Cultural historian Janina Ramirez presents a collection of intriguing and exciting short films by emerging women directors and artists. Each film gives a female perspective on modern-day topics from body image and new love to grief and belonging. Expect honest and refreshing storytelling that will make you laugh, make you cry and make you think. In a Room Full of Sisters; Blood Stains; Bridging the Gap; Cake; Ding-Ding, Next; Fruity; In Perpetuum; Owulide; White Dwarf; Cosmic Domestic; The Dead Are Jewels to Me; The Presence of Absence
June and Jennifer Gibbons are twins from the only Black family in a small town in Wales in the 1970s and '80s. Feeling isolated from the community, the pair turn inward and reject communication with everyone but each other, retreating into their own fantasy world of inspiration and adolescent desires. After a spree of vandalism, the girls are sentenced to Broadmoor, an infamous psychiatric hospital, where they face the choice to separate and survive or die together.
A cloudy riverbank. Kazuko, a one-piece woman with a floral pattern, stands under the viaduct. She was abandoned here when she was young and raised by a homeless man who lives there. Yoshio offers an engagement ring to his girlfriend Sachiko, but he gets confused. As he was frustrated and walking along the night road, Kazuko, who was standing under the guard and selling his body, called out and headed for a love hotel with her. Kazuko accepts rough acts as they are. After the fact, Yoshio opened the ring case in front of Kazuko and showed it. She couldn't help feeling destined because she never thought that such a day would come. A few days later, Yoshio also visited the riverside village, and Kazuko said goodbye to the homeless man. Kazuko was greeted by Yoshio's parents, Takeshi and Yoko, with joy and tension in her heart. Even though she knew her poor upbringing, her parents kindly accepted her because she wouldn't hide it from her family.
Hawaiian Love: Dangerous Honeymoon
Jess Bhamra, the daughter of a strict Indian couple in London, is not permitted to play organized soccer, even though she is 18. When Jess is playing for fun one day, her impressive skills are seen by Jules Paxton, who then convinces Jess to play for her semi-pro team. Jess uses elaborate excuses to hide her matches from her family while also dealing with her romantic feelings for her coach, Joe.
A 14-year-old pursues romance with a man while vacationing with her family in Switzerland.
German family Schroeder is spending their Christmas holidays on the Thai island, Phuket. Of all the things, deep within the sleazy tourist bars and alleys of Patong, the youngest son Felix falls in love with a gorgeous Thai girl Fai who in return appears to mutually attracted to him.
A woman becomes addicted to the rhythm and joy found on the train. Various men are encountered...but when will they get off?
In 1989, prostitute Aileen Wuornos befriends and enters a relationship with a young woman named Selby. Determined to straighten out her life, Aileen's limited education lands her back on the corner. She's raped by a trick, who she kills. A string of murder and robbery follows that ultimately leads Aileen to becoming America's first female serial killer.
Die Jüdin
Filmmaker Talya Lavie steps into the spotlight with a dark comedy about everyday life for a unit of young female Israeli soldiers. The human resources office at a remote desert base serves as the setting for this cast of characters, who bide their time pushing paper, battling for the top score in Minesweeper, and counting down the minutes until they can return to civilian life. Amidst their boredom and clashing personalities, issues of commitment—from friendship to love and country—are handled with humor and sharp-edged wit.
June R, an orphan, was born in the month of June, for which she was named. She works in an advertising agency. One day she happens to come across a middle-aged woman hurt badly in an accident.
Klaus Gremme, a retired instructor with the combat swimmers at the Baltic Sea, sets off for Lake Constance to meet his son Thomas and his grandchildren. They don't know anything about him because Klaus left his wife and Thomas when the boy was still very young. Klaus takes up residence with Mona, a single mother whose house is across the street from Thomas'. The reunion with his son turns into a fiasco, but Klaus doesn't give up and develops an elaborate plan to win Thomas and his family over after all. In the coming weeks, however, the ex-fight swimmer constantly clashes with his esoteric, pacifist landlady Mona. She and her children, the overweight Linus and Claire, who has Down syndrome, slowly grow fond of the lone warrior. In the end, the rapprochement with his own family seems to have failed. But Klaus may have found a new, completely different family in this search.
"REM" is an Afrikaans Sci-Fi Drama about a grief-stricken father, Dehan, who becomes obsessed with the memory of his late wife, Lena, through the use of a high-tech, dream-altering device, the REM. This unhealthy obsession leads to Dehan struggling to reconnect with his young son, Erich, who survived the car accident that caused Lena's death. Dehan must decide to face and to confront his grief, reconnecting with his son, or to become so immersed in his fantasy dream-world that he loses touch with reality, and Erich, altogether.
Miss Meadows is a school teacher with impeccable manners and grace. However, underneath the candy-sweet exterior hides a ruthless gun-toting vigilante who takes it upon herself to right the wrongs in the world by whatever means necessary. For Miss Meadows, bad behavior is simply unforgivable.
Cecilie and Joachim are about to get married when a freak car accident leaves Joachim disabled, throwing their lives into a spin. The driver of the other car, Marie, and her family don’t get off lightly, either. Her husband Niels works in the hospital where he meets Cecilie and falls madly in love with her.
While waiting for her divorce papers, a repressed literature professor finds herself unexpectedly attracted by a carefree, spirited young woman named Cay.
A woman and her daughter struggle to make their way through the aftermath of the Balkan war.
The lives of a lively local girl, a female pastor who has a thing for newly married husbands, a pregnant mistress searching for her sugar daddy and a frustrated wandering artist become entwined in the green hills of a mountain resort.
The male protagonist's father remarried, married a young and beautiful woman, and had sex with his father recklessly at home every day, which made the male protagonist imagine, but the male protagonist still did not cross the line after all, and could only vent his fantasy about his stepmother on his girlfriend. The male protagonist and his girlfriend, his father and his stepmother live at home, which is similar to a harmonious family. However, behind this harmony, there is a hidden ethical violation. The father also started a different kind of passionate sex with the male protagonist's little girlfriend...