Ellen Foster

In Tokyo, a girl and her boyfriend spend a night talking about their life, their precarious condition and their difficulties to earn a living, their place in the world, if ever they have one...

Billy is the self-designated leader of a group of teenagers living in a shelter. Jacob and Rae, Billy's oldest childhood friends, live there as well as part of "the family". Billy has an AIDs-like virus, which he has passed on to his blood brother Jacob. Billy and Rae are boyfriend and girlfriend, much to the dismay of Jacob who has always loved Rae from afar. Billy's philosophy of life, and how that interfaces with having a deadly virus, comes to a head when Billy and Jacob compete in a very unique game of "Tag", with the future of Rae and "the family" dependent upon the outcome.

After her father dies, a young woman returns to her Yorkshire village for the first time in 15 years to claim the family farm she believes is hers.

A troubled Southern man talks to his suicidal sister's psychiatrist about their family history and falls in love with her (and New York City) in the process.

Two young brothers in contemporary Russia are reunited with a father they know only from an old photograph after his sudden return from a long absence. With their mother’s reluctant consent, they set out on a remote trip that quickly becomes an uneasy test of authority, trust, and masculinity. As the journey moves deeper into the wilderness, the fragile bonds between father and sons are pushed to their limits.

Nine-year-old Frankie and his single mum Lizzie have been on the move ever since Frankie can remember, most recently arriving in a seaside Scottish town. Wanting to protect her deaf son from the truth that they've run away from his father, Lizzie has invented a story that he is away at sea on the HMS Accra. Every few weeks, Lizzie writes Frankie a make-believe letter from his father, telling of his adventures in exotic lands. As Frankie tracks the ship's progress around the globe, he discovers that it is due to dock in his hometown. With the real HMS Accra arriving in only a fortnight, Lizzie must choose between telling Frankie the truth or finding the perfect stranger to play Frankie's father for just one day...

Every Second Counts

Three generations of women deal with family secrets while surviving the east wind, fire, insanity, superstition, lies and even death.

Boris is around 20 years old and lives on the road with his disturbed father. When his boss offers him a better job at the restaurant where he works, Boris sees a way out off this rambling life.

1959, support from US troops based in Asia and later from the Sates enables two actresses to start a charity for mixed-race 'orphans' who are locally neglected as outcasts. Thus originates Childhelp, which later runs multi-disciplinary centers for abused and/or neglected children in the States. Among them is bright Jacob Fletcher, whose stepfather, a lawyer, terrorized him into utter trauma and reclaims him shortly after 10 months in jail. Jacob's peers have distressing stories of their own, but competent, devoted staff helps most of them decisively on the former farm, using animal therapy.

Gulabi is a transwoman groomed by her patriarchal father to join the military. When her father disowns her, Gulabi ends up living a life of prostitution in Kathmandu.

The Chemos and the Pachecos are two gangs whose adventures are witnessed by the doctor, the assistant and the social worker of a clinic where they know of the young men's problems.

Teen skater Ken Park (nicknamed Krap Nek; his name spelled and pronounced backward) kills himself at a Visalia skate park; his death bookends the lives of four other young people who knew him: Shawn, the most conventional; Tate brims with psychotic rage; Claude is habitually harassed by his brutish father and coddled, rather uncomfortably, by his enormously pregnant mother; and Peaches looks after her devoutly religious father, but yearns for freedom. They're all rather tight, or so they claim.

An epic tale spanning forty years in the life of Celie, an African-American woman living in the South who survives incredible abuse and bigotry. After Celie's abusive father marries her off to the equally debasing 'Mister' Albert Johnson, things go from bad to worse, leaving Celie to find companionship anywhere she can. She perseveres, holding on to her dream of one day being reunited with her sister in Africa.

Ciao, a fifth grader, has to create a vlog with his parents for a school assignment. Since he can't find time with them, he tries various ways to complete the task. One day, Ciao meets a homeless man who works as a street sign holder. In exchange for Ciao's lunchbox, the man agrees to pose as Ciao's grandfather in the video.

Lichter is an episodic tale from Hans-Christian Schmid about the life on the border between Germany and Poland. The film sheds light on the everyday stories of escape and desperateness.

When his young son is killed in a hit and run accident, Charles Thenier resolves to hunt down and murder the killer. By chance, Thenier makes the acquaintance of an actress, Helène Lanson, who was in the car at the time of the accident. He then meets Helène’s brother-in-law, Paul Decourt, a truly horrible individual.

Joe and Lucky travel around New England painting barns in exchange for an advertisement on one side. The meet Madge, who is cruelly treated by a her father who plans to marry her off to someone she despises.

Cathy and Reg are a couple with three young children, who find their life spiralling into poverty when Reg loses his well-paid job. Gripping and emotional, Cathy Come Home remains a truly ground-breaking piece of dramatic fiction, engaging viewers with social issues, such as homelessness, unemployment and the rights of mothers to keep their own children.

Dolores Claiborne was accused of killing her abusive husband twenty years ago, but the court's findings were inconclusive and she was allowed to walk free. Now she has been accused of killing her employer, Vera Donovan, and this time there is a witness who can place her at the scene of the crime. Things look bad for Dolores when her daughter Selena, a successful Manhattan magazine writer, returns to cover the story.