Being Impossible

It is 1913. Women across the country, outraged by inequality and prejudice are beginning to rise up and demand change. In York, a revolution is about to take place as an ordinary Heworth housewife risks her life and her family to join the fight. And she's not alone. Across the city, women run safe-houses, organise meetings, smash windows and fire-bomb pillar boxes. It's dangerous, it's exhilarating, it's ground-breaking: and in 2017 the amazing story of York's suffragettes will be told for the first time. Everything is Possible is York Theatre Royal and Pilot Theatre's latest large-scale community production. The play was performed on a spectacular scale with a cast of around 150 and a choir of 80. The performance started outdoors before moving onto the stage at York Theatre Royal. We raised the purple, green and white flags and cried "Votes for Women!" to sold-out audiences.

Santa, a peasant woman loyal to the Revolution, is sent to guard Andrés, a gay writer who is under house arrest, considered “ untrustworthy” for his ideas and sexuality by the Cuban authorities. Set in a small village in eastern Cuba during the early 1980s, this poignant political drama depicts an encounter between two deeply thoughtful souls on opposite sides of a profound cultural divide. Both have experienced deep loss, and both know the damaging effects of isolation and oppression. Even so, the cavernous ideological divide separating them — the same one that has separated Cuban friends and kin for over 50 years — has until now seemed insurmountable.

Manu, a trans immigrant, must return to her native Chile after 10 years in France. In the days leading up to her departure, Manu’s platonic friend Daniel proposes marriage with the intention of solving her visa issues. Manu strongly considers the offer, but she’s wholly disheartened at the prospect of a life without love, romance, and sex—that is, until she meets a fellow foreigner who instills in her the hope for a romantic future.

Ludovic is waiting for a miracle. With six-year-old certainty, she believes she was meant to be a little girl -- and that the mistake will soon be corrected. But where she expects the miraculous, Ludo finds only rejection, isolation and guilt -- as the intense reactions of family, friends, and neighbors strip away every innocent lace and bauble. As suburban prejudices close around them, family loves and loyalties are tested in the ever-escalating dramatic turns of Alain Berliner's critically acclaimed first feature. Winner of the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film and a favorite at festivals around the world, this unique film experience delivers magic of the rarest sort through a story of difference, rejection, and childlike faith in miracles.

21st Century Girl is an omnibus feature that is of the girls, by the girls and for the girls. The work of 15 women directors under the age of 30, each of whom contributed an 8-minute film, the package highlights a range of genres, visions and thematic concerns.

Lindani, a neurotic young trans man, struggles to tell his partner Tam he loves them after a random encounter with a stranger shakes his self-confidence. But as he finds himself pushed and pulled in all directions by the perceptions of others, can Lindani reconnect with himself enough to figure out how he really feels?

A headstrong young girl in Afghanistan, ruled by the Taliban, disguises herself as a boy in order to provide for her family.

Two actresses take us through a series of 'raps' and sketches about what it means to be beautiful and black.

When a Hong Kong teenager from a poor family wins a trip to Japan, he unleashes a chain of events that will soon bring him from his secluded fishing village to Tokyo. On the way, he connects with a barely competent tour guide and a gender-fluid pickpocket. Upon returning home with this merry band of schemers, he and his family of counterfeiters discover that a multinational conglomerate led by a ruthless Japanese developer has found the village, and is determined to raze it to build the new center of world trade.

The films spans two decades as the story unfolds in a series of flashbacks that begin when Qiyue and Ansheng were just thirteen. The two became inseparable until they met a boy who ended up tearing their lives apart.

A gritty story taking place in Stockholm, about the passionate love between the self-abusive Sebastian who wants to be a woman, and the easy-going Andreas who is certainly not gay.

Denny, a free spirit and artist falls for Ryan, a straight laced lawyer. When Denny questions gender their love is tested.

Sweet, chubby, theatrical Billy was never cut out to be a farmer or a rugby player, but as the only son of a ‘good kiwi bloke’ he’s obliged to try. The cows are stubborn and the chores gruelling but Billy finds escape in a fantasy world playing Lana, heroine of his favourite TV show Adventures in Space. Not everyone approves of Billy's transformation. On the brink of adolescene, he discovers growing up is more complicated than he could ever have imagined.

A depressed wife and mother whose reality is starting to fracture into fantasy, drives her children to the beach. On the return journey she stops at a service station to fill up with petrol. Four mechanics eye her off and, as one of them walks towards her car, a full-blown erotic fantasy develops.

Darren vies for a promotion while facing sexism from his co-workers in a gender-swapped world.

Three poetic tales of seeking the true identity. In the first story, Jing, a blind singer, falls in love with her band's tomboy accordionist Diego. In another time and place, Lily, an elderly lesbian and Yen, her gay friend, create an unexpected bond and support each other in a time of crisis. Finally, we see Diego before she joined the band, when as a teenager she came to grips with her gender identity.

Zoya Diwan and her 8 year old son are stuck in an abusive marriage with her activist husband, when she is sought out for help by a victim of Triple Talaq

Borrowing its title from the William Carlos Williams poem of the same name, Nameless Spectacle revela in the beauty of ordinary life through themes of voyeurism, power, and sexual violence. Projected on two duelling screens the viewer is unable to focus on the parallel perspectives of the film’s dual perspectives.

A short film about identity and gender.

A storm is coming; the winds are getting strong. The real source of the ominous winds lies with Jina, who finds the strange word 'LingLing' written in her father’s notebook. She suspects he is cheating on her mother, who appears to be bored with life and fills the house with potted plants as if to show for her apathy. The film too is riddled with images of humid air and foul-smelling water, impure and overflowing. The sway of her father’s fishing pole and the flutters in Jina’s skirt seem perilous and unstable. When her anxiety and doubts finally come to a head, the family squarely face the rough downpour brought on by the storm. The director’s talent in boldly translating the characters desires and sensibilities into a narrative with powerful imagery is quite impressive.