The Leaving

Return to 'burn' only to find out you're already in that urn.

(Some of us) Still run down the same [mental&emotional] streets we revered/reproached/replaced as children.

A production company begins casting for its next feature, and an up-and-coming actress named Rose tries to manipulate her filmmaker boyfriend, Alex, into giving her a screen test. Alex's wife, Emma, knows about the affair and is considering divorce, while Rose's girlfriend secretly spies on her and attempts to sabotage the relationship. The four storylines in the film were each shot in one take and are shown simultaneously, each taking up a quarter of the screen.

Glimpses of lives from a village in Assam reveal the relationship between its history and the present. People’s lives and beliefs are entangled with ecological strings , as nature stands witness to the narratives that unfolded there. A young boy, Rahul, hopes to write a book on his experience of growing up in this village. His mother, being deeply connected with nature can sense messages and signs arising from nature.. Urmila, a pregnant lady, is driven by sensorial experiences. But, In contrast to the serenity and harmonious living; there lurks a violent societal past.These peaceful and quiet lives intersect in a space where traumatic memories of death and loss in Assam’s thirty years of secessionist movement keep resurfacing.

Norman’s father was a society portrait painter. After his father’s death, Norman faces the burden of inheriting his father’s life’s work. He struggles with conflicting feelings about a man who was a gifted artist, but a difficult and unsupportive father. In this emotional journey Norman reconnects with his own artistic nature, something that had not been possible while his father was alive -- finally emerging from his father’s shadow, and the shadow of his grief.

Exploring the duality between friendship and loneliness, this intimate narrative short tells the story of David, a bright young boy struggling with a broken home life, as he tries to reconnect with his childhood best friends as they search for something to do in their small suburban town.

The Kuwaiti short film العاصفة (The Storm) explores Kuwait's social and economic shifts before and after the discovery of oil. Through the perspectives of an older father and his modernized son, it delves into the challenges of tradition versus rapid modernization.

Experimental film by Aldo Francia that consists in diverse situations through the 123 steps of the Santa Justina staircase in the Cerro Larraín of Valparaíso.

A take it or leave it auteur-experimental fiction exercise: two women are monitoring their dreams, dreams that may of course also be stark naked reality, at least to the dreamers, as they come and they go like bubbles, rising, floating, bursting. A man appears out of nowhere. Poet Peter Laugesen co-wrote the script with Tom Elling, who was Lars von Trier's director of photography on "The Element of Crime".

A short film recounting the travels of a lonely astronaut confronted by the unknown. Unfolding as a mystery, it becomes a carefully subtle, autobiographical examination of the feeling of loneliness and the existential issue of not understanding life on earth and ones place among it.

The interface of contrary realities is torn. Passion and fear of unbelievable strength are connecting and scattering the siblings. What remains: the search for love - the getaway into another reality?

In this fragile yet frightening poetic fantasy set against a dark industrial landscape, a woman sits knitting on the porch of her home when a man appears and takes the knitting from her.

Second short film by Andrea Campos, about a teenager who tries to combat her mother's compulsive alcoholism with the help of her stepfather. Kind of experimental.

The main protagonist is a young fellow who tries to live his life within 30 frames. He's a person suitable for any atmosphere, which makes him different from the rest. He's like a plant that differs from others, an informer who wants to escape out from his skin. This man loves, hates, eats, drinks, lies ill, laughs, cries, kisses, plays... These are agonies of a contemporary man.

An unknown future. A boy confesses to the murder of another in an all-boy juvenile detention facility. More an exercise in style than storytelling, the story follows two detectives trying to uncover the case. Homosexual tension and explosive violence drives the story which delivers some weird and fascinating visuals.

Experimental short film from Yugoslavia. A woman and a man are making out on a bed, when suddenly an odd fellow with a chandelier enters the room. Suspense grows as they have a drink together...

A young woman, injured and alone, desperately seeks refuge in an empty house before finding an abandoned train car. Haunted by surreal visions, she repeatedly collapses. At dawn, her motionless form draws the curiosity of local children, leaving her fate uncertain.

Director Lam Can-Zhao leads a small film crew as they shoot a film about a stray dog in the streets of Guangzhou, leading viewers into an unpredictable, peculiar and incredible journey.

This is a time when we learn afresh that nothing lasts forever and that the variability is an integral part of everyday life. What is a river today does not mean that tomorrow will not become a sea. Life itself is one large metamorphosis, and the human being is its variable shape...

The final 17 years of American singer and musician Karen Carpenter, performed almost entirely by modified Barbie dolls.