A single mother in rural India has to pay a heavy price to repay her debts.
Social & External
The people behind it
Tannishtha Chatterjee
Durga
Anushka Rathore
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
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.
Set in the Ottoman Empire, it deals with the Caesar's (Pande) army and its skirmishes with the local Muslim rulers. The Sultan's (Asooji) son Ziyad (Kumar) is arrested by the Roman army. The Roman princess Rahil falls in love with him. A Muslim maid Leela (Sitara Devi) and the princess help him escape. Long chase scenes and fights follow, which ultimately lead to success for Ziyad and his people.
Encouraged by his mother, Ram's early entry into petty thievery makes him a criminal as he grows older. While evading the law, he meets Sheila, a CBI officer's sister, and gets married to her.
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.
A 14-year-old pursues romance with a man while vacationing with her family in Switzerland.
A talented teenage singer-songwriter living amid domestic abuse becomes a YouTube sensation after a video in which she hides her identity goes viral.
A middle-aged tour guide develops profound affection for a bubbly traveller while helping her search for a lost engagement ring across various picturesque European destinations.
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.
A very clever parrot lives in a Hindu palace, surrounded by many beautiful girls, but the parrot escapes, and is trapped far from the palace. One day, when its new owner is sleeping, the bird convinces a young boy to open the cage door. In return, it shows the boy a secret passage to get into the palace.
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.
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, 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.
Director Sampooran Singh Gulzar’s insightful comic drama aims to capture the unique perspective of childhood.
A woman secretly gives birth to a child after being raped by her boss and hides the truth from her husband.
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.
Bhavna Dayal and Maya Jalan had been fellow collegians and close friends, both come from very wealthy families. Bhavna is in love with another ex-fellow collegian, Tarun Haksar, who also comes from a wealthy family, and is also in love with Bhavna. Their respective families' expect both to marry each other. However, Tarun and Maya suddenly announce their engagement, and get married, leaving a shocked and heart-broken Bhavna to deal with this situation on her own. She eventually breaks off all contact with her former lover and friend respectively. One night, several months later, a disturbed Tarun returns to her life and apartment, and stays there overnight. The next day she is shocked to find out that Maya has been shot dead, and the police suspect Tarun of killing her. The question remains if Tarun had spent the entire night with Bhavna, then who killed Maya, and further why did Tarun decide to return to Bhavna's life all of a sudden?
"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.
When a gangster named Heeralal gets arrested, he befriends Johny, a petty thief, in prison. He seeks Jony's help in executing his mission of smuggling a few diamonds. Johny, however, is an undercover CID officer named Sohan.
In a suburban landscape, the lives of several families interlace with loss, despair and personal crisis. Esther Gold has lost focus on all but caring for her comatose son, Paul, and neglects her daughter and husband. Lawyer Jim Train is devoted to his career, not his family. Helen Christianson wants to find a new spark in life, while Annette Jennings tries to rebuild hers.
In order to be reinstated to the bar and recover custody of her daughter, a hotshot lawyer, now in recovery and on probation, must take on the appeal of a woman wrongfully convicted of murder.
A poor, struggling South Carolinian mother and daughter face painful choices with their resolve and pride. Bone, the eldest daughter, and Anney her tired mother, grow both closer and farther apart: Anney sees Glen as her last chance.
More interested in partying and flirting with young musicians than work, veteran rock journalist Ellie Klug has one last chance to prove her value to her magazine’s editor: a no-stone-unturned search to discover what really happened to long lost rock god, Matt Smith, who also happens to be her ex-boyfriend. Teaming up with an eccentric amateur documentary filmmaker, Ellie hits the road in search of answers.
A psychotherapist helps a law student cope with schizophrenia in one of five interconnected tales dealing with mental illness.
Defiant young activists take the women's suffrage movement by storm, putting their lives at risk to help American women win the right to vote.
Years after her son's suicide, a woman longs to confront both the past and a friend of his who took his business idea.
During the 1976 Soweto uprising, a white school teacher's life and values are threatened when he asks questions about the death of a young black boy who died in police custody.
A troubled young woman becomes obsessed with her mysterious new neighbor, who bears a striking resemblance to the girl's dead mother.
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 story of a young writer's transformation when her past invades her present.
When lapsed Jew and former cardiologist Harry suddenly decides to spend his retirement as a pig farmer in Nazareth, Israel, the move deeply shocks his family and his new neighbours. Back in New York, Harry’s ex-wife Monica is trying to manage the lives of their adult children, Annabelle and David, as well as her own.
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.
Feeling awkward and isolated, an imaginative and strong-willed teenage girl runs away from home with an older punk rock drifter.
An acclaimed stage performer, Dorothy still struggled with the challenge of her color, in a time that wouldn't let some stars in by the front door. Yet against the odds she beat out many more famous rivals for the role of "Carmen Jones", becoming the first black woman ever nominated for a Best Actress Academy Award. Marriages and affairs would break her heart, but her heart was strong. Seductive and easily seduced, she was born to be a star - with all the glory and all the pain of being loved, abused, cheated, glorified, undermined and undefeated. Here was a woman who wouldn't wait in the wings. Halle Berry stars as Dorothy Dandrige.
A drama set in the American South, where a precocious, troubled girl finds a safe haven in the music and movement of Elvis Presley.
A mother and her teenage daughter must confront Death when it arrives in the form of an astonishing talking bird.
Nola grew up living in a van with her father, Clint—two nomads against the world. When tragedy strikes, Nola must confront the reality of life on the road alone, learning to own her grief, her past, and her new destination.
Agnes and her two sisters struggle through a day in a home overrun by gamblers, thieves, and johns.
Jackie Justice is a mixed martial arts fighter who leaves the sport in disgrace. Down on her luck and simmering with rage and regret years after the fight, she's coaxed into a brutal underground fight by her manager and boyfriend Desi and grabs the attention of a fight league promoter who promises Jackie a life back in the Octagon. But the road to redemption becomes unexpectedly personal when Manny - the son she gave up as an infant - shows up at her doorstep. A triumphant story of a fighter who reclaims her power, in and out of the ring, when everyone has counted her out
