Take the Lead

La goddam voie lactée

A lonely 60-year-old man lives in a small apartment on the top floor of a tower. Every day, a young woman entrusts her baby to him. A natural and unusual bond unites these two beings, one solid and sturdy, the other small and delicate.

The dance film When the Night Falls tells the story of a woman fleeing the horrors of a collapsing society in the near future. Along the way, she encounters people on whose trust her entire future depends on.

Twenty six year old Momo works quietly at her office and finds secret pleasure in growing a terrarium in her locker. A chance meeting with a mysterious gardener is all that’s needed to bring about a gradual and positive change in this mousy office worker.

Sumiko is a university student who is blessed (or suffers) from a special ability to instantly grasp the BPM (beats per minute) of almost anything. One day she meets a boy who inexplicably sends her own BPM off the charts!

Thirty-six-year-old Haruo Higashino is a tongue-tied failure who doesn’t fit in at work or at home. He uses a form of internal rap, a silent scream within, to release the emotional stress that he is too cowardly to say, or sing, out loud.

When Vincenzo Scocozza , an Italian immigrant sculptor living and working in Manhattan, weds the expectant Charlene Taylor, it over complicates his life for he is already married

The Swedish Liberal party leader David Holst is in crisis. Just recently, he was Sweden’s hottest politician. Stylish, funny, popular and the obvious candidate as the country’s next Prime Minister. Now, two years and a disappointing election defeat later, he finds himself in free fall. The voters have deserted him, the party is in uproar and he can hardly manage to get out of bed. It gets no better when he falls head over heels in love with party general secretary Martin, the last person on earth he can fall in love with. A man. A Social Democrat.

Nicolas, a photographer in his 20's, very suddenly loses his girlfriend to a car accident she was driving in. Still overcoming the loss, he takes up a sudden and unexpected affair with a girl he barely knows who is addicted to ecstasy. Their relationship slowly comes apart at the seams through sex, drugs, and harping on past mistakes.

Mit einem Schlag

Two powerful, yet deeply troubled women -- refugees from political and personal trauma -- flee a past that haunts them. The daughter of a murdered Black Panther revolutionary, Tess, (Hamilton) lives off the grid on a Sonoma vineyard, fiercely detached from all connections. Her hermetic life cracks when she gives reluctant shelter to a desperate young woman, Anna (Rabe) who has attempted suicide in a nearby forest. An unlikely alliance forms between the two, where other close relationships have failed -- David, Anna's husband, (Linklater) and John, Tess' employer (Weber), cannot break through their walls. But the very difference between the two women opens them up to a new vision of themselves, as not only survivors, but as heroes capable even of a thrilling shoot-out in the name of outlaw justice. Reclaiming freedom, and life, they plunge forward, towards an unknown, transformative horizon.

To Qiu Shui, a young lad in his most hungry, curious, and restless 20s, the whole world feels a little erotic. Studying at China's top medical college, he can break down men's carnal impulses with solid human anatomy knowledge but can't grasp the inner desire that draws him to three disparate romantic interests-the fairy-like hometown first love, the marriageable college girlfriend, and the sensuous working woman.

While his wife is away, Frederick Stumplefinger lets his kids go out jitterbugging on a school night, only to have his wife return early.

A countess falls for a shepherd who wishes to become a monk.

20 short films about human rights.

The Honors

Angela and her young son Guille travel to the big city to see Leo, her father and the boy's grandfather, when he suddenly takes ill. However, they arrive to discover that he has just passed away. Charo, the dead man's lover, explains the dire traits suffered by the paternal business: a hall with seven billiard tables.

A high-powered New York publicist finds herself in Montana promoting a charity calendar after being betrayed by her boss and fiancé. Unfortunately, matters of the heart are just as complicated in the wilds as they are in the big city.

Johnny Riggs, a con man on the lam, finds himself in a Latin-American country named Patria. There, he overhears a convent-bred rich girl praying to her guardian angel for help in managing her tangled business affairs. Riggs decides to materialize as the girl's "angel", gains her unquestioning confidence, and helps himself to the deluded girl's millions. Just as he and his partner are about to flee Patria with their booty, Riggs realizes he has fallen in love with the girl and returns the money, together with a note that is part confession and part love letter. But the larcenous duo's escape from Patria turns out to be more difficult than they could ever have imagined.

A bourgeois housewife, planning to go back to work as a physiotherapist after having devoted 20 years to her husband and two children, has her comfortable, elegant life turned upside down when she falls for a Spanish builder and begins a runaway affair.