Cat Skin

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.

El pasito de onda

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.

Cherry-Red

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.

According to Mateo

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.

Eclipse

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.

The Good Teacher

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.

Manzanas

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

'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Grey as "Robyn" and Lawrence Locke as "Anthony") find themselves continously educating or being imprisoned by outdated traditions and opinions from loved ones.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.

Soğuk, Uzak ve Kirli

Untitled

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.

El Desconsuelo

Mother and daughter, separated and alone, mourn the death of their respective husband and father. After this, they begin to hear mysterious noises and enter a progressive spiral of terror and paranoia. The different ways of facing loss, anxiety, pain and lack of communication.

4 Moons

Four interwoven stories about love and self-acceptance: An eleven year-old boy struggles to keep secret the attraction he feels towards his male cousin. Two former childhood friends reunite and start a relationship that gets complicated due to one of them’s fear of getting caught. A gay long lasting relationship is in jeopardy when a third man comes along. An old family man is obsessed with a young male prostitute and tries to raise the money to afford the experience.

Martha and the Bird

A fantastic story of Martha, a little girl, who finds true love three years after her mother died.

Millimeterle

Measuring their power and proving themselves is part of the boys’ everyday life. Even for the 13-year-old gentle-natured Yannik. Until his best friend’s upcoming sexual curiosity suddenly puts him in a threatening situation. Where is the line between game and reality and what happens if that line is crossed?

The Car Thief

Two friends are engaged in theft of cars in order to extort money from their owners. The next stealing runs smoothly. The owner of the car agrees to pay, but puts forward an unexpected condition ...

The Male Gaze: The Heat of the Night

When darkness falls, temperatures rise in these six stories about late night confessions, intimacy for sale, high speed hookups and full moon frissons. But when the sun comes up and reality reveals itself, will it have all been worth it? The short films are: Thirst (2018); According to Mateo [Según Mateo] (2017); Hardcore (2016); Beast [Séptimo] (2011); Petit Ami (2017); Skai Blue (2017).

First Act

Theatre students André and Gabriel drum up support for resistance against the dismantling of culture policies in Brazil.

Fake Me A Happy New Year

Anita and her children, Santa and Kristaps, live in an apartment in Riga. Every year, they celebrate New Year’s Eve with grandma, uncle Peter and a feast fit for kings…

Boulevard

Nolan Mack, a soft-spoken bank employee, undoubtedly loves his wife Joy, though their cavernous empty house only underscores how disconnected they’ve always been from each other. Nolan finds himself drifting from his familiar present-day life in pursuit of lost time after meeting a troubled young man named Leo on his drive home. What begins as an aimless drive down an unfamiliar street turns into a life-altering series of events.

Heavenly Creatures

Precocious teenager Juliet moves to New Zealand with her family and soon befriends the quiet, brooding Pauline through their shared love of fantasy and literature. This friendship gradually develops into an intense and obsessive bond.

Pretty Boy

Sean is taken to a motel and is given a prostitute for his 18th birthday by his father. He must sleep with her to "fix" his questionable homosexuality. "Pretty Boy" is a coming of age story of a young bullied teen, Sean, struggling with his sexuality and the hardships of high school. After his father finds some questionable magazines in his room, this devout Christian will go to any lengths to get his son to find the light and "perform" the way a man should. Sean is introduced to Katie, a prostitute that understands the stigmas of modern society and helps him see the true light that is within him.

Deaf

Angela's deafness raises concerns during her pregnancy regarding connecting with her daughter. Post-delivery, partner Héctor supports her as she learns to mother in a society lacking adequate accommodations for the hearing-impaired.

The Thing with Feathers

Following the death of his wife, a young father's hold on reality crumbles, and a strange presence begins to stalk him from the shadowy recesses of the apartment he shares with his two young sons.

Pain and Glory

Salvador Mallo, a filmmaker in the twilight of his career, remembers his life: his mother, his lovers, the actors he worked with. The sixties in a small village in Valencia, the eighties in Madrid, the present, when he feels an immeasurable emptiness, facing his mortality, the incapability of continuing filming, the impossibility of separating creation from his own life. The need of narrating his past can be his salvation.

Mothers' Instinct

Housewives Alice and Celine are best friends and neighbours who seem to have it all. However, when a tragic accident shatters the harmony of their lives, guilt, suspicion and paranoia begin to unravel their sisterly bond.

Wasp

Zoë is a single mother who lives with her four children in Dartford. She is poor and can't afford to buy food. One day her old flame drives by and asks her to go on a date with him. Scared that he doesn't want to go out with her, she lies and tells him that she is just babysitting the kids. This will be her first date in years.

Goodbye June

Four siblings' lives change drastically when their ailing mother takes a turn for the worse over the holiday season.

Under the Same Moon

Tells 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.

The Fabelmans

Growing up in post-World War II era Arizona, young Sammy Fabelman aspires to become a filmmaker as he reaches adolescence, but soon discovers a shattering family secret and explores how the power of films can help him see the truth.

Love You to Death

Inspired by a true story, this film tells the shocking tale of a mother and daughter who are nothing like they seem, their tumultuous relationship ending in a brutal murder.

Tuesday

A mother and her teenage daughter must confront Death when it arrives in the form of an astonishing talking bird.

The Chronology of Water

Plagued by an abusive childhood, a woman finds escape in competitive swimming, sexual experimentation, toxic relationships, and addiction before ultimately finding her voice through writing.

'night, Mother

A mother and daughter spend a night together after the daughter reveals that she will kill herself by the end of it.

Strange Weather

Years after her son's suicide, a woman longs to confront both the past and a friend of his who took his business idea.

Gimme Shelter

After running away from her abusive mother, a streetwise teen seeks refuge with her father, but he rejects her when he learns that she's pregnant.

Lilting

A young man of Chinese-Cambodian descent dies, leaving behind his isolated mother and his lover of four years. Though the two don't share a language, they grow close through their grief.

Girl in the Box

The true story of 20-year-old Colleen Stan, a hitchhiking woman abducted by a young couple and held captive for seven years, during which time she's tortured and forced to live as a slave to her captors.

Hamlet

Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, returns home to find his father murdered and his mother now marrying the murderer... his uncle. Meanwhile, war is brewing.

May December

Twenty years after their notorious tabloid romance gripped the nation, a married couple buckles under the pressure when an actress arrives to do research for a film about their past.

Bad Education

When an old friend brings filmmaker Enrique Goded a semi-autobiographical script chronicling their adolescence, Enrique is forced to relive his youth spent at a Catholic boarding school. Weaving through past and present, the script follows a transvestite performer who reconnects with a grade school sweetheart. Spurred on by this chance encounter, the character reflects on her childhood sexual victimization and the trauma of closeting her sexual orientation.