Always The Artist, Never The Muse (2024)

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.

Danse Macabre

A man walks into a bar and warns to the clients that Death will come at midnight.

7th & Union

Ex-fighter Raymundo forms an unlikely bond with a disgruntled man whose life and relationship with his daughter are unraveling. The men join forces to win a fight that could very well save Raymundo, his wife and their child.

Flares

After a near-death experience, a person floats in a mysterious space, gradually being reborn by reconnecting with the sensations of their body.

I'm Here

A library assistant plods through an ordinary life in LA until a chance meeting opens his eyes to the power of creativity and ultimately, love. When this new life and love begin to fall apart, he discovers he has a lot to give. This short film proves that ordinary is no place to be.

Dungarees

Transgender Blake and cisgender Cane hang out, play video games and grapple with their insecurities. This is their love story.

Oh'phelia: A Cartoon Burlesque

Cut-out animated parody of Hamlet by pioneering British animator Anson Dyer.

Stealing Silver

A woman confronting a painful time in her life after she discovers the truth about a mysterious old man living across from her.

Latch Key

Mom's out shopping and the gay boy is smooching with his buddy downstairs while his brother's upstairs with his girlfriend! When the cat is away, the mice will play.

A Hard Blow

Elsa arrives at Oliver's. She is ready to be seduced. But what he wants her to do is far much more exciting.

Operation YY

Ron, at 22, still lives with his parents. He barely knows the daylight hours and his nights are divided between his job as editor of wedding videos, chats on the Internet and futuristic fantasies. One night all the elements he toys with converge and, for the first time in his life, Ron is willing to risk an in-person human interaction.

Precious Moments

True story of a 30 something man arrested for having sex with a young man under the age of consent. The younger man (resident of a group home) made the initial contact and claimed to be old enough to consent.

Végtelen percek

On a summer afternoon, someone drips coffee, someone feeds a pigeon, someone kills a wasp, someone dies, someone runs away, someone copies, someone listens to the radio, someone makes a phone call, someone... And there may be some correlation between these things. Based on János Szántai's short story.

Something Blue

Alice and Mary were classmates in the county town high school. After graduation, they’ve separated: Mary went to college, while Alice felt in love and stayed in the grange. They meet at Alice's wedding, but Alice receives her friend reservedly: she reckons herself as a victim, and Mary as the symbol of the life she has been deprived of.

The Old Man and the Sea

An old fisherman makes the biggest catch of his life.

The Little Matchgirl

An animated short based on Hans Christian Andersen's tale about a poor young girl with a burning desire to find comfort and happiness in her life. Desperate to keep warm, the girl lights the matches she sells, and envisions a very different life for herself in the fiery flames filled with images of loving relatives, bountiful food, and a place to call home.

Swipe Right For Love

Angela attempts to navigate dating in the modern world, only to find out that it isn't as simple as everyone makes it seem. As men swipe in and out of her life, she wonders if she'll be alone forever.

Resurrection

In the wake of a traumatic incident at a funeral, an aging widow is faced with a bizarre, impossible choice.

Two Nights

Over two nights, a young Chinese immigrant has sexual encounters with two very different men. Consequently, he has to choose between the one he wants or the who wants him.

Black Shore

In the off-season British seaside town of Black Shore, Ben's world is turned upside down when his wife, Holly, mysteriously disappears.

BOB

A girl invites a costumed stranger off the street to her older sister's dinner party. The mysterious man simply called 'Bob' seems friendly enough - What could possibly go wrong?

Mr. Fox

Sr. Raposo is a staged documentary about the daily life of Acácio, who found out he was HIV+ in 1995.

Blue Christmas

On Christmas Eve, 1968, in a Scottish coastal town, a debt collector goes to work to avoid confronting his wife’s worsening psychosis at home.

One, Two

One Two is a short drama film which centres around the protagonist Maddy, a shy and introverted first generation migrant who wants to pursue her passion for AFL.

DEAD END

A spirited teenager tricks her older sister into joining her on a deceptively simple outing.

Rooster's Crow

Drowned in the chaos of a family reunion filled with testosterone and pig roast, Reynald will try to prove to his nephew, his family but mostly himself that he's still king.

My Spiritual Medicine

Two white-collar clerks setup a private radio program in Shanghai. An Otaku lady lives in isolation. As the random fates of individuals are linked and changed by the radiowave, love, in all possible forms, burgeons.

Marudase Kintarou

Makoto's grandfather was the principal of the great Onodera Academy, and when he passed away, he left Makoto and his school staff with one very important will - "The one man who is able to seduce Makoto with his superb sexual techniques will be given the right to take over as Onodera Academy's new principal!" Because of this ridiculous last request, Makoto is now every faculty member's target for sexual harassment! Desperate to protect his virginity, Makoto seeks help from his childhood friend (and the man who he has always loved), Kintaro.

Held for a Moment

A short film inspired by real-life testimonies, following the journey of a young woman after a traumatic and devastating event.

Reality Free

A young man undergoes the dilemma of either letting the medication he takes for his bipolar disorder suppress his entire personality or be himself with all that comes with it.

The Golden Wedding

A grandfather recalls how he and his wife met and fell in love during the Second Italian War of Independence.

Truck Driver

In a boarding school, Raidel is witness to the abuse suffered by his schoolmate Randy.

Torpore internazionale

In a country house a patriarch lords over his community made up of a tired woman and a boy in the midst of an economic-adolescent crisis. The guest of the facility is Dr. Girarda, a chemist extradited from Poland.

INKED

Two estranged friends, Chloe and Brooklyn, break down after fleeing the home of Micheal Davis, renowned Children’s Author, where he’s presumably been murdered. Brook attempts to take care of both the broken down car, Sabrina, and the wounded Chloe suffering from a bullet wound. The two argue as they wrestle with the frustration of going nowhere. Brooklyn eventually helps Chloe by removing the bullet from her shoulder and then sewing it up all the while Chloe reveals why she decided to visit her childhood home in Bombay Beach instead of remaining separate with her fiancee in New York.

Dummy

Using a faceless doll criminal reenacts a brutal crime. But surprisingly he is not the one being judged. There seems to be an odd one out in the investigative group. The film premiered in the Berlinale Short competition programme.

Filipiñana

A film about a girl drawn to a golf course.

Genius Loci

One night, Reine, a young loner, sees among the urban chaos a moving oneness that seems alive, like some sort of guide.

Union County

Cody is a recovering opiate addict in rural Ohio, 45 days clean and enlisted in a strictly enforced drug court programme by the county government. Local sober-living facilities are full, so Cody is living in his car on the outskirts of town and working at the nearby lumber mill to save money and keep busy. But his past doesn't want to forget him.

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.

Fucking Killas on Speed Dial

Jakob is attracted to Rakel, the girlfriend of the guy who is bullying him, Thomas. He feels small but he is determined to feel big.