The Measure of a Man

Mur(pl)

Mariusz lives in a cramped apartment in an old tenement with his mother, who suffers from depression and has not left the house for two years. The family survives on his father's pension. Mariusz should be finishing technical school, but he doesn't go to school. He earns money by finishing apartments in new housing estates and dealing drugs. He wants to improve his lot. He leaves his mother and rents an apartment in a new housing development. He thinks he will move up the social hierarchy by moving there. It turns out that it is not so easy to escape from his previous life and become a different person.

Yard Kings(en)

The film follows the story of Ellie, a young girl from a violent home. The 9-year-old seems to escape from her harsh reality by spending her days in the woods of a nearby scrapyard with her friend, Pete. There, the pair have built a new home for themselves. One night, after witnessing the horrifying abuse of her mother, Ellie decides to come back home and confront her stepfather.

Change of Heart(en)

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.

Flesh(en)

A heroin junkie works as a prostitute to support his habit and fund an abortion needed by the girlfriend of his lesbian wife. His seedy encounters with delusional and damaged clients, and dates with drag queens and hustlers are heavy on sex, drugs and decadence.

Import/Export(de)

A nurse from Ukraine searches for a better life in the West, while an unemployed security guard from Austria heads East for the same reason. Both are looking for work, a new beginning, an existence, struggling to believe in themselves, to find a meaning in life...

You're Not Alone(de)

Master painter Hans Moll and his wife, the television announcer Ms. Wellinek and her husband, and the German-Russian Jew Yevgenia have many things to live on: food, drink, an apartment. What they do not have is work. They all discover the yearning for a chance to start all over again and bring themselves back to life.

Michel(pt)

Michel wants to go home.

The Case of Charlie Gordon(en)

The first film ever distributed by the NFB, The Case of Charlie Gordon focuses on an unemployed young Canadian who has never held a job. In the late '30s, there were many in Charlie's position. Determined to change this, a committee was formed to team up local employers with these young men. Through their efforts, and with the help of the Federal Government, people were trained and employed. As a result, their hopeless attitudes were transformed into a readiness to learn and be useful members of society.

Speech Day(en)

Speech Day is a bit of a laugh if you are not one of nature's prize-winners. But now that they've finished with school and school with them, what comes next for Ronnie, Wally and Rob?

Jacqueline(en)

Jacqueline is the daughter of Belfast shipyard worker Mike McNeil. The worker's worth is compromised by his crippling fear of heights. Dismissed from his job, he finds solace in the bottle. All seems hopeless until Jacqueline breaks through her father's self-imposed gloom and helps him to regenerate. An adaptation of the novel 'A Grand Man', by Catherine Cookson.

Año cero(es)

"Año cero" is about the well-educated, well-to-do middle-class man, Miguel who loses his job. Now he finds himself without direction, credentials or long-term relationships.

Ainhoa(es)

Ainhoa is 8 years old and has left home with her school bag, a Playmobil figure and a secret plan.

Velaiyilla Pattathari(ta)

Raghuvaran, who is unemployed for years, gets his dream job but a powerful rival is keen to put him down. Can he take on his adversary?

The Van(en)

In a working-class quarter of Dublin, 'Bimbo' Reeves gets laid off from his job and, with his redundancy payout, buys a van and sells fish and chips with his buddy, Larry. Due to Ireland's surprising success at the 1990 FIFA World Cup, their business starts off well, but the relationship between the two friends soon becomes strained as Bimbo behaves more like a typical boss.

Renaissance Man(en)

An advertising man is slowly sliding downhill. When he is fired from his job in Detroit, he signs up for unemployment. One day they find him a job: teaching thinking skills to Army recruits. He arrives on base to find that there is no structure set up for the class.

Smith(en)

John Smith, a middle-aged married man, is made redundant by his employer; at a loss and despairing, his friend Harry Jones suggests applying to the Embankment Fellowship Centre, a charity that provides hostelling, retraining and help finding work for men in his position.

Red Rock West(en)

When a promised job for Texan Michael fails to materialize in Wyoming, Mike is mistaken by Wayne to be the hitman he hired to kill his unfaithful wife, Suzanne. Mike takes full advantage of the situation, collects the money, and runs. During his getaway, things go wrong, and soon get worse when he runs into the real hitman, Lyle.

Factotum(en)

This drama centers on Hank Chinaski, the fictional alter-ego of "Factotum" author Charles Bukowski, who wanders around Los Angeles, CA trying to live off jobs which don't interfere with his primary interest, which is writing. Along the way, he fends off the distractions offered by women, drinking and gambling.

Gung Ho(en)

When a western Pennsylvania auto plant is acquired by a Japanese company, brokering auto worker Hunt Stevenson faces the tricky challenge of mediating the assimilation of two clashing corporate cultures. At one end is the Japanese plant manager and the sycophant who is angling for his position. At the other, a number of disgruntled long-time union members struggle with the new exigencies of Japanese quality control.

At War(fr)

After promising 1100 employees that they would protect their jobs, the managers of a factory decide to suddenly close up shop. Laurent takes the lead in a fight against this decision.

PVC-1(es)

Based on the true story of a woman who is turned into a human time bomb in a bizarre act of terrorism.

Interesting Ball(en)

A red ball bounces past a cafe and a couple folks’ houses and then goes to the beach.

Mi rifaccio vivo(it)

After spending most of his life being defeated by his rival Ottone, meek Biagio tries to commit suicide – but in the hereafter he's offered a chance to come back to life for a week as Dennis, Ottone's trusted business partner.

L'Insoumis(fr)

Lucifer(es)

On his downfall from Heaven to Hell, Lucifer passes through the earthly paradise, a village in Mexico, where elderly Lupita and her granddaughter Maria live. Lupita's brother Emanuel pretends he's paralyzed so he can drink and gamble while the two women tend to the sheep. Lucifer senses an opportunity and plays the miraculous healer. He forces Emanuel to walk again, seduces Maria and makes Lupita doubt about her faith. He didn't bring bad luck, he only illuminated the line between good and evil, where it didn't exist before.

Paris Follies(fr)

Long married 50-somethings Brigitte and Xavier are prize cattle breeders in regional France. Life is good, but the departure of their children from home has thrown Brigitte’s world into flux, as she finds herself locked into routine. She keeps hoping for something else, something more. A party held by students on the adjoining property accelerates this latent crisis and Brigitte impulsively sets off for Paris under the guise of a doctor’s appointment. The city immediately invigorates her, and when she meets a charming Danish gentleman, she impulsively allows herself to be flattered by his attentions…

Return to Ithaca(fr)

Sun is setting on Havana. Five friends are gathered to celebrate the return of Amadeo after 16 years of exile in Madrid.

Flanders(fr)

André Demester secretly and painfully loves Barbe, his childhood friend, accepting from her the little that she gives him. He leaves home to be a soldier in a war in a far off land. Barbarity, camaraderie and fear turn him into a warrior. As the seasons go by, Barbe, alone and wasting away, waits for the soldiers to return. Will Demester’s boundless love for Barbe save him?

A Few Hours of Spring(fr)

Forty-eight-year-old Alain Evrard is obliged to return home to live with his mother. This situation causes all the violence of their past relationship to rise to the surface. Alain then discovers that his mother has a fatal illness. In the last months of her life, will they finally be capable of taking a step toward each other?

Adua and Her Friends(it)

When a brothel closes because of new laws, four of the prostitutes decide to go into business running a restaurant. They discover they cannot escape their past.

Love Steaks(de)

Clemens works as a masseur, Lara as a cook, but their clientele is the same: the guests of a luxury hotel. As sparks begin to fly between the two, his sensitivity clashes with her more fiery temperament—opposites attract, but harmony is nowhere in sight.

24 Days(fr)

When Ilan Halimi is kidnapped for ransom because Jewish and supposedly rich, his family and the police start a race against time to save him from the tortures of the "gang of barbarians".

Conversation Piece(it)

A retired professor of American origin lives a solitary life in a luxurious palazzo in Rome. He is confronted by a vulgar Italian marchesa and her lover, her daughter and her daughter's boyfriend, and forced to rent to them an apartment on the upper floor of his palazzo. From this point on his quiet routine is turned into chaos by his tenants' machinations, and everybody's life takes an unexpected but inevitable turn.

French Blood(fr)

Marco Lopez, a former Neo-Nazi and skinhead, tries to leave his violent, racist and hateful past behind him.

A Secret(fr)

In 1953, a sensitive French boy finds out from a neighbor that his family's Jewish. François Grimbert becomes a physician, and gradually peels the layers of his buried family history which resulted in his difficult upbringing, raised as Catholic by his "Aryan" appearing parents. His athletic father labored to stamp out stereotypical Jewish characteristics he perceived in his son, to keep the family's many secrets, as most relatives fought in World War II, and later were hauled off to labor and death camps by the Gestapo.

Jimmy's Hall(en)

Jimmy Gralton returns from New York and reopens his beloved community hall, only to meet opposition from the local parish.

Never Grow Old(en)

An Irish undertaker profits when outlaws take over a peaceful town, but his own family come under threat as the death toll increases dramatically.

Heaven Knows What(en)

A young heroin addict roams the streets of New York to panhandle and get her next fix, while her unstable boyfriend drifts in and out of her life at random.

Here Now(en)

The plot of the film unfolds over 24 hours during which everything happens, including a robbery. A Californian tourist, Sophie, played by Elena Kampouris, meets three young people on the beach who promise to introduce her to the Sicilian capital, but actually have a debt to pay and involve the girl. The three young men are played by Lorenzo Richelmy, Enrico Inserra and Saul Nanni.