Mis-Angel

A short film about identity and gender.

Things are hectic in heaven. Dozens of scribes sit before a long scroll incessantly scribbling away. They are composing the biographies of earth-dwellers. What is invented by the men in heaven is lived out below. And their employer, God, is increasingly vehement in demanding avant-garde ideas. Take, for example, the beautiful Yuri, a girl who dies in a car crash. Some of the heavenly scribes find this very dull and send former gangster Chas, who has become a heavenly tea-boy, back down to earth with instructions to save Yuri no matter what. And so Chas ends up in Okinawa, gets to know the earth-dwellers, interferes in their fates, becomes celebrated as 'Mr Angel' and is hounded by brutal enemies. His falling in love with Yuri is of course a foregone conclusion. But no one could anticipate what happens next. Not even God himself

A tormented jazz musician finds himself lost in an enigmatic story involving murder, surveillance, gangsters, doppelgängers, and an impossible transformation inside a prison cell.

Not long after moving into her own place, Maggie finds herself with two unsolicited roommates: her recently divorced mother, Lila, and her young brother. The timing is especially bad, considering Maggie has fallen hard for an attractive woman, Kim, only hours before they move in. What could be a nonissue becomes increasingly complicated -- since Maggie's family is unaware of her sexual orientation, and Maggie is not open to sharing that information.

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

A New York City writing professor, Frannie Avery, has an affair with a police detective who is investigating the murder of a beautiful young woman in her neighborhood.

Two families from different parts of Miami must confront a gangster who kidnaps their autistic children under the protective gaze of a guardian angel

Disappointed with humanity, God wants to revoke his contract with humanity and wants to take back the stone tablets containing the ten commandments. To this end an angel is sent out to affect the personal lives of three humans so an appropriate child may be conceived.

In post-9/11 New York City, an eclectic group of citizens find their lives entangled, personally, romantically, and sexually, at Shortbus, an underground Brooklyn salon infamous for its blend of art, music, politics, and carnality.

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.

A passionate telling of the story of Sada Abe, a woman whose affair with her master led to an obsessive and ultimately destructive sexual relationship.

In the upscale Toronto strip club Exotica, dancer Christina is visited nightly by the obsessive Francis, a depressed tax auditor. Her ex-boyfriend, the club's MC, Eric, still jealously pines for her even as he introduces her onstage, but Eric is having his own relationship problems with the club's female owner. Thomas, a mysterious pet-shop owner, is about to become unexpectedly involved in their lives.

Humbert Humbert is a middle-aged British novelist who is both appalled by and attracted to the vulgarity of American culture. When he comes to stay at the boarding house run by Charlotte Haze, he soon becomes obsessed with Lolita, the woman's teenaged daughter.

When a guardian angel – who invisibly watches over the citizens of Los Angeles – becomes captivated by a strong-willed heart surgeon, he ponders trading in his pure, otherworldly existence for a mortal life with his beloved. The couple embarks on a tender but forbidden romance spanning heaven and Earth.

In the farmhouse Gaikoborda, located in the north of Navarre, a mournful family lives; dad, mom, and their four children: Jon, the paraplegic Aintzane and the twins Saioa and Anartz. One of these monotonous days, the mother recieves a visit: the doctor.

Jesse, a small-time criminal, high-tails it to Los Angeles to rendezvous with a French exchange student. Stealing a car and accidentally killing a highway patrolman, he becomes the most wanted fugitive in L.A.

In the late 1940s, a murderous couple known as the 'The Lonely Hearts Killers' kills close to a dozen people. Two detectives try to nab the duo who find their targets via the personals in the paper.

Mia, an ex-prostitute, is trapped in a loveless marriage with the abusive Quan (Sunny Pang, who also stars in Headshot in this year’s Festival lineup), a butcher who runs a roast meat shop. When she meets sensitive funeral director Wu, their passion for one another escalates into an affair. But the path to true love is fraught with jealousy, forcing someone to make a deadly move.

The lives of two lovelorn spouses from separate marriages, a registered sex offender, and a disgraced ex-police officer intersect as they struggle to resist their vulnerabilities and temptations.

A lonely telephone operator leading an empty, amoral life finds God – only to have her faith continually tested in ways beyond what she could have imagined.