After a dreadful incident coupled with an ungovernable paroxysm of violence, a butcher will fall into a downward spiral that will burn to the ground whatever dignity still remained in him.
Before Words
A distraught squatter tries to cope with his werewolf nature through drugs and music.
A middle aged woman is desperately wondering in the streets looking for her daughter. A man finds her before she does.
Mairy, a thirty-year-old woman from Philippines, works in a village in Cyprus. She takes care of Mr. Michalis, an eigthy-five-year-old man with arteriosclerosis. Mr. Michalis spends his days in front of the television, watching time and again a soap opera with a heroine named Anna. He soon becomes obsessed with this heroine, to the point of calling Mairy 'Anna', despite the remarks of his daughter Melpo. When Mairy finds some old photographs she makes an important discovery...
Giano and Luc are traveling through the woods when a storm breaks, forcing them to take shelter in Luc's villa. Gradually and insidiously, a competition emerges between them, with terrible consequences.
Overwhelmed by grief following the death of his wife, Donnelly shares a train carriage home with a troubled young man identified only as the 'Kid'. As the Kid becomes more agitated and foul-mouthed, the journey takes on a violent and dangerous hue – for the bereaved Donnelly and for other hapless passengers on the train. Academy Award Winner: Best Live Action Short Film – 2005
Through a series of auditions, a young actor in New York City struggles with his identity.
It's Christmas night when Victor gets stranded in a deserted hotel in Baltimore. To pass the lonely hours, he decides that for first time in his life he's going to order the services of a call girl. When Victor mistakenly recognizes a beautiful young woman at the bar for the call girl, he is taken aback by her warm response to his shy approach. From this moment on, the line between real love and paid love quickly dissolves.
Chronique de l'ennui
Saori, a school girl, is molested on the notorious "molester train" of the Hanagawa line and rescued by another school girl who witnesses the act. The girl who rescues her turned out to be a new student of the same high school Saori attends. The mysterious new student Yuriko is rumoured to be a "parent killer". Yuriko then leads Saori and her friends to hunt molesters.
Adela has just settled in Madrid with her father, Claudio, a retired concert musician and a hermit. Both teach piano to small children in a quiet, sparsely-furnished flat in the centre of town.
Oscar got caught spraying graffiti. Now doing community service at a nursing home, he meets Isabel who is suffering from dementia. At 84 years old, Isabel may be a little old school, but soon the entire block is covered with her pink tag.
A young man's struggle with his sexuality overtakes his life, driving him deep into his subconscious where guilt and fears of physicality chase him still further. Cornered by an intangible terror, he realises he must either break out or break down.
A young boy called Justen, who went through doleful past, discoveres a way to change his situation greatly.
The seven short films making up GENIUS PARTY couldn’t be more diverse, linked only by a high standard of quality and inspiration. Atsuko Fukushima’s intro piece is a fantastic abstraction to soak up with the eyes. Masaaki Yuasa, of MIND GAME and CAT SOUP fame, brings his distinctive and deceptively simple graphic style and dream-state logic to the table with “Happy Machine,” his spin on a child’s earliest year. Shinji Kimura’s spookier “Deathtic 4,” meanwhile, seems to tap into the creepier corners of a child’s imagination and open up a toybox full of dark delights. Hideki Futamura’s “Limit Cycle” conjures up a vision of virtual reality, while Yuji Fukuyama’s "Doorbell" and "Baby Blue" by Shinichiro Watanabe use understated realism for very surreal purposes. And Shoji Kawamori, with “Shanghai Dragon,” takes the tropes and conventions of traditional anime out for very fun joyride.
Guillaume is getting ready to meet his wife in the maternity ward where she has just given birth. But an unexpected phone call plunges him back into bitter childhood memories: his father, whom he has not seen for years, wants nothing more than to see his daughter-in-law and the newborn child.
An animated short based on Hans Christian Andersen's tale about a poor young girl with a burning desire to find comfort and happiness in her life. Desperate to keep warm, the girl lights the matches she sells, and envisions a very different life for herself in the fiery flames filled with images of loving relatives, bountiful food, and a place to call home.
Ines is 21 years old and dreams of becoming an actress. In order to fulfil that dream, she decides to leave Brasília for São Paulo to appear as an extra in a popular soap opera. However, with no place to stay, she ends up staying at the Tiete Bus Terminal, the second largest in the world.
A library assistant plods through an ordinary life in LA until a chance meeting opens his eyes to the power of creativity and ultimately, love. When this new life and love begin to fall apart, he discovers he has a lot to give. This short film proves that ordinary is no place to be.