A Circle of Children

A couple of English tourists arrive at the island of Almanzora, off the Spanish Mediterranean coast, where they discover that there are no adults in a small fishing village, only some children who stare at them and smile mysteriously.

What follows is a black-and-white silent film set in the 1890s during the brewing Filipino revolution against Spanish colonialism. A series of tragic and comic sequences tells the Three Ages of an Indio (“common man”) as he progresses from boy bell ringer in a village church to teenage revolutionary to adult theater actor rehearsing a popular Spanish play.

Every year the Chincoteague fire department rounds up the wild ponies of Assateague Island and holds an auction to thin out the herd. The young children set out to raise enough money in hopes that the Phantom will be caught in this years round up. They soon realize they will get more than they bargained for when the Phantom has a surprise for everyone: a foal named Misty.

Story of the early maturity of a boy, which confirms the old pedagogical truth that life, joy and trouble that man carries with himself, are best teachers.

Children from a wealthy family are playing in a garden. They encounter poor children, looking sad and sickly, who watch them play with envy. Moved to the depths of their little souls, our little rich people will work together to lavish all the kindness possible on the unfortunate youngsters, adorning them with a nobly charitable gesture, showering them with toys and candy.

Marina

Faced with the challenging behaviour of their kids, more and more parents in America are turning to psychoactive medication to help them cope, even though the drugs, and sometimes the diagnoses, remain controversial. Louis travels to one of America's leading children's psychiatric treatment centres, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to get to know the diagnosed children and hoping to understand what drives parents to put their kids on drugs.

A group of women, including Skipper, the wealthy young Jennifer and the domineering Nan, journey from the United States to South America in hopes of easily adopting children. Unfortunately, their plans are complicated by local laws that require the women to live in the foreign nation for an extended period before they can take in orphaned kids. While stuck in another country, the women bond as they share their aspirations and anxieties.

One class of school children from a small village make the trip to Zagreb. One of the boys gets sick and the class is forced to go home. During their journey the train gets stuck in a snowstorm.

Aava has but one wish: to get a dog. Meanwhile, her parents' marriage is falling apart.

Stuck in a mining town near Vladivostok in 1947 amongst Soviet exiles and Japanese POWs (Japanese prisoners remained in Siberia for years after the war had ended), the kids have to come up with something to keep them busy. Two friends, Valerka and Galia, play some peculiar, very dangerous games of their own amid the man-made wasteland of Suchan.

In post-apocalyptic Yokohama, a hard-boiled cop and a mellowed out drifter hook up with a gang of rebels. When the gang kidnap the cop's son, the wheels are set in motion for an inevitable showdown.

Mario Moreno portrays a professor in this movie. A small town in the middle of no where requests the school Mario Moreno is working in for a teacher. He ends up going to give the town a hand. When he arrives he comes to know the corrupt leaders who through out the movie try to make him leave. Although he is being harassed you can see how much he cares for the kids and their circumstances. He deals with problems by using his hilarious comments.

Working with children led Barskaya to create superb direct sound and an inspired style of shooting. Don’t look for conventional cinematic syntax here. The film is chaotic in the way that Soviet films still knew how to be, and Langlois couldn’t help but be seduced by its rebellious spirit, its anarchy and love of children, comparable to Vigo’s Zero de conduite. As well as being a film made with and for children, it offers a complex take on Western society. Pre-Nazi Germany is not named as such but is carefully reconstructed, possibly under advice from Karl Radek, and children offer a playful reflection of class struggle – doubly excluded, as proletarians and as minors. “They play in the same way that they live”, one intertitle says. The interaction between their comical games and the yet more ludicrous ones played by adults is developed on several levels.

Maggie has had four children, by four different fathers, removed by social services because of a previous violent relationship. When she meets Jorge, a gentle Latin American refugee, she gradually sees her chance for happiness, but her past still haunts her.

During the 1990 World Cup, two young Palestinian boys are on a quest for “Maradona’s legs”; the last missing sticker that they need in order to complete their world cup album and win a free Atari.

With the one, big, happy family that she has, any woman would admire Ina Montecillo as the embodiment of a perfect mother. But after more than 30 years of doing everything for her family, she realizes she hasn’t done anything for herself. Ina then embarks on a journey of finding her self-worth that surprisingly lands her as the President of the Philippines!

The recently widowed mother of two, Sarah, is desperate to know who murdered her husband in front of her young son, rendering him mute. Coerced into helping a low-life drug dealer stash narcotics stolen from the local Mr. Big, she's forced into taking drastic action to protect her children, evolving from downtrodden submissive to take-charge vigilante.

Richard Dadier is a teacher at North Manual High School, an inner-city school where many of the pupils frequently engage in anti-social behavior. Dadier makes various attempts to engage the students' interest in education, challenging both the school staff and the pupils. He is subjected to violence as well as duplicitous schemes.

The film centers on a big Polish family. Jadzia is the mother and the ruler of the Pzoniak family (she has five children). Though she's happily married to Bolek, she is also having a long-time affair with Roman. Her young daughter Hala is having an affair with neighbour cop Russell and becomes pregnant by him. Russell is pressed hard to marry Hala.