Lotus

When a shy girl, secretly in love with her rocker-grrl housemate, meets an unbalanced heiress on the run, anything could (and does) happen in BRUSHFIRES, the latest production from Chicago-based film group Split Pillow. As the three women negotiate the dangerous relationships among them, the seven women directors weave a sensual tale of suspense. Drawing inspiration from the poem by Jessica Wilbur and the surrealist parlour game, The Exquisite Corpse, each director selected a word or phrase on which to base her segment, and the seven chapters of the film bear their individual marks. This impressive experiment in filmmaking emerges as a sensitive tale of young desire, loss, and love's confusion.

A mother released from a prison camp in Russia finds her son, but realises that reconciliation is impossible.

Personal shopper Gwen's newest client, Charlie, is a high-rolling, workaholic, single father. When Gwen meets his 8-year-old son, Owen, during a package drop, she is saddened to see just how little time Charlie spends with him. Determined to get Charlie to appreciate his family, Gwen makes it her Christmas mission to get him into the festive spirit.

Paloma, the new girl at an esteemed prep school, is drawn into the daily aggressions of warring senior class factions. She joins the Spades and becomes friends with the Spades’ leader, an enigmatic and scheming cheerleader named Selah.

Eve, a young chambermaid at a luxurious Mexico City hotel, confronts the monotony of long workdays with quiet examinations of forgotten belongings and budding friendships that nourish her newfound and determined dream for a better life.

A reclusive family therapist craving the solitude of an exclusive downtown loft doesn't realize that he's not the only person living in the same space.

A widowed mother, Ava Pryce (Katharine Ross) and daughter Susan Decker (Linda Hamilton) clash over the same man, a West Coast restaurant the owner named Alex Shepherd (Michael Nouri).

After the death of their mother, three estranged sisters return to their childhood home.

A surreal drama about an alienated family set in Koreatown, Los Angeles and Rishikesh, India.

Simone Carstensen-Kleebach actually has everything one could wish for in life: a husband who supports her and with whom she has been married for almost 20 years, a daughter and great career success. But the pressure to be perfect in all these roles lends Simone more and more. When she meets Leon on vacation, it sparks. And although Simone never thought it possible to "do something like that," she gets involved in an affair with him. Back in Hamburg with the family, Simone suddenly receives compromising photos of Leon and himself. But who took the pictures and what does the sender want to achieve?

In order to be reunited with Mahmood (Ören), a man she was promised to as a young girl, 20-year-old Shirin (Erten) leaves the life she had in a small village in Turkey in search of him.

The story of music legend Terri Hooley, a key figure in Belfast's punk rock scene. Hooley founded the Good Vibrations store from which a record label sprung, representing bands such as The Undertones, Rudi and The Outcasts.

“Congratulations, you’re pregnant!” Lara can hardly believe what the doctor has just told her. The 25-year-old spends her nights hanging around Berlin with best friend Nora, having lost interest in her architectural studies long ago. She has no idea what to do with her life – she does a lot, but nothing properly. She now finds herself pregnant after a night of passion with a charming barman she met at a party. Nora is thrilled by the news though, proclaiming: “we’re having a baby!” After some initial doubts, Lara too begins to see her pregnancy as a chance. Together with Nora, she sets about painting the nursery and goes in search of the baby’s father. Then the gynaecologist gives Lara some bad news…

What does ‘normal’ actually mean? And what is ‘crazy’? Everybody attempts to convince Léa that her mother, Suzanne, is mentally ill. Her father wants to see her returned to the psychiatric clinic, but Léa refuses to see her mother in the same light: Suzanne is happy – even if she doesn’t act like others expect her to. She appears to live a joyfully infantile existence after calmly letting go of life’s pressures. Léa captures her mother’s life on film and focuses her attention on examining the old super-8 films from the family archives. When she is left to drive her mother back to the clinic after a weekend at home, Léa grabs her opportunity: She turns the car around and whisks Suzanne off on a journey; a road trip without the judgements of others. AVANTI follows a mother-daughter relationship with an ease and depth that highlights the complexity of the emotional ties within a family.

The scene is a tawdry hotel room in Limbo, where several damned souls are gathered. At first, the group fails to comprehend where they are or why they're there. When the horrible truth dawns upon them, they carp and snipe at one another, blaming everyone but themselves for their dismal fate.

Fifteen-year-old Maren wants to get away – far away. Aside from all the boys thinking she’s frigid, her recently love-struck mother is driving her round the twist. But she also has a father who she hasn’t seen for years. When Maren decides to get in touch with him, her mother finally spills the beans: He now goes by the name of Sophia and lives as a woman – just what she needs! Irrespective of her vexation, Maren risks a meeting and finds in Sophia a person just as hormonal and puerile as herself – a person who would actually prefer to be her best friend, at best even her mother. Can Maren accept that this life makes her father happy? TRANSPAPA is a compassionate and funny story of gender role-breaking, tolerance and the search for identity.

One of three films commissioned by the Jeonju International Film Festival in 2005. A couple escaped their family to look for a spiritual tree in the jungle. There is a song at night, a song that spoke about an innocent idea of love and a quest for happiness. Worldly Desires is an experimental project where I invited a filmmaker friend, Pimpaka Towira, to shoot the love story by day and the song by night. The story, Deep Red Bloody Night, was written by my assistant who wanted to reprise a forbidden love story in a more romantic time in the past. I picked a pop song, Will I be Lucky? to convey a sense of guiltless freedom one feels when being hit by love. The video is a little simulation of manners, dedicated to the memories of filmmaking in the jungle during the year 2001-2005. -Apichatpong Weerasethakul

A diverse group of guests gather in a small hotel in Paris to contemplate the state of their lives in this pretentious drama. Joseph Goldman (Fernando Rey) is a washed-up Hollywood actor making a living in the dinner-theater circuit. Accompanied by his wife Sarah (Carole Regnier), Goldman meets Frederique (Berangere Bonvoisin), who is hiding from her former lover. French financier Arthur (Fabrice Luchini) hopes to get into the film industry and bends the ear of a British director (Michael Medwin). The talkative film has little action, and none of the characters evoke much interest or resolve their dilemma.

Set during the second world war, the sentimental education of a sensual adolescent girl, growing out of her childhood in a small, impoverished village in Southern Italy.

After her own daughter abandons her child, an ambitious and orderly publisher has little choice but to raise the grandchild as her own.