Gene (1977)

Muriel's Wedding

Socially awkward Muriel Heslop wants nothing more than to get married. Unfortunately, due to her oppressive politician father, Muriel has never even been on a date. Ostracized by her more socially adept friends, Muriel runs into fellow outcast Rhonda Epinstalk, and the two move from their small Australian town to the big city of Sydney, where Muriel changes her name and begins the arduous task of redesigning her life to match her fantasies.

Popular Music

Matti and Niila, growing up in the mid-sixties in the harsh and conservative environment of a Finnish-speaking part of Tornedalen in Swedish Laponia, close to the Finnish border. Their big dream is to become rock stars. In the present the now grown-up Matti feels guilt for the death of his drug-addicted rock star friend Niila.

Pi

A mathematical genius discovers a link between numbers and reality, and thus believes he can predict the future.

Taxi Driver

Suffering from insomnia, disturbed loner Travis Bickle takes a job as a New York City cabbie, haunting the streets nightly, growing increasingly detached from reality as he dreams of cleaning up the filthy city.

Human Traffic

For Jip, Lulu, Koop, Nina and Moff, the dead-end jobs they endure during the week just kill the time until Friday night. That's when they cut very loose and get on the rollercoaster ride that takes them right through to Monday morning.

The Idol

A rebellious student embarks on an affair with the mother of his best friend, leading to disastrous consequences.

The Class

Teacher and novelist François Bégaudeau plays a version of himself as he negotiates a year with his racially mixed students from a tough Parisian neighborhood.

The Savages

A sister and brother face the realities of familial responsibility as they begin to care for their ailing father.

Cashback

After a painful breakup, Ben develops insomnia. To kill time, he starts working the late night shift at the local supermarket, where his artistic imagination runs wild.

Darling

Eva is beautiful, irresponsible, self-absorbed and emotionally disconnected. Her life is all about the right clothes, the right people and the right places. Her life is turned upside down when she loses her job and alienates her friends by cheating on her boyfriend. She soon finds herself among "common" people where she makes a surprising new acquaintance.

Naked

An unemployed Brit vents his rage on unsuspecting strangers as he embarks on a nocturnal London odyssey.

Over the Edge

A group of bored teenagers rebel against authority in the community of New Granada.

The Cat

Julien Bouin, a former typographist, and his wife Clemence, who used to perform in a circus, hardly talk to each other in their small house, soon to be demolished. His cat Greffier being the only one he still gives affection to, he becomes the object of Clemence's anger.

L'Eclisse

This romantic drama by Michelangelo Antonioni follows the love life of Vittoria, a beautiful literary translator living in Rome. After splitting from her writer boyfriend, Riccardo, Vittoria meets Piero, a lively stockbroker, on the hectic floor of the Roman stock exchange. Though Vittoria and Piero begin a relationship, it is not one without difficulties, and their commitment to one another is tested during an eclipse.

You, the Living

In the Swedish city of Lethe, people from different walks of life take part in a series of short, deadpan vignettes that rush past. Some are just seconds long, none longer than a couple of minutes. A young woman remembers a fantasy honeymoon with a rock guitarist. A man awakes from a dream about bomber planes. A businessman boasts about success while being robbed by a pickpocket, and so on. The absurdist collection is accompanied by Dixieland jazz and similar music.

Flight of the Swan

A young girl leaves her Nigerian village to attend a ballet school in England. Fascinated by Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake, she dreams of performing as lead ballerina Princess Odette, but the girls in her close-minded ballet school mock her ideas of a 'black swan'.

Le réfrigérateur

Two different but strangely complementary young women living together are pictured in a fragmented and non-linear narrative about incommunicability and alienation.

The Life of Jesus

Twenty-something Freddy is becalmed in a podunk French village where the only sign of life is the local amateur brass band and youth aimlessly roaming around the countryside on scooters. He has an intense sexual connection with his girlfriend but has no joy or passion to give her. When she falls for a handsome Arab youth a tragedy unfolds.

Full Moon in Paris

Feeling suffocated by a possessive boyfriend, work and suburban life, a young woman starts spending the weekends in her Paris apartment in order to reclaim some of her lost freedom.

No Man of Her Own

An on-the-lam New York card shark marries a small-town librarian who thinks he's a businessman.

PLEH

An experimental journey through a year in the life of the director, using his always playing playlist to cross the boundaries of fiction and documentary. Through scenes of both comedy and tragedy, realistic documentary footage and experimental sequences of the director's environment and daily life we get a sometimes estranging image of a young man and also an intriguing insight in his mindset and how this translates to the imagery on screen.

Aliens

A young woman arrives in a city for the first time. She observes the people around her and realizes that she does not belong to that world, everything is alien to her. Even so, she tries to pretend to be one of them, to fit into this strange place.

Dangerous Liaisons

In 18th century France, Marquise de Merteuil asks her ex-lover Vicomte de Valmont to seduce the future wife of another ex-lover of hers in return for one last night with her. Yet things don’t go as planned.

Martian Child

A recently-widowed science fiction writer considers whether to adopt a hyper-imaginative 6-year-old abandoned and socially-rejected boy who says he's really from Mars.

The Seventh Continent

Chronicles three years of a middle-class family seemingly caught up in their daily routines, troubled only by minor incidents. Behind their apparent calm and repetitive existence, however, they're planning something much more sinister.

Despair

Berlin, 1930, during the rise of Nazism. Hermann Hermann, a Russian emigrant and chocolate manufacturer, married to the capricious Lydia, loses his temper more and more every day when dealing with his workers and other businessmen; until he meets Felix, a vagrant, who seems to be physically identical to him; a disconcerting fact that leads Hermann Hermann to plot a particular way out of a fake world he actually hates.

Radiofreccia

April 24, 1993: it's the last broadcast of Radiofreccia, an independent radio station closing after 18 years, barely one minute before coming of age. Bruno, one of its founders, begins to tell its story, the story of a group of friends—especially troubled Freccia's—and a period of their youth in their small hometown.

Sister My Sister

A true story of shocking violence catapults a picturesque little town into history. The close sibling relationship between the two maids takes on a new dimension as their overbearing employer discovers a sexual fever between the two sisters.

Yannick

In the middle of a performance of the play "Le Cocu", a bad boulevard comedy at a Parisian theatre, Yannick gets up and interrupts the show to take the evening back in hand.

Lollygag

A woman recounts her sensual yet macabre childhood memory about the boy next door.

Fists in the Pocket

A deeply disturbed and epileptic young man benignly decides to murder other members of his dysfunctional family for altruistic reasons.

CANCER

Plot unavailable

Labow or: Yet Another Engineering Student's Short Film

A bored engineering student thinks too much, tries a cigarette, and almost falls in love. A film about what happens when thought runs dry and emotion, uninvited, takes its place.

Quarantine

The main character of the film writes a diary. For over 20 years he has lived in a bunker and has not ventured outside. His only companions are ghosts of the past. He tries to find an explanation for the fateful course of events, which has destroyed the whole earth. The feeling of guilt does not leave him, as he believes that he could have prevented the apocalypse and the death of his beloved.

Drimage

Mike lives in New York. Every day he walks in the streets and what he sees mixes with his thoughts, while his dreams blur with the mirages of the society of images. In such a large city it may be difficult to find a balance between the words and the noises around. Suddenly, Mike realizes what he wants: to go away, as far as he can.

Belle

Mathieu Grégoire is an esteemed author who lives in Spa with his wife and daughter and leads a carefully structured life. One day, while out in the desolate landscape of the High Fens he meets a mysterious woman whom he calls 'Belle'. An obsessive passion is kindled in Mathieu and in a short space of time he loses all control over his existence.

Play It as It Lays

Burned-out B-movie actress Maria, depressed and frustrated with her loveless marriage to an ambitious film director, Carter Lang, who would rather work on his career than on his relationship with her, numbs herself with drugs and sex with strangers. Only her friendship with a sensitive gay movie producer, B.Z., offers a semblance of solace. But even that relationship proves to be fleeting amidst the empty decadence of Hollywood.

The Librarian

About how the social environment affects Mazhar's consciousness/inner world and his effort to get rid of the stuckness he is in.

Deserted by the Masses

Social media corrupts the mind of a young University student--but can he escape the psychological torment of alienation?

Desperate Characters

Sophie and Otto Bentwood are a middle-aged, middle class, childless Brooklyn Heights couple trapped in a loveless marriage. He is an attorney, she a translator of books. Their existence is affected not only by their disintegrating relationship but by the threats of urban crime and vandalism that surround them everywhere they turn, leaving them feeling paranoid, scared, and desperately helpless.

Good News

A disaffected media executive spends his days watching violent programming on the television screens in his office and his evenings neglecting his frustrated wife at home. The monotonicity is disturbed when he is contacted by an old friend who confides in him he is being threatened by mysterious assassins.

Phantom Love

A surreal drama about an alienated family set in Koreatown, Los Angeles and Rishikesh, India.

Street Without End

Mikio Naruse’s final silent film is a gloriously rich portrait of a waitress, Sugiko, whose life, despite a host of male admirers and even some intrigued movie talent scouts, ends up taking a suffocatingly domestic turn after a wealthy businessman accidentally hits her with his car.

Tokyo Stray Girls

A timid young woman who lives with her domineering mother accepts an Adult Video scout's offer to "become somebody else" by performing in porn videos. As she rises in popularity, the boundaries between her two lives begin to disintegrate.

WALKA!

France: 2020s. Piotr, a young Polish immigrant stuck in a string of odd jobs, crosses paths with Stefano, a burly mover. Little did Piotr know, this encounter would soon draw him into the eerie world of nighttime fighting.

Other People

David, a struggling comedy writer fresh off from breaking up with his boyfriend, moves from New York City to Sacramento to help his sick mother. Living with his conservative father and much-younger sisters for the first time in ten years, he feels like a stranger in his childhood home. As his mother’s health declines, David frantically tries to extract meaning from this horrible experience and convince everyone (including himself) that he's "doing okay.”

Mermaids

In Corsica, four girlfriends share the last days of an endless summer. It's hot, too hot to do anything. While they share their secrets, Camille, the youngest of them, says she's pregnant.

The Return of the Prodigal Son

Engineer Jan Sebek (Jan Kacer) is undergoing treatment in a mental home after his unsuccessful attempt to commit suicide. His therapist, via discussions both with the patient and with people who know him, tries to find out what made the young and seemingly satisfied man decide to end his own life. Jan's pretty wife Jana (Jana Brejchová) claims not to know about anything but she is conducting an affair with a family friend, almost publicly and with the blessing of her parents.

The Immaculate Room

Mike and Kate, a young couple, get the once-in-a lifetime chance to win a cool five million dollars. The challenge: Live for 50 days in a blank space. Sticking it out for thirty days, and the five million are theirs. How difficult can it be?

Año cero

"Año cero" is about the well-educated, well-to-do middle-class man, Miguel who loses his job. Now he finds himself without direction, credentials or long-term relationships.

to Crinkle their Wrist, Perfumed Splendour

An omnium-gatherum of film, poem, and song excerpts contextually juxtaposed in an attempt to explore masculinity, alienation, and identity in a post-industrial society.

A Touch of Sin

Four independent stories set in modern China about random acts of violence.

Rubber Duckie

Rubber Duckie is the story of Jesse and Daniel, who on a blazing summer afternoon, are consumed with boredom and push their own limits and boundaries. This leaves us begging the question; is it simple boredom or insatiable innate appetite for more?

You're Not Gay, Right?

A gay office worker feels alienated due to being straight-passing and not fitting in with his peers. He dreams of a better environment and is outed, leading to a mysterious change in community.

Thus Began Antoine's Down-Going

Antoine - a grieving loner - spends his days in a cafe on Place Clichy watching people. Every day, he sees a woman he calls Albertine get out of the subway and go to the movies. Today, he takes it upon himself to talk to her. Thus began Antoine's down-going.

The Girl from the Wardrobe

This is the story of three characters (brothers Tomek and Jacek and their neighbor Magda), each of them is in their own way lonely and alienated. The title character makes herself secluded. Tomek's alienation results from his neurological disease, and Jacek contacts the world mainly via the Internet. This is also a film about love. Love of one brother to the other and of one alienated human being to the other. All together it creates a very universal picture with a Polish entourage.

Someone's Gaze

Aya Okamura has been working for two years and has begun living on her own for a job opportunity. With her mother working overseas as a doctor, her father is now living alone with the family's longtime pet cat Mii-san. One night, Aya returns from a long day at work, and as she rests on her bed, she reminiscences about the times the family had together. She remembers the sadness she felt when her mom went overseas, and the solace she felt when her father brought home Mii-san to give her comfort. Then, she receives a phone call.

Still Life

A railway crossing guard and his wife live in a routine of total isolation and uneventfulness.

Belgian Bob

A satire about an alien who lands in Belgium and tries to attain citizenship. During the integration programme he experiences discrimination and unfairness whilst he just wants to fit in with the rest.

Adolescent Window

While their girlfriend is on a trip, Harrison reminisces on his old apartment's bedroom window, one much higher up than his current one.