Social & External
Madre
Hija
It's 1992. Martin is 17 and he films his daily life with his Hi8 camera. He films anything and everything—his room, the world around him... But never his father, the thought doesn't occur to him. One day he meets Dominique. He's 23 and works as a student monitor at Martin's high school.
Paul is 16 years old and earns his pocket money working the streets. But there is something special about Paul. He has made a pact with some ants, which questions the strict patterns of our reality.
When perpetually single, aging music industry exec Harry Sanborn, and his latest trophy girlfriend, Marin, arrive at her mother's beach house in the Hamptons, they find that her mother, playwright Erica Barry, also plans to stay for the weekend. Erica is scandalized by the relationship and Harry's sexist ways. But when Harry has a heart attack while there, and the doctor prescribes bedrest, his only option is to stay at the Barry home. Left in the care of Erica and his doctor, a love triangle starts to take shape.
This delightful short is a world away from Tomomatsu's later works. It's a lovely story, told well. The reason that I tracked it down is because I'm quite a fan of Alice Sailor's music. She fronts new wave band Amaryllis and I was curious to see her acting. She has frequently supplied theme songs and other music to several of Tomomatsu's films. Indeed, the most disturbing sequence in this movie is accompanied by a psychotic Amaryllis track, 'Haha', and the closing piece is another Amaryllis song, 'Usagi'. This rip comes from the 'Eat The Schoolgirl' DVD, where it was one of the extras. Having just watched the main feature from that disc, I can say with some certainty that I found this tale far more enjoyable.
The elderly at the nursing home have their heads shaved. The protagonist who works there sees them but can't read their expressions. However, from one instance, he finds himself looking closely at their faces.
In early 20th Century Europe, a dancer becomes the romantic bone of contention between two men, a humble shepherd and an imperious marquis.
Upon discovering her husband’s affair, Pooja seeks guidance from her friend. Eventually, more secrets unveil, pushing Pooja to her emotional extreme.
Edo, 1863. Aisuke Kajiki, a young blind swordsman, is entrusted the son of his best friend Toramaru Sakakibara, who is about to join the Shogun's Samurai Unit and promises to train him well. However, after Toramaru's death in battle, Eisuke drowns in a river and is transported in time to present-day Tokyo. Eisuke and his descendant, Ryusei, a college student, go to meet Toramaru's descendant, Taiga, a swimmer. The blind samurai's promise to his best friend in Edo is fulfilled 160 years later in present-day Tokyo through para-swimming.
Chloe, a straight talking film director, tries to convince her friend Sam to be an actor in her next short film. Just after finding out that he once again didn’t get into medical school, Sam meets Alex, a hypochondriac 18 year old. A love triangle forms in these self-reflexive, humoristic fragments filled with sex talk , set in New Orleans.
Every gay person goes through a process of discovering their own identity. Caught between their truest self and the family and societal pressure around them, which should a college student still in the middle of this process choose? Details
My Pretty Pony is a story telling about time and what the old man believes time is telling him. He believes this pony represents time and he must fufill it.
An evocative and imaginative exploration of the racial tensions in Othello and how the themes in Shakespeare's play still resonate today.
During an historic counter-terrorism summit in Spain, the President of the United States is struck down by an assassin's bullet. Eight strangers have a perfect view of the kill, but what did they really see? As the minutes leading up to the fatal shot are replayed through the eyes of each eyewitness, the reality of the assassination takes shape.
This film is about what the routine of everyday life can do to the human mind and psyche. It also reflects on the importance of the choices we make and how limited these choices are in the first place. The plot evolves around a family of four. They live in the suburbs, in a strange villa that appears, through a complex game of mirrors, to be more like a piece of installation art than a real house. The main character, who hardly appears on screen, is the son, a man in his thirties. Suffering from asthma and eczema since childhood, he uses his condition to manipulate his parents and his sister. Thus the existence of the terrorized family turns into an endless ritual of attempting to satisfy his whims, and always on the alert for yet another one of his “health crises”. Las Meninas resembles the scattered pieces of a puzzle. It is up to the viewer to assemble them in order to form his very own picture – something that makes the film itself personal and unique.
In a dystopian future where people live nocturnally to avoid the harmful rays of the sun, a young black girl unravels the lie that has kept her and her sister in the dark.
Aging painter Louis and his wife Michelle struggle to cope with Louis' advancing dementia.
When a brilliant nine-year-old working in a sweatshop gets a chance to attend school, she must make a difficult choice for her and her sister's future.
We Are Not Here is a short film about a small derelict town, waiting for a road. Through a series of vignettes we take a glimpse into the life of the town and its residents.
When his father brings his new girlfriend to the seaside, a withdrawn boy is forced to share his grief with someone he doesn't want to know.
Itsuki, a young director, begins making a film with a homeless girl she meets one day as the protagonist. However, this leads her to confront the distorted reality that she had been pretending not to notice.
Ana, an eight-year-old girl living in Madrid with her grandmother and two sisters, mourns the death of her mother.
Rose and her daughter Sofia travel to the Spanish seaside town of Almería to consult with the shamanic Dr. Gomez, a physician who could possibly hold the cure to Rose’s mystery illness, which has left her bound to a wheelchair. But in the sultry atmosphere of this sun-bleached town Sofia, who has been trapped by her mother’s illness all her life, finally starts to shed her inhibitions, enticed by the persuasive charms of enigmatic traveller Ingrid.
Inspired by a true story, this film tells the shocking tale of a mother and daughter who are nothing like they seem, their tumultuous relationship ending in a brutal murder.
During a mysterious thunderstorm, Vera, a young mother, manages to save a life in danger, but her good deed causes a disturbing chain of unexpected consequences.
Seville, Spain. Juan Santos, a convicted petty criminal, gets out of jail for a day to celebrate with Triana, his wife, the first communion of their daughter Estrella.
A mother and her teenage daughter must confront Death when it arrives in the form of an astonishing talking bird.
Amaia has just become a mother, and the challenge is even more significant than she imagined. So when her partner has to leave for several weeks because of his job, she decides to spend time with her parents in a lovely coastal village in the Basque Country and hopefully share the responsibility of looking after her baby. However, she forgot that even when one becomes a parent, one never stops being a daughter.
Salvador Mallo, a filmmaker in the twilight of his career, remembers his life: his mother, his lovers, the actors he worked with. The sixties in a small village in Valencia, the eighties in Madrid, the present, when he feels an immeasurable emptiness, facing his mortality, the incapability of continuing filming, the impossibility of separating creation from his own life. The need of narrating his past can be his salvation.
It is summertime in a blue-collar, marginal district of a city in the South of Spain. Tano, a teenager currently serving a sentence in a juvenile reform center, is given a 48-hour leave to attend his brother’s wedding.
One summer, Dario flees the hellish environment of his home. Luismi, unconditional friend, a poor devil with pretensions of winning, and Antonia, an old woman who collects abandoned his motorcar furniture, become his new family. Three generations living together in a city too big to be alone.
Bored 15-year-old school chums Rai Manu and Javi dream of sexual adventures and exotic resorts while the well-off population of Madrid flock to the beaches on a summer holiday. The youths hang around the concrete wasteland killing time by reading the sex classifieds and pushing their luck. They masturbate, thieve, fight with their families and get involved in a drug bust. Finally Rai, the most daring and restless of the trio - gets shot while trying to steal stereo gear from a car. Each adolescent faces a dreary home life but when they get together they enjoy each other's company to the full. The film is an engaging mixture of comedy drama and the pathos of life in a Madrid neighborhood.
In New York City, a young girl is caught in the middle of her parents' bitter custody battle.
In this Oscar-winning short film, grieving parents journey through an emotional void as they mourn the loss of a child after a tragic school shooting.
While out to avoid spending time with her narcissistic and promiscuous mother, sixteen-year-old Jo has a brief affair that leaves her pregnant and abandoned. When her mother remarries, Jo's only support becomes her friend Geoffrey, a homosexual.
When lapsed Jew and former cardiologist Harry suddenly decides to spend his retirement as a pig farmer in Nazareth, Israel, the move deeply shocks his family and his new neighbours. Back in New York, Harry’s ex-wife Monica is trying to manage the lives of their adult children, Annabelle and David, as well as her own.
The family-friendly movie explores the transformational role prayer plays in the lives of the Jordan family. Tony and Elizabeth Jordan, a middle-class couple who seemingly have it all – great jobs, a beautiful daughter, their dream home. But appearances can be deceiving. In reality, the Jordan’s marriage has become a war zone and their daughter is collateral damage. With the help of Miss Clara, an older, wiser woman, Elizabeth discovers she can start fighting for her family instead of against them. Through a newly energized faith, Elizabeth and Tony’s real enemy doesn’t have a prayer.
A woman recalls her childhood growing up in the North of Spain, focusing on her relationship with her father.
17-year-old Ainara is a student at a Catholic secondary school, and is about to take her final year exams and choose her future university course. To everyone’s surprise, this brilliant young girl announces to her family that she wants to take part in an induction period at a convent in order to embrace the religious life. Nobody was expecting this. While her father seems to be won over by his daughter’s aspirations, for Maite, Ainara’s aunt, this unexpected vocation is the manifestation of a deeper problem.
SANJAY'S SUPER TEAM follows the daydream of a young Indian boy, bored with his father's religious meditation, who imagines "a kind of ancient, Hindu version of The Avengers," with the gods appearing like superheros.
Chile, 1976. Carmen heads off to her beach house. When the family priest asks her to take care of a young man he is sheltering in secret, Carmen steps onto unexplored territories, away from the quiet life she is used to.
