A chain of people connected by desire. They are all looking for the one – talking about sex and chasing love. They know what they want, but will they ever get it?
Social & External
The people behind it
The year is 1950 and an English couple, Louise and Michael, have arrived in French-occupied Indochina to cover a story on a French-owned rubber plantation. They are to be the guests of the enigmatic plantation overseer, Daniel, and his beautiful yet difficult daughter Viola, at their elegant, decaying villa amid a tropical jungle. Michael and Louise hope that some time spent working in an exotic location will help reignite the passion in their floundering marriage. Instead they become unwittingly involved in the personal, sexual and political tensions of their hosts. Daniel is desperate to hold onto a way of life no longer possible in a country struggling for independence, bringing him into conflict with not only his daughter but also with his adopted country.
Traveling through an unnamed European country on the brink of war, sickly, intellectual Ester, her sister Anna and Anna's young son, Johan, check into a near-empty hotel. A basic inability to communicate among the three seems only to worsen during their stay. Anna provokes her sister by enjoying a dalliance with a local man, while the boy, left to himself, has a series of enigmatic encounters that heighten the growing air of isolation.
Dede is a sole parent trying to bring up her son Fred. When it is discovered that Fred is a genius, she is determined to ensure that Fred has all the opportunities that he needs, and that he is not taken advantage of by people who forget that his extremely powerful intellect is harboured in the body and emotions of a child.
Four female cons who have formed a band in prison get a chance to play at a police ball outside the walls. They take the chance to escape. Being on the run from the law they even make it to sell their music and become famous outlaws.
Talented 20-year-old Lolita dreams of a singing career. But her self-esteem is low due to her weight problem and her narcissistic father, Étienne, a literary star with scant interest in his daughter's life. Lolita finds little comfort in the attentions of her vocal coach, suspecting the woman is using her to meet her influential father. Étienne's second wife proves to be Lolita's only trustworthy ally in her private battle to find a sense of worth.
During the evacuation of British troops from Dunkirk in 1940, a young woman takes her motorboat to join the flotilla to rescue soldiers and also to search for her husband, a British soldier who was fighting in France and who may be among the troops waiting to be rescued.
Mario and Kike hook up on a dating app. What initially was never meant to be more than a sex date will turn into something else, in spite of their different ways of viewing their bisexuality and how they both cope with it in their respective social circles.
When Sam, a woman mired in regret, goes to visit her aged parents, the disappearance of her mother's pet bird threatens to unravel her tenuous hold on life.
11-year-old Ena meets a young fisherman in a port. He gives her an eel and they arrange to meet the following Sunday on the other side of the lake. She has to be there.
Fifteen-year-old Sarah has returned to Colmar, where she has taken up high-performance figure skating and competition. The rivalry between the girls and the trainer's harsh words put her body to the test on the ice, while her adolescent desires distract her from her athletic ambitions.
"White Water" is a short drama about lumberjack country. Nell Shipman plays a girl in love with nature and animals. One day she meets a crippled boy, who sings for pocket change. When she finds out that the boy is badly malnourished, Nell Shipman takes him under her wing and finds work for his elder brother. Then one day disaster strikes when the boy, who can't swim, falls into the river and is carried downstream. Nell Shipman jumps in a canoe and paddles frantically to reach the boy before the current takes him to the rapids, where mortal danger awaits.
An African mother will do just about anything to protect her child. Bilaly is a simple peasant who is blind. He wants to “know” a woman before he dies, but try as his mother might, she cannot find someone to oblige. She finally gets an idea – an idea that completely stuns the village.
Cultural critic David Kepesh finds his life -- which he indicates is a state of "emancipated manhood" -- thrown into tragic disarray by Consuela Castillo, a well-mannered student who awakens a sense of sexual possessiveness in her teacher.
Emily Eximo finds herself sat in a strange room, with a strange man, who's sitting in a strange chair. Denton Elicient wants her to settle a debt she didn't even know she had.
Goh Jun-chul grew up with second-handed things from a young age. As an adult, he makes his living selling used cars. Having never had anything new, he is proud of his innocent girlfriend. But he starts to understand there are more important things in life than whether things are new or used. This realization helps Jun-chul to regain both love and hope.
He is conductor on the railcar to Vänersborg. She is a conductor on the Herrljunga train. For two minutes once a week, their trains stop at the same platform.
To ease her homesickness Miriam recreates an aspect of home in her suburban British garden. Cultural memory exerts a healing power, combatting cultural appropriation, hostility towards migrants and the rift between Miriam and her Nigerian-British children.
A woman attends a job interview at a mysterious company that may not be what it seems.
During the end of the world, two best friends walk around their city, talking about their sex lives, and one of them reveals they are still a virgin.
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.
A psychotherapist helps a law student cope with schizophrenia in one of five interconnected tales dealing with mental illness.
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.
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.
Feeling awkward and isolated, an imaginative and strong-willed teenage girl runs away from home with an older punk rock drifter.
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.
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.
Years after her son's suicide, a woman longs to confront both the past and a friend of his who took his business idea.
The story of a young writer's transformation when her past invades her present.
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.
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.
Fourteen-year-old Mo is a lonely, sensitive boy whose hunger for the rant and banter of buddies makes him prone to tread dangerous territories. He idolizes his handsome older brother, Rashid, a charismatic, well-respected member of a local gang, whose drug dealing enables “Rash” to provide for his family. Aching to be seen as a tough guy himself, Mo takes a job that unlocks a fateful turn of events and forces the brothers to confront their inner demons. It turns out that hate is easy. It is love and understanding that take real courage.
A troubled young woman becomes obsessed with her mysterious new neighbor, who bears a striking resemblance to the girl's dead mother.
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.
Diana Guzman, a troubled Brooklyn teenager, decides to channel her aggression by training to become a boxer, all while keeping it a secret from her father.
In New York City, the lives of a lawyer, an actuary, a house-cleaner, a professor, and the people around them intersect as they ponder order and happiness in the face of life's cold unpredictability.
A disconnected teenage girl enters a relationship with a man twice her age. She sees him as the solution to all her problems, but his intentions are not what they seem.
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.
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.
