Things are looking up.
Social & External
The Optimist
Karrer plods his way through life in quiet desperation. His environment is drab and rainy and muddy. Eaten up with solitude, his hopelessness would be incurable but for the existence of the Titanik Bar and its beautiful, haunting singer. But the lady is married and Karrer is determined to keep her husband away...
In an industrializing Italian town, a married woman, rendered mentally unstable after a traffic accident, drifts into an affair with a friend of her husband.
Released from prison, a woman returns to her village and tries to face the four seasons of her past. The lack of welcome from the villagers, and even her family, leads her into a power that is hidden underneath the fog. Aiming to heal, a sexual assault survivor takes a journey to redefine her own meaning of home, family, and peace.
After straight-arrow district attorney Joseph Foster says in frustration that he would sell his soul to bring down a local mob boss, a smooth-talking stranger named Nick Beal shows up with enough evidence to seal a conviction. When that success leads Foster to run for governor, Beal's unearthly hold on him turns the previously honest man corrupt, much to the displeasure of his wife and his steadfast minister.
A switchman at a seaside railway witnesses a murder but does not report it after he finds a suitcase full of money at the scene of the crime.
A German living in India during World War II is blackmailed by the English to impersonate an SS officer on board a cargo ship leaving Japan for Germany carrying a large supply of rubber for tyres. His mission is to disable the scuttling charges so the captain cannot sink the ship if they are stopped by English warships.
Set in the pastoral mountains of northern Iran, eight-year-old Sahand has been rendered mute by the loss of his mother during the war. He is taken care of by his older sister as he struggles to process his trauma.
Neurosurgeon Koichi uses an experimental technique to enter the brain of his beloved Atsumi, who is in a coma after attempting suicide. In his quest, Koichi drifts steadily further into the sweltering marshes of the spirit. It is soon no longer clear what is real and what is not.
A young woman reunites with the father she's not seen since early childhood, also falls in love with a sailor who wishes to marry her, and eventually is forced to reveal to each man about her dark past. (NOTE: This is the German language version.)
Multiple stories unfold over the course of twenty-four hours in and around a bustling central airport.
The wind carries an aspiring healer into a chaotic, virulent parallel world. Paralyzed by a familiar universe that is gradually becoming distorted, she discovers she has the power to stop time.
A romantic getaway for two troubled college sweethearts turns into a struggle for survival when unexpected guests – and the surrounding environment – exhibit signs of a mysterious infection.
Led by the words of an old man, we will witness the extraordinary event that changed the life of a village forgotten amid the fog.
Is Fer a different child or is he a child like any other in a strange world? On the way home, Fer and her father experience strange events.
The Forbidden Zone is a stop-motion short film about Dumont, a botanist, who has quarantined in an abandoned train station. The world has become saturated by a toxic fog that destroys all life forms and replaces oxygen with poison. He spends his days fighting to survive, as his resources quickly dwindle. On a night when all seems lost, a nymph crashes outside Dumont’s bunker. In a sudden act of bravery, he dons his final tank of oxygen and leaves the safety of the station. Gathering the wounded Nymph in his arms, Dumont risks his life to return the glowing creature to the peak of the red mountain. In his quest to save his new charge, Dumont risks his life and, in doing so, discovers hope beyond the fog.
A lone figure drifts between reality and reflection, caught in stillness and searching for something just out of reach.
Arthur fulfills his fate by bringing together the Knights of the Round Table at Camelot and unifying the country. However, this flawed monarch faces greater tests ahead in pursuit of love, the Holy Grail, and his nation's survival.
Detectives Jonas and Erik are called to the midnight sun country of northern Norway to investigate a recent homicide, but their plan to arrest the killer goes awry, and Jonas mistakenly shoots Erik. The suspect escapes, and a frightened Jonas pins Erik's death on the fugitive. Jonas continues to pursue the killer as he seeks to protect himself; however, his mounting guilt and the omnipresent sun plague him with an insomnia that affects his sanity.
To mark his passage into manhood, young Ilias is gifted a magical bow by his father and embarks upon a journey into the wilderness to rid the land of evil, all the while battling the witch Ocron, who wishes to steal the bow for her own nefarious ends.
A golden sunrise brings light to the foggy hills and meadows of late summer.
Contemporary Russia. After he flubs a penalty kick, a humiliated national soccer player quits the game. He flees to a small town, where he decides to coach their local team.
Four women are waiting for the blue circle and a possible change of their lives.
Middle-aged widow Beatrice Hunsdorfer and her daughters Ruth and Matilda are struggling to survive in a society they barely understand. Beatrice dreams of opening an elegant tea room but does not have the wherewithal to achieve her lofty goal. Epileptic Ruth is a rebellious adolescent, while shy but highly intelligent and idealistic Matilda seeks solace in her pets and school projects, including one designed to show how small amounts of radium affect marigolds.
When a man becomes tyrannical towards his family, the women of the house decide to teach him a lesson in gratitude.
A religious organization interferes with the life of a terminally ill girl.
Back from a tour of duty, Kelli struggles to find her place in her family and the rust-belt town she no longer recognizes.
A young art teacher hopes to be transferred to Istanbul after completing his mandatory duty in a remote village school in Anatolia. After accusations of inappropriate contact with a student surface, his hopes of escape fade and he descends further into an existential crisis.
On a summer day in late 19th century Russia, a group of bourgeois friends and acquaintances gather at a dilapidated country estate.
On the edge of the Gobi desert in Northwest China, Lang returns to his hometown after being released from jail. While working for the local dog patrol team to clear the town of stray dogs before the Olympic Games, he strikes up an unlikely connection with a black dog. These two lonely souls embark on a journey together.
Josephine and Iris, sisters with opposite personalities, have their relationship radically transformed while working on a book.
Alina is a brilliant and enterprising woman who runs a successful art gallery in Palermo. Her husband Daniele, a successful orchestra conductor, cultured and intelligent, is not a regular presence. One day, while accompanying Daniele to the airport, Alina feels a sense of emptiness. She will try to fill it with a butcher who is always joking and full of erotic allusions and who arouses a strong attraction in her.
A woman who works in a meat packing plant is continuously preyed upon by lecherous men.
A teenager faces an uphill battle when she fights to give women the opportunity to play competitive soccer.
A daughter seeks to restore the reputation of her disgraced father, a wronged college professor. With help of a professional student, she must overcome an ambitious sorority bitch and corrupt college dean.
In a mining town which has been blighted by economic downturns, an elementary school headmaster struggles to obtain social services on behalf of his students.
Evangelist Carlton Pearson is ostracized by his church for preaching that there is no Hell.
A jaded mother makes a last-ditch effort to keep her family together by taking them on a trip to their teenage daughter’s pole dancing competition.
When three friends open a hot pot restaurant in a former bomb shelter, they discover it’s linked by a single wall to the bank vault next door. While deciding to take the easy money or go to the police, they find out one of the bank’s employees is a former classmate and look to enlist her in deciding their future.
A pro ball player with a substance abuse problem is forced into rehab in his hometown, finding new hope when he gets honest about his checkered past, and takes on coaching duties for a misfit Little League team
In a small suburb on the outskirts of Rome, the cheerful heat of summer camouflages a stifling atmosphere of alienation. From a distance, the families seem normal, but it’s an illusion: in the houses, courtyards and gardens, silence shrouds the subtle sadism of the fathers, the passivity of the mothers and the guilty indifference of adults. But it’s the desperation and repressed rage of the children that will explode and cut through this grotesque façade, with devastating consequences for the entire community.
