Wrestling with Alligators

Fat Girl(fr)

Anaïs is twelve and bears the weight of the world on her shoulders. She watches her older sister, Elena, whom she both loves and hates. Elena is fifteen and devilishly beautiful. Neither more futile, nor more stupid than her younger sister, she cannot understand that she is merely an object of desire. And, as such, she can only be taken. Or had. Indeed, this is the subject: a girl's loss of virginity. And, that summer, it opens a door to tragedy.

Once Upon a Zipper(en)

Rachel can't stop herself from falling in love with Paulie, the woman who helps her try on wedding gowns.

Dream Girl(en)

Humans use technology to improve their lives, to forge connections, to create time that doesn’t exist, to replace real interactions. When we devise a second version of ourselves on social media, do we lose a piece of our true selves in the process? Do our digital connections threaten our real life relationships? What happens if the filtered characters we’ve imagined take on a life of their own?

Moral(tl)

The episodically connected lives of four college friends unfold throughout the incipient martial law years, as they struggle to define their sexual and professional desires and how best to attain them.

Little Miss Sunshine(en)

A family loaded with quirky, colorful characters piles into an old van and road trips to California for little Olive to compete in a beauty pageant.

Bridget Jones's Diary(en)

Bridget Jones is an average woman struggling against expectations. As a New Year's resolution, Bridget decides to take control of her life, starting by keeping a diary in which she will always tell the complete truth. Her charming boss takes an interest in her, and she cannot stop running into a rather disagreeable acquaintance whom Bridget cannot help finding quietly attractive.

Pussy Have the Power(en)

Pussy Have the Power is the song improvised by four girls in a recording studio. When an established music producer walks in, they face the choice of selling out their work to something that could lead to success, while they risk losing their own message

The Pinkie(ja)

Since they were both five, Ryosuke has been stalked by Momoko - the ugliest girl in the village. Her love for Ryosuke is so boundless that she has her face surgically altered to suit his taste - but still he wants nothing to do with her. Ryosuke goes in for fleeting romance - for example, with the girlfriend of a gangster boss. But when he finds out about their affair, he has Ryosuke's little finger hacked off. Magically, the finger falls into Momoko's hands, and she uses it to clone Ryosuke, so she can finally have him (or almost him) for herself. And this is just the first five minutes of Lisa Takeba's short-but-powerful feature debut. Just like in her previous short films, the director - who cut her teeth in the advertising world and as the writer of a video game - throws a lot of genres and techniques into the mix: from science fiction to gangster films, from hospital eroticism to animation. Hectic and absurd, but with its heart in the right place. © IFFR

Die Augen von Jade(de)

Home Again(en)

Life for a single mom in Los Angeles takes an unexpected turn when she allows three young guys to move in with her.

Supernova(nl)

Meis is fifteen, lives in the back of beyond and aspires to a grand and stirring life, but all that happens is the passing of the time, waiting for the next car to run into the front of the house.

The Piano(en)

When an arranged marriage brings Ada and her spirited daughter to the wilderness of nineteenth-century New Zealand, she finds herself locked in a battle of wills with both her controlling husband and a rugged frontiersman to whom she develops a forbidden attraction.

The Old Settler(en)

The Old Settler is the story of two middle-aged sisters, Elizabeth and Quilly, who share an apartment in Harlem in 1943. The sisters quarrel amiably, but they share a wounded history that becomes revealed as the tale unfolds. An earnest but unworldly young man named Husband travels up from the South to board with the sisters while he searches for his beloved Lou Bessie, who left their small town a few years back to find a new life. Husband would like to bring Lou Bessie back home, but she's enamored with the excitement of the city, and her plans are more complicated. In time, Elizabeth and Husband begin a courtship that may or may not overcome their considerable age difference, while Quilly reacts disapprovingly.

Subway in the Sky(en)

Berlin provides the backdrop for this crime drama that centers on a military doctor falsely accused of dealing illegal drugs. Determined to prove his innocence, he escapes from the MPs and ends up holing up in the apartment his wife rented. He doesn't know that she has sublet the flat to a nightclub singer. When he finds out, he begs the singer to assist him. She is attracted to him and agrees. The doctor believes that his wife is behind the black-market dealings, but in the end, they find the real culprit.

Northern Lights(en)

A stranger's call informs Roberta that her estranged brother Frank has died in a small town under bizarre circumstances. Ben, his best friend from college, also gets the call. Arriving just in time for his funeral, it becomes quickly obvious to them that the little slice of small-town America in which they find themselves is like an episode of The Twilight Zone featuring Frank's eccentric friends, his amazing secrets and his stunning final request. Both Ben and Roberta are shocked to discover that Frank not only had a child, but that he has left them responsible for his son's care.

Gisela(de)

Gisela is a young wife and mother, living in a working class German Housing Scheme. She is a supermarket cashier, her husband a delivery driver. The marriage is stale but together they are working their way up into the middle class. George and Gisela evidently knew each other as teenagers. They live on the same scheme and George introduces her to his friend Paul. There is instant mutual attraction. Gisela spontaneously goes to a party that they invite her to that evening, where she and Paul begin a sexual relationship.

Lady Chatterley(fr)

After a crippling injury leaves her husband impotent, Lady Chatterly is torn between her love for her husband and her physical desires. With her husband's consent, she seeks out other means of fulfilling her needs.

After the Wedding(da)

A manager of an orphanage in India is sent to Copenhagen, Denmark, where he discovers a life-altering family secret.

Forever a Woman(ja)

Fumiko, mother of two children and wife of an unfaithful man, shares her family life with her budding vocation as a poet. The beginning of her successful literary career coincides with her divorce and her breast cancer diagnosis. In the last stage of her life, she meets a young journalist from Tokyo who wants to write a story on her life.

The Moon Has Risen(ja)

Mokichi is the widowed father of three daughters, with whom he lives on the premises of a temple since the war. All three daughters become involved in some sort of complicated relationships.

Return(en)

Back from a tour of duty, Kelli struggles to find her place in her family and the rust-belt town she no longer recognizes.

The Truth About Emanuel(en)

A troubled young woman becomes obsessed with her mysterious new neighbor, who bears a striking resemblance to the girl's dead mother.

I Believe in Unicorns(en)

Feeling awkward and isolated, an imaginative and strong-willed teenage girl runs away from home with an older punk rock drifter.

Won't Back Down(en)

Jamie Fitzpatrick and Nona Alberts are two women from opposites sides of the social and economic track, but they have one thing in common: a mission to fix their community's broken school and ensure a bright future for their children. The two women refuse to let any obstacles stand in their way as they battle a bureaucracy that's hopelessly mired in traditional thinking, and they seek to re-energize a faculty that has lost its passion for teaching.

Nancy Drew and the Hidden Staircase(en)

Nancy Drew, a smart high schooler with a penchant for keen observation and deduction, stumbles upon the haunting of a local home. A bit of an outsider struggling to fit into her new surroundings, Nancy and her pals set out to solve the mystery, make new friends, and establish their place in the community

Unrelated(en)

A woman in an unhappy relationship takes refuge with a friend's family on holiday in Tuscany.

Framed(en)

Truck driver Mike Lambert is a down-and-out mining engineer searching for a job. When his rig breaks down in a small town, he happens upon a venomous seductress. When her boyfriend robs a bank, they intend to frame Lambert.

Eleanor the Great(en)

94-year-old Eleanor Morgenstein tries to rebuild her life after the death of her best friend. As a result, she moves back to New York City after living in Florida for decades.

A Question of Faith(en)

When Tragedy Strikes three Families, their Destiny forces them on a coverging path and mercy as the challenges of their fate could also resurrect their beliefs

Just Charlie(en)

Football star Charlie has the world at her feet. With a top club desperate to sign her, her future is seemingly mapped out. But the teenager sees only a nightmare. Raised as a boy, Charlie is torn between wanting to live up to her father's expectations and shedding this ill fitting skin.

The Locket(en)

A dark personal secret drives a young woman to use every man she encounters.

Reading Lolita in Tehran(en)

As Islamic morality squads stage arbitrary raids in Tehran and as fundamentalists seize hold of the universities, Azar Nafisi, an inspired teacher, secretly gathers six of her most committed female students to read forbidden western classics. Unaccustomed to being asked to speak their minds, they soon removed their veils, their stories intertwining with the novels they read: just like the heroines of Nabokov, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henry James or Jane Austen, the women in Nafisi’s living room dare to dream, hope and love as we experience the complexity of the lives of individuals facing political, moral and personal siege.

Outrage(en)

A young woman who has just become engaged has her life completely shattered when she is raped while on her way home from work.

Radium Girls(en)

Young women toiling in a factory are exposed to hazardous material which takes a disastrous toll on their health.

All Together Now(en)

An optimistic, talented teen clings to a huge secret: she's homeless and living on a school bus. When tragedy strikes, can she learn to accept a helping hand?

Imagine(en)

A blind teacher breaks the rules to help a female student rediscover the pleasures of life.

Waiting for Anya(en)

During the harrows of WWII, Jo, a young shepherd along with the help of the widow Horcada, helps to smuggle Jewish children across the border from southern France into Spain.

Hungry Hearts(en)

The relationship of a couple who meet by chance in New York City is put to the test when they encounter a life or death circumstance.

The Girl(en)

Director Alfred Hitchcock is revered as one of the greatest creative minds in the history of cinema. Known for his psychological thrillers, Hitchcock’s leading ladies were cool, beautiful and preferably blonde. One such actress was Tippi Hedren, an unknown fashion model given her big break when Hitchcock’s wife saw her on a TV commercial. Brought to Universal Studios, Hedren was shocked when the director, at the peak of his career, quickly cast her to star in his next feature, 1963’s The Birds. Little did Hedren know that as ambitious and terrifying as the production would be to shoot, the most daunting aspect of the film ended up coming from behind the camera.

Come Away(en)

Before Alice went to Wonderland, and before Peter became Pan, they were brother and sister. When their eldest brother dies in a tragic accident, they each seek to save their parents from their downward spirals of despair until finally they are forced to choose between home and imagination, setting the stage for their iconic journeys into Wonderland and Neverland.