"WE FIGHT TO REMAIN VISIBLE"
Three second-generation teens from Toronto navigate the everyday pressures of high school and their futures.
Social & External
The people behind it
Maryan Haye
Munira (Mo)
Terry He
Lee
Chloe Nava
Sharon
Minhaj Monnan
Abdi
Angela Xu
Yuna
Steve Kasan
Roshan
Alethea Annirood
Ana
Jennifer Deadman
Mrs.Robbins
Mohamed Ahmed Abdulkadir
Ali
Andrew Knights
Chuck
Genius musician An He, stuck with writer’s block, meets runaway rich kid Xiao Yu. Bonding over music, they fall in love chasing dreams.
A shy caretaker believes that the father of her teenage charge is falling in love with her, unaware that she is actually the victim of the girl's prank.
Twenty-six-year-old Hiroto Suwa; his wife, Naho; and their old high school classmates—Takako Chino, Azusa Murasaka, and Saku Hagita—visit Mt. Koubou to view the cherry blossoms together. While watching the setting sun, they reminisce about Kakeru Naruse, their friend who died 10 years ago. Mourning for him, they decide to visit Kakeru's old home, where they learn the secret of his death from his grandmother.
New Year's Eve 1999 finds college-bound Clark and Trevor concerned about the future of their friendship, and a request for Clark to be Trevor's wingman ensures things will never be the same again.
Lizzie and Janie are best friends, bonded like sisters, who share many things in common: crushes, gossip, and a taste for liquor. Although they manage to sneak alcohol at home and in water bottles at school, they never get caught. One night, while at a per-graduation party, Lizzie, Janie, and their friend Kate get completely drunk, and Lizzie decides to drive Janie home. While blasting the music in the car, with rain pounding on the windshield, Lizzie crashes the car. She escapes with a concussion, but Janie isn't so lucky - she dies in the twisted metal. What happens is a depiction of the aftermath of tragedy, and the recovery process of an alcoholic. Gruesome dramatization of a horrific car accident, and depiction of a DWI trial.
Daphne, a teenage judo athlete from a remote Greek island, is ready to spread her wings and follow Sensei Yuri to the big city and ultimately to the next Olympic Games. Yuri, for unknown reasons, has been absent from the world of Judo for the last few years and he is looking for a new beginning, while Daphne transitions from the carefreeness of adolescence into the hard world of adults.
A group of Spanish boys take advantage of a high roof to ogle a sunbathing woman, but the presence of an adjacent male nude complicates matters.
Jason has been in therapy with Yvonne for three years. After a large, traumatic event, the two seem to have hit an inflection point in their relationship.
These five award-winning coming of age short films offer a glimpse of how boys and young men tackle life's difficult desires: confronting one's demons, understanding sexual relationships, gaining the respect of one's father, or simply running away from it all. This is only the start of their complex formative years, where not every question has an answer, and not every answer makes sense. The short films are: Boys [Pojkarna] (2015); Ioana (2015); Kiem Holijanda (2017); Picnic [Piknik] (2015); Tomer & Elias [Tomer en Elias] (2016).
In this mother-daughter story, a young woman explores her own mortality through art and poetry as her terminal illness holds her back from a normal life.
Hanging out with friends, smoking a lot, spinning bottles and kissing, making mistakes, playing, refusing to accept, dreaming with open eyes - life as a teenager can be overwhelmingly beautiful and difficult at the same time. In her debut, the Ukrainian director composes a deeply emotional and multi-layered portrait of a generation whilst seamlessly flowing between the fictional and the documental.
Star quarterback Connor Tucker finds himself in unfamiliar territory as a broken leg puts him out for the season. Adjusting to life off the football field, Connor surprisingly starts falling for school outcast Jayden Sansbury in this LGBTQ story.
A 15-year-old girl in late 1960's America is inadvertently sucked into an odyssey of sex and drugs. She eventually seeks help.
A young track star is derailed from his social hopes after constant isolation and harassment from his new teammates. After enduring a devastating bus accident, he and his nemesis must learn to accept one another in order to fully recover.
Satomi is fine being alone until an AI named Shion joins her class with a song and a promise to make her happy. While Shion’s musical numbers and princess gowns don’t quite pass as human, her antics bring Satomi closer to four other classmates. Together, they make memories worth saving, but even our most precious data can be erased.
After years of living away from home and leaving a trauma in the past, Emile receives a phone call from his mother prompting him to go back home, there is a secret he shares with his father, Dele, and his mother, Amina.
A group of young adults plan a staycation for their friend who recently lost a parent. At their most vulnerable, personified fears shape-shift to pick them off one by one. Face them, but with which face?
Centers around the Walker family as they navigate personal loss and the consequences of online manipulation. Set against the backdrop of a school system heavily reliant on technology, the Walker’s and a group of courageous students challenge a corrupt administration as they fight to reclaim their community and their lives.
An Irish anti-homophobic and transphobic bullying advertisement, created as part of BeLonG To Youth Services annual Stand Up! LGBT Awareness Week.
Jeffrey Dahmer struggles with a difficult family life as a young boy. During his teenage years he slowly transforms, edging closer to the serial killer he was to become.
In 2003, Harvard undergrad and computer programmer Mark Zuckerberg begins work on a new concept that eventually turns into the global social network known as Facebook. Six years later, Mark is one of the youngest billionaires ever, but his unprecedented success leads to both personal and legal complications when he ends up on the receiving end of two lawsuits, one involving his former friend.
A shy teenager living on the Isle of Wight dreams of pop stardom. With the help of an unlikely mentor, she enters a singing competition that will test her integrity, talent, and ambition.
A socially awkward tween endures the ruthless hierarchy at a water polo camp, his anxiety spiraling into psychological turmoil over the summer.
Melody Brooks, a sixth grader with cerebral palsy, has a quick wit and a sharp mind, but because she is non-verbal and uses a wheelchair, she is not given the same opportunities as her classmates. When a young educator notices her student's untapped potential and Melody starts to participate in mainstream education, Melody shows that what she has to say is more important than how she says it.
Based on a true story. Liz Murray is a young girl who is taken care of by her loving, but drug-addicted parents. Liz becomes homeless at 15 and after a tragedy comes upon her, she begins her work to finish high school.
The story of August Pullman – a boy with facial differences – who enters fifth grade, attending a mainstream elementary school for the first time.
A hard-working lawyer, attached to his cell phone, can't find the time to communicate with his family. An estranged couple uses the internet as a means to escape from their lifeless marriage. A widowed ex-cop struggles to raise a mischievous son who cyber-bullies a classmate. An ambitious journalist sees a career-making story in a teen that performs on an adult-only site. They are strangers, neighbors and colleagues and their stories collide as ordinary people struggling to connect in today's wired world.
Seventeen-year-old Pakistani American teenager Hala struggles to balance desire with her family, cultural, and religious obligations. As she comes into her own, she grapples with a secret that threatens to unravel her family.
In the 1990s, an immigrant single mother raises her teenage son in the Canadian suburbs, determined to provide a better life for him than the one she left behind in South Korea.
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.
When a rebellious teen embarks on a solo summer journey to connect with her roots, she finds herself in a new world, geared up for the ride of her life, and discovers she had the drive in her all along.
A street smart runner develops an intense rivalry with an equally ambitious wealthy young athlete.
Based on the true story of a black girl who was born to two white Afrikaner parents in South Africa during the apartheid era.
The story of golf icon and legend, Bobby Jones, who retired from competition at the tender age of 28.
Samantha Kingston has everything. Then, everything changes. After one fateful night, she wakes up with no future at all. Trapped into reliving the same day over and over, she begins to question just how perfect her life really was.
Growing up in post-World War II era Arizona, young Sammy Fabelman aspires to become a filmmaker as he reaches adolescence, but soon discovers a shattering family secret and explores how the power of films can help him see the truth.
Follows the life of Native Canadian Saul Indian Horse as he survives residential school and life amongst the racism of the 1970s. A talented hockey player, Saul must find his own path as he battles stereotypes and alcoholism.
Jared, the son of a Baptist pastor in a small American town, is outed to his parents at age 19. Jared is faced with an ultimatum: attend a gay conversion therapy program – or be permanently exiled and shunned by his family, friends, and faith.
In New York City, a young girl is caught in the middle of her parents' bitter custody battle.
New Jersey teen Daniel LaRusso moves to Los Angeles with his mother, and soon strikes up a relationship with Ali. He quickly finds himself the target of bullying by a group of thugs, led by Ali's ex-boyfriend Johnny, who study karate at the Cobra Kai dojo under ruthless sensei John Kreese. Fortunately, Daniel befriends Mr. Miyagi, an unassuming repairman who just happens to be a martial arts master himself. Miyagi takes Daniel under his wing, training him in a more compassionate form of karate for self-defense and, later, preparing him to compete against the brutal Cobra Kai.
