Romance

Midnight Sun(en)

Katie, a 17-year-old, has been sheltered since childhood and confined to her house during the day by a rare disease that makes even the smallest amount of sunlight deadly. Fate intervenes when she meets Charlie and they embark on a summer romance.

A Prayer(pl)

In a little house all for herself, an elderly woman moves through her day. While she tends to every chore on the docket, we learn some things about her. She has a green thumb, she speaks Polish while on the phone, she likes to nap. A prayer sounds. They are words from her mother-in-law, Polish poet Zofia Bohdanowiczowa, who was also displaced from her native Poland. Three generations meet, one by writing, one by living, and the third by the very making of this film, a composition of her ancestors through sound and image.

My Old Ass(en)

An 18th birthday mushroom trip brings free-spirited Elliott face-to-face with her wisecracking 39-year-old self. But when Elliott’s "old ass" starts handing out warnings about what her younger self should and shouldn't do, Elliott realizes she has to rethink everything about family, love, and what's becoming a transformative summer.

Dahil Mahal Kita: The Dolzura Cortez Story(tl)

Dolzura Cortez has had several men in her life. One returns to her as an AIDS researcher and unwittingly, Dolzura becomes his subject. He encouraged her to come out in public so she can dispel the social stigma that comes with the disease.

The Craft: Legacy(en)

An eclectic foursome of aspiring teenage witches get more than they bargained for as they lean into their newfound powers.

The Only Thrill(en)

A small-town store owner with a comatose wife shares a long-term relationship with his seamstress.

The Hippocratic Oath(lv)

After a botched surgery a rookie doctor takes a job in a meteorological station in the Arctic Circle.

Viktoria(bg)

Dreaming of the West, Boryana is determined not to have a child in communist Bulgaria. Nonetheless, her daughter Viktoria enters the world in 1979, curiously missing a belly button, and is declared the country’s Baby of the Decade. Pampered by her mother state until the age of nine, Viktoria’s decade of notoriety comes crashing down with the rest of European communism. But can political collapse and the hardship of new times finally bring Viktoria and her reluctant mother closer together

Liar's Dice(hi)

The film follows Kamala, a young woman from Chitkul village and her girl child Manya, who embarks on a journey leaving their native land in search for her missing husband. Along this journey she encounters Nawazudin, a free spirited army deserter who helps them to get to their destination with his own selfish motive.

How's It Going?(fr)

During the making of a video film about a communist printing press, a union member and a leftist activist discuss how to present their information, especially how to caption two specific images: one of a protest in Portugal, the other of a strike in France. One of them decides to write to his son, a manual worker living outside of Paris with his girlfriend, telling the young man about his troubles.

Because the Dawn(en)

Marie is a Manhattan vampire thirsting for acceptance and blood, not necessarily in that order. Apparently a renaissance woman, she sings the blues, poses for a picture, and rides through Times Square in a horse drawn carriage. Ariel is a fashion photographer attracted to the beguiling vampire. Attraction escalates into obsession, and before long locate the elusive creature of the night.

The Party(fr)

A thirteen-year-old French girl deals with moving to a new city and school in Paris, while at the same time her parents are getting a divorce.

Drunktown's Finest(en)

On a desolate Navajo reservation in New Mexico, three young people – a college-bound, devout Christian; a rebellious and angry father-to-be; and a promiscuous but gorgeous Nádleehi (trans person)- search for love and acceptance.

Love, Plastic and Noise(pt)

Following in the footsteps of her idol and bandmate Jaqueline, Shelly intends to become a great singer of Brega. She enters show business in search of fame and fortune but, inserted in a world where everything is disposable, including love and human relationships, she will encounter great difficulties to achieve fame.

Eve(en)

A woman battles to survive alone in a post-apocalyptic London wasteland.

Swept Away(it)

A spoiled rich woman and a brutish Communist deckhand become stranded alone on a desert island after venturing away from their cruise.

An American Rhapsody(en)

A Hungarian family forced to flee the Communist country for the United States must leave a young daughter behind. Six years later, the family arranges to bring the absent daughter to the United States where she has trouble adjusting. The daughter then decides to travel to Budapest to discover her identity.

Phyllis(en)

Phyllis is a moving and atmospheric portrait of a ‘psychic’ vampire, a woman obsessed with synthetic Nollywood dramas, that lives alone in Lagos, Nigeria. The central idea of this short experimental film is the practise and significance of wig-wearing in Nollywood film; a practise the director has invested with deeper psychological as well as science-fiction layers. Underpinning this central idea however is a critique of the unforgiving treatment of single women in Nollywood and Nigeria. The film is an example of what the director, Zina Saro-Wiwa, has termed “alt-Nollywood”, a genre that plays with and reworks certain narrative, stylistic and visual conventions of Nollywood. Phyllis explores the gothic possibilities of the Nollywood aesthetic creating a new kind of low-budget atmospheric film that is very much of Nollywood and yet subverts the genre. Using Nollywood to subvert Nollywood.

Dream Life(fr)

Two twenty-something women dream of the ideal man and slowly realize that reality is very different from their fantasies.

What if it Works?(en)

Adrian, an irrepressibly chirpy tech nerd, has OCD. Grace, a beautiful street artist, has multiple personality disorder. It's a love story that seems impossible. But what if it works?

The Devil's Rock(en)

Set in the Channel Islands on the eve of D Day, two Kiwi commandos, sent to destroy German gun emplacements to distract Hitler's forces away from Normandy, discover a Nazi occult plot to unleash demonic forces to win the war.

Lovers: A True Story(es)

Set in '50s Spain, a young man leaves the army and looks for a job so he and his fiancée can get married. He rents a room from a widow, and shortly begins a torrid affair with her. The fiancée figures it out and decides to win him back by offering herself to him and taking him to meet her family. Ultimately he has to make a decision. Based on a true story.

WR: Mysteries of the Organism(sh)

What does the energy harnessed through orgasm have to do with the state of communist Yugoslavia circa 1971? Only counterculture filmmaker extraordinaire Dušan Makavejev has the answers (or the questions). His surreal documentary-fiction collision begins as an investigation into the life and work of controversial psychologist and philosopher Wilhelm Reich and then explodes into a free-form narrative of a beautiful young Slavic girl’s sexual liberation.

Black Tar Heroin: The Dark End of the Street(en)

The film follows a simple structure, and shows the drug-related degradation of five youths (Jake, Tracey, Jessica, Alice, Oreo) during the course of three years. The film depicts drug-related crimes and diseases: prostitution, male prostitution, AIDS, and lethal overdoses.

A Woman's Life(fr)

Normandy, 1819. Jeanne is a young woman full of childish dreams and innocence when she returns home after finishing her schooling in a convent. She marries a local Viscount, Julien de Lamare, who soon reveals himself to be a miserly and unfaithful man. Little by little Jeanne’s illusions are stripped away.

My Life with James Dean(fr)

Still pining for his ex-boyfriend, Géraud has come to a French seaside town to present his new experimental film, but the only person keen on seeing it is the cinema's underage projectionist who becomes smitten with the handsome director.

Erotic Short Circuits Vol. 1(it)

L'Ultimo Metro: It can happen. Any night in any metro station. It can happen that a hurried girl comes out of the bathroom without realizing that she is badly arranged in her skirt. And it can happen that two guys are going to commit behind her to attend a fabulous show. But it is only the beginning of an incredible erotic game between rails and trains. Sogno: Alone on a deserted beach, a girl undresses and falls asleep. The sun rises. As a reflection of the erotic dream she is having, the girl touches herself moaning and enjoying. The beach fills up... Fine Settimana A Lecco: Mischievous and spicy chronicle of the meeting between two friends who, after playing the slave and the mistress, vent their excitement on a talented and enthusiastic gardener.

A Long and Happy Life(ru)

Sascha lives in a village on the Kola Peninsular in northern Russia and dedicatedly manages what is left of an old collective farm. He gets on well with his farm workers who respect him and also tolerate his more or less clandestine love-affair with Anya, a secretary at the local government office. But then Sascha is suddenly faced with a dilemma: the district’s self-seeking administrators, none of whom could be termed squeamish, offer him a lucrative deal for the farm. In legal terms, Sascha doesn’t have much of a leg to stand on since his lease on the farm was only agreed with a handshake. The pressure mounts, and even more so when his employees convince him to stand firm. Against the backdrop of a landscape exposed to the elements, this unflinching man’s destiny takes its course.

Lucky Man(zh)

9 Songs(en)

Matt, a young glaciologist, soars across the vast, silent, icebound immensities of the South Pole as he recalls his love affair with Lisa. They meet at a mobbed rock concert in a vast music hall - London's Brixton Academy. They are in bed at night's end. Together, over a period of several months, they pursue a mutual sexual passion whose inevitable stages unfold in counterpoint to nine live-concert songs.

Swept Away(it)

A spoiled rich woman and a brutish Communist deckhand become stranded alone on a desert island after venturing away from their cruise.

Welcome Home(en)

A couple try to repair their damaged union in an Italian vacation paradise. Then they discover the owner's intentions.

Teen Spirit(en)

A shy teenager living on the Isle of Wight dreams of pop stardom. With the help of an unlikely mentor, she enters a singing competition that will test her integrity, talent, and ambition.

Summertime(fr)

In 1971, a young woman moves from the French countryside to Paris and begins a passionate love affair with a feminist leader.

Boo 2! A Madea Halloween(en)

Madea and the gang encounter monsters, goblins and boogeymen at a haunted campground.

Sexual Chronicles of a French Family(fr)

Three generations of a French family open up about their sexual experiences and desires after young Romain is caught masturbating in his biology class.

Intimacy(en)

Failed musician Jay abandoned his family and now earns a living as head bartender in a trendy London pub. Every Wednesday afternoon, a woman comes to his house for graphic, almost wordless, sex. One day, Jay follows her and learns about her. This eventually disrupts their relationship.

Leave No Trace(en)

A father and daughter live a perfect but mysterious existence in Forest Park, a beautiful nature reserve near Portland, Oregon, rarely making contact with the world. But when a small mistake tips them off to authorities, they are sent on an increasingly erratic journey in search of a place to call their own.