We Will Never Be Royals

Three couples at different parts of life navigate big turning points in their lives over the holidays.

In writer/director Paolo Rotondo’s debut feature, three teenagers on the run break into a deluxe Waiheke Island home and find themselves caught in a tense psychodrama with the conflicted owner.

Now a taciturn adult, an adoptee finds his biological mother and strikes up a relationship fraught with tension and emotion.

The arrival of a beautiful new stranger in town prompts two boys to spend their summer holidays enticing the young woman to act in a short-film. However their motivation is purely that of seeing her naked.

You don't choose your family. You choose your friends. Vegas is the story of Thomas, Marianne and Terje - three teenagers with nowhere to go.

Julia always said that her upbringing as a biological child in a foster family was a happy time. But something is wrong. In The Foster Family, we follow director Julia's journey back in time, where she, together with her parents Ewa and Lennart and the foster child Patrik, recollect the shocking events that changed their lives over thirty years ago. The children are at the center of this strong, touching and warm documentary about a system where you can love, but not too much.

Anne Shirley, an orphan, is fostered by farmer Matthew Cuthbert and his sister Marilla, who were expecting a boy to be sent them to help with their farm work. They accept Anne, who quickly endears herself to them and to the local villagers.

Young and feisty Gilly Hopkins devises a scheme to escape from her new foster home and reunite with her birth mother.

Lucy is eleven years old. Having been neglected by her estranged mother and father, she is placed in a children's home. Through her eyes, we follow her struggle to cope with the system; her only saving being her self-belief and certainty that she is being watched over and protected by the holy spirit.

Théo is given up for adoption by his biological mother on the very day he is born. After this anonymous birth, the mother has two months to change her mind… Or not. The child welfare services and adoption service spring into action… The former have to take care of the baby and support it during this limbo-like time, this period of uncertainty, while the latter must find a woman to become his adoptive mother. She is called Alice, and she has spent the last ten years fighting to have a child.

When Dr. Drew Carter tragically loses his ten-year old son in a car accident, he didn’t expect to lose his whole family as well. Since the accident, his wife (Julia) has become emotionally absent towards him and their daughter. When Johnny, a terminally ill foster child with leukemia, is referred to Drew he sees a chance to heal his family. With Julia against the idea, Drew takes matters into his own hands and adopts Johnny. Johnny doesn’t know what he is in for, but believes he is here for a special mission.

A rural Maine farmer fights for custody of the boy who he's raised as his own.

Grace, a compassionate young supervisor at a foster care facility, helps at-risk teens. But when a new charge dredges up memories of her own troubled past, Grace's tough exterior begins eroding.

A passionate and tumultuous love story set against the backdrop of the Yorkshire moors, exploring the intense and destructive relationship between Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw.

Keith and Kim Lussier are a childless couple who are given custody of a 3-month-old foster child, Brittany. However, tragedy strikes when Kim dies of cancer in the middle of the adoption process, leaving Keith to fight for Brittany's custody alone.

A dedicated social worker organizes a train trip for a group of slum orphans in 1894, taking them from New York City to the Midwest in search of new families and new lives.

Three orphans from very different backgrounds find themselves living with the same foster couple while waiting to be adopted.

Fresh out of foster care at age 18, a young drifter turns to petty crime to survive, and discovers an impossible love in an unlikely friend.

Annie is a young, happy foster kid who's also tough enough to make her way on the streets of New York in 2014. Originally left by her parents as a baby with the promise that they'd be back for her someday, it's been a hard knock life ever since with her mean foster mom Miss Hannigan. But everything's about to change when the hard-nosed tycoon and New York mayoral candidate Will Stacks—advised by his brilliant VP and his shrewd and scheming campaign advisor—makes a thinly-veiled campaign move and takes her in. Stacks believes he's her guardian angel, but Annie's self-assured nature and bright, sun-will-come-out-tomorrow outlook on life just might mean it's the other way around.

The film follows five years in the life of a young girl as she struggles against an onslaught of good intentions. From her first encounter with the social care system, through a range of foster placements, to a haunting climax, we are challenged to question how it is that so many well-intentioned people can do so much unintended damage. And how it is that the £4bn a year that people in the UK spend on children in care has failed to break the cycle of abuse, addiction and abandonment. Written by Tim Kemp