Born in a small town in Japan, a young girl named Ai is sent to a cult commune by her religious maniac mother and lives there for seven long years. After the cult is exposed by the police, Ai starts a new stage of life, going to a normal school for the first time, but she can’t find her place to fit in there. Ai drops out from the school and society, spending her life living with a rock-bottom delinquent family full of gangsters and call girls. In a strange twist of fate she finds herself back in a new and normal life, living with a middle-class family, but her troubled life continues to follow her into more deep and seedy paths.

Fifth Avenue socialite Irene Bullock needs a “forgotten man” to win a scavenger hunt, and no one is more forgotten than Godfrey Park, who resides in a dump by the East River. Irene hires Godfrey as a servant for her riotously unhinged family, to the chagrin of her spoiled sister, Cornelia, who tries her best to get Godfrey fired. As Irene falls for her new butler, Godfrey turns the tables and teaches the frivolous Bullocks a lesson or two.

All hilarity breaks loose in this heartwarming coming-of-age comedy when three generations of Fiedlers collide in a crazy family reunion. As they prepare for the biggest Bar Mitzvah on the block, they begin to see that they’re much more alike than they’d originally thought.

“In 1946, my great-grandfather murdered a black man named Bill Spann and got away with it.” So begins Travis Wilkerson’s critically acclaimed documentary, DID YOU WONDER WHO FIRED THE GUN?, which takes us on a journey through the American South to uncover the truth behind a horrific incident and the societal mores that allowed it to happen. Acting as narrator and guide, Wilkerson spins a strange, frightening tale, incorporating scenes from TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, the music of Janelle Monáe and Phil Ochs, and the story of Rosa Parks’ investigation into the Recy Taylor case, as well as his own family history, for a gripping investigation into our collective past and its echoes into the present day.

Born into one of the wealthiest and best-known families in American history, Gloria Vanderbilt has lived in the public eye for more than 90 years, unapologetically pursuing love, family and career, while experiencing extreme tragedy and tremendous success side by side. This documentary features a series of candid conversations as Vanderbilt and her youngest son, Anderson Cooper, look back at her remarkable life.

George Nottoli, is a regular guy extraordinaire: family man, rocker, stunt man, and Sausage King of Chicago. At age 35, in need of a new challenge, George re-invents himself as professional wrestle, Vito ‘Two Finger’ Fontaine. Follow him into the world of pro wrestling where the more you love someone the harder you hit them….even if its with a rubber chicken!

Michael Thomasson has devoted his life to video games. It’s been his passion and his obsession for more than three decades. He owns over 11,000 unique game titles for more than 100 different systems. Why? Because there’s something wrong in the back of my head, he says. His collection is so large, in fact, it’s currently recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records. But there’s one thing Michael loves more than his games: his family. The Last Move chronicles Michael’s attempts to help his mother at an enormous personal cost to himself.

A family living with their grandpa find out that there’s more than meets the eyes at their families’ barn.

Yehudi Menuhin was the 20th century’s greatest violinist. He was a child prodigy but the man behind the violin was harder to know. Endlessly touring and crossing continents and cultures, his contract with EMI was the longest in the history of the music industry. He took classical music out of the concert hall because he believed music was for everyone and had the power to change lives. An impassioned idealist, Yehudi wanted to give more to the world – he became a tireless fighter for humanitarian issues he believed in. In this film, commemorating the 100th year of his birth, family and close friends recall his extraordinary musical life, in which he embraced jazz and Indian ragas as much as Bach, Beethoven and Bartok. And incredible home movies take us on an intimate behind-the-scenes journey from his childhood in California, to meeting gypsies in Romania and travelling to India and beyond.

Tom “Putuparri” Lawford is a man caught between two worlds: his past and present in modern society, where he battles with alcoholism and domestic violence; and his future as a leader of his people, reconnecting with his ancestral lands, learning about his traditional culture and shouldering his responsibility to pass this knowledge on to the next generation. Director Nicole Ma spent more than a decade documenting Putuparri’s journey, travelling with him and his family on numerous occasions to Kurtal, in the Kimberley’s Great Sandy Desert region – traditionally a site of great significance as a place where people ritually make rain – as they fight for their native title claim over the area. Set against the backdrop of this long fight for ownership of traditional lands, the MIFF Premiere Fund-supported Putuparri and the Rainmakers is an emotional, visually breathtaking story of love, hope and the survival of Aboriginal law and culture against all odds.

A 40-year old actress (single and strong, yet lonely), her sister (an emotionally unstable schoolteacher whose married-with-kids life appears more orderly) and their domineering father, who gradually loses control over his family due to his wife’s sudden illness and his own health troubles; these are the three individuals at the heart of this film, a touching story about the strength of family ties in a situation of imminent danger.

The extraordinary untold story of how an NYPD bomb disposal expert played a key role in helping defuse the decades old “Troubles” in Northern Ireland. In 1975, Irish immigrant Denis Mulcahy of the NYPD bomb squad – gathered a group of family, friends and neighbours to start a scheme offering children from Northern Ireland a chance to temporarily escape the violent turmoil of their daily lives. From modest beginnings, Project Children ultimately brought over 20,000 Catholic and Protestant children to suburban US for summer-long visits where they forged unexpected friendships and found they had more in common with the ‘enemy’ than they thought. Now this extraordinary untold story is being brought to the screen in a new documentary by Des Henderson, and narrated by Liam Neeson, entitled How To Defuse A Bomb: The Project Children Story.

In a dusty post-war summer in rural Warwickshire, a doctor is called to a patient at lonely Hundreds Hall. Home to the Ayres family for over two centuries, the Georgian house is now in decline. But are the Ayreses haunted by something more sinister than a dying way of life?

After losing his job and the end of his marriage, Júnior returns to his father’s house. But that is not his childhood house anymore. His old room has been rented by a young woman and the place feels unwelcome and oppressive. Júnior develops and obsession for his family history, as strange things start happening in the house.

Nick Gutlicht lives of illegally selling valuable books, owes money to a bunch of other crooks and has to hide from them. By chance he ends up in the mansion of the famous, now very old philosopher Curt Ledig, who despite the age related forgetfulness and pathological kitchen phobia resists to move to his daughter. Nick is hired by the family as watchdog. Now Curt can work on a presentation for the upcoming symposium, which anybody thinks he’s capable of anymore. Nick thinks he has an excellent hiding place. This partnership of convenience of the two individuals quickly develops its own momentum. Curt regards Nick as an exciting research object and subjects him to an absurd therapy. For Nick it’s a unique opportunity to fund his finances with Curt’s phenomenal library. The strange couple is going through turmoil of incalculable proportions.

Eleven year old Masha Kulabokhova is about to be adopted into fourteen year old Cami Diaz’s family. Masha grew up in a Russian orphanage; Cami was born and raised in Wisconsin and has been the exclusive focus of her parents’ love her whole life. The process of Masha becoming part of the Diaz family is going to change both girls forever. The Dark Matter of Love follows Masha as she leaves Russia to the spend her first year as part of the Diaz family, who have also adopted five year old twin boys Marcel and Vadim. When the reality of bonding with children who have grown up in institutions turns out to be more difficult than they ever imagined, the Diaz’s hire two of the world’s best developmental psychologists to help them build their new family – through science. Sometimes hilarious, sometimes heartbreaking, The Dark Matter of Love melds the story of the Diaz family learning to love, with rare archive footage of science experiments exploring parent-child love.

Turkish director Hasan Karacadag is something of an unusual case. In a nation that appears uncertain how to feel about its own history with exploitation film and generally reluctant to embrace genre film – though there are obvious exceptions – Karacadag has jumped headlong into the horror pool. The director first came to attention with the J-horror influenced D@BB, a surprise hit in Turkey that allowed Karacadag to move on to the more visually ambitious – and effects heavy – effort, Semum. Both film showcased Karacadag’s growing ability to shock and terrify his audiences by taking the rich folklore of his country and pushing it to its dark extremes. And he’s at it again with D@BB: Bir Cin Vakasi. The sequel to his original hit, this latest efforts puts away the Japanese influence in favor of a more Paranormal vibe, but the underlying mythology remains purely regional with the story following a Turkish family whose home is possessed by angry jinns

Tragedy doesn’t come any more Dickensian in tone or Shakespearian in scope than this dark social drama of the disintegration of a little family of four. A series of small debts triggers the swift domino effect that unleashes chaos on a well-meaning working class dad who has the bad judgment to speak truth to power.

Based on a true story, it concerns a group of boys who grow up together playing basketball in tournaments and driveways – and end up on opposite sides of the proverbial fence, playing for rival high schools. Then another twist occurs when each high school yields a championship team – pitting the two against one another in the finals and forcing the young men to learn the importance of family, friendship and a great deal more.

When the film broke out that a young man coming from a rich adopted family murdered his birth father, the controversy around the case hit a nerve with the public at large. An experiment was held through the form of virtual court inside a college to discuss this hot topic. During the process of virtual court, 12 Chinese people from different walks of life got together and discussed the case like a jury. Through intricate and thought provoking questions from the main character, people start to think more critically about the case. During this process, one sees the revelation of people’s bias and emotional-preconceptions about the suspect, about each other, and also about the society.

Imagine if you’d had a six-foot tall monster to help you through the rough times when you were 11! Willy is terrified about moving into the family’s new house. He’s convinced it’s filled with evil space aliens out to get him. In response to his wish for someone to save him, Gooby comes to life as a loveable, full-size, scraggly, orange, furry creature who in fact seems more frightened of the world than Willy. The two have hair-raising adventures and learn something about the power of friendship. In the end, Gooby fulfills Willy’s initial wish by bringing Willy and his dad together in a touching and exciting climax.

Tomb Raider franchise, taking the story back to the beginning of Lara Croft’s journey and showing her rise to become “Tomb Raider”. A sacred artifact created by the ancient Mayan Civilization in Mexico hundreds of years ago, believed to hold the secrets behind the end of the Mayan calendar in 2012. With the family butler, Winston, educating her about everything he has learned from her Father about the Ascension Stone, Lara heads off to follow her first lead buried in an ancient mine deep in the heart of England. Once down there she discovers more than she had ever hoped for and soon realizes her Uncle has answers to questions she has been asking for a long time.

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.

For as long as she could remember, Dakota Skye has been cursed with a super power. She has the ability to see the truth in any lie she hears. From small, harmless white lies, to the more devious kind, they have come from the people that she should trust the most; her family, friends and teachers. These lies have snowballed, leading to her becoming bitter and apathetic towards the world around her.

For his fourth full feature, Toyoshi Toyoda has abandoned the theme of the angry young man, examined in depth in Pornostar, Blue Spring and 9 Souls. Kuchu Teien is, on the face of it, more a drama, a character study, than a typical Toyoda genre flick. Yet within this beautifully structured and photographed film, there lies a dark soul. Ostensibly the story of a happy family, it becomes increasingly clear as the movie progresses that the Kyobashis are anything but. Despite a family agreement that they are all open with each other, the entire household knows the opposite is true.

A Swedish family found murdered in her home on the Costa del Sol in southern Spain – all except the 16-year-old daughter, who has disappeared. At first the police believe that there is a burglary gone wrong, but the more crime examined, the more remarkable it becomes. When the burglars also found dead paralyzed the entire investigation. The offense sends a shockwave that shakes, and even on the crime-ridden Costa del Sol.

A story about a chance encounter that momentarily destroyed a successful and happy family life. All of a sudden the woman found passion and desire more important than her loving husband and cherished child. The father and son suffer from the realization that they are no longer needed, but try to understand and forgive. The woman, who failed to become happy, is in turmoil.

Banned in Iran this experimental film uses fictionalized, grainy, home video footage to tell the story of the abusive relationship between a successful middle aged Iranian businessman and his 18 year old wife, Goli. She has just received a camcorder as his birthday present and the entire story is told from the view of this camcorder. Goli has lived with him and been his sex slave since he took her captive as a nine year old from her family in the Kurdish rebellion. Now she is pregnant, but as she starts to talk back to him and he discovers that she has learned English and started to read, he again is making her more and more a prisoner in his home.

Still guilt-ridden over the accident that took his family’s lives, Eric Norris discovers that his body is host to a parasite from another world. Except, it is more than a parasite: it carries his DNA.

With nothing more than a blazing spirit of philanthropy and his beat-up red wagon, Zach sets out to help homeless children in America. In the process, he sweeps his fractured family – and ultimately the entire country – along with him.

Jacob is tired of living on the family farm, submitting to the rules of his father. One day he demands an early inheritance from his father, who shocks his young son by agreeing to give it to him. So, he heads to the big city doing things his way without restraint, and for a while he does well-surprisingly well. He takes huge business risks and converts his small fortune into a big fortune, despite his extremely flamboyant lifestyle that attracts the wrong women, including seductive Laura, whose rich boyfriend Frank is often dangerously nearby. Jake had it all: money, ladies, prestige-but then-he loses it all and just when he things he’s hit bottom the bottom drops some more- until he is eating out of dumpsters and eventually ends up living in a literal pig pen. Coming to his senses he heads home, determined to work in an entry level position for his dad, who surprises him once again by running to him-but is it to kiss him or kill him?

Edyta is forty and in the midst of a crisis. She has left her family, her husband and son and their house on the Baltic Sea behind her. She spends her nights in a Warsaw hotel room and her days driving around the unfamiliar city. When she runs out of cash, she hatches a plan: An ad in the newspaper – sex for money. Edyta never lets things get that far though, as she drugs her clients and then uses their apartments as a refuge for the night. Then she meets an artist, Patryk. A smidgen of luck and Edyta can no longer maintain her dismissive attitude. In this enthralling character study, Tomasz Wasilewski uses filmic minimalism to ensure that glances and gestures say more than words. He portrays a lonely woman in both fragility and strength, using precise image composition.

“I Have Never Forgotten You” is a comprehensive look at the life and legacy of Simon Wiesenthal, the famed Nazi hunter and humanitarian. Narrated by Academy Award winning actress Nicole Kidman, it features interviews with longtime Wiesenthal associates, government leaders from around the world, friends and family members–many of whom have never discussed the legendary Nazi hunter and humanitarian on camera. Previously unseen archival film and photos also highlight the film. What was the driving force behind his work? What kept him going when for years the odds were against his efforts? What is his legacy today, more than 60 years after the end of World War Two?

At the downbeat of the new millennium there was no bigger, darker, or more deeply influential hard rock band in the world than KoRn. But for lead guitarist Brian Head Welch, a dream come true was giving way to a raging nightmare of self-loathing and addiction. At the end of himself, he made an even harder decision than leaving KoRn. Told with intimate access to the family and band, this genre-bending documentary delivers unprecedented access to one of rock’s most unbelievable stories of restoration.

Waking in a hospital, bruised and beaten, a young man struggles to piece together the events of a horrifying weekend. Amid flashes of relaxing with friends, the image of a killer begins to emerge – creeping ever closer. Somewhere within his memories and the madness lies the key to the killer’s identity, which, once discovered, may be more horrific than the murders themselves. Set in rural southern Louisiana Jake’s Road is a tale of family and how one moment can rip loved ones apart or bind them forever. With enough twists and turns to keep viewers guessing until the very end, we discover what drives a man to kill all that he loves and fight for all that he has.

All Alza Bennett wants is to get home to her estranged family for the Easter holiday, but an auto mishap leaves the high strung executive more than 700 miles short of her destination and standing on the doorstep of a grizzled, reclusive farmer named Lincoln, who’s goal in life is to be left alone. After a deal is struck the mismatched pair sets out on a three day odyssey of misadventure along the highways and byways of America where they encounter rat infested hotels, convenience store hold ups, rural rabbit stalkers and a starstruck couple from a local trailer park. Best of all, they are forced to encounter each other as the two worlds of the princess and hermit collide at each and every turn. A humorous retelling of The Story of The Prodigal Son, told through the eyes of a young woman looking to make amends while she searches for the road back home.

Jack Carter, a man constantly living in a state of regret, takes his technology-obsessed family, including their lovable dog Buster, on a Christmas vacation to the mountains in the hopes of reconnecting with them. While on vacation, Jack and his family run into an estranged, uber-competitive friend of Jack’s, who now lives the life of luxury Jack pines for. Through a series of juvenile competitions, Jack realizes that the love of his family is more rewarding than anything money could buy.

An insurance salesman gets mixed up with two gangsters in effort to make more money and provide for his family, but things don’t go as he planned.

1865, the American Civil War has just ended. The last remaining members of a now destitute Southern family journey to California. The guilt and scars they carry from the war are deeper and more painful than the loss of their family fortune and home. The war is over, but the battle to survive has just begun, they are in search of a new life, a new fortune, a new world and something else that they do not yet understand, the redemption of their very souls. Written by Joseph Paul Stachura

Japanese schoolgirl Sakura (Higarino) has her idyllic small-town life turned inside-out when the local males start savagely killing the females. Armed with only her kyudo bow for protection and an English textbook for comfort, Sakura journeys through an apocalyptic world of mayhem. As trauma from witnessing the violent deaths of friends and family drives her toward madness, Sakura takes refuge in an animated dreamworld where she meets Billy (Mackenzie), a character from her English text! Billy helps her survive murderous zombies, as well as an even more formidable foe in Aoi (Tsujimoto), as she races to find real-world Billy and answers to the questions: Why is all this happening? And who or what is behind it?