A small town shortly before the end of the GDR: 15-year-old Ulla lives with her mother in a dilapidated old building where not even the electricity works properly. Economy of scarcity and national bankruptcy are visible everywhere. Only higher party comrades live in the lap of luxury. When Ulla meets Winfried after a summer bathing trip, the two fall in love. Winfried is the son of an influential general director and owns things from West Germany that others only dream of: a computer, a games console, a walkman. On an excursion with her biology class, the high school student discovers that a dacha is being built in the middle of the nature reserve and the creek has been dammed. Winfried's father turns out to be the culprit, but the mayor is on his side. Ulla rebels against this environmental destruction connected to political corruption and organizes a protest. Her activism not only endangers her own future, but also her first great love.
In a dystopian future where the world has devolved into a pre-industrial state, the Purists rule supreme. The Purists blame technology for all the world’s past ills, and have deemed it to be inherently sinful. A handful of Companions, human-like artificial intelligence, have managed to make it through the apocalypse. They survive the only way they can –by hiding in plain sight.
A journey of passion, a bitter night. Xiao Cheng ask for help to resolve a big trouble, the guy with whom he spend the afternoon is dead on his bed from the effect of a drug, not something the Chinese authorities look kindly on.
Sin and Illy have a plan: on a Greek island they want to get 'clean' on their own. But the intention of the two girls fails already on the way to the airport. Finally Sin realizes she has to go the way out of heroin addiction all alone.
Jess, age 18, and Moss, age 12 are second cousins in the dark-fire tobacco fields of rural Western Kentucky. Without immediate families that they can relate to, and lacking friends their own age, they only have each other. Over the course of a summer they venture on a journey exploring deep secrets and hopes of a future while being confronted with fears of isolation, abandonment and an unknown tomorrow.
An awkward 13-year-old leaves her cranky grandfather in rural Texas, to live with her mother in Fort Worth.
Gosia is a beautiful and innocent young maid on the catholic countryside tending the cattle. One summer day she is having a bath in the river naked as god created her. On the next day a stranger appears painting and painting all day long. As they talk the black dressed suddenly shows her a picture showing her naked in the river. At first she is very ashamed, but then she begins to forget her shyness.
On the night before he is set to leave his Rhode Island home to study photography in New York City, Rocco must decide how much he's willing to give up to follow his dreams.
In New South Wales, Jared surfs with his mates and has a first girl. He hosts a beach party for his older pal, Ricko, and witnesses four of his mates gang-rape a 15 year old. He does nothing, and the next day, she's found murdered. At school, the boys and the girls react: the girls with anger at the perpetrators, the boys with jeering at the dead girl's morality. The students' parents have their own responses. Jared retreats into angry silence, disgusted that he did nothing to help the dead girl. Meanwhile, his mother wants to talk to him about her impending cancer surgery, the police want to know what he saw, and his friend Ricko wants an alibi. Jared's cracking under the pressure.
Is perfection real or is it an abstract concept unattainable in life? A fetishist sees the perfect pair of feet and goes to great lengths to meet them (and the woman to whom they're attached). He talks it over with his shrink (an axilla fetishist), sees the mystery woman remove her shoes at a Japanese restaurant (he sneaks over to her shoes and traces the sole of one in order to buy her a pair that will fit), and follows her, shoe box in hand, until the right moment. Meanwhile, we learn something about her own fetish when she sneaks into a hospital and puts on a nurse's outfit. When the moment of their meeting is at hand, will she accept his gift?
Antonia is a single mother who works as a hotel maid in Berlin. A normal hot summer day takes a dramatic turn when she crosses paths with a particular guest of the hotel, famous blind portrait painter Julius Pass.
Three high school students make an incredible discovery, leading to their developing uncanny powers beyond their understanding. As they learn to control their abilities and use them to their advantage, their lives start to spin out of control, and their darker sides begin to take over.
Two sisters track down and torture a man which they suspect is their estranged father.
Giuseppe, 33, is still struggling to build his life in a small Italian town where he has to hide his homosexuality. With a Polaroid in hand, he decides to leave for Berlin to find Peter, a summer love he has never forgotten. The shock of a cosmopolitan city is nothing compared to the moment he realizes that the German artist has a "normal" family. For him this represents the possibility of 'losing' himself and meeting Marco, who takes him around all night to arrive at dawn to the conviction that love is the only strength to find one's identity. "Polaroid" is one of five short film segments in an omnibus feature titled "A Quintet".
This fictionalized story, based on the family life of writer James Jones, is an emotional slice-of-life story. Jones is portrayed here as Bill Willis, a former war hero turned author who combats alcoholism and is starting to experience health problems. Living in France with his wife, daughter, and an adopted son, the family travels an unconventional road which casts them as outsiders to others. Preaching a sexual freedom, his daughter's sexual discovery begins at an early age and betrays her when the family moves to Hanover in America. Her overt sexuality clashes with the values of her teenage American peers and gives her a problematic reputation. Meanwhile, her brooding brother copes with his own interior pain regarding his past, only comfortable communicating within the domestic space.
Léo is dragged to a nudist camping resort by his mother. Like most boys at the age of 12 or 13, being nude in public holds little appeal for Léo, who protests by wearing extra layers. Until he meets a certain special girl, who captures his heart and releases his inhibitions.
A Brooklyn teenager juggles conflicting identities and risks friendship, heartbreak, and family in a desperate search for sexual expression.
At the Personality Plant, robots are being built and slowly outfitted with the artificial memories of real people. Suzu is one such robot, being made to replace the young boy a family has lost. By chance, he meets Hitori, a young girl suffering from progressive memory loss. The two children become friends and attempt to define themselves in the light of their changing memories.
Somewhere in North Kolkata, OBHYESH is an unfurling of a 28 years old boy's life, through his struggle to fall asleep during a whole night. The boy seems to be terribly tired and tries hard to get some sleep but various thoughts perpetually come and go keeping him awake where rest is dreamlike and comes to him eventually at dawn.
Set in cold rural Quebec at Christmas time, we follow the coming of age of a young boy and the life of his family which owns the town's general store and undertaking business.