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An idealist district governor, Selahattin Bey, adopts Yusuf, orphaned after his family was killed by thugs. Yusuf falls in love with Muazzez, the daughter of Selahattin. But when Hilmi Bey’s son Şakir also wants to marry Muazzez, a conflict escalates.
Zilan, a young woman, returns to her home town looking for traces of her dead brother, killed by ISIS. But her town is not what it used to be: social and political tensions have escalated into a state of war. The people have risen up to demand their political autonomy and the police and army repress them with brutal force. But the city’s resistance will go on for more than 100 days and Zilan will not remain a passive witness. Based on the diaries of those who died fighting and the testimony of survivors, who are the protagonists of the film, Çelik’s first feature explores concepts such as hope, friendship, sacrifice and loss in the struggle for freedom of a group of young people.
From a bland tract house on the outskirts of Los Angeles, Simon Geist (with occasional help from his platonic girlfriend Darla) wages war against all of modern American popular culture. Geist starts up a magazine called “The Next Big Thing”, which he uses to confront and insult upcoming actors, comics, models and rock bands. As Geist’s mysterious Underground Agenda escalates, will he become the “last big thing”, or be co-opted by the very forces he is railing against? Written by Van Film Fest
D’Artagnan, on a quest to rescue the abducted Constance, runs into the mysterious Milady de Winter again. The tension between the Catholics and the Protestants finally escalates, as the king declares war — forcing the now four musketeers into battle. But as the war goes on, they are tested physically, mentally and emotionally.
A tectonic shift deep below the Mariana Trench causes a series of ever escalating earthquakes. If a team of leading seismologists fails to stop the disaster, the events will break apart the Earth, resulting in billions of casualties. Finally, someone’s paying attention to our leading seismologists.
When a global pandemic limits the possibility of travel, a honeymooning couple gets stranded at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel where a skeleton staff of two employees tend to them. As tensions escalate amidst a forced lockdown, it becomes apparent there is more to fear at the storied hotel than just cabin fever.
Ford Brody, a Navy bomb expert, has just reunited with his family in San Francisco when he is forced to go to Japan to help his estranged father, Joe. Soon, both men are swept up in an escalating crisis when Godzilla, King of the Monsters, arises from the sea to combat malevolent adversaries that threaten the survival of humanity. The creatures leave colossal destruction in their wake, as they make their way toward their final battleground: San Francisco.
Brothers, Sean and Tommy Donnelly live and work in modern day Texas. Tommy has always been troubled and Sean has always been there to help him but when Tommy gets himself $6,000 in debt there’s not much Sean can do. The money is owed to some very dangerous people and neither Sean nor Tommy has a spare dime. Worse, at every turn, Tommy manages to find a way to exacerbate their already difficult position. The situation escalates to the point where Sean is faced with a decision: stand by his brother or give up on him once and for all.
Three people from different walks of life find themselves trapped inside a stalled elevator. What at first seems like an inconvenience rapidly escalates into a nightmare.
Set in the year 2000 (between the events of Patlabor and Patlabor 2), when the level of Labor accidents begin to escalate around Tokyo Bay, police detectives Kusumi and Hata are assigned to investigate. What they discover leads to a series of government cover-ups, conspiracy concerning a new biological weapon entitled WXIII-Wasted Thirteen and a tragic, personal connection to Hata. The only hope to stop this threat is to cooperate with the military and lead WXIII into a showdown with the Labors of Special Vehicle Division 2.
Wallace and Gromit have a brand new business – a bakery. Although business is booming, Gromit is concerned by the news that 12 local bakers have ‘disappeared’ this year – but Wallace isn’t worried. He’s too distracted and in love with local beauty and bread enthusiast, Piella Bakewell, to be of much help. Gromit must be the sleuth and solve the escalating murder mystery.
It’s been two years since Tina’s husband-to-be, Brock, lost his first wife in a tragic accident. Everyone is thrilled to see Brock so happy with Tina, including his eight-year-old daughter Harper. It seems Tina’s only obstacle to happily ever after is Joyce, Brock’s former mother-in-law, who is determined to stop the marriage and keep Harper to herself. Joyce’s attempts to disrupt the happy couple quickly escalate and it becomes clear that Joyce will do anything to keep Tina from walking down the aisle. Katie Leclerc and Catherine Dyer star.
Baby Girl, 30, a poet with a bachelor’s degree in arts, is anguished because of her relationship with Pirkka, a relatively smart, young man. Baby Girl’s parents, Eila and Rampe, do their best to become friends with Pirkka and his elegant mother. Through coincidence and error Eila occupies her summerhouse neighbors’ empty luxury villa. When Pirkka’s mother drops by, Eila lies that she and Rampe own the fancy house. The showing off and lying escalate when Eila’s mother and sister show up. The real owners of the house, an upper-class couple, Thomas and Monica, are driven away to Eila and Rampe’s modest cottage.
Following the conclusion of Split, Glass finds David Dunn pursuing Kevin Wendell Crumb’s superhuman figure of The Beast in a series of escalating encounters, while the shadowy presence of Elijah Price emerges as an orchestrator who holds secrets critical to both men.
Sophie, a quiet and shy maid working for the upper-class family Lelievre, hides her illiteracy under the cloak of a perfect household and obedience. She finds a friend in the energetic and uncompromising postmaster Jeanne, who encourages her to stand up against her bourgeois employers. Things start to escalate as the Lelievres find out that Sophie can’t read and has brought Jeanne into their house against their wish.
The clash of two worlds in the present-day Europe. As the indigenous population seeks to defend the status quo against escalating immigration, the newcomers are burdened by their own displacement. Forced to flee their homes, they are trying to adapt to the strange new environment.
In order to find each other again, Lena and Andi decide to retreat to a remote holiday cabin deep in the mountains for a long weekend. When Andi finds out one morning that Lena has suddenly disappeared without a trace, the situation escalates. He goes in search of her and penetrates deeper and deeper into a mysterious and dark world of horror…
It’s summer and very hot in Germany’s only open-air swimming pool for women. There, women bathe topless, in a bikini, bathing suit or burkini. Each follows different rules. This always leads to friction, which the overwhelmed lifeguard is not quite able to control. When a group of completely veiled women enthusiastically discovers the women’s bath for themselves, rags literally fly: Who owns the bath and who makes the rules? Who owns the female body? And when is a woman a woman at all? The lifeguard resigns, exasperated. But when a man of all people is hired as the successor as lifeguard, the situation escalates in unpredictable directions.
Andi joins her husband Tim on a tropical island to help him with the capturing of poisonous sea snakes for their venom. Her flagrant sensuality attracts the attention of hired hand Dak, and when Tim becomes bitterly obsessed with his faltering job, Andi shares an intimate afternoon with the obsessed crewman, but then refuses to continue the affair, which leads the jilted lover to begin a series of escalating violent events.
An autobiographical film taken from the experiences of writer-director Rob Moretti, CRUTCH is a coming-of-age tale about a young man’s struggle with family problems and substance abuse. Behind a facade of suburban middle class perfection, David’s home life is falling apart. As he tries to cope with the impossible situation, the troubled and impressionable teenager falls under the spell of Kenny, a georgous, thirty-something, has-been actor turned theatre coach. When Kenny’s “support” escalates into seduction, David slowly decends into an abyss of drinking and drug addition from which he must escape if he is to survive. CRUTCH is a dramatic tale of the confusion of youth and the difficulties in finding oneself.
Cold War adversaries Col. Jack Knowles and his Russian counterpart, Col. Valachev, are stationed on opposite sides of the German-Czech border. Both men are responsible for a group of troops in their remote settings, and both have been shaped by their combat experiences and a shared aversion to their superiors’ ways of doing things. After a defector is killed, things escalate into a full-fledged battle with serious geopolitical ramifications.
The Order of Rights is a pro-life film. The story centers around Emma Stein, a pregnant single girl who has been advised by her mother to have an abortion. Despite the objection of the child’s father, Ethan Carpenter, and his promise to help her, she decides to go ahead with the procedure. When Ethan and his family file a lawsuit on behalf of the child’s right to life, the drama escalates as Emma’s mother, Kerri, contacts a friend in the Associated Press. Before long, the case is mired in media frenzy. The court has to decide whether the child in Emma’s womb is a person or not, and if so, if it is endowed with the unalienable rights as enumerated in the Declaration of Independence. The title, “Order of Rights” refers to the order in which the categories of rights are deliberately listed in the document: Life, Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness.
When a quiet group of pensioners learn that their homes are to be torn down to make way for a block of flats, they decide to take action. What starts as an attempt to discourage the developers soon escalates into wholesale murder of both the developers and the construction workers.
Mia, an ex-prostitute, is trapped in a loveless marriage with the abusive Quan (Sunny Pang, who also stars in Headshot in this year’s Festival lineup), a butcher who runs a roast meat shop. When she meets sensitive funeral director Wu, their passion for one another escalates into an affair. But the path to true love is fraught with jealousy, forcing someone to make a deadly move.
Upon turning eight-teen, Salih leaves the orphanage to find his lost family and begins working in a Serbian farm. Suddenly, at the most unexpected moment he has found a home. Will he ever be able to let go of the ghosts of his past and be happy in this new life? As tension escalates disquieting secrets surface. A gripping tale of family, love and identity, My Mother’s Wound follows Salih as he searches for a trail of hope amongst war-torn lives.
When a dim-witted widower and his teenage son offer a beautiful young woman refuge on their farm, their living situation escalates from hysterical comedy to maddening horror once they discover she’s not who she says she is.
A masked maniac targets cast members at a suburban Halloween haunt attraction, turning their staged injuries into gruesome real-life horrors. As the terror escalates, the lines between performance and reality blur.
After discovering a strange statue in the Catskill Mountains, two hikers become the target of chilling paranormal phenomena. As the activity escalates, occult museum curators Greg and Dana Newkirk are called to uncover the startling truth behind the haunted artifact before it’s too late
Pat Baker is a small town sheriff. His son, Kurt, is a deranged young man with a dark secret. Sheriff Baker’s worst nightmare comes true when Kurt escapes from a psychiatric hospital where he was locked away for the brutal murder of his mother thirteen years earlier. Gary, a hospital security guard, sets out into the woods to stop him, but soon finds himself relentlessly hunted by the deranged psychopath intent on killing him and anyone who crosses his path. Sheriff Baker launches an intense search to find his son, only to discover that his daughter, Sara, and her friends are camping in the same woods where Kurt has escaped. Kurt’s psychosis escalates, as does his vengeful killing spree, culminating in a terrifying, climactic confrontation with Kurt, the sheriff and his family.
The three Hammett brothers, Cain, Harry and Dale are caught in a conflict that escalates rapidly and the old farmers facing against new farmers who have settled in the green grasslands.
When Mary and her teenage son, Fergal, move to yet another new home, it soon becomes clear they live their lives on the run, hiding from someone or something, terrified of being found. Their hunter, Cathal, soon picks up the trail. Intent on tracking Mary and Fergal, he will go to any lengths to succeed in his quest, often using dark arts to aid him. Mary’s only defence is to use an ancient form of her own magic to protect her only son. When local residents begin to be brutally murdered by an unknown life force, the sense of fear escalates. Is Cathal the beast responsible for the killing? Or is it the beast that he is trying to destroy?
Matt and Karen have inconsiderate neighbours whose lawn sprinkler drowns their flowers. A feud errupts and a series of tit-for-tat actions develop and escalate.
At a Shanghai apartment, Mr Hou, a Nationalist official, gets ready to move to Taiwan upon the imminent defeat of the KMT during the Civil War. Mrs Hou gives an ultimatum to the rest of the tenants to move out on behalf of her husband, who is the “owner” of the flat and who is now planning to sell it. From the conversations with the rest, we find out that Hou has been a Hanjian during the Sino-Japanese War and that he has since taken over the apartment by force from the old landlord, Mr Kong. The tenants, including Mr Kong, Mrs Xiao, Little Broadcast (alias Mr Xiao, played by Zhao Dan) and a schoolteacher, Mr Hua, and his wife, initially plan to band together, but circumstances force them to find other ways out. Mr Hua tries to find a place to stay at the KMT-sponsored school he is teaching in. Little Broadcast and Mrs Xiao invest in black market gold. As the situation escalates, Mr Hua gets arrested by KMT agents and his young daughter falls desperately ill.
London police officer DC Hana Li is escorting Dr Matthew Nolan back to Beijing where he has been accused of a crime. However, on board flight 357, she finds herself embroiled in an escalating conspiracy and a growing number of murders.
A former cop returns to challenge a plot to escalate gang violence in the streets of Los Angeles.
With its armies sweeping across the continent, the Empire seems unstoppable. After securing victory over the remnants of the Republic’s army, the Empire’s ultimate victory is finally within reach. However, dark clouds are gathering in the East. The communist-led Russy Federation is mustering troops on its western border, preparing to enter the war. Supported by a detachment of Allied volunteer magicians—among whom is Mary Sioux, the daughter of a soldier killed by Tanya—the Federation is determined to spread the communist creed and bring the Empire to its knees.
Meanwhile, Tanya and her battalion return to the imperial capital from the southern front. Upon their arrival, they are tasked with investigating troop movements on the border with the Federation. Any escalation of violence at this point may lead to new conflicts, plunging the world into a global war.
Will the Empire eventually emerge victorious from its struggle, or will it crumble in the face radically different ideologies?
Ricky is just out of a young offenders institute, heading home to Hackney and determined to go straight. Instead, he heads straight for trouble when he becomes involved in a street confrontation, siding with his best friend Wisdom against a local rude boy. The trouble escalates into a series of tit-for-tat incidents that threaten to spiral out of control. Ricky’s 12-year-old brother Curtis, hero-worships Ricky, though he appears smart enough to know he doesn’t want to follow his example. Yet, despite the stern warnings from his mother and support from her friends in the community, might Ricky’s bad boy allure be too attractive for Curtis to resist?
