Praxis

"The Hours" is the story of three women searching for more potent, meaningful lives. Each is alive at a different time and place, all are linked by their yearnings and their fears. Their stories intertwine, and finally come together in a surprising, transcendent moment of shared recognition.

Crotchety retired doctor Isak Borg travels from Stockholm to Lund, Sweden, with his pregnant and unhappy daughter-in-law, Marianne, in order to receive an honorary degree from his alma mater. Along the way, they encounter a series of hitchhikers, each of whom causes the elderly doctor to muse upon the pleasures and failures of his own life. These include the vivacious young Sara, a dead ringer for the doctor's own first love.

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

The drug-induced utopias of four Coney Island residents are shattered when their addictions run deep.

A boy who lives with his parents in Kyoto comes to Tokyo for a business trip and stays with his fuck buddy. They have no special plans for the five days together. They will go to work in the morning, come home, spend the evening together, and sleep. The first night when he arrives, the fuck buddy starts to have sex with him just as usual, but he is somehow unable to respond. In fact, he has been concerned about a certain thing since before he visits Tokyo.

A cemetery worker hides his disfigurement under the cloak of a sinister hood. But it doesn't hide his twisted attempt to recapture the one he loves. Even if he has to kill him first.

A young nurse, Alma, is put in charge of Elisabeth Vogler: an actress who is seemingly healthy in all respects, but will not talk. As they spend time together, Alma speaks to Elisabeth constantly, never receiving any answer.

Tom Ripley is a calculating young man who believes it's better to be a fake somebody than a real nobody. Opportunity knocks in the form of a wealthy U.S. shipbuilder who hires Tom to travel to Italy to bring back his playboy son, Dickie. Ripley worms his way into the idyllic lives of Dickie and his girlfriend, plunging into a daring scheme of duplicity, lies and murder.

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.

A veteran high school teacher befriends a younger art teacher, who is having an affair with one of her 15-year-old students. However, her intentions with this new "friend" also go well beyond platonic friendship.

Various lives converge on an isolated island, all connected by an author whose novel has become inextricably entwined with his own life.

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 Russian poet, Andrei and his interpreter, Eugenia travel to Italy to research the life of an 18th-century composer.

The New York club scene of the 80s and 90s was a world like no other. Into this candy-colored, mirror ball playground stepped Michael Alig, a wannabe from nowhere special. Under the watchful eye of veteran club kid James St. James, Alig quickly rose to the top... and there was no place to go but down.

In the 1970s, a young transgender woman called “Kitten” leaves her small Irish town for London in search of love, acceptance, and her long-lost mother.

In New York City in the days following the events of 9/11, Monty Brogan is a convicted drug dealer about to start a seven-year prison sentence, and his final hours of freedom are devoted to hanging out with his closest buddies and trying to prepare his girlfriend for his extended absence.

Filmmaker Jonathan Caouette's documentary on growing up with his schizophrenic mother -- a mixture of snapshots, Super-8, answering machine messages, video diaries, early short films, and more -- culled from 19 years of his life.

Steve Burdick is closeted television anchorman whose lover dies of an AIDS-related illness. Steve decides to come out and then tells his story about being gay and battling AIDS during a special segment of the nightly news. Originally episode eight of LifeStories, it was moved to later in the season due to the subject matter.

Every day Paul crosses a canal that separates the Amsterdam city center from the north side, where his lover Christiaan lives and waits for him. A dear routine for both - until one day Paul meets Claire, who starts seducing him into her very own universe, the Hotel Paradijs. Claire makes Paul the audience of her own play: a play where the roles are reversed and into which Paul is undeniably drawn.

In the small town of Pagadian, a gay teenager eagerly waits for a mature man to finally reveal his face after developing an anonymous sexual relationship with him online.