Breaking Pencils

Set in the heart of a rapidly gentrifying west Los Angeles neighborhood still reeling from decades of guns and gang violence across the four corners near Venice, a working-class single mom desperately tries to wean her 17-year-old son Freddy away from a veteran gangster who has become a father figure to him.

On an unseasonably hot day in November, Hiro, a Japanese immigrant in New York City, decides to butcher a live chicken for dinner. While showing his visiting cousin Kei around, the pair encounter a medical emergency on the street. After they mishandle the situation and end up causing more harm than good, Hiro cannot bring himself to kill the chicken. Throughout, Kei observes his cousin’s new lifestyle as Hiro and his pregnant wife prepare for their move to Chinatown. As the day wears on, Hiro and Kei’s actions highlight how their lives are complicit in the structural violence that surrounds them.

Two brave young men set out to create the greatest film drama of all time. What comes next turns out to be much bigger than they ever expected.

Work up a sweat from the soccer field to the locker room in these drama-fueled four films from Germany, France and the UK that explore how rivalry between teams can spill over into teacher-pupil relationships, high school crushes and brotherly compassion. The short films are: Islands [Inseln] (2018); Play It Like a Man [Un été viril] (2018); Colours (2015); Through the Fields [Passer les champs] (2015).

Oskar is on the night train heading home after an interview in Stockholm. With a long night ahead of him, he makes eye contact with Ahmad. For the first time, he meets the gaze of someone who feels the same desire as he does.

At fifteen, Milagros' world still revolves around her mother's affection. This summer an unexpected encounter with death will make her question their relationship, her privilege and her own existence.

Santeri (13) looks on as older guys are driving their motor bikes and wants to be part of their world. He combs his hair and goes to meet his friend Anna (13). At Anna's home childhood's anarchy meets puberty.

Elisabeth and John John are raised in the same city, yet they live light years apart, separated economically, socially and culturally. That is until the day they start in the same high school class.

JR is a fatherless boy growing up in the glow of a bar where the bartender, his Uncle Charlie, is the sharpest and most colorful of an assortment of quirky and demonstrative father figures. As the boy’s determined mother struggles to provide her son with opportunities denied to her — and leave the dilapidated home of her outrageous if begrudgingly supportive father — JR begins to gamely, if not always gracefully, pursue his romantic and professional dreams, with one foot persistently placed in Uncle Charlie’s bar.

Solteras Indisponibles

2020, in global confinement in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic, in CDMX women decide to give birth in their own home. The film is an intimate witness of life, which, despite everything, prevails.

Stories told along the river: a woman reunites with her ex-lover at a hydroelectric plant; meanwhile, a young man travels downstream to a temple in search of a cure for his insomnia.

While spending a summer vacation with his cousin Pamela, 14-year-old David becomes completely infatuated with her alluring older boyfriend Javier. As a heatwave intensifies, so do the boy's burgeoning desires.

Ariel must make an important decision.

Two women are flat-mates and friends in Tokyo. One is an event manager and the other works in the world of fashion marketing. The result shows that one is pregnant one day. The woman decides to give birth out of wedlock. It is a major decision, which is the harbinger of not just a change in their lives, but also their relationship.

For teenage misfits Hunter and Kevin, the path to glory is clear: Devote themselves to metal. Win Battle of the Bands. And be worshipped like gods.

Childhood friends Amy and Steve come home from their first semester of college for a relaxed winter break, but must navigate turbulent reunions, unspoken romance, and even an unplanned pregnancy. There's no place like home for the holidays!

A woman inhabits her lover’s secluded ice fishing cabin in the dead of winter to begin a unique transformation.

An account of what it means to be Black in 2020.

Sunny, a young Asian American woman with anger management issues, returns home to the San Gabriel Valley seeking respite from her recent career failures - but a simple grocery shopping trip with her mother may prove more than she can handle.