APOTHEOSIS 85 (2025)

Solidarność: How Solidarity Changed Europe

Gdańsk, Poland, September 1980. Lech Wałęsa and other Lenin shipyard workers found Solidarność (Solidarity), the first independent trade union behind the Iron Curtain. The long and hard battle to bring down communist dictatorship has begun.

Basquiat

The brief life of Jean Michel Basquiat, a world renowned New York street artist struggling with fame, drugs and his identity.

The Experiment

20 volunteers agree to take part in a seemingly well-paid experiment advertised by the university. It is supposed to be about aggressive behavior in an artificial prison situation. A journalist senses a story behind the ad and smuggles himself in among the test subjects. They are randomly divided into prisoners and guards. What seems like a game at the beginning soon turns into bloody seriousness.

Silent Hill

Rose, a desperate mother takes her adopted daughter, Sharon, to the town of Silent Hill in an attempt to cure her of her ailment. After a violent car crash, Sharon disappears and Rose begins a desperate search to get her back. She descends into the center of the twisted reality of a town's terrible secret. Pursued by grotesquely deformed creatures and townspeople stuck in permanent purgatory, Rose begins to uncover the truth behind the apocalyptic disaster that burned the town 30 years earlier.

The Passion of the Christ

A graphic portrayal of the last twelve hours of Jesus of Nazareth's life.

Wolves, Pigs & Men

Sabu and his pals hold a pauper's funeral for Sabu's mother. His brother Jiro arrives home, fresh out of jail, and Sabu pointedly states that Jiro is not invited. Jiro meanwhile is planning a big job - steal 40 million in cash and drugs, and he invites Sabu and gang to act as decoys, for 50,000 each. The sting is a success, but the double-crossing starts almost immediately. Sabu discovers how little of the take they were promised and hides the stash. Jiro and his slimy partner pressure the kids to fess up. Meanwhile, their respectable elder brother Ichiro is being leaned on by the town's big boss, whose money it was.

Five Fingers

Martijn, an idealistic Dutch pianist, travels to Morocco to help start a food program for malnourished children. Within moments of his arrival, however, Martijn is abducted by a group of terrorists, injected with a debilitating drug, and imprisoned. Under threat of death, the young man engages in a mental chess match with Ahmat, trying to learn his captor's true objective and avoid a horrible fate

Kiss of the Spider Woman

The story of two radically different men thrown together in a Latin American prison cell. One is Valentin, a journalist being tortured for his political beliefs. The other is Molina, a gay window-dresser who fills their lonely nights by spinning romantic fantasies drawn from memories of old movies.

The Last Starfighter

Video game expert Alex Rogan finds himself transported to another planet after conquering the video game The Last Starfighter, only to find out it was just a test. He was recruited to join the team of best Starfighters to defend their world from the attack.

This Is England

A story about a troubled boy growing up in England, set in 1983. He comes across a few skinheads on his way home from school, after a fight. They become his new best friends, even like family. Based on experiences of director Shane Meadows.

Once Upon a Time in Euskadi

Basque Country, Spain, 1985. Four teenage friends must face life and death, social upheaval and political violence as they try to enjoy their summer vacation.

Mark of the Devil

In 1700s Austria, a witch-hunter's apprentice has doubts about the righteousness of witch-hunting when he witnesses the brutality, the injustice, the falsehood, the torture and the arbitrary killing that go with the job.

Turkey Shoot

In the near future, after an unspecified holocaust, survivors are herded into prison camps. There, they are hunted for sport by the leaders of the camp. Paul, one of the newest prisoners, is determined not to go down as quietly as the others.

Waking the Dead

A congressional candidate questions his sanity after seeing the love of his life, presumed dead, suddenly emerge.

The Poughkeepsie Tapes

When hundreds of videotapes showing torture, murder and dismemberment are found in an abandoned house, they reveal a serial killer's decade-long reign of terror and become the most disturbing collection of evidence homicide detectives have ever seen.

The Witnesses

Paris, 1984. A group of friends contend with the first outbreak of the AIDS epidemic.

Boy

Boy, an 11-year-old child and devout Michael Jackson fan who lives on the east coast of New Zealand in 1984, gets a chance to know his absentee criminal father, who has returned to find a bag of money he buried years ago.

True Blue

The story of the year the Oxford and Cambridge boat race changed from a gentleman's race to one where winning was everything.

Linha de Passe

In the periphery of São Paulo, the pregnant single mother Cleuza works as maid in the apartment of a middle-class family. Each of her sons has a different unknown father: the oldest, Dênis, has a baby son that lives with his mother and he works as motorcycle courier.

Carandiru

When a doctor decides to carry out an AIDS prevention program inside Latin America’s largest prison: the Casa de Detenção de São Paulo - Carandiru, he meets the future victims of one of the darkest days in Brazilian History when the State of São Paulo’s Military Police, with the excuse for law enforcement, shot to death 111 people. Based on real facts and on the book written by Dráuzio Varella.

The History Boys

The story of an unruly class of bright, funny history students at a Yorkshire grammar school in pursuit of an undergraduate place at Oxford or Cambridge. Bounced between their maverick English master, a young and shrewd teacher hired to up their test scores, a grossly out-numbered history teacher, and a headmaster obsessed with results, the boys attempt to pass.

The Final Countdown

During routine manoeuvres near Hawaii in 1980, the aircraft-carrier USS Nimitz is caught in a strange vortex-like storm, throwing the ship back in time to 1941—mere hours before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

Nirvana

Jimi, a computer game designer, finds that his latest product has been infected by a virus which has given consciousness to the main character of the game, Solo. Tormented by the memory of his fled girlfriend Lisa and begged by Solo to end its useless "life", Jimi begins a search for people who can help him both to discover what happened to Lisa and to delete his game before it is released.

Choose or Die

In pursuit of an unclaimed $125,000 prize, a broke college dropout decides to play an obscure, 1980s survival computer game. But the game curses her, and she’s faced with dangerous choices and reality-warping challenges. After a series of unexpectedly terrifying moments, she realizes she’s no longer playing for the money but for her life.

The Recce

After the South African Defense Force wrongfully declares young Recce Henk Viljoen dead behind enemy lines, it’s up to him alone to use every skill and tool in his arsenal to make it back to his grieving wife.

My Beautiful Laundrette

A young Pakistani Briton manages a rundown laundrette with his lover while dealing with tension in his family, the local Pakistani community, and a persistent mob of skinheads.

House of Gucci

When Patrizia Reggiani, an outsider from humble beginnings, marries into the Gucci family, her unbridled ambition begins to unravel the family legacy and triggers a reckless spiral of betrayal, decadence, revenge, and ultimately… murder.

Wall Street

A young and impatient stockbroker is willing to do anything to get to the top, including trading on illegal inside information taken through a ruthless and greedy corporate raider, whom takes the youth under his wing.

The Squid and the Whale

Based on the true childhood experiences of Noah Baumbach and his brother, The Squid and the Whale tells the touching story of two young boys dealing with their parents' divorce in Brooklyn in the 1980s.

Oi! Warning

A young man gets caught up in a conflict between his friends, a skinhead and a gay anarchist.

1987

In 1987, Ricardo is 17 years old. This summer, Ricardo has a busy schedule: loose his virginity, find a way to get into bars, have a car, spend time with his friends. In order to rapidly make money, Ricardo decides to use his italian inheritance and take a shortcut in the medium of crime. But things will go wrong...

Coming Home

Gay high school couple - Ivan, a well-behaved local Taiwanese, and Eric, a rebellious international student from the US, take a road trip down the most dangerous highway in Taiwan. Their trip is cut short when Eric reveals that he must return home after graduation, forcing Ivan to confront his darkest demons.

Crossroads

After the death of his wife, a father finds out his son is gay and confronts him leading to devastating consequences.

Prayers for Bobby

Bobby Griffith was his mother's favorite son, the perfect all-American boy growing up under deeply religious influences in Walnut Creek, California. Bobby was also gay. Struggling with a conflict no one knew of, much less understood, Bobby finally came out to his family.

Angels in America - Part One: Millennium Approaches

America in the mid-1980s. In the midst of the AIDS crisis and a conservative Reagan administration, six New Yorkers with interconnect lives grapple with life and death, love and sex, heaven and hell.

Polytechnique

A dramatization of the Montreal Massacre of 1989 where several female engineering students were murdered by an unstable misogynist.

Hot Tub Time Machine

Four pals are stuck in a rut in adulthood: Adam has just been dumped, Lou is a hopeless party animal, Nick is a henpecked husband, and Jacob does nothing but play video games in his basement. But they get a chance to brighten their future by changing their past after a night of heavy drinking in a ski-resort hot tub results in their waking up in 1986.

South Central

During a 10-year sentence for murdering the leader of a rival South Central Los Angeles gang, Bobby Johnson finds religion and rehabilitation with the help of Muslim inmate Ali. Upon his release, Bobby returns home to find that his young son, Jimmie, has joined the Deuces, his old crew. Tensions rise as Bobby struggles to convince Jimmie to leave the gang that was his only family during the painful years his absent father spent behind bars.

Code of Silence

A Chicago cop is caught in the middle of a gang war while his own comrades shun him because he wants to take an irresponsible cop down.

Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS

Ilsa, a warden at a Nazi death camp that conducts experiments on prisoners, strives to prove that women can withstand more pain and suffering than men, and therefore should be allowed to fight on the frontlines.

Museo

Mexico, 1985. Juan and Wilson, two perennial Veterinary students, perpetrate an audacious heist in the National Museum of Anthropology, running away with a loot of more than hundred invaluable pieces of Mayan art, unaware of the consequences of their outrageous act.

Innocent Voices

A young boy, attempting to have a normal childhood in 1980s El Salvador, is caught up in a dramatic fight for his life when he desperately tries to avoid the war that is raging all around him.

Red Riding: The Year of Our Lord 1980

After 6 years of brutal murders, the West Yorkshire Police fear that they may have already interviewed The Ripper and let him back into the world to continue his reign of terror upon the citizens of Yorkshire. Assistant Chief Constable of the Manchester Police, Peter Hunter, is called in to oversee the West Yorkshire Police's Ripper investigation and see what they could have missed.

Red Riding: The Year of Our Lord 1983

Detective Chief Superintendent Maurice Jobson is forced to remember the very similar disappearance of Clare Kemplay, who was found dead in 1974, and the subsequent imprisonment of local boy Michael Myshkin. Washed-up local solicitor John Piggott becomes convinced of Myshkin's innocence and begins to fight on his behalf, unwittingly providing a catalyst for Jobson to start to right some wrongs.

Kiss the Bride

In high school, Matt and Ryan were best friends. More than friends, actually. But in the ensuing ten years, they've lost contact. So when Matt receives an invitation to Ryan's wedding he's surprised - especially that Ryan is marrying a woman!

What Goes Up

Set in the mid-80s, when a reporter is sent to cover the Challenger Space Shuttle launch only to become mixed up in the lives of some local students.

East Side Story

Diego is a gay but closeted Hispanic chef living in East Los Angeles who works in the restaurant operated by his grandmother. Frustrated by the secretive lifestyle he shares with his similarly closeted lover, Pablo, Diego finds himself attracted to Wesley, one of the openly gay Caucasian men he feels are gentrifying his neighborhood. Their relationship pushes Diego to consider the possibility of a life he had never imagined.

Law Abiding Citizen

A frustrated man decides to take justice into his own hands after a plea bargain sets one of his family's killers free. He targets not only the killer but also the district attorney and others involved in the deal.

Homecoming

A jilted ex-girlfriend plots revenge after her former beau comes back to their hometown with a new lover.

Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story

Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story is a movie based on the life story of world-renowned neurosurgeon Ben Carson from 1961 to 1987.

Summer Days, Summer Nights

On the south shore of Long Island in the summer of 1982, a group of working-class teenagers and 20-somethings work their summer jobs, fall in and out of love, and wrestle with what the future holds when the summer ends and the real world beckons.

The Brave

A down-on-his-luck American Indian recently released from jail is offered the chance to "star" as the victim of a snuff film, the resulting pay of which could greatly help his poverty stricken family.

Children of the Revolution

A man (Richard Roxburgh) the Australian government blames for 1990s political woes blames his mother (Judy Davis), a communist Stalin seduced in 1951.

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.

Fag

Thomas, a 17-year-old high school student, finds himself attracted to Esteban, another boy from his school. The rumor of Thomas's homosexuality is spreading fast, and he begins to suffer the gaze of others.

History of the Occult

During the last broadcast of 60 Minutes Before Midnight, the most watched journalistic program on television, Adrián Marcato could expose a conspiracy and link the government to a obscure secret society.

Goodnight Mommy

In the heat of the summer lays a lonesome house in the countryside where nine year old twin brothers await their mother’s return. When she comes home, bandaged after cosmetic surgery, nothing is like before and the children start to doubt whether this woman is actually who she says she is.

Noah's Arc: Jumping the Broom

As Noah and Wade prepare to marry in Martha's Vineyard, the personal problems of their friends - and the unexpected arrival of rapper Baby Gat - threatens to permanently end their relationship.

Bianca

Eccentric and full of manias, Michele is a young high school professor who defines himself as “not used to happiness”. He realizes his life is meaningless if he doesn’t have a woman by his side but, after a series of rather disastrous experiences, he feels more alone than ever. Then, out of the blue, a new French teacher called Bianca arrives at school. Amongst uncertainties and contradictions, the two start dating. In the meantime, a series of homicides take place and a police officer begins to suspect that Michele is involved. Bianca will save him providing an alibi at the right moment, but then, everything goes wrong again.

Repo Man

A down and out young punk gets a job working with a seasoned repo man, but what awaits him in his new career is a series of outlandish adventures revolving around aliens, the CIA, and a most wanted '64 Chevy.

Frontier(s)

A gang of young thieves flee Paris during the violent aftermath of a political election, only to hole up at an Inn run by neo-Nazis.

Red Dust

Sarah Barcant, a lawyer in New York City who grew up in South Africa, returns to her childhood dwelling place to intercede for Alex Mpondo, a Black South African politician who was tortured during apartheid.

Feed

A cybercrime investigator tracks a man suspected of force-feeding women to death.

Summer of 84

After suspecting that their police officer neighbor is a serial killer, a group of teenage friends spend their summer spying on him and gathering evidence, but as they get closer to discovering the truth, things get dangerous.

Golden Horseshoes

Youssef Soltane, a 45-year-old Tunisian intellectual, is the product of a generation that lived the era of euphoria and great ideologies in the sixties, and their subsequent failure. He was incarcerated and tortured for his political opinions. Furthermore, his relationship with Zineb, a young, beautiful bourgeois, only brings him more trouble. During one long winter night, Youssef wanders in search of an emotional haven, prey to all the questions that flood his memory.

Boys On Film Presents: Campfire

BOYS ON FILM is proud to present the complete short film collection of Bavo Defurne (North Sea Texas [Noordzee, Texas] (2011)), a beautiful imaginative series that reflects on different aspects of youth and sexuality. Defurne’s short films have wowed festival audiences all over the world and won numerous awards. His fluid directing style playfully takes reference from works of art and legendary filmmakers and creates something unique and original. The short films collected in Boys on Film Presents: Campfire showcase the foundation of an unusual directing talent with astonishing visual flare. Includes: Campfire [Kampvuur] (2000), Particularly Now, in Spring (1996), Sailor [Matroos] (1998), Saint (1996).

Shooting for Socrates

Set in Belfast against the backdrop of the 1986 World Cup, Shooting for Socrates tells the story of a momentous time in Northern Ireland's football history through the eyes of players, fans and the media. The film also follows the lives of passionate football supporter Arthur and his son Tommy from East Belfast. The lead up to a momentous day in the life of a young boy (his 10th birthday) mirrors the build up to the big day for the Northern Ireland football team as they play the greatest match of their lives.

Misery

After an accident, acclaimed novelist Paul Sheldon is rescued by a nurse who claims to be his biggest fan. Her obsession takes a dark turn when she holds him captive in her remote Colorado home and forces him to write back to life the popular literary character he killed off.