goes up to him and he bends close to take a bug off her shoulder and hand it to her. Is this an innocent or a dangerous world? Is Lacey in trouble?

Columbus' 4th voyage has been a total failure: he has not found the westward passage, he has no gold to show, he has lost men and ships and his efforts to build a colony have fallen through. The monarchs of Spain are not going to restore the rights and privileges which were taken away from Columbus after the first voyage. And Columbus will be shamed. Many of his sailors who have survived, can't face the journey home. They will choose to remain on Hispaniola or neighbouring Puerto Rico.

Camille, a mercurial César-winning actress, has seen better times. Estranged from her husband, she's with her children only every other weekend. It's her weekend, but her agent has booked her to MC a Rotary club dinner in Vichy. She takes them with her, and when her husband learns this, he demands to pick them up at once. She bolts in a rented car to the seaside, trying to improve her relations with the children, especially the precocious and distant Vincent. He loves astronomy. A rare meteor shower is due in a few days, so she suggests they go to a plateau in Spain hoping to see it. He agrees, but the relationship remains difficult, and her husband is on their trail.

India. Smita is an untouchable. She dreams of seeing her daughter escape her miserable condition and enter school. Italy. Giulia works in her father’s workshop. When he has an accident, she discovers that the family business is ruined. Canada. Sarah, a successful lawyer, is about to be promoted to the head of her firm when she learns that she is ill. Three lives, three women, three continents. Three battles to fight. Although they don’t know each other, Smita, Giulia and Sarah are unknowingly linked by their most intimate and singular bond.

Petra, a young single mother, after divorce and her father's death, tries to free herself and live her life in spite of everyone, looking for the Right One.

Jinx Sister is a story about Laura (Wiseman) who is convinced she is a jinx. People who get close to her have a habit of dying. She thought fleeing to the other side of the world would help. Instead, she developed a serious drink problem. Waking one night in an alley, with no recollection of who she had sex with, Laura decides its time to face up to her past.

Architect Alexander Beck has just won an architecture prize. He wants to modernize GDR building blocks in Thuringia. Alex travels to the heart of rural Eastern Germany where he grew up and where people remember him as Alex from the Free German Youth, a pro-GDR youth organization.

Away from the microphone, David is soft spoken, shy and unsure of himself. However, as his on-air alias ‘Danger Dave,’ the host of “Gay Talk,” he’s poised, witty, and every listener’s best friend. His sister, Kate, a thrice divorced banker has a yen for Schumann and cats. Though successful, the siblings suffer from a secret, yet vast, sense of inadequacy. Kate decides to adopt and asks David to be a father figure. David gawkily romances his coworker. Past and present intertwine to tell the story of a man learning to love and accept himself.

A young refugee travels from Russia to America in search of her lost father and falls in love with a gypsy horseman.

Mildred and Doris are two middle-aged white women, from very different backgrounds, who become lovers and set up house together. Film explores the pleasures and uncertainties of later-life emotional attachment and lesbian identity in a culture that glorifies youth and heterosexual romance.

Pierre has been happily married for fifteen years and a good father. Still in love with his wife, he enjoys his wife and family and is content. One evening, he meets Elsa at a party and are immediately attracted to each other. Fifteen days later, they happen to meet again and the mutual attraction turns into infatuation. But his love for his wife and Elsa's rule about not dating married men prevents them from taking the next step. Instead, they fantasize about each other, and soon the fantasies mingle with the reality.

A father and a mother await the arrival of a son on a rainy day.

"Olivia" captures the awakening passions of an English adolescent sent away for a year to a small finishing school outside Paris. The innocent but watchful Olivia develops an infatuation for her headmistress, Mlle. Julie, and through this screen of love observes the tense romance between Mlle. Julie and the other head of the school, Mlle. Cara, in its final months.

Police inspector Sciarra, struggling with an identity crisis, and Domenica, an orphan who would like to know about her mother, spend one day together along the streets of Naples. It's Sciarra's last day of work and he has to take Domenica to the morgue, to identify a man who might have raped her. To Domenica, Sciarra is a father she never had, to him she is the daughter he couldn't have.

An adventurous love story between two young women of different social and economic backgrounds who find themselves going through all the typical struggles of a new romance.

The Soong family was a political dynasty in China that reached the highest levels of power. This film follows the lives of the three Soong daughters, who were educated in America and returned to China. Ai-ling married a wealthy and powerful businessman. Ching-ling married Sun Yat-sen, the revolutionary founder of modern China. Mei-ling married Chiang Kai-shek, China's leader during World War II. The sisters captured the world's fascination for their brilliant marriages and their strong influence on their nation.

Sophie just finished high school and is going to college. This means she will have to move out of town and say goodbye to her mother, brothers, sisters and her family home. Sophie wants to live on her own and and become independent, but at the same time she longs to be in her mother's arms, to the safety of her home and to prolong the scary and unknown.

A love affair: from the end to the beginning