"A LUMINARA FILMS Short Film."
INDEPENDENTS Season 1. Screened for the first time, worldwide at INDEPENDENTS PREMIER 2025. CUE: "First" Toronto Metropolitan University. 1/4
Social & External
The people behind it
Alem Djedovic
The Protagonist
Nolan Byrne
The Sitter
Arjun Rajagopal
Sportscaster
Tom Liu
The Friend
When the police reveal a narcotic smuggling the driver is shot dead. It appears that the driver is Superintendent Martin Beck's son. Beck breaks down and moves out of the way. But on his colleagues request he returns.
A gay police officer's double life is paid by Becks archenemy, Gavling. A man who runs Stockholm's underworld. In return have the homosexual police, been serving Gavling with secret information from the archive of the police authorities.
Inhabitants of a small village in Hungary deal with the effects of the fall of Communism. The town's source of revenue, a factory, has closed, and the locals, who include a doctor and three couples, await a cash payment offered in the wake of the shuttering. Irimias, a villager thought to be dead, returns and, unbeknownst to the locals, is a police informant. In a scheme, he persuades the villagers to form a commune with him.
When a mother and son with a caustic history reunite to pack-up their old house, sparks fly as long-buried secrets are revealed, and it might fall upon the shoulders of the son's boyfriend to help heal old wounds.
A small-town piano teacher is shocked by the arrival of her foster daughter's biological mother, whose young lover soon follows and causes further disruption.
Set in New York City's gritty East Village, the revolutionary rock opera RENT tells the story of a group of bohemians struggling to live and pay their rent. "Measuring their lives in love," these starving artists strive for success and acceptance while enduring the obstacles of poverty, illness and the AIDS epidemic.
Dustin Lewis investigates his own past after losing a signification portion of his memory.
Three stories. Three ages. Three men. Grandfather, father, son. One is an orderly, one is a leading sportsman, and one is a master taxidermist. One desires love, the other success, and the third immortality.
Humanity finally rids themselves of Godzilla, imprisoning him in an icy tomb in the South Pole. All is peaceful until various monsters emerge to lay waste to Earth's cities. Overwhelmed, humanity is seemingly saved by a race of benevolent aliens known as Xiliens. But not all is what it seems with these bizarre visitors. If humanity wishes to survive, they must reluctantly resurrect their most hated enemy, Godzilla.
A journalist goes undercover to ferret out businessman Harrison Hill as her best friend's killer. Posing as one of his temps, she enters into a game of online cat-and-mouse.
When the San Francisco Giants pay center-fielder, Bobby Rayburn $40 million to lead their team to the World Series, no one is happier or more supportive than #1 fan, Gil Renard. When Rayburn becomes mired in the worst slump of his career, the obsessed Renard decides to stop at nothing to help his idol regain his former glory—not even murder.
When the head of a statue sacred to a village is stolen, a young martial artist goes to the big city and finds himself taking on the underworld to retrieve it.
Chronicles the rise and fall of legendary blues singer Billie Holiday, beginning with her traumatic youth. The story depicts her early attempts at a singing career and her eventual rise to stardom, as well as her difficult relationship with Louis McKay, her boyfriend and manager. Casting a shadow over even Holiday's brightest moments is the vocalist's severe drug addiction, which threatens to end both her career and her life.
Truck driver Teddy's late night stop at a gas station takes a dark turn when he meets the mysterious hooker Katerina, leading to unexpected consequences.
Jen's romantic getaway with her wealthy married boyfriend is disrupted when his friends arrive for an impromptu hunting trip. Tension mounts at the house until the situation culminates in an unexpected way.
Ex-wrestler and Tennessee Sheriff Buford Pusser walks tall and carries a big stick as he tussles with county-wide corruption and moonshining thugs.
A rising pop sensation navigates fame and industry pressures while preparing for her arena tour debut, revealing the transformation of underground culture into mainstream success.
Due to a botched robbery attempt, a ruthless Romanian barbarian is somehow resurrected in modern day New York and begins wreaking havoc on a small Manhattan art-house. Chaos ensues as the patrons of the establishment band together to fight for their lives.
Alison, left to manage an ailing farm and an alcoholic father-in-law after her husband’s sudden death, navigates the challenges of rural life. The film explores generational trauma, love, loss, and the undeniable resilience of a farming community in the face of tragedy.
Conman Robert Freegard poses as an undercover MI5 agent and kidnaps countless victims amidst a high-stakes manhunt, until the woman who fell for him brings him to justice.
A psychic's ominous reading sends a man into a tailspin.
20 men are chosen to participate in the roles of guards and prisoners in a psychological study that ultimately spirals out of control.
A troubled young woman becomes obsessed with her mysterious new neighbor, who bears a striking resemblance to the girl's dead mother.
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.
A nightmarish evening unfolds for neighbors David and Robert when they accidentally hit a woman on her bike and flee the scene. While David is increasingly plagued by feelings of guilt, Robert shows no remorse and becomes overbearing and possessive.
A group of friends' fishing boat capsizes off the coast of Mexico and they're left alone stranded at sea and struggling for survival.
An adrenaline seeking snowboarder gets lost in a massive winter storm in the back country of the High Sierras where he is pushed to the limits of human endurance and forced to battle his own personal demons as he fights for survival....
A woman is released from prison after serving a sentence for a violent crime and re-enters a society that refuses to forgive her past.
High-powered attorney Marley faces her most personal case yet when she is tasked with uncovering the truth behind the murder of her best friend Fela’s husband. With the help of her boyfriend – a former cop turned private investigator – Marley’s search for what really happened leads her down a treacherous maze of deception and betrayal.
After a morally-bankrupt company tries to weaponize a brilliant scientist's revolutionary technology, he goes off the grid to safeguard humanity. When the company sends a strike force to find him, they make their biggest mistake of all – they weaponize the man they are trying to catch.
Set during the true and unconscionable Central Intelligence Agency MK ULTRA drug experimentations in the early 1960s. The journey of Ford Strauss, a brilliant psychiatrist, whose moral and scientific boundaries are pushed to the limit as he is recruited to run a subsect of the program in a rural Mississippi Mental Hospital.
A pair of high-frequency traders go up against their old boss in an effort to make millions in a fiber-optic cable deal.
Inspired by Chris Marker's iconic 1962 featurette La Jetée; the year is 2073—a not-so-distant dystopian future—and the setting is New San Francisco, the scorched-earth tech-dominant police state where democracy and personal freedom have been well and truly obliterated.
A young woman with psychokinetic powers breaks out of a Louisiana asylum and makes her way to New Orleans, where she falls into the city’s netherworld of misfits and miscreants.
A precocious and obsessive teenager develops a crush on a naive writer with harrowing consequences.
An attention-seeking psychic is kidnapped and tries to use the situation to boost his popularity.
Reclusive and controversial author Bruce Cogburn is drawn out of hiding by an obsessive fan, forcing the novelist to confront a past that he thought he could escape, and to account for events set in motion by his bestseller decades earlier. Cogburn's search for who is behind the manipulation and mental torment he encounters leads to an emotional roller-coaster ride full of fear and danger, where things are not always as clear as they seem to be, and where past deeds can have dire consequences.
A homicide detective goes undercover as a patient to investigate a psychotherapist he believes is linked to a strange double murder. As his therapy sessions continue the line between fantasy and reality begins to blur.
Unable to process the death of his daughter, Detective Boyd embarks on a hunt for a serial killer who murders according to a brutal tribal ritual: Muti. The only person who can help Boyd is Professor Mackles, an anthropologist who hides an unspeakable secret. The line between sanity and madness thins as Boyd goes deeper into the killer’s world.