Social & External
director
Ted Morgan has been treading water for most of his life. After his wife leaves him, Ted realizes he has nothing left to live for. Summoning the courage for one last act, Ted decides to go home and face the people he feels are responsible for creating the shell of a person he has become. But life is tricky. The more determined Ted is to confront his demons, to get closure, and to withdraw from his family, the more Ted is yanked into the chaos of their lives. So, when Ted Morgan decides to kill himself, he finds a reason to live.
A few weeks before Carnival, slum boys organize huntings for stray cats, whose leather can be used in Samba percussion instruments, like the Tamborim, a small drum.
She works nights, when most people are asleep. As she listens to trendy music, she practices the words she means to say to jump out to the world that she senses, is vibrating outside.
Anna and Marie are two women who could possibly love each other, but each must decide if she is willing to throw away her old life in pursuit of this new overwhelming feeling.
Mateo and his boyfriend, Marc, arrive home after a night out with Luke, a guy they've just met. After an argument, Mateo leaves the flat and bumps into Jon, a drug dealer they have called. Mateo convinces Jon to take him to his house where he discovers he can't feel anything if it's not through pain.
Liisa and the renowned composer Raimo Kaarna are fond of each other, but in Kaarna's family history, everyone does not accept the relationship. In addition, Liisa has her own doubts, and a secret that does not endure the daylight.
The event of the century is about to take place, a spectacular total solar eclipse. A girl is going to witness it with her grandmother and, despite her happiness, she will have to face her fear of the dark to enjoy the moment when it gets dark in the middle of the day. But when that happens, both of them will understand that sometimes the mind is also overshadowed by a reality that can erase all its memories.
One night in his near-empty tower block in contemporary London, Adam has a chance encounter with a mysterious neighbor, which punctures the rhythm of his everyday life.
The Good Teacher is a film about the lives of school teachers in a low-income urban area and the challenges they face while trying to provide a quality education to students. Dominique Daily is a first year school teacher who gives up his football career after an injury to teach Math at Louis Jones high school while struggling to cope with his short-lived life long dream of being a football star.
Manuel and Alexander met in 1945. They fell in love and together they fought for the creation of laws and norms for inclusion and equality in society.
'Intended Parents' is a short film about a Black millennial couple, seeking to expand their family through surrogacy. With one partner identifying as a transgender woman, the couple (Alexandra Grey as "Robyn" and Lawrence Locke as "Anthony") find themselves continously educating or being imprisoned by outdated traditions and opinions from loved ones. While the film explores the intersections of love, gender, surrogacy, acceptance, and desperation; the powerful couple aims to deflate multiple negative stigmas as they prepare for the life-alternating roller coaster of fertility and surrogacy.
From the music of UK composer Anne Dudley, Belgian filmmaker Stijn Coninx crafts a story of a hearing-impaired woman on various runs, determinedly straight ahead of herself, crossing deserted forests, meadows and swamps, in different get-ups. This short film is part of the 2x25 Project of Film Fest Gent and the World Soundtrack Awards. The project commissioned 25 composers to compose a short piece of music, after which 25 filmmakers made short films that are the ultimate symbioses of music and cinematography, fitting completely within the DNA of the festival. The result: 25 exceptional films where the music inspired the form, narrative and texture.
Lester Burnham, a depressed suburban father in a mid-life crisis, decides to turn his hectic life around after developing an infatuation with his daughter's attractive friend.
"Olivia" captures the awakening passions of an English adolescent sent away for a year to a small finishing school outside Paris. The innocent but watchful Olivia develops an infatuation for her headmistress Julie and through this screen of love observes the tense romance between Julie and the other head of the school Cara in its final months.
On a small green island out in the sea, they live in harmony - until a stranger comes. Like a hurricane this rocks the small society, and a killing lets all hidden forces loose.
Brad Wilson is a preoccupied, presumptuous, business man and husband to his neglected wife, Victoria. Until he meets with his colleagues and finds his best-friend is a playboy, with everything he wants in life especially any woman that he desires. After Brad plays high-stakes with Victoria as the prize, he finds himself against unfavorable odds.
Four teenagers from a rural village in South West Nigeria stumble upon a pouch of uncut diamonds — but before long, others come looking for the bounty.
Seize the Day is about a man, Ray Stevenson (James S. Cacciatore) who had dreams of changing the world, but through some poor decisions he made in his life he has lost everything. Frustrated and dying of cancer he blames one man for his misfortune, his business partner Jon Peterman (Jay E. Salsberg). To get revenge he storms his former office building and takes him hostage. At the same time throughout the city high power businessmen are getting knocked off one by one. And its up to a Cal (David J. Plescia) a rookie Detective and his veteran partner Burke (Jay Storey), to solve these murders and how they tie into the recent hostage situation.
Confined to a cold cell for 41 nights, a doctor's dreams of failures collide with his memories of success.
When a guardian angel – who invisibly watches over the citizens of Los Angeles – becomes captivated by a strong-willed heart surgeon, he ponders trading in his pure, otherworldly existence for a mortal life with his beloved. The couple embarks on a tender but forbidden romance spanning heaven and Earth.
A 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.
The final part of the film adaption of the erotic romance novel Gabriel's Inferno written by an anonymous Canadian author under the pen name Sylvain Reynard.
Finley, a talented aspiring violinist, meets Beckett, a famous young movie star, on the way to her college semester abroad program in a small coastal village in Ireland. An unexpected romance emerges as the heartthrob Beckett leads the uptight Finley on an adventurous reawakening, and she emboldens him to take charge of his future, until the pressures of his stardom get in the way.
A car accident and shifting affections test the bond between a married couple.
Bill Parrish has it all - success, wealth and power. Days before his 65th birthday, he receives a visit from a mysterious stranger, Joe Black, who soon reveals himself as Death. In exchange for extra time, Bill agrees to serve as Joe's earthly guide. But will he regret his choice when Joe unexpectedly falls in love with Bill's beautiful daughter Susan?
When Ruby and Rhett's parents are killed in a car accident, their carefree teenage lives are suddenly shattered. Moving to an incredible house in Malibu with the Glasses', old friends of the family, seems to be the beginning of a new life for them.
A fiery Spanish woman is about to marry a kind British man when she meets a Brazilian actor who ignites in her a flame of lust she can't ignore.
Two outsiders, both shaped by the circumstances that have brought them together, forge a deep and lasting love.
Dumped on her grandparents for the summer by her indifferent mother, acerbic and self-destructive teenager Greta disrupts the elderly couple's staid life on the Jersey Shore. Eventually, a romance helps Greta face down her demons.
In contemporary Los Angeles, two millennials navigating a social media–driven hookup culture begin a relationship that pushes both emotional and physical boundaries.
At Pacific Palisades High, a poor Latino falls hard for a troubled girl from the affluent neighborhood.
After 29-year-old Adaline recovers from a nearly lethal accident, she inexplicably stops growing older. As the years stretch on and on, Adaline keeps her secret to herself until she meets a man who changes her life.
Seventeen-year-old Stella spends most of her time in the hospital as a cystic fibrosis patient. Her life is full of routines, boundaries and self-control — all of which get put to the test when she meets Will, an impossibly charming teen who has the same illness. There's an instant flirtation, though restrictions dictate that they must maintain a safe distance between them. As their connection intensifies, so does the temptation to throw the rules out the window and embrace that attraction.
Bridger is a young outsider who's always wanted more. He and his mother flee an abusive home, eventually finding a small town in the middle of nowhere. Once there, Bridger finds true acceptance with another misfit.
Will Keane, a Manhattan restaurateur, is content with his playboy lifestyle until he meets Charlotte Fielding, a free-spirited young woman. Together the pair pursue a passionate affair that forces them both to reevaluate what they want out of life, even as fate threatens to steal away their future.
Lucinda Price is sent to a reform academy under the assumption that she has killed a boy. There, she meets two mysterious boys, Cam and Daniel, to whom she feels drawn to both. But as the love triangle unfurls, it is Daniel that Luce cannot keep herself away from, and things begin to take a darker turn when she finds out his true identity.
When his mother dies, young Peter Ibbetson leaves Paris and his best friend, Mary, behind to live with a severe uncle in England. Years later, Peter is an architect with little time for women, until he begins a project with the Duke and Duchess of Towers. When Peter and the duchess become great friends, she reveals that she is Mary — but the duke soon suspects his wife of infidelity and challenges Peter to a duel, threatening the pair's second chance.
When lifelong best friends Leo and Ulrich return home after completing their military training, Leo meets the stunning Felicitas at a railway station and is mesmerized by her beauty. A scandal follows, for which Leo is sent away. Returning home three years later, he discovers that much has changed.
