Women in Film: BBC Introducing Arts

Cultural historian Janina Ramirez presents a collection of intriguing and exciting short films by emerging women directors and artists. Each film gives a female perspective on modern-day topics from body image and new love to grief and belonging. Expect honest and refreshing storytelling that will make you laugh, make you cry and make you think. In a Room Full of Sisters; Blood Stains; Bridging the Gap; Cake; Ding-Ding, Next; Fruity; In Perpetuum; Owulide; White Dwarf; Cosmic Domestic; The Dead Are Jewels to Me; The Presence of Absence

The Silent Twins

June and Jennifer Gibbons are twins from the only Black family in a small town in Wales in the 1970s and '80s. Feeling isolated from the community, the pair turn inward and reject communication with everyone but each other, retreating into their own fantasy world of inspiration and adolescent desires. After a spree of vandalism, the girls are sentenced to Broadmoor, an infamous psychiatric hospital, where they face the choice to separate and survive or die together.

Bend It Like Beckham

Jess Bhamra, the daughter of a strict Indian couple in London, is not permitted to play organized soccer, even though she is 18. When Jess is playing for fun one day, her impressive skills are seen by Jules Paxton, who then convinces Jess to play for her semi-pro team. Jess uses elaborate excuses to hide her matches from her family while also dealing with her romantic feelings for her coach, Joe.

36 Fillette

A 14-year-old pursues romance with a man while vacationing with her family in Switzerland.

Patong Girl

German family Schroeder is spending their Christmas holidays on the Thai island, Phuket. Of all the things, deep within the sleazy tourist bars and alleys of Patong, the youngest son Felix falls in love with a gorgeous Thai girl Fai who in return appears to mutually attracted to him.

Monster

In 1989, prostitute Aileen Wuornos befriends and enters a relationship with a young woman named Selby. Determined to straighten out her life, Aileen's limited education lands her back on the corner. She's raped by a trick, who she kills. A string of murder and robbery follows that ultimately leads Aileen to becoming America's first female serial killer.

Die Jüdin

Zero Motivation

Filmmaker Talya Lavie steps into the spotlight with a dark comedy about everyday life for a unit of young female Israeli soldiers. The human resources office at a remote desert base serves as the setting for this cast of characters, who bide their time pushing paper, battling for the top score in Minesweeper, and counting down the minutes until they can return to civilian life. Amidst their boredom and clashing personalities, issues of commitment—from friendship to love and country—are handled with humor and sharp-edged wit.

June R

June R, an orphan, was born in the month of June, for which she was named. She works in an advertising agency. One day she happens to come across a middle-aged woman hurt badly in an accident.

Geheimkommando Familie

Klaus Gremme, a retired instructor with the combat swimmers at the Baltic Sea, sets off for Lake Constance to meet his son Thomas and his grandchildren. They don't know anything about him because Klaus left his wife and Thomas when the boy was still very young. Klaus takes up residence with Mona, a single mother whose house is across the street from Thomas'. The reunion with his son turns into a fiasco, but Klaus doesn't give up and develops an elaborate plan to win Thomas and his family over after all. In the coming weeks, however, the ex-fight swimmer constantly clashes with his esoteric, pacifist landlady Mona. She and her children, the overweight Linus and Claire, who has Down syndrome, slowly grow fond of the lone warrior. In the end, the rapprochement with his own family seems to have failed. But Klaus may have found a new, completely different family in this search.

REM

"REM" is an Afrikaans Sci-Fi Drama about a grief-stricken father, Dehan, who becomes obsessed with the memory of his late wife, Lena, through the use of a high-tech, dream-altering device, the REM. This unhealthy obsession leads to Dehan struggling to reconnect with his young son, Erich, who survived the car accident that caused Lena's death. Dehan must decide to face and to confront his grief, reconnecting with his son, or to become so immersed in his fantasy dream-world that he loses touch with reality, and Erich, altogether.

Miss Meadows

Miss Meadows is a school teacher with impeccable manners and grace. However, underneath the candy-sweet exterior hides a ruthless gun-toting vigilante who takes it upon herself to right the wrongs in the world by whatever means necessary. For Miss Meadows, bad behavior is simply unforgivable.

Open Hearts

Cecilie and Joachim are about to get married when a freak car accident leaves Joachim disabled, throwing their lives into a spin. The driver of the other car, Marie, and her family don’t get off lightly, either. Her husband Niels works in the hospital where he meets Cecilie and falls madly in love with her.

Desert Hearts

While waiting for her divorce papers, a repressed literature professor finds herself unexpectedly attracted by a carefree, spirited young woman named Cay.

Grbavica: The Land of My Dreams

A woman and her daughter struggle to make their way through the aftermath of the Balkan war.

Boys Don't Cry

A young transgender man explores his gender identity and searches for love in rural Nebraska.

Afterparty

On the night of his brother's wedding, best man Charlie gets the old gang back together for a fun-filled, post reception after party, at the newlyweds' home, where he has been staying for several weeks. Unsure of how to proceed with his own troubled marriage, Charlie reunites "the fellas" fifteen years after high school, in hopes that revisiting the past will help him find clarity for the future. What he finds, however, is that while his friends have all taken different paths, they are all faced with similar conundrums that comes with being in one's thirties.

Ana

Centered on an elderly matriarch and her family in the Trás-os-Montes region of Portugal. An exploration of the cycle of life and death, using the main character, Ana, as an emblem of a life lived in harmony with nature and tradition.

A Child Lost Forever: The Jerry Sherwood Story

A teenage mother is forced to give up her baby for adoption and, 19 years later, when she tries to contact her son, she learns that he died, under questionable circumstances when he was three years old.

Wuthering Heights

Yorkshire moorlands, northern England, in the late 18th century. Young Heathcliff, rescued from the streets of Liverpool by Mr. Earnshaw, the owner of Wuthering Heights, an isolated farm, develops over the years an insane passion for Cathy, his foster sister, a sick obsession destined to end tragically.

Call Me Crazy: A Five Film

A psychotherapist helps a law student cope with schizophrenia in one of five interconnected tales dealing with mental illness.

The Girl in the Book

The story of a young writer's transformation when her past invades her present.

Starving in Suburbia

When seventeen-year-old Hannah stumbles upon a website about Thinspiration--an online community devoted to anorexia as a life choice--she becomes an obsessive follower of the site founder, ButterflyAna. By the time Hannah's family realizes what is happening and get Hannah the help she needs, the disease has fully taken hold and Hannah is refusing to eat. Will this family be able to exorcise the demon of anorexia from their lives?

The Truth About Emanuel

A troubled young woman becomes obsessed with her mysterious new neighbor, who bears a striking resemblance to the girl's dead mother.

TalhotBlond

Thomas 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.

I Believe in Unicorns

Feeling awkward and isolated, an imaginative and strong-willed teenage girl runs away from home with an older punk rock drifter.

Sky

A woman embarks on a journey alone across the United States after fleeing from her violent husband.

Won't Back Down

Jamie Fitzpatrick and Nona Alberts are two women from opposites sides of the social and economic track, but they have one thing in common: a mission to fix their community's broken school and ensure a bright future for their children. The two women refuse to let any obstacles stand in their way as they battle a bureaucracy that's hopelessly mired in traditional thinking, and they seek to re-energize a faculty that has lost its passion for teaching.

Skin

Based on the true story of a black girl who was born to two white Afrikaner parents in South Africa during the apartheid era.

What Maisie Knew

In New York City, a young girl is caught in the middle of her parents' bitter custody battle.

The River

Tom and Mae Garvey are a Tennessee farming couple battling violent floods to save their land. In addition to natural disasters, the Garveys fight to stop a selfish land developer and a local corporation from foreclosing on their farm. While Mae stays at home to care for their children and tend to the crops, Tom finds work as a scab at a steel mill to preserve his family's property.

Nothing Personal

Alone in her empty flat, from her window Anne observes the people passing by who nervously snatch up the personal belongings and pieces of furniture she has put out on the pavement. Her final gesture of taking a ring off her finger signals she is leaving her previous life in Holland behind. She goes to Ireland, where she chooses to lead a solitary, wandering existence, striding through the austere landscapes of Connemara. During her travels, she discovers a house that is home to a hermit, Martin.

Normal

A Midwestern husband and father announces his plan to have a sex change operation.

Gigi & Nate

A young man with a bright future suffers a near-fatal accident and recreates his new life with the help of an unlikely animal friend.

Fast Girls

A street smart runner develops an intense rivalry with an equally ambitious wealthy young athlete.

Third Star

James and his three closest lifelong friends go on an ill-advised trip to the stunning coastal area of Barafundle Bay in West Wales. What follows is a touching and comical adventure dealing with friendship, heroism and love.

Come Sunday

Evangelist Carlton Pearson is ostracized by his church for preaching that there is no Hell.

Anne of Green Gables

A retelling of L.M. Montgomery's story of Anne Shirley, an orphan who is accidentally sent to a couple looking to adopt a boy instead.

A Question of Faith

When Tragedy Strikes three Families, their Destiny forces them on a coverging path and mercy as the challenges of their fate could also resurrect their beliefs

Skater Girl

Prerna, a teenager growing up in rural India, comes of age when she’s introduced to the sport of skateboarding. As a result, she has to fight the odds to follow her dreams and compete in the national championship.