

21st Century Girl is an omnibus feature that is of the girls, by the girls and for the girls. The work of 15 women directors under the age of 30, each of whom contributed an 8-minute film, the package highlights a range of genres, visions and thematic concerns.


7.5Tala, a London-based Palestinian, is preparing for her elaborate Middle Eastern wedding when she meets Leyla, a young British Indian woman who is dating her best friend. Spirited Christian Tala and shy Muslim Leyla could not be more different from each other, but the attraction is immediate and goes deeper than friendship. But Tala is not ready to accept the implications of the choice her heart has made for her and escapes back to Jordan, while Leyla tries to move on with her new-found life, to the shock of her tradition-loving parents. As Tala's wedding day approaches, simmering tensions come to boiling point and the pressure mounts for Tala to be true to herself.
6.5The story follows the social intercourse between a cameraman, Masaya, with a visual impairment, and Misako who disconnects from the world.
6.2A young woman who is determined to maintain her independence finds herself at odds with her family who wants her to tame her wild side and get married.
6.1Captives of the very relationships that define and sustain them, nine women resiliently meet the travails and disappointments of life.
6.9The wife of a pastor who preaches against homosexuality embarks on an affair with a female writer.
7.0A psychotherapist helps a law student cope with schizophrenia in one of five interconnected tales dealing with mental illness.
5.8The story of a young writer's transformation when her past invades her present.
6.3Feeling awkward and isolated, an imaginative and strong-willed teenage girl runs away from home with an older punk rock drifter.
8.2A 17 year old finds out that his girlfriend is dying, so he sets out to give her an entire life, in the last year she has left.
7.7Canadian folk artist Maud Lewis falls in love with a fishmonger while working for him as a live-in housekeeper.
6.5A former child actress attends college in search of independence and ends up becoming romantically involved with a female professor. Their relationship thrives until an opportunity to return to acting forces her to make life-altering decisions.
6.8Following the death of the unmarried and childless Taki, Takeshi, a young relative of hers, discovers several pages of closely written lines in which the old lady has recorded her memories. This is how he learns the truth about her youth working as a housemaid and nanny for the Hirai family in a little house in Tokyo with a red gabled roof.
7.3Aza confronts her potential for love, happiness, friendship, and hope while navigating an endless barrage of invasive, obsessive thoughts.
7.3A widow with three children hires a handyman to fix her house during a major storm. When not doing home repairs, he shares his philosophy of believing in the power of the universe to deliver what we want.
6.2Clare and Aidan make a pact to break up before college — no regrets, no broken hearts. But will one epic goodbye date offer them a last chance at love?
6.8Trying to put her life back together after the death of her husband, Libby and her children move to her estranged Aunt's goat farm in central Texas.
6.3Thomas Montgomery, a married father of two young daughters, gets seduced by the world of online gambling and chat rooms where a virtual romance and sexual obsession ultimately leads to the murder of an innocent man.
6.7Fanny Price is sent to live with her wealthy relatives, the Bertrams, where she is treated poorly by most except her cousin Edmund. Her life is complicated by the arrival of the worldly Mary and Henry Crawford.
6.6A big-city cop is reassigned to the country after his superiors find him too angry to be an effective policeman. While on his temporary assignment he assists in a manhunt of a suspected murderer.
5.9In Cairo on her own as she waits for her husband, Juliette finds herself caught in a whirlwind romance with his friend Tareq, a retired cop. As Tareq escorts Juliette around the city, they find themselves in the middle of a brief affair that catches them both unawares.
7.5Tala, a London-based Palestinian, is preparing for her elaborate Middle Eastern wedding when she meets Leyla, a young British Indian woman who is dating her best friend. Spirited Christian Tala and shy Muslim Leyla could not be more different from each other, but the attraction is immediate and goes deeper than friendship. But Tala is not ready to accept the implications of the choice her heart has made for her and escapes back to Jordan, while Leyla tries to move on with her new-found life, to the shock of her tradition-loving parents. As Tala's wedding day approaches, simmering tensions come to boiling point and the pressure mounts for Tala to be true to herself.
7.2Struggling to elevate himself from his low caste in 17th century Japan, Miyamoto trains to become a mighty samurai warrior.
7.1After years on the road establishing his reputation as Japan's greatest fencer, Takezo returns to Kyoto. Otsu waits for him, yet he has come not for her but to challenge the leader of the region's finest school of fencing. To prove his valor and skill, he walks deliberately into ambushes set up by the school's followers.
5.9The film tells the story of sixteen-year-old Nena, who is confronted with the suicide attempt of her handicapped father. At the same time she falls head over heels in love for the first time in her life with Carlo, whose father has just outed himself. Away from prying eyes of the adults - who struggle with failed marriages, blossoming love and insufferable physical decline - they push the boundaries of their friendship, love and sexuality. But while discovering her own lust for life, Nena realizes that her father's existence is becoming more and more unbearable.
5.5One Monday morning Katya, Vika and Zhanna learn that there will be a school disco, their first disco, on the coming Saturday night. The girls feverishly start preparing for the event, which rapidly becomes the most important moment ever in their universe, and looks like the ideal way to escape their daily lives...
3.5Three rebellious teenage girls decide to even the score in the battle of the sexes.
6.6Two Indigenous Latina bestfriends, Mousie and Sad Girl live in a contemporary Los Angeles poor Indigenous Hispanic American neighborhood. But when Sad Girl becomes pregnant by Mousie's boyfriend, a drug dealer named Ernesto, the two become bitter enemies. While their dispute escalates towards violence, the violence of the world around them soon also impacts their lives.
5.4Jack is encouraged to take the romantic Paris vacation he won, despite just being dumped by his girlfriend. His trip soon devolves into chaos and adventure, when his luggage is swapped for a French businesswoman's belongings who soon takes a liking to his belongings -- especially his shoes -- and sets out to find him.
4.7An Iranian expat living in London has a shady past and an enigmatic present.
6.2Teenagers Rose and Bennett were in love, and then a car crash claimed Bennett's life. He left behind a grieving mother, father and younger brother, and Rose was left all alone. She has no family to turn to for support, so when she finds out she's pregnant, she winds up at the Brewer's door. She needs their help, and although they can't quite admit it, they each need her so they can begin to heal.
5.2A teenager relocates to a new environment but can't quite escape the reach of his traumatic past, in Yatzy, a haunting coming of age saga from Norwegian director Katja Jacobsen. At the age of 15, Daggi has fallen in love with the wrong girl, and has experienced horrors so extreme that circumstances force him to move out and take up a new residence in the country with new parents.
5.3Shopping malls - today's place of creating desires. Best jewelry, clothes, shoes. Unaffordable by young girls, but they "work" to get themselves sponsors for new items.
7.7Tells the parallel stories of nine-year-old Carlitos and his mother, Rosario. In the hopes of providing a better life for her son, Rosario works illegally in the U.S. while her mother cares for Carlitos back in Mexico.
6.0A tragic comedy about an 18-year old girl growing up near the new Berlin airport's construction site.
5.5A ten year old girl named Angela leads her six year old sister, Ellie, through various regimens of 'purification' in an attempt to rid themselves of their evil, which she believes to be the cause of their mother's mental illness. Precocious, to say the least, Angela has visions of Lucifer coming to take her and her sister away, and one of her remedies for this is for them to remain within a circle of their dolls and toys until they see a vision of the virgin Mary come to them. But such thinking can only lead to an ending befitting of her own mental state.
5.9In a series of three vignettes, three women in turn struggle to free themselves from the men who restrict their personal freedom.
0.0An (13) leaves a youth institution to move in with an adoptive family on a farm. She explores this unknown world, her new parents, and a little brother that has down syndrome. An observes this family and their environment, and cautiously tries to make this new place her home.
7.2A group of villagers from Maranur, India, and their clash with a neighbouring village leader as their community begins to prosper. Soon, money and greed threaten a will for peaceful coexistence between the two rivalling communities.

