A poetry film that tells the story of a man struggling with his deteriorating mental state and self-destruction.
Social & External
The Man of the Sea / The Poet (voice) (uncredited)
The family of a wealthy businessman gather to celebrate his 60th birthday. During the course of the party, his eldest son presents a speech that reveals a devastating secret that turns the night into a battle of truth and denial.
A woman and her daughter struggle to make their way through the aftermath of the Balkan war.
A deadpan young man obsessed with death meets an eccentric septuagenarian who teaches him to live life to the fullest.
An average, everyday metalworker and volunteer firefighter content in his marriage to his childhood sweetheart finds his emotions unexpectedly stirred when he falls for a pretty waitress from a nearby town.
In this contemporary take on William Shakespeare's classic tragedy, the Montagues and Capulets have moved their ongoing feud to the sweltering suburb of Verona Beach, where Romeo and Juliet fall in love and secretly wed. Though the film is visually modern, the bard's dialogue remains.
Director helmut Dietls and Patric Susskinds illustrate a legendary story of two lovers who cant keep themselves away from death.
Guido Anselmi, a film director, finds himself creatively barren at the peak of his career. Urged by his doctors to rest, Anselmi heads for a luxurious resort, but a sorry group gathers—his producer, staff, actors, wife, mistress, and relatives—each one begging him to get on with the show. In retreat from their dependency, he fantasizes about past women and dreams of his childhood.
Seize the Day is about a man, Ray Stevenson (James S. Cacciatore) who had dreams of changing the world, but through some poor decisions he made in his life he has lost everything. Frustrated and dying of cancer he blames one man for his misfortune, his business partner Jon Peterman (Jay E. Salsberg). To get revenge he storms his former office building and takes him hostage. At the same time throughout the city high power businessmen are getting knocked off one by one. And its up to a Cal (David J. Plescia) a rookie Detective and his veteran partner Burke (Jay Storey), to solve these murders and how they tie into the recent hostage situation.
After a failed suicide attempt, a man receives a substantial inheritance from a long lost relative and meets a struggling single mom with an eccentric young daughter. Together they embark on a journey of self discovery and healing.
Sembula Cheru is an experimental hyperlink short film. In a 1990s Tamil Nadu remote village, Guru had to struggle for his love from three robbers, which ultimately does a good thing to a stranger.
To the dismay of Allison Edwards, her bookworm, adoring neighbor, Mary Randolph, falls in love with and marries Jack Van Norman, a rich and handsome former football star. After a few months of marital contentment, Jack becomes infatuated with Rose, an exotic dancer.
Michaela, an epileptic, enrolls in college to study education. She goes off her medication and soon begins hearing voices and seeing apparitions that tell her to avoid religious objects, although she is devoutly Roman Catholic. One priest scoffs at the idea that Michaela could be possessed by demons, but a younger pastor arranges an exorcism for the young woman.
In a violent relationship, it takes a mother’s strength to save herself and her children from the man she loved. Once Were Warriors is a violent love story set against a contemporary urban backdrop.
An alcoholic ex-football player drinks his days away, having failed to come to terms with his sexuality and his real feelings for his football buddy who died after an ambiguous accident. His wife is crucified by her desperation to make him desire her: but he resists the affections of his wife. His reunion with his father—who is dying of cancer—jogs a host of memories and revelations for both father and son.
Andrew returns to his hometown for his mother’s funeral, a journey that reconnects him with old friends. The trip coincides with his decision to stop taking his powerful antidepressants. A chance meeting with Sam—a girl also struggling with various maladies—opens up the possibility of rekindling emotional connections, confronting his psychologist father, and perhaps beginning a new life.
After a wonderful time in Hungary Sissi falls extremely ill and must retreat to a Mediterranean climate to rest. The young empress’ mother takes her from Austria to recover in Madeira.
An intimate study of two women friends who come to each other because of troubles with everyday life and with men and thus try to enjoy a life based on their ideas.
From the music of Uruguayan composer Florencia Di Concilio, English filmmaker Terence Davies does a cinematic reading of his own poem about his late sister, delivered over a single serene shot of the countryside near his home in Essex. 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.
Orson Welles reads the poem especially for this film by Larry Jordan, which is dedicated to the late Wallace Berman, and is made possible by a grant from The National Endowment Of The Arts.
Nothing is as it seems when a woman experiencing misgivings about her new boyfriend joins him on a road trip to meet his parents at their remote farm.
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.
Set in the changing world of the late 1960s, Susanna Kaysen's prescribed "short rest" from a psychiatrist she had met only once becomes a strange, unknown journey into Alice's Wonderland, where she struggles with the thin line between normal and crazy. Susanna soon realizes how hard it is to get out once she has been committed, and she ultimately has to choose between the world of people who belong inside or the difficult world of reality outside.
An 11-year-old girl watches her father come down with a crippling depression. Over one summer, she learns answers to several mysteries and comes to terms with love and loss.
The drug-induced utopias of four Coney Island residents are shattered when their addictions run deep.
An awkward office drone becomes increasingly unhinged after a charismatic and confident look-alike takes a job at his workplace and seduces the woman he desires.
On the outside, Helen has it all – a loving family and a successful career – but when her suppressed mental illness resurfaces, the world crumbles around her. Crippled by depression, Helen finds solace through her friendship with Mathilda, a kindred spirit struggling with bipolar disorder.
Evan Hansen, a high schooler with social anxiety, unintentionally gets caught up in a lie after the family of a classmate who committed suicide mistakes one of Hansen’s letters for their son’s suicide note.
A mother and daughter spend a night together after the daughter reveals that she will kill herself by the end of it.
A film about existence from the perspective of 20 nameless black females. Each of the women portray one of the characters represented in the collection of twenty poems, revealing different issues that impact women in general and women of color in particular.
Controversy and legal problems follow Dr. Jack Kevorkian as he advocates assisted suicide.
It's San Francisco in 1957, and an American masterpiece is put on trial. Howl, the film, recounts this dark moment using three interwoven threads: the tumultuous life events that led a young Allen Ginsberg to find his true voice as an artist, society's reaction (the obscenity trial), and mind-expanding animation that echoes the startling originality of the poem itself. All three coalesce in a genre-bending hybrid that brilliantly captures a pivotal moment-the birth of a counterculture.
A Pulitzer-winning writer grapples with being a widower and father after a mental breakdown, while, 27 years later, his grown daughter struggles to forge connections of her own.
Years after her son's suicide, a woman longs to confront both the past and a friend of his who took his business idea.
A group of friends' fishing boat capsizes off the coast of Mexico and they're left alone stranded at sea and struggling for survival.
Psychiatrist Sam Foster has a new patient, Henry Letham, who claims to be suicidal. In trying to diagnose him, Sam visits Henry's prior therapist and also finds Henry's mother -- even though Henry has said that he murdered both of his parents. As reality starts to contradict fact, Sam spirals into an unstable mental state. Then he finds a clue as to how and when Henry may try to kill himself, and races to try to stop him.
A troubled hedge fund magnate, desperate to complete the sale of his trading empire, makes an error that forces him to turn to an unlikely person for help.
When Eve, an interior designer, is deserted by her husband of many years, Arthur, the emotionally glacial relationships of the three grown-up daughters are laid bare. Twisted by jealousy, insecurity and resentment, Renata, a successful writer; Joey, a woman crippled by indecision; and Flyn, a budding actress; struggle to communicate for the sake of their shattered mother. But when their father unexpectedly falls for another woman, his decision to remarry sets in motion a terrible twist of fate…
Suffering from a severe case of depression, toy company CEO Walter Black begins using a beaver hand puppet to help him open up to his family. With his father seemingly going insane, adolescent son Porter pushes for his parents to get a divorce.
A young heroin addict roams the streets of New York to panhandle and get her next fix, while her unstable boyfriend drifts in and out of her life at random.