2020
Set between the New World (Heaven) and the Old World (Earth) the story follows the life and afterlife of Jonathan Stone and all of those lives around him from his past, present and future.
In a dying 1950’s town, a mysterious traveler propositions a young farmhand, Donnie, to help take down the town’s tyrannical leader in exchange for the release of Donnie’s mother from a primitive mind rehabilitation center.
Monkey King comes to life as a young boy named MK, obsessed with the legends of old, discovers Monkey King’s magical staff. After witnessing Red Son and Princess Iron Fan release the Demon Bull King from his prison under the mountain, MK accidentally grabs Monkey King’s magical staff and escapes, sending him on a journey to return the staff to Monkey King in order for him to save the day.
Mustafa and his wife Salwa come from two Palestinian villages that are only 200 meters apart, but separated by the wall. Their unusual living situation is starting to affect their otherwise happy marriage, but the couple does what they can to make it work. Every night, Mustafa flashes a light from his balcony to wish his children on the other side a goodnight, and they signal him back. One day Mustafa gets a call that every parent dreads: his son has been in an accident. He rushes to the checkpoint where he must agonisingly wait in line only to find out there is a problem with his fingerprints and is denied entry. Desperate, Mustafa resorts to hiring a smuggler to bring him across. His once 200-meter journey becomes a 200-kilometer odyssey joined by other travellers determined to cross.
Reeling from the unexpected death of her husband, Beth is left alone in the lakeside home he built for her. Soon she begins to uncover her recently deceased husband’s disturbing secrets.
Former detective Jeff Jackson teams up with Dr. Zee Madieras to track down their friend’s missing emerald brooch, a thief, and also… a murderer.
An astonishing record of the hereditary nature of trauma, Jacinta follows the lives of three generations of women struggling to find stability amid years of dependency. Jacinta leaves the Maine Correctional Center, leaving her mother behind to complete her own sentence, and attempts to rebuild her relationship with Caylynn, her preternaturally wise pre-teen daughter who craves time and attention from the mother she adores. But as the pressures of shaping a life in a world she has hardly known sober proves increasingly challenging, she brings the viewer into her emotional, day-to-day battle to find peace with herself and earn the trust of her family.
In the Forest of Okoya, Koko is a feral child who has been raised as a Pokémon by the Mythical Pokémon Zarude. Koko has grown up never doubting that he is a Pokémon even though he can’t really use any sort of moves. Ash Ketchum and Pikachu meet Koko and help him protect the Great Tree from the crooked scientist Dr. Zed.
An ex surf pro is forced to take a job at a beachfront hotel teaching obnoxious tourists how to surf. Soon he’s the tennis pro, the yoga instructor, the handyman – he might even be key to saving this family-run, Hawaiian-owned hotel.
SF stripper Champagne White (multi-hyphenate talent D’Arcy Drollinger) is expecting her boyfriend Rod to pop the question; when he instead tells her of a secret plot involving booty bumps and the world’s largest retail store, it’s up to the intrepid ecdysiast to save the day. With a lo-fi ’70s exploitation film aesthetic and a John Waters-esque sense of the absurd and outrageous, Drollinger adapts his wildly successful stage show for the big screen, featuring extraordinary talent from the world of drag, including Alaska 5000 from RuPaul’s Drag Race.
A terminally ill old lady convinces a self-destructive addict to help kill her, in exchange for clean urine.
A Ukrainian farmer living in Alberta loses his wife in a tragic accident. Guilt and grief send him into an emotional spiral where mysterious and inexplicable events force him to relive traumatic incidents from his childhood in Ukraine.
Experiential cinema in its purest form, GUNDA chronicles the unfiltered lives of a mother pig, a flock of chickens, and a herd of cows with masterful intimacy. Using stark, transcendent black and white cinematography and the farm’s ambient soundtrack, Master director Victor Kossakowsky invites the audience to slow down and experience life as his subjects do, taking in their world with a magical patience and an other worldly perspective. GUNDA asks us to meditate on the mystery of animal consciousness, and reckon with the role humanity plays in it. Executive produced by Joaquin Phoenix.
Dominic’s fetish is… himself. Nothing turns him on more than his own reflection. That’s why discovering that he has a twin brother, raised in a remote monastery by a depraved priest, causes him major consternation. Fate brings the two young men back together again, and their fraternal relationship is torn between sex, revenge and redemption.
Tired of his parents’ constant bickering, 15 year old Damien is certain they’re all wrong for each other— he would know, he’s a relationship expert. Damien and his best friend Erin have a side hustle coupling-up classmates for the right price. So when Damien discovers his parents may have had a shotgunning wedding, he convinces Erin to turn their efforts toward finding his parents new partners— but the cost of doing business may come at the price of everyone involved.
November 1944. On the flooded isle of Walcheren, Zeeland, thousands of Allied soldiers are battling the German army. Three young lives become inextricably connected. A Dutch boy fighting for the Germans, an English glider pilot and a girl from Zeeland connected to the resistance against her will, are forced to make crucial choices that impact both their own freedom and the freedom of others.
A neighborhood is plagued by mysterious tragedies when a young man becomes the conduit for an unknown spirit, the “Aiyai,” which lures victims to their chilling fates.
Jimmy carries a leather, black doctor’s bag around with him containing the rope he plans to hang himself with. He returns home to the fictional town of Ballylough to the cold austere beauty of West Cavan to seek salvation for sins committed in the past before saying goodbye.
Emmy-winning Israeli filmmaker Maya Zinshtein (Forever Pure) returns to the Festival with this riveting exposé that investigates the unlikely connection between Jews and evangelical Christians in the U.S. and Israel, and the startling hypocrisy at its core. From conversations with a devout pastor and his congregation in rural Kentucky to meetings with religious leaders in Washington D.C. and Israel, Zinshtein closely follows Chicago native Yael Eckstein, President and CEO of the influential advocacy group the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, in her fundraising and coalition-building efforts. What she uncovers is a shocking alliance rooted in apocalyptic prophecy and driven in unprecedented ways by Donald Trump’s White House.
Recently retired accountant Richard Flicker attends a life-drawing class and his world is turned upside down when he encounters free-spirited Amelia, the spitting image of a long lost love from decades ago. Grappling with a troubled home front, Richard flirts with the temptation of this second chance at romance.
Trainee policeman, ‘Sung-min’ and job seeker, ‘Jun-hyeok’ were suspicious about a suicide incident of a girl who lived in the same dormitory, and they will be tracking her SNS account with the help of a private detective agency hacker, ‘Nu-ri’. The investigation which started out of chivalry leads to uncontrollable consequences. These three people, Jun-hyeok, Sung-min, and Nu-ri become targets of SNS crime…
After the tragic overdose of his estranged friend, Will, a recovering addict, returns home, where he is reunited with Claire, his friend’s grieving mother, with whom he begins a secret but volatile affair.
A successful white documentarian deals with the fallout from his last film, which caught the murder of a Black teen on tape. While he films a new doc series, someone else tapes his every move.
When the spoiled son and newest wife of a billionaire patriarch plot to murder him, they form a psycho-sexual bond with their brutally handsome hitman as they kill and kill (and kill) in their quest for wealth and recognition.
Nelly and her dog London are about to spend autumn break with her uncle Hannibal. Soon she noticed that he doesn’t live a quiet life. Her uncle is a Monster agent. Nelly gets dragged in to an adventure filled with ghosts, vampires and werewolves.
A young Dutch soldier deployed to suppress post-WWII independence efforts in the Netherlands’ colony of Indonesia finds himself torn between duty and conscience when he joins an increasingly ruthless commander’s elite squad.
As a result of a traffic accident involving a violation of the centerline, the perpetrator dies, and the victim falls into a coma. After some time, the wife of the perpetrator, Heejoo, returns. Heejoo is bewildered at the fact that the victim’s wife Youngnam is also working at the factory where she goes to work. By accident, Heejoo becomes close with Youngnam’s daughter Eunyoung and learns a new fact about the incident. The true nature of this accident, where Heejoo’s husband was known to have crossed over the centerline, is actually very complicated. Since the social issues of dispatched labor and industrial accidents and personal issues of depression and family trouble are intertwined here, it is more difficult to apprehend.
12-year-old Seon-yoo and her mother struggle for a new start after her father killed himself with huge debt behind.
A reclusive man conducts a series of interviews with human souls for a chance to be born.
A 13-year-old girl grows up between a boxing ring and the street. Her friends are guys who kill and rob. In the 1990s the whole city hates them, but for Masha they are the best people in the world, who love and protect her. She sings them jazz and dreams of becoming a singer. But one day Masha learns who they actually are and what they have done to her life and family. She matures, leaves the small city for Moscow, trying to break with her past. But one day the past stands directly before her.
Rojda, a native of Iraqi Kurdistan and a soldier in the German army, travels to a refugee camp in Greece where she manages to meet her mother, who has bad news about her sister Dilan.
The story of two sisters who grew up on the fractious Irish border. When one of them, who has been missing, finally returns home, the intense bond with her sister is re-ignited. Together they unearth their mother’s past but uncovered secrets and resentments which have been buried deep, threaten to overwhelm them.
Alabama preacher’s daughter runs off with a touring Xian hair metal band during the summer of 1986.
While scouring the streets of Detroit for his lost championship ring, a former basketball star, suffering from mental illness, finds himself stuck in a time warp and unable to come to grips with life as it is now.
A Mexican biologist living in New York returns to his hometown, nestled in the majestic butterfly forests of Michoacán. The journey forces him to confront past traumas and reflect on his hybrid identity, sparking a personal metamorphosis.
Claudina is a repressed woman from the countryside. After her husband passes away, she meets Elsa, a married woman with whom she discovers real love. In a little conservatory town in the south of Chile, obsessed with UFO sighting, she starts a new journey.
The balance of power between man and animal is reversed. In a remote countryside, any encounter with the dominant can become hostile. At the crossroads of fantastic and suspense kind, Anonymous Animals questions the place of animals in our societies.
