On the outskirts of Birmingham and the margins of society the Billingham family perform extreme rituals and break social taboos as they muddle through a life decided by factors beyond their control. At times shocking and laced with an unsettling humor, three episodes unfold as a powerful evocation of the experience of growing up in a Black Country council flat.
Older Liz
Jason
Hilda
Richard (Aged 10)
Composed of intimate and unencumbered moments of people in a community, this film is constructed in a form that allows the viewer an emotive impression of the Historic South - trumpeting the beauty of life and consequences of the social construction of race, while simultaneously a testament to dreaming.
Rita and Sue are two teenagers living on a run-down council estate in Bradford, who both share a job babysitting for Bob and Michelle's children. Whilst giving them a lift home one night, Bob decides to take Rita and Sue up to a deserted, country-side landscape. Clearly knowing what he has in mind, Rita and Sue are only too happy to oblige and both have a sexual encounter with him that becomes a regular occurrence.
A thirty Two year old man trapped in a dead end job gambles everything to tell an inspiring story.
Halla declares a one-woman-war on the local aluminium industry. She is prepared to risk everything to protect the pristine Icelandic Highlands she loves… Until an orphan unexpectedly enters her life.
A dramatization of the Montreal Massacre of 1989 where several female engineering students were murdered by an unstable misogynist.
This rock opera tells the story of one year in the life of a group of bohemians struggling in late 1980s East Village, New York, USA. The film centers around Mark and Roger, two roommates. While a tragedy has made Roger numb to new experiences, Mark begins capturing their world through his attempts to make a personal movie. In the year that follows, they and their friends deal with love, loss, and working together.
A young prosecutor in postwar West Germany investigates a massive conspiracy to cover up the Nazi pasts of prominent public figures.
Laura, a Spanish woman living in Buenos Aires, returns to her hometown outside Madrid with her Argentinian husband and children. However, the trip is upset by unexpected events that bring secrets into the open.
When a madman dubbed 'Scorpio' terrorizes San Francisco, hard-nosed cop, Harry Callahan – famous for his take-no-prisoners approach to law enforcement – is tasked with hunting down the psychopath.
Magically able to hear what men are thinking, a sports agent uses her newfound ability to turn the tables on her overbearing male colleagues.
Newspaper magnate Charles Foster Kane is taken from his mother as a boy and made the ward of a rich industrialist. As a result, every well-meaning, tyrannical or self-destructive move he makes for the rest of his life appears in some way to be a reaction to that deeply wounding event.
All unemployed, Ki-taek's family takes peculiar interest in the wealthy and glamorous Parks for their livelihood until they get entangled in an unexpected incident.
Chris and his girlfriend Rose go upstate to visit her parents for the weekend. At first, Chris reads the family's overly accommodating behavior as nervous attempts to deal with their daughter's interracial relationship, but as the weekend progresses, a series of increasingly disturbing discoveries lead him to a truth that he never could have imagined.
Spanning the years 1945 to 1955, a chronicle of the fictional Italian-American Corleone crime family. When organized crime family patriarch, Vito Corleone barely survives an attempt on his life, his youngest son, Michael steps in to take care of the would-be killers, launching a campaign of bloody revenge.
A young girl, Chihiro, becomes trapped in a strange new world of spirits. When her parents undergo a mysterious transformation, she must call upon the courage she never knew she had to free her family.
In the smog-choked dystopian Los Angeles of 2019, blade runner Rick Deckard is called out of retirement to terminate a quartet of replicants who have escaped to Earth seeking their creator for a way to extend their short life spans.
In the early years of the 20th century, Mohandas K. Gandhi, a British-trained lawyer, forsakes all worldly possessions to take up the cause of Indian independence. Faced with armed resistance from the British government, Gandhi adopts a policy of 'passive resistance', endeavouring to win freedom for his people without resorting to bloodshed.
Léon, the top hit man in New York, has earned a rep as an effective "cleaner". But when his next-door neighbors are wiped out by a loose-cannon DEA agent, he becomes the unwilling custodian of 12-year-old Mathilda. Before long, Mathilda's thoughts turn to revenge, and she considers following in Léon's footsteps.
An alcoholic ex-football player drinks his days away, having failed to come to terms with his sexuality and his real feelings for his football buddy who died after an ambiguous accident. His wife is crucified by her desperation to make him desire her: but he resists the affections of his wife. His reunion with his father—who is dying of cancer—jogs a host of memories and revelations for both father and son.
In early-1970s Las Vegas, Sam "Ace" Rothstein gets tapped by his bosses to head the Tangiers Casino. At first, he's a great success in the job, but over the years, problems with his loose-cannon enforcer Nicky Santoro, his ex-hustler wife Ginger, her con-artist ex Lester Diamond and a handful of corrupt politicians put Sam in ever-increasing danger.
An ambitious Indian university graduate has to struggle to live his entrepreneurial dreams against both the British social structure and his own family's stubborn traditional values.
A 10-year-old's happy life is shattered when his parents are divorced.
Steve Lucas is a nineteen year old who is filled with the burning resentment of being forced to live in his brother's shadow. His brother Adam, is burdened by his father's desire for glory, and must win The Coolangatta Gold Tri-Aquathon, It is the greatest endurance test of them all: a marathon involving a 20 kilometer beach run, 6 kilometer swim and a 17 kilometer surf ski from Surfers Paradise along the golden arc of beach to Coolangatta and back to the start. The Coolangatta Gold is a story of human endeavor and endurance against overwhelming odds.
24-year-old Kjell feels trapped in his little village. One day he meets a mysterious young man named Flurin and is immediately fascinated by him. Soon they start spending time together and show one other what it is they each long for.
Nathan Algren is an American hired to instruct the Japanese army in the ways of modern warfare, which finds him learning to respect the samurai and the honorable principles that rule them. Pressed to destroy the samurai's way of life in the name of modernization and open trade, Algren decides to become an ultimate warrior himself and to fight for their right to exist.
Die Polizistin is a documentary by Andreas Dresen about the life of a young police woman who is faced with the difficulties between her responsibilities at work and her personal responsibilities.
The love story of an abused English girl and a Chinese Buddhist in a time when London was a brutal and harsh place to live.
A committed film director struggles to complete his movie while coping with a myriad of crises, personal and professional, among the cast and crew.
A New York nightclub manager tries to save his brother and father from Russian mafia hitmen.
Augusto and Michaela Odone are dealt a cruel blow by fate when their five-year-old son Lorenzo is diagnosed with a rare and incurable disease. But the Odones' persistence and faith leads to an unorthodox cure which saves their boy and re-writes medical history.
Two college roommates have 24 hours to make the ultimate choice as they finalize arrangements for a black market abortion.
When 4 year old Amanda McCready disappears from her home and the police make little headway in solving the case, the girl's aunt, Beatrice McCready hires two private detectives, Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro. The detectives freely admit that they have little experience with this type of case, but the family wants them for two reasons—they're not cops and they know the tough neighborhood in which they all live.
1984, Sandusky, Ohio. A naive 17-year-old navigates heartbreak and self-expression as he explores his sexuality.
Shoko and Mutsuki get married to satisfy their worried parents, but she is well past the age at which a 'good' Japanese woman should marry, and he is in love with a young male college student. The film is less a realistic exploration of gay life than a fairy tale of three young Japanese trying to construct an alternative to the sexual and familial roles given to them by a society turning increasingly emotionally barren.
Set in 1977, back when sex was safe, pleasure was a business and business was booming, idealistic porn producer Jack Horner aspires to elevate his craft to an art form. Horner discovers Eddie Adams, a hot young talent working as a busboy in a nightclub, and welcomes him into the extended family of movie-makers, misfits and hangers-on that are always around. Adams' rise from nobody to a celebrity adult entertainer is meteoric, and soon the whole world seems to know his porn alter ego, "Dirk Diggler". Now, when disco and drugs are in vogue, fashion is in flux and the party never seems to stop, Adams' dreams of turning sex into stardom are about to collide with cold, hard reality.
Working-class British housewife Myra Savage reinvents herself as a medium, holding seances in the sitting room of her home with the hidden assistance of her under-employed, asthmatic husband, Billy. In an attempt to enhance her credibility as a psychic, Myra hatches an elaborate, ill-conceived plot to kidnap a wealthy couple's young daughter so that she can then help the police "find" the missing girl.
An ex-theater actor is given one more chance to star in a musical yet his alcoholism may prevent it from happening.