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- Gangi, Soyeong, and Aram are best friends who go to the same high school. Gangi appears relatively normal, compared to Soyeong who dreams of becoming a model, or Aram who is unique in her own special way. One day, they decide to run away from home. However, life does not go easy on them. What is more serious are the cracks in their relationship. After their failed attempt to run away, they return home and go back to school only to face more challenges. What had happened to Soyeong and Gangi later prompts Soyeong to intentionally leave Gangi out, and the bullying gets worse as time goes by. Aram also has a hard time along the way. Based on Lim Solah's full-length novel of the same title, Snowball is the directorial debut of Lee Woo-jung who has been constantly making interesting short films. It elaborately captures the emotional sensitivity and turbulence of adolescence that cannot be easily defined.
- For young Raf, who lives in a shabby suburb of London with his unemployed and permanently drunk father Mario, motorbike riding is everything. Raf uses every free minute he gets to tinker with his bike - a prototype he wants to win the world championship with one day! And Raf is quite convinced that he will. His best friend Ruben is crazy about bikes too, but he lacks Raf's obsession with them - possibly because fate seems to have been kinder to Ruben. He comes from a reasonably well-to-do background, and also has the prettiest girl in the gang as his girlfriend - Savannah, with whom Raf is secretly in love. While Mario does his best to get his son Raf to forget about bike riding and technical school so he can earn enough money for both of them with a full-time job, and even resorts to violence to get his own way, Ruben's father Tommy employs subtler means to turn his son into a respectable adult: he gives Ruben a smart sports car as a present. The attraction of speed on two wheels beats four, however. That same night Raf and Ruben race their bikes, and the risky venture is interrupted by the police. Raf is arrested, but Ruben bails him out - a last service as a friend, because it is now clear that the two young men are drifting apart. When Ruben accepts an office job, thereby betraying their joint dreams in Raf's eyes, the split is final. Mario has serious gambling debts, and one day he is brutally beaten up by a petty criminal named Morris. Raf sincerely loves his father, despite their conflicts, and wants to help him repay what he owes. Morris passes him on to the unscrupulous Silverstone, who runs the illegal racing scene, and he makes a deal with Raf: if he comes second in a forthcoming race then Silverstone's betting income will be secured and the father's debts will be forgotten about. Raf's bike is still unserviceable, and so he "borrows" Ruben's bike for the race without telling him. The racecourse is highly dangerous and a mass collision occurs. Raf is a really talented rider, however, and wins the race - whereupon Silverstone loses a great deal of money. And Silverstone is a powerful man! He not only has Raf beaten up but also forces him to steal cars for him. Raf has now ended up where he never wanted to be - right at the very bottom. Lukas, a formerly successful racer who now works as a talent scout for the renowned AXO team, was among the spectators at the illegal race. He doesn't know the name of the winner, however, only his bike. This leads Lukas to Ruben who, instead of making any effort to clear up the misunderstanding, grabs the unique opportunity. Without hesitation he accepts Lukas's offer to take part in the Axo training. Ruben performs excellently on the course and is selected for the next professional race. Yet Lukas still isn't all that satisfied with his choice. Ruben lacks the special combination that turns excellent riders into true champions: instinct, and the indomitable will to win at all costs. Meanwhile the attractive Savannah devotes her attention entirely to Ruben, expecting him to give her the sense of security her life has lacked until now. But then she finds out about the way he tricked Raf - and senses yet again just how attracted she is by Raf's wildness and temperament. She knows that Raf is ready to put his life at risk to beat Ruben, and that she cannot stop him: the two former friends have now become implacable rivals! Raf manages to win over the bike freak Stick and his gang. They build the prototype bike together and win "sponsors" in the neighborhood - and even Mario helps wherever he can. He's proud of his son, who now only has one objective: to enter the qualifiers for the professional race and to win them. This is not lost on Savannah, who is now trying to see as much of Raf as she can, and she starts getting very worried about him. She implores Ruben not to participate in the race - after all, he only got his place in it by means of a trick. But Ruben has scented blood now too, and all that concerns him now is: which of them is the better rider? Everything goes really well for Raf: despite all kinds of difficulties. he makes it through the time qualifiers. At this point Lukas realizes that Ruben tricked him. He goes to see Raf in the pits and is delighted by his powerful personality. Lukas offers Raf a job as a mechanic, but he proudly refuses, saying he is a rider and he intends to win! Silverstone is furious, however: he considers Raf as one of his own, and will not tolerate any clever ideas: the night before the race he has Raf's bike destroyed. The dream is over before it even began! Raf hands back his starter number in resignation. Savannah's distant attitude is not the only thing making it quite clear to Ruben that he behaved wrongly. But when he offers Raf his own starter number, Raf coolly rejects it, saying the race is between the two of them - and only one of them will win. Utterly determined, Raf tells Lukas to give him a bike, and starts the race as an Axo guest rider. Breathlessly, Lukas, Savannah and the others look on as the two former friends battle it out on the track. Leaving the competition far behind, they continue racing incredibly fiercely. But Raf's willpower is stronger. He wins just before the finishing line, and leaves his first professional race as the victor. Raf is triumphant # now he has the whole world at his feet!
- While documenting a controversial tragedy that shook her community, a filmmaker must put her morals to the test when a perverse secret in her own life is revealed.
- The former NBA star and Senator recounts his life from Mississippi childhood to Princeton basketball fame, the NBA, 18 years in the Senate focused on rights, education and growth, and his presidential bid.
- Lola, a hot-blooded Spaniard, is deserted by her husband for a cool and calculating Aussie blonde. Lola is pregnant again but she and their daughter Lucia are left to starve while Ricardo spends all their savings on a sleek new set of wheels for his mistress. When he dies unexpectedly the family fortune, one flash car, remains with the mistress. Despite all his betrayals, Lucia sides with her father. Desperate and destitute in a country she doesn't like or understand, Lola's quest for revenge begins. Caught in the tempests of begrudging love, revenge, sibling rivalry, jealousy and passion, fourteen year old Lucia must find the strength to survive on her own terms. Aided to break free of her mother by her eccentric Aunt Manolo she struggles to find her own identity and her own quest for justice puts her on a collision course with her mother.
- Aspiring actor Shota visits a nursing home near his hometown to teach acting classes. There he meets Takara, a young caregiver who has been working at the nursing home since leaving high school. One day, when Shota visits Takara at her house to ask her to come with him to a town festival, they become embroiled in an incident and end up fleeing the town together. Shota says, "God puts us through trials but always gives us a way out." Shota and Takara have no choice except to run in search of a possible exit, but gradually they come to realize that they can save each other. Shota's acting proves its worth.
- Three young Cambodian men navigate Phnom Penh's rapid changes through intertwined stories of struggling with debt, lack of transport, and finding purpose in the modern city
- In the early 1940s, strange symptoms appear in the people of Minamata. People are having convulsions all over their bodies and tongues are eventually made mute. The government treated those whose physical functions had collapsed as fake patients and controlled the situation in a political context. Minamata Mandala opens by rebelling against the political solution. There is a man in his nineties who has battled in court for more than twenty years, a medical school professor striving to identify the cause of the disease, and a fisherman providing disease samples for medical examinations. Kazuo Hara does not portray them as a tenacious fighter against political power, a dedicated medical scientist, and a suffering victim. The running-time of 372 minutes embraces their long history of suffering in solidarity as well as embodies the individual lives with distinct personalities.
- A former Ninja must outplay his former Mastress and an evil lord to free his family from certain death.
- Atsuhisa is an ordinary man living with his wife Natsumi and a five-year-old daughter Suzu. Atsuhisa and Natsumi have been friends with Takeda since high school. Once dreamed of becoming singers, Takeda and Atsuhisa are now taking Chinese and English lessons, hoping to become businessmen one day. One day, Astuhisa discovers that Natsumi is having an affair, and Natsumi asks Atsuhisa for a divorce. All the Things We Never Said is the first of the six low-budget films from the Hong Kong International Film Festival's Back to Basics (B2B) project. Director Ishii Yuya paints a portrait of disjointed and helpless yet unhateable youth who have bottled-up resentment that needs to be released. Director Park Jong-beom makes an appearance as Atsuhisa's older brother.
- Wai Bhone, a young film director, has to overcome the tough realities in order to direct his debut film. The hard worked scenario is criticised and undermined by the unpretentious censorship of the authorities. The film producers constantly pressure for lack of money, and even casting actors to the unfamous director is not an easy task. With the help of friends and relatives, the hardly prepared film production begins at last. However, an accident occurs in which an expensive camera is dropped. To fix the broken camera and to escape the difficult life, he even thinks of robbing the bank and he starts to plan. The debut film of Maung Sun satirizes the life of an artist based on events in Myanmar's modern history.
- Twelve-year-old Young-ha has been living with her divorced mother, but goes to live with her father so her mom can make a new start. However, when her father suddenly disappears, Young-ha has to return to her mom. Now 15, Young-ha has a new father from her mom's second marriage. Mom works hard to support the family and keep up appearances. Meanwhile, Mi-jin, Young-ha's best friend and cousin, is sent away to an uncle after losing all her family. Young-ha has nothing to do but pity her. At 19, after finishing the college entrance exam, Young-ha spends many hours with her new dad since mom is so busy. One day, while alone with her step-dad an unexpected event occurs. She tells her mom about it. Sub-zero Wind is a film about a girl's growth. The series of trials Young-ha experiences make her realize she is alone in confronting the world. Meanwhile, from the mother's perspective, her struggle to make a new family is falling apart. For the characters in this film, life's failures throw them into a world of loneliness.
- The ultimate H.P. Lovecraft horror comedy!
- The film chronicles the melancholy journey of two celebrity look-alikes chasing their dream of la dolce vita in Italy. Romanian Marilyn Monroe impersonator Ileana and Bulgarian Elvis double Nicolaj win a look-alike contest in Bucharest in which the prize is a summer engagement in a nightclub on Italy's Adriatic coast. The two strangers take off together, communicating in the broken Italian they picked up from TV. When a bureaucratic hitch with Ileana's passport cuts them off at the airport, they cross the border illegally by car, travelling through a part of Yugoslavia devastated by war. They accept hospitality at a military outpost, but the suicide of a colonel there casts suspicion on Ileana. Beaten and afraid, they continue their odyssey across the harsh sunless no-man's-land gradually scarring them both and clouding their hopes. They finally reach Italy, but all is not as promised.
- Director Mina Keshavarz recently discovered a family secret about her grandmother's death. Her grandmother, forced to marry at a young age, gave birth to seven children and took her own life at the age of 35 during her eighth pregnancy. Domestic violence against women is an impractical concept under Iranian law that regards daughters and wives as the property of patriarchs. Mina sees her grandmother's suicide as "revenge for all injustice" and goes out onto the streets with five female lawyers who have raised their voices on gender equality and criminalization of domestic violence. The Art of Living in Danger retraces the past and present status of Iranian women with the director's intimate voice-over.
- Soviet Kazakhstan in 1979. Sher becomes an intern in a team led by the competent Soviet investigator Snegirev. The team is chasing a cannibalistic serial killer. The authorities order the criminal to be treated in a mental hospital due to concerns that this incident might negatively affect the Moscow Olympic Games if it receives international attention. Pak Ruslan, whose 2012 debut feature Hanaan received favorable reviews from film festivals in Busan, Locarno, and Toronto, presents a strong portrayal of bizarre murders and the destruction of a corrupt state system in his second feature Three, a joint project between Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and South Korea.
- Thirteen-year-old Guo, who lives with a selfish cousin, an always-tired aunt and her family, wants to live with her newly remarried mom in Shanghai. When a friend drowns while playing with Guo by the riverside, Guo flees the scene in shock. Yu, who likes Guo, knows that she was there on that day, but Yu's infatuation only makes Guo uncomfortable. Summer Blur is a coming-of-age story about a girl on the threshold of puberty. Neglected by an irresponsible mother and living with an unwelcoming aunt, Guo enters the world of adults through a series of events that a thirteen-year-old cannot possibly handle. Director Han Shuai's directing captures the strongminded Guo who defies age, class, and gender discrimination in a calm and restrained manner.
- Prague Stories is a film about relationships and love seen from four different perspectives. The punctuation of four full stops in the film's title represents the film's four directors: Vladimir Michalek, Michaela Pavlatova, Martin SulIk, and Artemio Benki. Each of them has shot a 20-minute episode set in contemporary Prague. Fatal crosses in love affairs, tragi-comic barriers in communication and the uneasy overcoming of distance and alienation are the topics of the individual episodes.
- School Town King opens with a boy rapping. The 18-year-old Book and 13-year-old Non, living in the slums of Thailand, already know a "life that started from zero". These "slum kids rappers," who dream of becoming the best rappers in Thailand and buying a house for their mother, are struggling to find a way to quit school. They hate studying but what they hate the most is to recite the "12 commandments to be good children" written by the military. Sometimes in quick and sensuous editing, or with a long tracking shot, Dir. Laisuwanchai builds the rhythm of the film, as the boys rap against poverty, inequality, and repressive educational systems. It is a cheerful and harmonious ensemble of kids rappers and a young director.
- Seven-year-old Chandra and his elderly grandfather have to travel on foot through earthquake-hit Kathmandu in order to get to hospital, where Chandra's mother has just given birth. Chandra is oblivious to the scenes of misery on the streets, and is fascinated by the many curious and beautiful sights, and excited about meeting his new sibling. Grandfather, who knows the sheer scope of destruction, attempts to protect Chandra from the grim reality of it all, while gradually coming to terms with the fact that the city is no longer the same, and that the hospital may not even stand.
- An innocent girl in a village is bullied by her family and villagers for her poor behavior, and she is called Chnchik that means stupid instead of her real name. Her mistakes become a neighbor's laughter, and her parents, who are not happy with this situation, are ashamed of her as well. However, she does not lose her dignity, and works alone to herd goats in the mountains far from the village. One day, she encounters an unfamiliar soldier who was isolated while he is training. They feel small compassion with each other and fall in love. However, a short, dreamlike moment of love on a midsummer day brings a permanent change to her life.
- It all starts on Mr. Chen's 60th birthday. To a semi-retired dentist, still physically fit and full of charisma, reaching 60 is not the best of news. His wife constantly says he is now an old man; his daughter's boyfriend keeps asking him to insure himself; his son and daughter quarrel over the mortgage. Mr. Chen just wants to get away. Before long, his dream comes true when he falls in love with a kindergarten director. But even before a week passes, his wife finds out and claims to want a divorce. He accepts, perplexing the whole family.
- After taming a former wasteland through hard work and sweat and creating a community, the settlers living there are given a place of worship?a place for honoring the gods. Now that the clergy owns the land, the settlers are reduced to being tenant farmers and must make way for redevelopment after the land is sold off. A dispute over god's land begins. In God' Land is not simply about the fight between the priests and the farmers. Using animation it recounts the history of the land and satirizes the exploitation perpetuated by religion and class distinction. And it looks at the land within the larger issue of development, forcing us to recognize the totalitarian attitude of the ideals of development, ostensibly to bring economic prosperity but rarely a benefit to real users. But the film's most interesting element is the people living on this god's land. Instead of fighting the temple or government, they accept this dire reality and try to find comfort in god's will, perhaps because for them it is still the land of god.
- Middle-aged worker Jaebok recently lost a lawsuit asking for the invalidation of his recent dismissal. Sitting in a tent in the cold weather, he and his colleagues lose their will to fight further and feel pity for not being able to relish the time off work. Jaebok returns home but what awaits him are his daughters neglecting him and the feeling of worthlessness. His misery is aggravated because he cannot provide financial support for his oldest daughter's college tuition, and a longpadded coat that his little one has always wanted. The issues that director Lee has drawn attention to in her short films are now coalesced, developed and displayed in A Leave, her feature film debut.
- At night, in his studio perched high above the lights of New York, Bill Diamond, a famous photographer, invents stories and fairy tales, to chase away the evil spirits his memories keep bringing back. One of these stories is about Mark, a gifted photographer who lives alone, embittered and withdrawn from the world, in a church that once was his studio on the lake of Geneva. Mark has lost everything: his fame, his wife, his friends, and above all, his self-esteem. His dear friend Luc, the village policeman, is the only companion he has left. Into this bleak world, Bill sends Jessi, a beautiful model he once worked with. Jessi tells Mark that Bill is dead, and that he is now to continue the work the elder photographer had begun. Mark reacts to this offer with cynicism, but because he needs money, he accepts. The relationship between Mark and Jessi is difficult and tense. Yet in the course of their work Mark becomes more and more fascinated by this strange, gentle woman. Could Jessi really be the angel Bill Diamond says she is?
- Sasha is stalking a man. They seem to have a common past, which Sasha can't let go. This leads her into dark territory. For he is an uncompromising photographer, who is obsessively trying to get an exhibition in a gallery. His theme is fear - and to capture this in its perfection, he puts women into shock situations in his photo shoots. In the process, reality and production become blurred, and the models pay the price. One day he turns up at Sasha's door - A dark cocktail of passion and obsession, portraying the borderline facets of photography.
- In 1949, the Nationalist government safely arrived in Taiwan, but the war between the Nationalists and the Communists continued to ravage the island of Kinmen. Situated between the two coasts, Kinmea was bombed by the Communist Chinese government on every odd-numbered day for over 20 years following the Battle of August 23. This island with an area of 140km^2 endured more than 970,000 bombs. Working with donations from over 300 island residents, local filmmaker Dong Cheng-Liang reveals this hidden history from the residents.
- One day, while wondering what kind of film he should be making, Go Riju befriends the driver of a newspaper-delivery truck. The man is rather recalcitrant, a bit of a loner, but Riju pressures him into agreeing to become the subject of a documentary. Sadly, nothing very illuminating comes of their encounters, and the man resists Riju's attempts to get him to read books and discuss them. Eventually he tells Riju to get lost, and Riju turns in despair to the man's next-door neighbour, a student who is apparently having trouble with his studies - You can't tell whether it's by accident or design while you're watching it (things become clearer once it's over), but Blind Alley adds up to a remarkably clear account of student-worker relationships in the 1980s. By making his own uncertainties the starting point for his film, and by measuring them against a stranger to whom they mean little or nothing, Riju in effect dramatises the impotence of many post-political intellectuals as the old Marxist dreams of revolution died their natural death. This is what it's like to grope for something to believe in at 24 frames-per-second.
- The group gets together on Christmas Eve so that Opie can go over his new pyramid scheme. When someone drops a bloody tampon on the new fallen Christmas snow Opie is possessed by the ghost of Aunt Flo.
- You will listen to the voice... You will obey the voice... You will never suppress the voice again.
- While Kazuo Tanaka eagerly practices his greetings for the big wedding the next day, his first as a matchmaker, his second daughter Hitomi prepares for her travels with her secret lover. The eldest daughter Reiko, nine months pregnant, has left her cheating husband to enter a frenzied Tanaka household. On the wedding day, Kazuo learns his father has passed away. Afraid of ruining the wedding, he asks Reiko and Hitomi to deal with the crisis. Rushing home after the ceremony, Kazuo and Kanako are faced with various problems.