In Sara's class, the popular kids, also known as the kings and queens, are subjected to daily humiliations, which include having their pants pulled down or water thrown on them, but this is only a sign of their elevated status. Sara is the only blond and blue-eyed girl in her class, and she is completely overlooked by the kings and queens who do not have blond hair and blue eyes. She has a secret crush on one of the kings, who is way out of her league, and she doesn't have any friends either, but would like to become friends with Karen, also an outsider who aspires to a better status. One day, Sara eyes an opportunity to boost her popularity by humiliating herself and thereby become queen. Karen instantly becomes her friend, she seems to catch the eye of her kingly crush and popularity appears within her reach. However, her happiness is short-lived, and in the end she learns a far more valuable lesson than how to be queen for a day.
A white-collar South Korean man discovers a severed human finger and keeps it.
I Faresonen is a combination of a documentary and fictional approach to the problem of alcoholism -- or alcohol dependency. Tackling a problem common to other Nordic countries as well, director Bjoern Breigutu has focused on the life of sailors, among others, and how alcohol is used or abused in that sector of the population. This was the Norwegian entry at the 1961 Berlin Film Festival.
China, 1997. An unhappy marriage, a love affair and a child who holds all the secrets.
An anxious teenage boy overcomes his apprehension to talk to a girl. While approaching her, he imagines the worst that could happen. He is laughed at, he goes viral on social media and he turns into a clown all before facing a decision; to learn the truth or to stay in the darkness and dread of his mind. His choice of the truth results in a relievingly pleasant conversation that ends with the girl revealing that she has a boyfriend
A reframing of the classic tale of Narcissus, the director draws on snippets of conversation with a trusted friend to muse on gender and identity. Just as shimmers are difficult to grasp as knowable entities, so does the concept of a gendered self feel unknowable except through reflection. Is it Narcissus that Echo truly longs for, or simply the Knowing he possesses when gazing upon himself?
After a one-night stand with another man, a married farmer attempts to hide the affair from his family as the truth drives him to breaking point.
For over 30 years, Cora has woken up every morning at 4am to go work at the factory and raise her daughter, Alex, gone to Paris, much to Cora’s regret, to try and become a filmmaker. As Cora is about to retire, she would very much like Alex to finally abandon this risky choice, but Alex is preparing her first film.
An 80-year-old woman spends her time at a bus station. She’s waiting for the right moment to leave this place forever.
A short story of two strangers meeting in a train journey, not knowing that something stranger is coming their way.
Chen Hao-Zhi lives alone with his Grandmother who has Alzheimers and has suffered from a stroke. In order to pay the bills and his grandmother's medical expenses, he goes to work in a gay massage parlor. At first, it was just work...but Hao-Zhi soon finds that he is attracted to some of his clientele, and gets pulled into a world where he loses control of things he thought he could handle.
A young guy asks a prostitute to go down on him while singing La Marseillaise.
Claudia Recher is a young woman who has lived a horrible situation. Her sense of reality becomes an illusion as she struggles to assemble the loose fragments of wrecked life. The last witness of innocence and her internal conflicts.
"REM" is an Afrikaans Sci-Fi Drama about a grief-stricken father, Dehan, who becomes obsessed with the memory of his late wife, Lena, through the use of a high-tech, dream-altering device, the REM. This unhealthy obsession leads to Dehan struggling to reconnect with his young son, Erich, who survived the car accident that caused Lena's death. Dehan must decide to face and to confront his grief, reconnecting with his son, or to become so immersed in his fantasy dream-world that he loses touch with reality, and Erich, altogether.
Caught between the traditions of his upbringing in rural Indonesia and his idealization of Western freedom, a teenager struggles with the expectations of imminent manhood.
When a scandal occurs between a high school teacher and one of his students, the school's principal decides to take matters into his own hands and investigate through the people involved.
A famous self-help guru returns from a book tour to a house suddenly filled with an estranged friend. The two friends then spiral into a drug-induced contemplation of the human condition.
In the course of one afternoon, Raphael's paradise turns into a spiral of guilt and paranoia.
Yoon-hye likes Da-joo more than just as a friend but denies her feelings for the sake of their friendship. After some events following Da-joo being introduced to a boy, Yoon-hye is not able to hide her emotions anymore.
Karin and Peter have been married for almost 15 years. From the outside, they seem happy, but behind the closed doors of the house there is a repression. Then the dog Orion steps into their lives ...