A Little Burden (2021)

Unseen

Unseen explores racial fetishisation and micro-aggressions through the eyes of Lien, a young woman who hopes for more than society is willing to offer her.

La Jetée

A man confronts his past during an experiment that attempts to find a solution to the problems of a post-apocalyptic world caused by a world war.

Janjaal

A fisherman survives a deadly boat incident with a mysterious golden pocket watch that grants wishes, but at a steep cost. As a police officer seeks to revive his son, he discovers the dark power of the watch, leading to devastating consequences.

The Yellow Island

11-year-old Ena meets a young fisherman in a port. He gives her an eel and they arrange to meet the following Sunday on the other side of the lake. She has to be there.

Vito-Man

Vito is a sweet little boy with Down syndrome, and this short documentary puts his energetic, jolly personality on full display as he interacts with his loving family. By showing Vito’s dignity and inherent value, Vito-Man tackles the difficult conversation that is the eradication of people with Down syndrome, proving that an extra chromosome should not be a death sentence.

The Simple Things

Penelope is a civil servant who lives with her mother, who has Alzheimer's. One day she meets Ulises, a poor old man who has lost his memory and his identity papers. She convinces him that he is her father and he must come home to take care of his wife.

Capture the Heart of That Day

It's the year 20XX, and the latest technologies are protecting the nature of rural towns. The main character, Ruuto, and Michi, are childhood friends. But during the second year of junior high, as Michi moves to an urban area, the two drift apart. Ruuto doesn't want Michi to forget him. Michi doesn't want to show her weak side. The two friends go their separate ways. Mobility services transcend space and time and connect their hearts.

In The Woods We Can Be Together

Under the scalding heat of the summer sun, two young men find shelter in the woods of a local park. Unbeknownst to them, they’re thrust into a summer of exploration, emotion, and romance. But is love enough?

When We Met

In the summer of 2012 in a small town in the south of China, divorced shopkeeper Peng Yun makes the acquaintance of Ji Qing Qing who sells meat skewers from her rickshaw.

9th Floor to the Right

One evening, in his apartment in Paris, Lorenzo is getting ready to receive Marvin for the first time, a boy he really likes. Marvin shows up at the door with Thomas, a homeless man he met on the street in need of a shower. Lorenzo doesn’t dare say no.

Late for Break Time

During a football training, two friends celebrate a goal effusively, which causes an unexpected reaction in one of them.

Arrival

This traditionally animated film tells the journey of how a young boy's personal discovery affects the long-distance relationship he keeps with his mother.

By the Sea Where We Played

A short story about a boy who is honest and courageous despite being paralyzed.

Kind Mother

An estranged mother arrives at the silent retreat that her daughter is attending. When the two women engage in an unusual - and fantastical - power struggle, limits are tested, generational trauma is brought to light, and together they must grapple with mortality and forgiveness.

The Red Kiss

Passion brews quietly between Qian and Vicky, as they rehearse for the school anniversary drama performance in their form 5 summer holiday. The two girls gradually lose in their exquisite tension and growing intimacy. Right before the new school year begins, the kissing plot is exposed and their show is banned. Yet, it unfolds Qian’s courage that she decides to make a bold move on the first school day.

Cirque du Soleil: Journey of Man

A child is born. We see underwater swimmers representing this. He is young, in a jungle setting, with two fanciful "instincts" guiding him as swooping bird-like acrobats initially menace, then delight. As an adolescent, he enters a desert, where a man spins a large cube of metal tubing. He leaves his instinct-guides behind, and enters a garden where two statues dance in a pond. As he watches their sensual acrobatics of love, he becomes a man. He is offered wealth (represented by a golden hat) by a devil figure. In a richly decorated room, a scruffy troupe of a dozen acrobats and a little girl reawaken the old man's youthful nature and love.

BEE, My Friend

Zhi Xuan is a new teacher at her alma mater. One day, her troubled student, Zhe Yu commits a misdemeanour which reminds her of a past mistake. Zhi Xuan is determined to help her student solve his family problems, and also seeking redemption for herself.

Light

Haunted by trauma and trapped in sex work, Light meets Shuo, an undercover cop who offers him shelter. But healing isn’t easy—can Light choose a new path?

The Dreams Of Lonely People

After twenty years in prison, a man returns to his homeland to wait for death in peace. His world is completely changed when he accidentally meets a character from the magical world of nature.

Liyoki

Liyoki, a silverback gorilla, lives peacefully with his family, when they are attacked by poachers.

Stockholm Daybreak

At the break of dawn, teenagers Axel and Love are on the way home after a night out partying. As the sun rises, they start to see each other in a whole new light... Elin Övergaard's remarkably tender portrait of the struggle to say what you mean to the person you care for the most packs a considerable emotive punch in only just a few minutes.

Gaze in Silence

Yun Fei’s twisted curiosity turns critical when Yan Xin’s life is threatened. Will he stay in the shadows—or act?

The Line

On an ordinary day, Yoon-jin(26) finds Ji-hoon(14) crouching down on a stair in the hallway in front of her house.

Mac-boogie

Hyo-seon is diagnosed early menopause, and his son Jinsu calls for a MacBook. One old cow that would be the money in the house.

The Summer House

A young girl flees to France to forget her boyfriend; first his letters pursue her, then he himself follows her there. During a party to celebrate the moon landing she takes her own small step...

Reckless

An uncompromising and controversial short set in the Scandinavian suburbia on the hottest day of the summer. A sister reluctantly babysits her little brother. Two young boys catch her attention, and she makes a crucial decision.

Cowboy and Indian

When a young Bengali bride collapses in the desert, a cowboy appears out of the sunset and rescues her.

A Regular Thing

Love has a price in this quirky sex comedy. Sten is a 30- year-old librarian. Over a book he meets supersexy Katja, the woman of his dreams, and they soon end up in bed together. It's love at first sight, but the next thing he knows, Katja wants money every time they make love. Otherwise their relationship will become trivial, she says. Reluctantly Sten agrees, but then Katja puts up the price.

The Idyll

A modern adaptation of Guy de Maupassant's short story about a man and a woman sharing an unexpected encounter on a train as it travels through a beautiful and surreal landscape.

Islands

A sexual reverie unfolds over the course of one ethereal night. Characters wander through an erotic maze of love and lust, blurring the lines between wet dream and lucid nightmare as a macabre, erotic stage performance sends a ripple of lustful desires through its audience and performers.

Bad Bunny

Wayward boy punishes his mother’s lover. Beauty and horror fondle each other. Young gods callously abjure conventional morality. Death goes whoring in child’s guise.

Other Black Boys

A queer, black college student is forced to confront the masks he wears in his relationships.

My First Suit

14-year old Steve is caught between creatures he does not fully understand: two parents with very different ideas about the suit he should wear to his first school dance. Meanwhile everywhere he seems to look, images of men are taking control of his imagination. In Stewart Main's comical coming of age story Steve escapes his parents' good wishes, to discover his true desires. They aren't quite what his no-nonsense father had in mind.

Triptych on Matter and Death

A young woman, injured and alone, desperately seeks refuge in an empty house before finding an abandoned train car. Haunted by surreal visions, she repeatedly collapses. At dawn, her motionless form draws the curiosity of local children, leaving her fate uncertain.

A Chiara

Chiara feels that there is something wrong. She has a strange feeling she cannot explain to her mother or sister. During the night, after overhearing a heated argument between her parents and witnessing something shocking, her world is overturned and her safety net crumbles. Reality and dreams start to blur and Chiara’s life will never be the same.

The Room

Mariana must sacrifice her dog Frida after violently beating it for having destroyed her recently deceased son's toys. The pet's death helps Mariana accept and overcome the loss of her son.

Debut

Ivan has just scored a goal and rushes to kiss Marko.

Don't be late, Myra

Ten-year old Myra is forced to walk home alone, dodging men harassing her on the streets of Lahore. Soon things escalate in this thriller where a sinister turn quietly awaits her.

Dilution

Dilution is an experimental short film that explores the transit between resistance and (di)ssolution, between holding and releasing and a path towards obsessive repetition. They are layers, exposed pores, matter that oscillates between remaining or disappearing. The sound is not a background, but a puncture: friction, tearing, water that drags what still persists. A sensorial testimony of what refuses to vanish completely.

Goldfish

Two couples, in the same room, try to keep it together. The human couple fare differently to the pair of Goldfish in their fish tank. An artful piece exploring choice in life and love. The humour is derived from the wistful musings, in Cantonese, of the male fish and narrator.

Sugar Glass Bottle

Near-future Tokyo. Kou, through the help of his high school best friend, finds a surprising way to express his mounting frustration at the insidious forces of commercialism that are forcing out the neighbors he cares most about. Initially inspired by a prank that the writer-director Neo Sora (The Chicken, 2020) had pulled on him in his childhood, a sense of warm nostalgia and cold, material reality intermingle to tell a tale set in the not-so-distant future about disappearing spaces and the forces of policing and gentrification that drills this process forward.

I Can Just Imagine

Paulo seems to lose himself in the life of others: at the age of 30, he is still closely attached to his protective mother and silent father; to his cold and domineering boyfriend Luis; to the lives of unknown men; to his female roles at the cabaret; and to the songs of Shirley Bassey.