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Lush scenery and gorgeous photography highlight this bio of Princess Ka’iulani (Q’Orianka Kilcher), a 19th-century Hawaiian princess raised in England but determined to maintain her people’s independence from aggressive American businessmen. After being sent to England as a child by her Scottish father, Ka’iulani returns to Hawaii and becomes a political activist who fights to retain her throne, even though she must leave her English paramour.
A teacher discovers in a five year-old child a prodigious gift for poetry. Amazed and inspired by this young boy, she decides to protect his talent in spite of everyone.
Children’s author Dorothy Gale makes a decent living continuing her grandfather’s series of Oz books. When a new agent enters the scene, Dorothy moves to New York city. In the midst of a major business deal for her books, Dorothy discovers that her books are not based on her imagination, but on repressed memories. While Dorothy struggles with the revelation, she is forced to confront The Wicked Witch of the West, who has descended upon the Big Apple, determined to settle an old score.
Hipsters beware: there is no irony in Hardwick’s affinity for Captain Picard, Comic-Con and the Atari 2600. Filmed at Skirball Center for Performing Arts in New York City, “Chris Hardwick: Mandroid” features candid comedy tales that cover virginity, chess club, shark vaginas, awkward childhood, awkward adulthood (which in this case is an extension of awkward childhood) and a myriad of other topics which may or may not include Quidditch. From unearthing his old MySpace page to the futility of attempting to delete his Facebook account, Hardwick displays his comical approach to all things trivial in the digital era, all while #hashtagging completely out of context.
Four horror stories focusing on a group of neglected children and their unfortunate guardians come to life in this terrifying anthology from Wild Dogs Productions.
Unlike the former Philippine First Lady, Imelda is indifferent towards shoes. To her, they are fraught with the bittersweet nostalgia of childhood, one that was marred by a difficult relationship with her shoe-maker father, Romeo. Growing up, all of hers were handmade by him. Now a mature woman, she takes a pivotal call from the morgue, spurring her search for the perfect pair of shoes for her dead father. The deeper she searches for the perfect shoes, the more she finds herself.
Sara was placed in care aged 11. Now 28 she hears her mother has died. She goes to the funeral and realises her brother and father don’t recognise her so keeps quiet about her identity. When watching her father’s house, she finds out she has two younger sisters, and realises that what’s going on connects to her childhood…
Strathewen: a lush green paradise where families built their homes to raise their children, close to nature. But at 3am one summer morning residents are woken by the trees thrashing in the hot northerly wind. “It felt like we were in a tinderbox”. The lucky ones drive out before the firestorm spreads across the darkened countryside and the trucks start to explode.
Three childhood friends. Three sworn brothers. One was initiated into the sacrament and grew up to be a great shaman. The other two followed the path of war and the nation recognised them as leaders. But only one of them was to become the ruler of the entire steppe. He was chosen by the Eternal Blue Sky and the Sky itself put him on a trial. Love for a woman will make him a warrior. Allegiance to the law will lead him to fratricide. Striving for peace will force him to start war. The council of nine tribes, speaking nine tongues, proclaimed him the sovereign and gave him the name of an ancient deity – Genghis Kahn.
Fresh off the success of her first horror novel, Jessie is revered by the literaly world as the next Stephen King. While her editor anxiously awaits her next novel, she is suffering from writer’s block. Out of fear of becoming a one-hit novelist, Jessie ventures to her deceased aunt’s cabin in the woods to find inspiration for her new book. Having not visited in many years, Jessie has no memory of her childhood summers at the cabin or her time spent in the surrounding woods. But when darkness falls on Jessie’s first night alone in the cabin, her memories begin to awaken. A dark presence resides here; one that seems to be watching Jessie every move and one that she has always been afraid of. A series of erotic, bizarre and terrifying events that force Jessie to question her own reality.
The film details the personal experiences of five young Western men who were identified in childhood as being tulkus, or reincarnated Tibetan Buddhist masters.
Shin Dong-Huyk was born on November 19, 1983 as a political prisoner in a North Korean re-education camp. He was a child of two prisoners who had been married by order of the wardens. He spent his entire childhood and youth in Camp 14, in fact a death camp. He was forced to labor since he was six years old and suffered from hunger, beatings and torture, always at the mercy of the wardens. He knew nothing about the world outside the barbed-wire fences. At the age of 23, with the help of an older prisoner, he managed to escape. For months he traveled through North Korea and China and finally to South Korea, where he encountered a world completely strange to him.
In this film, childhood friends come face to face with the demons of rock and roll (lust, drugs, and passion) on a cross-country road trip that compels them to face their past, present, and future. Rocker Spyder, whose debut album was a huge hit saw his follow-on album bomb, causing him to retreat to his small hometown and give up. Seven years later, 27-year-old Spyder reconnects with his long-lost best friend and writer of his debut album Eric, son of a late great punk rock guitar legend, who has long settled into the sedate life of a suburban middle school music teacher. The reunion forces the two to recall their youthful ambitions and re-examine the choices they’ve made.
Florida Justice Transitions is home to 120 convicted sex offenders. Like in many other U.S. states, sex offenders are not allowed to live within 1000 feet of places frequented by children. Because of this, many sex offenders live under bridges or in woods – or in the trailer park Florida Justice Transitions – known as Pervert Park. The crimes committed by the residents range from simple misdemeanors to horrendous acts unbearable to contemplate.
Hubert, a brash 17-year-old, is confused and torn by a love-hate relationship with his mother that consumes him more and more each day. After distressing ordeals and tragic episodes, Hubert will find his mother on the banks of Saint Lawrence river, where he grew up, and where a murder will be committed: the murder of childhood.
Two childhood girlfriends named Andy and Liv reunite to scatter Andy’s father’s ashes from LA to Austin where Liv will audition for the role of a vixen spy in a noir film. Between performing mini-funerals in surreal Southwestern landscapes, the girls practice being bad!
After being abducted as children, and suffering years of abuse, a teenage boy and girl find themselves living on the street.
While researching an urban legend on feral children, three friends find themselves trapped in an abandoned high school, where they are confronted with an evil more sinister than the legend itself.
Heddy Honigmann returns to her birthplace of Lima, Peru to reacquaint herself with a place and people dear to her heart. It is about a forgotten city, a forgotten history and a forgotten people. With irony as their loved weapon for survival, they have to forget as well, in order not to give way to cynicism, hatred and grief. It is about remembering the old days when life – despite class differences, corruption and violence – was still good: waiters, bartenders and shopkeepers who are fighting a losing battle and have lost everything. It is also about the children who manage to survive by mastering the art of street life and who reveal the country in it’s true colours. Just like the dogs they share the streets with, they have no good memories to forget.
Comedian Alec Mapa’s on how his life has changed since he adopted a child.
One day a puppy comes to the house of Akari, who has just turned twelve, and was trying hard to act strong after her mother suddenly fell ill. She immediately falls in love with the puppy and names it “Socks” after the paws which looked like they had white socks on. Akari was together with Socks day and night. However, as Akari grows up, her feelings and interest moves away from Socks. Year by year, their distance grows, which also leads to her physical distance as she moves to a far off city, and must leave Socks behind to a childhood friend.One day Akari remembers the 10 promises that she had made with Socks and her deceased mother…
I AM BAD is the voyeuristic story of a serial killer in love. Shot entirely from his point-of-view, we see what he sees, and travel through his life from his brutal childhood to the power he reclaims as an adult when he begins to feel the thrill of killing. Then he meets Anne. She’s training to be a psychiatrist. Now his life alternates between the warmth and love he feels with Anne, and the horrific bloodshed he creates in her absence.
Passed the Door of Darkness: Two young children dead, floating face down in their family’s bathtub. Their mother, shot in the back of the head, lies next to the tub in a pool of her own blood. On the floor slumped against a blood covered wall is her husband, dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. For rookie Homicide Detective Chris Malloy this grisly scene is more than he expected to see in his first week of working the graveyard shift. For his partner, grizzled yet poetic Detective Murphy MacCasey, this is but one tragedy among countless in his fifteen years in homicide. They haven’t seen anything yet.
Two childhood friends from South Boston turn to crime as a way to get by, ultimately causing a strain in their personal lives and their friendship.
When Pete and Ellie decide to start a family, they stumble into the world of foster care adoption. They hope to take in one small child but when they meet three siblings, including a rebellious 15 year old girl, they find themselves speeding from zero to three kids overnight.
Alex is a man with everything – the well-paid executive job, the impressive house in the country and the beautiful wife and child. When he inexplicably decides to leave work early one Friday nothing will ever be the same again. Within hours of his return a cataclysmic storm threatens to destroy everything around them.
Former teen idol Nam Hyeon-soo is now in his thirties and working as a radio DJ. One day a young woman named Jeong-nam shows up and claims to be his own daughter. She also has a son whom she claims to be Hyeon-soo’s grandson. Their relation is proven via DNA tests by Hyeon-soo’s brother. This leads to Hyeon-soo attempting to avoid a scandal concerning him having children “unknown” to the media.
Doodslag (Dutch for “Manslaughter”) is the story of Max, a paramedic who is repeatedly hindered in performing his duties by loutish behaviour. As his ambulance hurries towards a complicated childbirth, some youths prevent Max from reaching the distressed woman in labour. Spurred on by the emergency and the incendiary words of a TV pundit, he reaches a boiling point and forcefully hits one of the men obstructing his ambulance. Max’s strike has far-reaching, unintended consequences.
Martijn, an idealistic Dutch pianist, travels to Morocco to help start a food program for malnourished children. Within moments of his arrival, however, Martijn is abducted by a group of terrorists, injected with a debilitating drug, and imprisoned. Under threat of death, the young man engages in a mental chess match with Ahmat, trying to learn his captor’s true objective and avoid a horrible fate
Mentally ill young woman Valda convinces herself that a boy growing up in an orphanage is her child. Following the footsteps of a thousands Lithuanians, she immigrates to Ireland to earn money to save him. “Loss” portrays beauty and tragedy in the human heart.
The Go Master is a 2006 biopic by director Tian Zhuangzhuang of renowned twentieth century Go master Wu Qingyuan, better known by his adopted name of Go Seigen. The film, which premiered at the 44th New York Film Festival, focuses on the life of this extraordinary player from his meteoric rise as a child prodigy to fame and fortune as a revolutionary strategic thinker, as well as the tumultuous global conflicts between his homeland and his adopted nation. The film also features a scene involving the Atomic bomb go game.
Jameela Jamil finds out if it’s true that children are being exposed to more pornography than ever before – and what the effects of that might be.
SWAMP DEVIL is the story of young Melanie Blaime (played by Cindy Sampson) and her father Howard (portrayed by the venerable Bruce Dern). After a long estrangement from her father for reasons not entirely clear, Melanie returns to her childhood home of Gibbington, Vermont to confront the realization that her father is wanted for murder. As Melanie digs a little more deeply into the stories of the past, she uncovers a tale wound about the town like Spanish moss, that is composed of secrets and lies, murder and revenge.
The first film in the Seto language in the world speaks about the brightest heroine of a small people, the folk singer Hilana Taarka, a woman who lived her whole life as an outcast in a small chimney-less hut; as an unmarried mother of children in poverty, begging her bread, doing odd jobs and singing. She always sang the truth, sometimes bitter, sometimes funny, sometimes cruel. She was feared, despised and coveted. Taarka sang throughout her remarkable life, throughout her fate, from a small Seto village to international fame. And she sang well. Really well. Taarka became the Mother of the Song, a legend. But as a woman, as a member of the community, the Seto people never really accepted her. Taarka – a despised woman and a worshiped singer.
As a kid, Leo thought he possessed, like a magician, the secret power to make things happen. As a young man, he certainly knows how to make things happen with women. But as his best friend Krantz would say to him, “Why do you always ask questions you already know answers to?”. Leo believes firmly in what he invents from one day to the next. Images, impressions, stories fill his head. That’s just how he is: life, for Leo, is just a game. Behind this childlike attitude, hides the very essence of his own life’s quest.
In Nebraska, in pioneer days, a woman who knows she is going to die asks a prostitute to replace her with her husband and four children in order to make it possible for them to keep their family farm.
In an undefined future, the earth has been destroyed by man, and the air polluted with a mysterious virus that turns humans into zombies. Only a few children are immune to the disease and have adapted to these extreme conditions and survived. Camille, a nine year old girl wanders through these desolate wastelands, protecting herself from zombies and the armed military forces that roam the land killing anyone who might be infected. However, the little girl will find other kids like her that share a recurring dream of: they all have visions of the ocean as their destiny. Together they will try to survive the journey to the ocean in search of an escape from the military who seem to be as determined on their destruction as on the zombies. Written by David Pollison/Solos Website
An epic tale about a supremely intelligent young African-American male who rises from the ferocious and oppressive streets of North Philadelphia to being a shining star in the lucrative world of high finance at Wall Street’s most prestigious firm. However, he soon finds that the white-collar world is filled with crime and death just like the drug-filled hood he left behind. His only chance of survival is to fully integrate a mysterious gift from a slain childhood friend fully into the fabric of his character.
