Social & External
The people behind it
Paul Hébert
Marie-Michèle Dion Bouchard
This anti-coming-of-age film follows Generation Y characters as they chase the desire for radical self-realisation.
The unusual friendship between a German embassy employee and a twelve-year-old refugee girl helps both of them rediscover their joy in life, but also brings with it suspicion, corruption and violence.
With only her bicycle, Olivia goes through the Croatian mountains and comes to a crossroad where she runs into a stranger named Mia. Together they go on a journey where Olivia gains a deeper understanding of what life has to offer.
A family spends three summer days in a beautiful lake mansion close to Berlin. Together with her new lover, Irene visits her brother Alex, who still inhabits the house with Irene's writer son Konstantin. Konstantin's girl-friend pops in, too, and all of them drift away from each other more and more.
The story follows a young man, Rok Kocijancic, who struggles to fit into society despite numerous attempts. However, behind his sense of being lost and his desire for acceptance lies a deeper reason.
Every night while the city sleeps, Ahmad, a former Pakistani rock star turned immigrant, drags his heavy cart along the streets of New York. And every morning, he sells coffee and donuts to a city he cannot call his own. One day, however, the pattern of this harsh existence is broken by a glimmer of hope for a better life.
When a girl picks a forbidden flower for her sick mother, she triggers a curse of misfortunes, forcing her to confront her grief and reconcile with nature.
Kanji Watanabe is a middle-aged man who has worked in the same monotonous bureaucratic position for decades. Learning he has cancer, he starts to look for the meaning of his life.
Radhesh, a high school student in Sydney’s affluent Bondi, betrays close relationships and his own self worth in order to claw his way up the social ladder.
A documentary about a funeral director and her views on life and death.
A supernatural encounter burdens the recently retired Mr. Melih with an existential awakening. Soon he, his wife, and their daughter are all haunted by the "ghosts" of lost opportunities, abandoned dreams, and alternate possibilities -- literally...
Elizabeth has just been through a particularly nasty breakup, and now she's ready to leave her friends and memories behind as she chases her dreams across the country. In order to support herself on her journey, Elizabeth picks up a series of waitress jobs along the way. As Elizabeth crosses paths with a series of lost souls whose yearnings are even greater than her own, their emotional turmoil ultimately helps her gain a greater understanding of her own problems...
A lonely cult-member tries to recruit an old friend - a nihilistic drifter from her childhood church. But it becomes unclear if she’s trying to save his soul, or if she herself wishes to be saved.
Clint is a dead man who lives alone in a frozen tundra. However, this isolation cannot bring either evasion or peace. One night, he begins a journey where he must confront his dreams, memories, and visions, crossing the darkness into the light.
With a keen sense of visual beauty, director Markku Lehmuskallio has created a thought-provoking, aesthetic film about a married couple and an old man living in a remote part of Finland. The young husband goes out hunting but only to support himself and his wife, not to kill off hordes of animals. He sets traps, and that gets him in trouble with the police who proceed to ticket him for using the devices. The forest cycles themselves are intimated when an old tree is shown falling to earth -- perhaps a reflection on the old man's passing years. In contrast to these few people living off the land and basically keeping the ecological balance intact, a highway construction crew is shown at work felling trees. Soon the antagonism grows between encroaching civilization and the quiet life of the young couple and elderly man.
Depressed Alain Leroy leaves the clinic where he was detoxified. He meets friends, acquaintances and women, trying to find a reason to continue living.
Pierre West's everyday life revolves around his work and few hobbies. When his tv-set suddenly breaks, an unexpected life journey begins. A film about a man and loneliness.
Bernardo and his friends are in the middle of a school reunion. It's been ten years since the last time the group got together, and they're all chatting while drinking and eating appetizers. Suddenly, Serena, his high school sweetheart, arrives alone, unaccompanied and different from everyone else in the room. As he watches her, Bernardo falls into a daydream, caught between memories of the past, in an insatiable search for the point at which his life became automatic.
A middle aged woman is desperately wondering in the streets looking for her daughter. A man finds her before she does.
The dialogue-less film follows the major life stages of a castaway on a deserted tropical island populated by turtles, crabs and birds.
The profound story of husband and wife Raynor and Moth Winn, who embark on a 630-mile trek after being forcibly removed from their home. Hoping that in nature they will find solace and a sense of acceptance, they walk through the beautiful but rugged coastlines of South West England - a journey that is exhilarating, challenging, and liberating in equal measure. THE SALT PATH is a powerful portrayal of home, and how it can be lost and rediscovered in the most unexpected ways.
A man and woman are drawn together, entangled in the lifecycle of an ageless organism. Identity becomes an illusion as they struggle to assemble the loose fragments of wrecked lives.
A unique friendship develops when a little girl and her dying mother inherit a cook - Mr. Church. What begins as an arrangement that should only last six months, instead spans fifteen years.
A council case worker looks for the relatives of those found dead and alone.
Follows the journey of a 90-year-old atheist and the quirky characters that inhabit his off-the-map desert town. He finds himself at the precipice of life, thrust into a journey of self-exploration.
With Christmas Eve just around the corner in bustling New York, five lonely and sad strangers find their lives inadvertently intersected.
The story of three women searching for more potent, meaningful lives. Each is alive at a different time and place, all are linked by their yearnings and their fears. Their stories intertwine, and finally come together in a surprising, transcendent moment of shared recognition.
The drug-induced utopias of four Coney Island residents are shattered when their addictions run deep.
Oona, a recent graduate in anthropology, has returned to her dead mother’s seaside cottage in southern England to prepare it for sale. Her arrival disturbs Mani, a wary vagrant who has been squatting on the property.
Four siblings' lives change drastically when their ailing mother takes a turn for the worse over the holiday season.
A group of disillusioned outsiders abandon modern society in search of a new beginning. Settling on a remote, uninhabited island, their utopian dream quickly unravels as they discover that the greatest threat isn’t the brutal climate or deadly wildlife, but each other.
Fed up with the hectic, senseless world he lives in, Teddy decides to settle down alone in Siberia, in the midst of winter, in a hut by the shore of Lake Baikal. After an initial period of elation in front of the splendor and magic of unspoiled nature, Teddy soon finds himself confronted with the less glossy side of things : solitude, extreme cold, the necessity to find food, danger... One night Teddy gets lost in a blizzard and would be doomed to a certain death, were it not for Aleksei, a Russian convict living hidden away in the forest nearby, who rescues him in extremis. Friendship soon blossoms between the two men...
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.
Working in a Boston homeless shelter, Nick Flynn re-encounters his father, a con man and self-proclaimed poet. Sensing trouble in his own life, Nick wrestles with the notion of reaching out yet again to his dad.
A young student decides to have no more interaction with the world than is needed to minimally sustain life. His increasingly automaton-like behavior is coupled with a strange clarity of insight about the world around him.
Two sisters find their already strained relationship challenged as a mysterious new planet threatens to collide with Earth.
A deeply religious black ex-con thwarts the suicide attempt of an asocial white college professor who tries to throw himself in front of an oncoming subway train, 'The Sunset Limited.' As the one attempts to connect on a rational, spiritual and emotional level, the other remains steadfast in his hard-earned despair. Locked in a philosophical debate, both passionately defend their personal credos and try to convert the other.
Julie is a new mom and children's book author, who escapes into the bright Crayola-colored world of her creation in order to leave behind the darkness caused by her post-partum depression.
A woman adjusting to life after a loss contends with a feisty bird that's taken over her garden — and a husband who's struggling to find a way forward.
