The Last Straw (2023)

Talking To My Mother

A young Asian American man struggles for both personal happiness and the love of his mother.

Antoine and Colette

Now aged 17, Antoine Doinel works in a factory which makes records. At a music concert, he meets a girl his own age, Colette, and falls in love with her. Later, Antoine goes to extraordinary lengths to please his new girlfriend and her parents, but Colette still only regards him as a casual friend. First segment of “Love at Twenty” (1962).

Lucky Fares

One of the Three Kings and Santa Claus spend Christmas in jail, talking about what their future will be like in a world like this.

Beyond Silence

Two women, two generations, same trauma. One has been silent for over thirty years, the other 'only' for a year and a half. Where one decides to remain silent after a confrontation, the other finds the courage to break the silence.

Shannon Amen

Shannon Amen unearths the passionate and pained expressions of a young woman overwhelmed by guilt and anxiety as she struggles to reconcile her sexual identity with her religious faith. A loving elegy to a friend lost to suicide.

I, Chinese

An influencer famous for his racist Chinese impressions faces consequences when his family gets involved.

Frogs

It’s dripping through the ceiling, the space for sleeping is scarce. Under poor living conditions, a young mother handles everyday life with her two daughters in the Brazilian suburb as best she can. When they unexpectedly acquire a load of frog legs, this gives rise to a celebration that will not soon be forgotten.

Footing

One winter morning, a father and his son go for a jog. Along the way, we understand that a gap has grown between Marco, a Parisian who has come to spend a few days in the countryside, and Jean-Claude, a retired policeman who doesn't talk much. Their love is present, but barriers and modesty hold them back from expressing it.

Blind Rain

A poetic story about the first love of boy Sanya to girl Lena.

Visions of Europe

Twenty-five films from twenty-five European countries by twenty-five European directors.

Laurita

Laura and her mother are spending their vacation on the seashore, in Sao Paulo, at a middle-class beach house. Laura's adolescent body is changing but not in harmony with her coming of age. She's less bothered by that than the situation the two of them find themselves in.

Dedication

A young maid enlists supernatural help in order to escape her past.

Kieselchen

A pretty mouse, gray as a pebble, comes into money, builds herself a cabbage house and looks around for a man. As she likes to sing herself, she wants him to have a nice voice. She doesn't like sheep, frog and rooster, so she gives her favor to a tomcat. One day, when he gets to lick her blood, his appetite overcomes him. She manages to escape - and they have lived in enmity ever since.

Cornet at Night

Based on a short story by Sinclair Ross, this short film recalls rural life on the Prairies in the 1930s. In the film a farmer's young son, sent to town to hire a man for the harvest, readily accepts when an itinerant trumpet player, down on his luck, begs a chance. He is hardly the kind of man the boy's father had in mind, but that night his trumpet speaks from the shadows and everyone pauses to listen.

Lollygag

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

Michelle

Plot unavailable

Cremaster 5

Cremaster 5 is a five-act opera (sung in Hungarian) set in late-ninteenth century Budapest. The last film in the series, Cremaster 5 represents the moment when the testicles are finally released and sexual differentiation is fully attained. The lamenting tone of the opera suggests that Barney invisions this as a moment of tragedy and loss. The primary character is the Queen of Chain (played by Ursula Andress). Barney, himself, plays three characters who appear in the mind of the Queen: her Diva, Magician, and Giant. The Magician is a stand-in for Harry Houdini, who was born in Budapest in 1874 and appears as a recurring character in the Cremaster cycle.

Latidos Ebrios

Carolina needs a heart transplant. Everything seems to have gone well, but Dr. García will discover that the alcoholism suffered by the patient who donated the heart has been transferred to the new patient.

Wren Boys

On the day after Christmas, a Catholic priest from Cork drives his nephew to prison.

egress

two college seniors coincidentally reunite at a party after drifting apart freshman year. unrealized anxieties, impulsive decisions and one particularly potent joint...

Firsts

On the eve of Chinese New Year, Steven, a closeted Chinese international student living in New Zealand oppressed by the expectations of his parents, plans to lose his virginity to a stranger that he meets online.

Towards the Sun

Lennart is bullied at school until the beautiful Julia moves in next door. She teaches him how to fight back, but what will happen when Julia's dark past come between them?

Boomerang

Paul is facing the hard feeling of being abandoned by the person he loves. But is his fear really justified or is it just the echo of a past wound?

The Plague

Rosa's father escapes from a nursing home and comes back to his former house. He hides a secret, and he's not coming alone.

Ends

A bickering mother and father take their daughter to visit her estranged grandmother. Isolated, the grandmother has grown ill; suffering from a worsening paranoia of imminent alien invasion. The young girl and the grandmother form a bond as the parent's fight about how best to handle the situation.

Hot Nasty Teen

A young teenage girl is being filmed through a simple video camera. She is being told to dance by an older man. Two months later they are traveling together by car through small town Sweden. She wants to go home but he insists that they should go on. After all, they have a few more friends to visit. Hot Nasty Teen depicts a seemingly well-known Sweden. But underneath the ordinary surface it simmers from suppressed desires and oppression. Hot Nasty Teen brings a new and daring perspective to male exercise of power and sexual abuse. The cast consists of some of Sweden's most well-known actors.

The Little Match Girl

An impoverished girl tries to sell matches on NYE. Shivering with cold and unable to sell her wares, she sits in a sheltered nook. Striking a match to keep warm, she sees things in the flame.

Ripple

Rae Ripple, a welder from the outskirts of West Texas transforms neglected metal into works of art and in the process finds healing from her traumatic past.

Do Me a Favor

On a late night, two lonely and disgruntled individuals cross paths in downtown Tallahassee and create an unlikely friendship.

The Universe

In a last-ditch effort to save earth, a man sacrifices himself and is forced to relive a series of suppressed memories that become smeared by the detonation of a stellar bomb. This paranormal explosion of thoughts begin to blur the lines between reality and fiction; the only way out is forward.

On My Way

Winter storm’s night. In his last breaths of life, Jules (35 y/o) imagines himself at home, taking one last look at his daughter. As he gaze around, he notices Sara (9 y/o) is immersed in reading a comic book. Jules feels that he doesn’t have much time left. He knows this moment with Sara will be his last, and it will be short. Too short. But all he wants, is to take his time.

Susanna

In an isolated religious community, the desperation of a pregnant woman to escape her abusive domestic condition leads her to enlist a male friend to accuse her of infidelity. She hopes being falsely charged by a man will be taken as truth in the trial of the Elders. To find her guilty of this crime would mean excommunication into the vast unknown outside their gates. A risk Susanna is willing to take in order to be free.

Home Shopper

In a loveless marriage, Penny finds solace in the hypnotic escape of the home shopping channel. When things take an unexpected turn with her husband, the channel proves to be her saving grace... or was it the problem all along?

Broken

Jani Budi, 60s, after serving a sentence, was released from prison in Ancona and embarks on a ship to return to his country of origin, Albania. Arriving in Tirana he discovers the shocking truth: his wife died shortly after his arrest, and his son, Andi, has become politically corrupt. The film is a combination of drama and comedy that scans Albania today and human relations.

Neon Lights

In 2053, amidst a devastating pandemic, an old gravedigger from Elementar Corporation insists on burying his wife with just a shovel, rejecting the corporation's new burial technology, the "Cube Of Miracles." Conflict arises when a young gravedigger armed with the "Cube of Miracles" challenges the old gravedigger's traditional methods at the cemetery. The film explores the clash between tradition and innovation, delving into broader themes of man versus machine in a society grappling with AI and automation.

Bosco's Guitar

The true story of Bosco, a young musician orphaned and blinded by the 1993 Burundian genocide, is taken in by a member of the tribe he believes is responsible for the death of his mother. Bosco is forced to choose between hatred and hope.

For People in Trouble

When two people meet one night in London, their relationship blossoms and fractures, intertwined with impending societal collapse.

Divebomb

With his career in jeopardy a journalist begins to question the nature of his friendship with a senior journalist.

The Silent Child

A deaf 4-year-old girl named Libby lives in a world of silence until a caring social worker teaches her to use sign language to communicate.

Grenadine

How do three brothers change when their parents inexplicably disappear?

Anthony

Christmas Eve. An enormous explosion tears through Lapland. Santa and his elf, Anthony, have crash-landed in the middle of nowhere on their busiest night.

Chato

When a fatherless 12-year-old boy attempts to put an end to his abuse from his brotherly neighbor, he's later confronted by his own mother about her suspicion next door, and he must quickly decide who he's willing to protect at the end.

Far Away Places

A boy from Los Angeles travels to Tahiti, French Polynesia to visit his relatives only to find out his younger cousin is being abused by one of the locals.

He

A story told in four parts, "He" explores the swell of poetic love and the breathless aftermath of its heartache.

Otava

An adolescent girl tries to dream about memories of Mother while having to be physically present in the surrounding farm with grandmother.

Peaches

June 2010. 11 years old Julia and Raphaëlle are the best at killing time together. Between walking their blind neighbor’s dogs and finishing their music video before Raph returns to Romania, they unconsciously grow apart. This nostalgic semi-autobiographical story recounts the last moments of the inevitable and awkward summer between childhood and adolescence.

Mother

An everyday conversation between Marta and her mother turns into a tragic race against the clock when Marta receives a phone call from Iván, her six-year-old son, who is on holiday in France with his father.