A Common Experience (2013)

Millie's Care Free Day

Weighed down and despondent from crushing depression, Millie tries to escape the daily grind by deciding today will be different. However, she must first confront her trauma before it consumes her.

Jess + Moss

Jess, age 18, and Moss, age 12 are second cousins in the dark-fire tobacco fields of rural Western Kentucky. Without immediate families that they can relate to, and lacking friends their own age, they only have each other. Over the course of a summer they venture on a journey exploring deep secrets and hopes of a future while being confronted with fears of isolation, abandonment and an unknown tomorrow.

My Crazy Seven

In seven days, Brianna confronts her chaotic life, battling abuse, workplace politics, and trauma to reclaim her power and rewrite her story.

Winter

Nico's father, with whom he has a distant relationship, comes to town for medical reasons. Nico must hide his homosexuality in addition to his new life as a drag queen.

the skin of our souls.

A woman relives her trauma as she recounts her experiences with immigration, disassociation, and abuse.

Brotherly Love

A poetic and melancholic short film about two brothers with different intentions. A personal struggle involving obsession, abuse, and guilt.

Stories Are in Our Bones

In this layered short film, filmmaker Janine Windolph takes her young sons fishing with their kokum (grandmother), a residential school survivor who retains a deep knowledge and memory of the land. The act of reconnecting with their homeland is a cultural and familial healing journey for the boys, who are growing up in the city. It’s also a powerful form of resistance for the women.

Nobody Asked

Yahya is a middle-aged man who lives in a small town, a place where he can hide and forget his past, connected to the repression in Iran. One day, his son Nima leaves the house and disappears. Gradually, he distanced himself from Marta, his lover, and sought refuge alone. So, the police department calls and informs that a body that cannot be identified has been found, and Yahya is convinced that his son ran away because he found out his secret. To find him, Yahya will have to face his memories.

Athlete A

Follow the Indianapolis Star reporters that broke the story about USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar's abuse and hear from gymnasts.

This Means More

Images of crowd simulation are faced with testimonies from Liverpool Football Club’s supporters who recall their experience marked by a tragic event: the Hillsborough stadium disaster in 1989, which changed the nature of the game of football.

Xapiri

Xapiri is a Yanomami term that characterizes the shamans, male spirits (xapiri thëpë) and also auxiliary spirits (xapiri pë). Xapiri is an experimental film about Yanomami shamanism that was filmed during a meeting of 37 shamans at the Watoriki Reserve, Roraima, in March of 2011. The film was designed to take into account two different notions of image: those of the Yanomami and ours. Therefore, it does not set out to explain shamanism, its methods or procedures, but to allow different cultures to visualize and feel the way in which the shamans “embody” the spirits, their bodies and voices.

The Darjeeling Limited

Three American brothers who have not spoken to each other in a year set off on a train voyage across India with a plan to find themselves and bond with each other -- to become brothers again like they used to be. Their "spiritual quest", however, veers rapidly off-course (due to events involving over-the-counter pain killers, Indian cough syrup, and pepper spray).

Jindabyne

Outside the Australian town of Jindabyne, local man Stuart Kane is on a fishing trip with friends when they discover the body of a murdered girl.

Dreamcatcher

Four boyhood pals perform a heroic act and are changed by the powers they gain in return. Years later, on a hunting trip in the Maine woods, they're overtaken by a vicious blizzard that harbors an ominous presence. Challenged to stop an alien force, the friends must first prevent the slaughter of innocent civilians by a military vigilante ... and then overcome a threat to the bond that unites the four of them.

A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints

Dito Montiel, a successful author, receives a call from his long-suffering mother, asking him to return home and visit his ailing father. Dito recalls his childhood growing up in a violent neighborhood in Queens, N.Y., with friends Antonio, Giuseppe, Nerf and Mike.

Postcard (Or, from afar, you are a mirage)

"The palm trees on the reverse are a delusion; so is the pink sand". This line, taken from a poem by Margaret Atwood, lights the path traced in "Postcard". As the years go by, landscapes transform, take on new meanings, and hold onto joys that will never be regained. The sea and the beach, once stages of happy summers, romances, and encounters, will turn into concentration camps or centers of detention and torture. This occurs across different times and places. In this piece, I embark on a journey through some of my works that explore the relationship between testimony, spaces, and time, engaging in dialogue with the beautiful film directed by Alejandro Segovia in 1972.

Homemade

Homemade is the cinematic and profoundly intimate five-year journey with decorated Force Reconnaissance Marine, Adam Sorensen, and his wife, Victoria, as they navigate marriage and the effects of Post Traumatic Stress, Traumatic Brain Injury, and addiction.

Visitor Q

In a dysfunctional family where the mother is a heroin addict and prostitute, beaten by her son, and the father is an ex-TV reporter, sleeping with his daughter and filming his son being beaten up, ‘Q’, a complete stranger enters the bizarre family, changing their lives for the better, finding a balance in their disturbing natures.

Et Minde

Plot unavailable

Hannah and Her Sisters

Between two Thanksgivings, Hannah's husband falls in love with her sister Lee, while her hypochondriac ex-husband rekindles his relationship with her sister Holly.

Risky Business

A teenage girl accuses her primary schoolteacher, Jean Doucet (Jacques Brel), of trying to rape her. The police and the mayor investigate, but Doucet denies the charges. Two other students come forward to reveal more of Doucet's misconduct – one confessing to be his mistress. Doucet faces trial and hard labor if convicted.

Silence and Sunset

Contemplative and almost without dialogues, the film shows the routine of inhabitants in a city: a young woman who lives alone; an eldery that lives in the street, next to the river; a police officer; customers in a bar; two students. Little by little, through flashbacks, the plot connects these characters.

Throat Song

In a small town in the Canadian Arctic, Ippik, a young Inuit woman, suffers in an abusive relationship. She starts to heal when she connects with other victims of violence and finds her voice.

Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom

Four corrupted fascist libertines round up 9 teenage boys and girls and subject them to 120 days of sadistic physical, mental and sexual torture.

Baghead

Four actors go to a cabin in the woods to write, direct, and act in a film that will jump-start their careers. Their idea is a horror film about a man with a bag over his head, but what happens when that man mysteriously shows up?

Martyrs

A young woman’s quest for revenge against the people who kidnapped and tortured her as a child leads her and her best friend, also a victim of child abuse, on a terrifying journey into a living hell of depravity.

Rabbit-Proof Fence

In 1931, three Aboriginal girls escape after being plucked from their homes to be trained as domestic staff, and set off on a trek across the Outback.

Brubaker

The new warden of a small prison farm in Arkansas tries to clean it up of corruption after initially posing as an inmate.

The Piano Teacher

Erika Kohut, a sexually repressed piano teacher living with her domineering mother, meets a young man who starts romantically pursuing her.

Mirror

A dying man in his forties recalls his childhood, his mother, the war and personal moments that tell of and juxtapose pivotal moments in Soviet history with daily life.

Submission

A well-respected professor who is a celebrated novelist and loving husband loses himself when he becomes obsessed with an ambitious and talented student.

Live Flesh

When Victor attempts to seduce Elena, all he gets for his trouble is a one-way, six-year ticket to prison, where he concentrates on strengthening his mind, his body... and his desire for vengeance on the man who put him there. After his release and still madly in love with her, Victor will stop at nothing to win her over even if means revenge, for Elena has married David, the cop who sent him to prison!

Once Upon a Time in America

A former Prohibition-era Jewish gangster returns to the Lower East Side of Manhattan over thirty years later, where he once again must confront the ghosts and regrets of his old life.

Mystic River

The lives of three men who were childhood friends are shattered when one of them suffers a family tragedy.

The Green Mile

A supernatural tale set on death row in a Southern prison, where gentle giant John Coffey possesses the mysterious power to heal people's ailments. When the cell block's head guard, Paul Edgecomb, recognizes Coffey's miraculous gift, he tries desperately to help stave off the condemned man's execution.

Monster

An emotionally scarred highway drifter shoots a sadistic trick who rapes her, and ultimately becomes America's first female serial killer.

Marnie

Marnie is a thief, a liar, and a cheat. When her new boss, Mark Rutland, catches on to her routine kleptomania, she finds herself being blackmailed.

To Be

Juana, Mar, and Eduardo tell their stories of abuse.

Yesterday and Tomorrow

Horacio reunites with his father and together remember the past.

2:37

At 2:37, someone commits suicide in the school lavatory. The day is told up to that point from the viewpoint of six different students.

Solo mía

A women meets a charming man and falls in love, they get married and start a family. As they age and have children, the man's becomes violent and abusive.

Capturing the Friedmans

An Oscar nominated documentary about a middle-class American family who is torn apart when the father Arnold and son Jesse are accused of sexually abusing numerous children. Director Jarecki interviews people from different sides of this tragic story and raises the question of whether they were rightfully tried when they claim they were innocent and there was never any evidence against them.

Enough

Working-class waitress Slim thought she was entering a life of domestic bliss when she married Mitch, the man of her dreams. After the arrival of their first child, her picture perfect life is shattered when she discovers Mitch's hidden possessive dark side, a controlling and abusive alter ego that can turn trust, love and tranquility into terror. Terrified for her child's safety, Slim flees with her daughter. Relentless in his pursuit and enlisting the aid of lethal henchmen, Mitch continually stalks the prey that was once his family.

Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood

A mother and daughter dispute is resolved by the "Yaya sisterhood" - long time friends of the mother.

Stop Playing

A child's imagination clashes with his strict mother.

Coche

David has to share his room with a stranger, although he is not so fond of the idea.

Lily

Lily, a little girl, prepares a party for her father while she is in the care of her cousin Teo, who completes her idea of family.

The Tree of Life

The impressionistic story of a Texas family in the 1950s. The film follows the life journey of the eldest son, Jack, through the innocence of childhood to his disillusioned adult years as he tries to reconcile a complicated relationship with his father. Jack finds himself a lost soul in the modern world, seeking answers to the origins and meaning of life while questioning the existence of faith.

Swallow

Hunter, a newly pregnant housewife, finds herself increasingly compelled to consume dangerous objects. As her husband and his family tighten their control over her life, she must confront the dark secret behind her new obsession.