Proud, though poor, Bob wants his little girl to have a beautiful (and costly) brand-new dress for her First Communion. His stubbornness and determination get him into trouble as he turns to more and more questionable measures, in his desperation to raise the needed money. This tragic flaw leads him to risk all that he loves and values, his beloved family, indeed even his immortal soul and salvation, in blind pursuit of that goal.
Anne
Coleen
Jimmy
Butcher
Irishman
May
The ever-poker-faced Ilona loses her job as a restaurant hostess, as her tram driver husband, Lauri, also finds himself out of work. Together they must hit the streets of Helsinki, facing up to hardship and humiliation in their quest for survival, guided through the gloom by a ray of hope.
Angie is a working class woman. After being fired, she decides to set up a recruitment agency of her own, running it from her kitchen with her friend, Rose. Taking advantage of the desperation of immigrants, Angie builds a successful business extremely quickly.
A bizarre black comedy about a man whose overwhelming ambition in life is to be a renowned serial killer of women, and will stop at nothing to achieve it - but not everything goes according to plan...
Maggie has had four children, by four different fathers, removed by social services because of a previous violent relationship. When she meets Jorge, a gentle Latin American refugee, she gradually sees her chance for happiness, but her history still haunts her.
Stevie, fresh from prison in Scotland, finds a job on a London construction site. The working conditions are poor and most of the men are working under aliases, due to immigration status and to not conflict with their "signing on" for unemployment benefits. Some coworkers help Stevie secure housing, squatting in a council estate. Then Stevie meets Susan, from Ireland, who's struggling to be a professional singer.
Griffin Dunne’s years-in-the-making documentary portrait of his aunt Joan Didion moves with the spirit of her uncannily lucid writing: the film simultaneously expands and zeroes in, covering a vast stretch of turbulent cultural history with elegance and candor.
Jeremy and Julian Lewis, the "Lewis Twins", are two unruly brothers who terrorise the city of Swansea from the caravan park where they live with their family. When their father, Fatty, is injured while working on a roof for local kingpin Bryn Cartwright, they try in vain to claim compensation. Thus begins a campaign of terror, which local policemen Terry and Grayo are ill-equipped to prevent, involved as they are in a drugs deal with Cartwright.
During WWII, industrialist Joe Keller commits a crime and frames his business partner Herbert Deever. Years later, his sin comes back to haunt him when his son plans to marry Deever's daughter.
Alice is 27 years old today. Even though she is suffocating a bit, she still lives with her parents and tends to live in her dreams to escape her dreary everyday life. After a psychedelic party on a factory roof, she has a serious drunken bike accident. Will this give her the courage to become an adult?
An American junior diplomat in London rents a house from, and falls in love with, a woman suspected of murder.
Narrowly avoiding jail, new dad Robbie vows to turn over a new leaf. A visit to a whisky distillery inspires him and his mates to seek a way out of their hopeless lives.
Michel takes up pickpocketing on a lark and is arrested soon after. His mother dies shortly after his release, and despite the objections of his only friend, Jacques, and his mother's neighbor Jeanne, Michel teams up with a couple of petty thieves in order to improve his craft. With a police inspector keeping an eye on him, Michel also tries to get a straight job, but the temptation to steal is hard to resist.
Five down-on-their luck strangers meet by chance while looking at a property in the country none of them are able to afford. They decide to join forces and risk everything to turn it into a B&B, only for the local mafia to show up demanding their "fair" share.
Starship C57D travels to planet Altair 4 in search of the crew of spaceship "Bellerophon," a scientific expedition that has been missing for twenty years. They find themselves unwelcome by the expedition's lone survivor and warned of destruction by an invisible force if they don't turn back immediately.
A gay couple from Hong Kong takes a trip to Argentina in search of a new beginning but instead begins drifting even further apart.
Minnie Goetze is a 15-year-old aspiring comic-book artist, coming of age in the haze of the 1970s in San Francisco. Insatiably curious about the world around her, Minnie is a pretty typical teenage girl. Oh, except that she’s sleeping with her mother’s boyfriend.
The quiet life of Baker Dill, a fishing boat captain who lives on the isolated Plymouth Island, where he spends his days obsessed with capturing an elusive tuna while fighting his personal demons, is interrupted when someone from his past comes to him searching for help.
A packed cruise ship traveling the Atlantic is hit and overturned by a massive wave, compelling the passengers to begin a dramatic fight for their lives.
In 1980s Naples, Italy, an awkward Italian teen struggling to find his place experiences heartbreak and liberation after he's inadvertently saved from a freak accident by football legend Diego Maradona.
With no clue how he came to be imprisoned, drugged and tortured for 15 years, a desperate man seeks revenge on his captors.
After kidnapping a father and his two kids, the Gecko brothers head south to a seedy Mexican bar to hide out in safety, unaware of its notorious vampire clientele.
Sent to Mexico to help take care of aging Father Benito, young Father Amaro faces a moral challenge when he meets a 16-year-old girl who he starts an affair with. Likewise, the girl's mother had been having an affair with Father Benito. Father Amaro must choose between a holy or sinful life.
Two childhood friends are recruited for a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv.
Several lonely hearts in a semi-provincial suburb of a town in Denmark use a beginner's course in Italian as the platform to meet the romance of their lives. The film, which unspools the connections and family drama shared between the students, complies with several aesthetic principles of Dogme 95 movement.
An examination on the effect of Franco-era religious schooling and sexual abuse on the lives of two longtime friends.
In a small and conservative Scottish village, a woman's paralytic husband convinces her to have extramarital intercourse so she can tell him about it and give him a reason for living.
When you read the title ‘Summer on the Balcony’ you probably think it will be a light Berlin summer comedy but it’s not. This film is an intimate study of two women friends who come to each other because of troubles with everyday life and with men and thus try to enjoy a life based on their ideas.
From the youth directed novel of the same name by Greogor Tressnow comes a film by Detlev Buck that is a realistic portrait of life in the section of Berlin called Neukölln. It’s about power and weakness, delinquents and victims, and the difficulties a 15-year-old faces in a poor and criminal environment.
Lichter is an episodic tale from Hans-Christian Schmid about the life on the border between Germany and Poland. The film sheds light on the everyday stories of escape and desperateness.
A drama about a Maori family living in Auckland, New Zealand. Lee Tamahori tells the story of Beth Heke’s strong will to keep her family together during times of unemployment and abuse from her violent and alcoholic husband.
Fifteen-year-old Alice has always been a good Catholic, but when an innocent AOL chat turns unexpectedly racy, she finds herself suddenly obsessed with sex.
A single mother suffers a devastating stroke leaving her teenage daughter and 7-year-old son to care for her, testing the family's strength to hold things together as their roles are reversed.
Alma lives a humble and secluded life behind the walls of a contemporary Catholic convent in Denmark. As she prepares for her perpetual vows as a nun, her older brother Erik unexpectedly shows up. He is a recovering alcoholic and clearly depressed, yet Alma struggles to show him mercy, as his presence unearths a family secret she has desperately tried to suppress. With the ceremony impending, Alma begins to lose her footing and doubt whether she is worthy of the love of her God.
Three lives of three young people intersect over the course of one summer. A rich student and a young working-class man accidentally destroy a diner when their impromptu road race takes a disastrous turn. Ordered by a judge to spend the summer repairing the building, they find themselves becoming rivals for the affections of the owner's daughter.
Buddy is a young boy on the cusp of adolescence, whose life is filled with familial love, childhood hijinks, and a blossoming romance. Yet, with his beloved hometown caught up in increasing turmoil, his family faces a momentous choice: hope the conflict will pass or leave everything they know behind for a new life.
Set in Genoa, the film concerns the financial struggles and emotional strain that occur after Michele loses his job. He and his wife Elsa are forced to give up their affluent lifestyle and cope with the tensions of moving into a smaller home, finding new work, and making sacrifices.
A defrocked Episcopal clergyman leads a bus-load of middle-aged Baptist women on a tour of the Mexican coast and comes to terms with the failure haunting his life.
Stefan Book is Pastor of the Hamburger St. Pauli Church for Schanze, Karo and Kiez. He sees it as his life's task to devote himself to the fallen and stranded. In view of the flight of the young, deportation-threatened African Adoma Fauré into his church, the chummy clergyman proves to be a serious opponent of asylum policy. The fate of the girl allows him to fight for the girl's residence permit without fear of authorities or sanctions of the municipal board. Book grants her church asylum and reaches the limit of its legal possibilities.
Catherine and Mack and their close friends Chris and Madge graduate from a West Coast college and fly to New York City to find work.