Mixed Christmas (2024)

Monster

After an outburst at school involving her son, a concerned single mother demands answers, triggering a sequence of deepening suspicion and turmoil.

Blank Canvas

A queer female artist struggles with her first major painting and its impending deadline. Concealing herself in her cluttered bedsit, she begins to experience hallucinations which she ultimately decides to use to her advantage.

Hoje

Former political activist receives compensation from the Brazilian government for the disappearance of her husband, victim of the repression triggered by the Brazilian military dictatorship. With the money, she can buy her an apartment and free herself from this dreadful condition she lived for decades. At the moment of moving to the new home, however, a visit arises that forces her to review her entire life.

The Little Match Seller

A short melodrama based on Hans Christian Andersen's harrowing tale. A poor little girl tries to sell matchsticks in the freezing December cold. She lights matches for some light and warmth. There are visions: a fireplace, dinner, a Christmas tree. She sees her dead mother, welcoming her.

All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt

Tender caresses and enveloping embraces are portals into the life of Mack, a Black woman in Mississippi. Winding through the anticipation, love, and heartbreak she experiences from childhood to adulthood, the expressionist journey is an ode to connection — with loved ones and with place.

The Selfish Giant

A hyperactive boy and his best friend, a slow-witted youth with an affinity for horses, start collecting scrap metal for a shady dealer.

Ivan & Abraham

In 1930s Poland Christian boy Ivan goes to live with a Jewish family to learn a trade. He becomes friends with Abraham, the son of the family. However, anti-Semitism is rife in their environment, and they flee to escape an upcoming conflict. Journeying together, they demonstrate their inseparability.

Christmas Island

When a snowstorm diverts Kate's first private flight bound for Switzerland, to Christmas Island in Nova Scotia, she must team up with an air traffic controller to secure her dream job as the family's pilot.

Everything Christmas

Christmas lover Lori Jo and her roommate head to Yuletide Springs for a longtime tradition to honor her late grandmother — and meet two men, Carl and Jason, along the way.

Brother and Sister

Neukölln, a trendy district in Berlin. Living space is scarce here. Without surety, proof of credit worthiness and salary there is no chance at all now. Thies knows this game; he works for a real estate management company and watches that the rules are upheld - until he meets Bruno and Sonja. He provides the dissimilar siblings with a flat free of charge on the quiet. And enters into an affair with the brother. Step by step he becomes more deeply immersed in the secret of the "siblings". A Berlin film about a loner who gets caught up. About a couple with unclear residency status. About a city everyone wants to live in.

Fathers

A gay couple faces personal challenges and society's expectations when their adopted son starts grade school and notices his family's unique dynamic.

The Passion of Remembrance

Co-directed by Blackwood and Julien, the first full-length feature film by Sankofa Film and Video offers a radical and necessary interrogation into what constitutes 'post-colonial' identity at a time of political and social restlessness in Britain. Set within an isolated desert landscape contrasted with recognizable scenes of the intensity of family life, this vanguard work demonstrates the richness and variety of the black experience; it is a poetic and hard-hitting commentary on the complexities of race, gender and sexuality.

Twenty Something

Follows Gia, who has to deal with the challenges and insecurities of "adulting" during her 21st birthday.

Debut

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

The Color of Rain

After cancer claims Matt Kell's life on Christmas Day 2005, his widow, Gina and two young boys are left to cope with the pain of his loss while their close church community gathers around them for support.

The Phone Call

A married man calls the wrong number for phone-sex and winds up being stalked by a psychotic man.

Beggars and Noblemen

In June 1945, during the final days of WWII, former university professor Gohar meets a young prostitute in a brothel and kills her in a moment of frenzy. Police Detective Noureddine takes on the murder case and tracks down Gohar, hoping to confront him and get a confession to the murder from him. However, both the detective and the killer face startling facts that change the way they think.

Lost and Found

Six young filmmakers from Central and East Europe developed shorts about the theme of 'generation'.

Sticky Notes

The story of an emotionally detached backup dancer named Athena, who must return home to Florida to help care for her estranged father, Jack, after he gets diagnosed with cancer. There, she must contend with Jack’s irresponsible lifestyle, while looking after six year old Honey Bunny, who is only beginning to grasp the err in Jack’s ways.

Summer '04

A character study of a family on vacation. The emotional abyss and problems are behind the seemingly nice facade of an intact family as they experience guilt, love, and jealousy.

Bend It Like Beckham

Jess Bhamra, the daughter of a strict Indian couple in London, is not permitted to play organized soccer, even though she is 18. When Jess is playing for fun one day, her impressive skills are seen by Jules Paxton, who then convinces Jess to play for her semi-pro team. Jess uses elaborate excuses to hide her matches from her family while also dealing with her romantic feelings for her coach, Joe.

36 Fillette

Lili, a pouty and voluptuous 14-year-old, is caravan camping with her family in Biarritz. She's self-aware and holds her own in a café conversation with a concert pianist she meets, but she has a wild streak and she's testing her powers over men, finding that she doesn't always control her moods or actions, and she's impatient with being a virgin. She sets off with her brother to a disco, latching onto an aging playboy who is himself hot and cold to her. She is ambivalent about losing her virginity that night, willing the next, and determined by the third.

My Own Private Idaho

In this loose adaptation of Shakespeare's "Henry IV," Mike Waters is a hustler afflicted with narcolepsy. Scott Favor is the rebellious son of a mayor. Together, the two travel from Portland, Oregon to Idaho and finally to the coast of Italy in a quest to find Mike's estranged mother. Along the way they turn tricks for money and drugs, eventually attracting the attention of a wealthy benefactor and sexual deviant.

Monsoon Wedding

A stressed father, a bride-to-be with a secret, a smitten event planner, and relatives from around the world create much ado about the preparations for an arranged marriage in India.

Cléo from 5 to 7

Agnès Varda eloquently captures Paris in the sixties with this real-time portrait of a singer set adrift in the city as she awaits test results of a biopsy. A chronicle of the minutes of one woman’s life, Cléo from 5 to 7 is a spirited mix of vivid vérité and melodrama, featuring a score by Michel Legrand and cameos by Jean-Luc Godard and Anna Karina.

Monster

In 1989, prostitute Aileen Wuornos befriends and enters a relationship with a young woman named Selby. Determined to straighten out her life, Aileen's limited education lands her back on the corner. She's raped by a trick, who she kills. A string of murder and robbery follows that ultimately leads Aileen to becoming America's first female serial killer.

Love Actually

Eight very different couples deal with their love lives in various loosely interrelated tales all set during a frantic month before Christmas in London.

Fire

In a barren, arranged marriage to an amateur swami who seeks enlightenment through celibacy, Radha's life takes an irresistible turn when her beautiful young sister-in-law seeks to free herself from the confines of her own loveless marriage.

Summertime

In 1971, a young woman moves from the French countryside to Paris and begins a passionate love affair with a feminist leader.

Tango Bar

A young woman travels abroad trying to realize her dream of being a model, but there she is deceived and subjected to prostitution at the Cabaret Tango Bar, where she experiences the horrors as a victim of a sex trafficking network.

The Nativity Story

Mary and Joseph make the hard journey to Bethlehem for a blessed event in this retelling of the Nativity story. This meticulously researched and visually lush adaptation of the biblical tale follows the pair on their arduous path to their arrival in a small village, where they find shelter in a quiet manger and Jesus is born.

Neon Purple

Estrella, an emerging drag queen, confronts anxiety and challenges on the pivotal night of her artistic life.

Polaroid

Giuseppe, 33, is still struggling to build his life in a small Italian town where he has to hide his homosexuality. With a Polaroid in hand, he decides to leave for Berlin to find Peter, a summer love he has never forgotten. The shock of a cosmopolitan city is nothing compared to the moment he realizes that the German artist has a "normal" family. For him this represents the possibility of 'losing' himself and meeting Marco, who takes him around all night to arrive at dawn to the conviction that love is the only strength to find one's identity. "Polaroid" is one of five short film segments in an omnibus feature titled "A Quintet".

Thylacine

A young couple nearing their nine months anniversary hit a road block when one decides to have lunch with an admirer. The relationship is tested as they face their insecurities along the way.

Starving in Suburbia

When seventeen-year-old Hannah stumbles upon a website about Thinspiration--an online community devoted to anorexia as a life choice--she becomes an obsessive follower of the site founder, ButterflyAna. By the time Hannah's family realizes what is happening and get Hannah the help she needs, the disease has fully taken hold and Hannah is refusing to eat. Will this family be able to exorcise the demon of anorexia from their lives?

Vacant Possession

Following the death of her mother, a young woman returns after many years to the weather-beaten family home on the shores of Sydney's Botany Bay. But the old family home begins to bring old wounds more and more to life. The story unfolds through flashbacks yet as it progresses the flashbacks merge into the present as it becomes apparent that the situation Tessa has returned to is very much the result of that which passed before.

Annaluise & Anton

Luise, called Pünktchen, and Anton are closest of friends. Being the daughter of a wealthy surgeon, young Pünktchen lives in a great house. Her mother, who always travels through the world more for public relation reasons than for the social tasks she pretends to fulfill, is never available to her as a mother. Anton, son of a single and sick mother in financial trouble, does his best to help her out of it by working late. Pünktchen decides to help her only friend (as nobody else would anyway) and starts singing in public places. Trouble arises when Anton can't resist stealing a golden lighter and Pünktchen's secret life is discovered by her parents. Two troubled families finally can see the need for actions to be taken.

Sleepless in Seattle

After the death of his mother, a young boy calls a radio station in an attempt to set his father up on a date. Across the country, an engaged woman becomes convinced that they belong together, despite their never having met. Will their paths collide despite the odds?

Borderless

Following the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, Denys is forced to leave his country. He has nothing left but the hope of seeing Dmitrii, a young recruit of the Russian army.

Demons at Dawn

Orlando and Marco, two young men who live in Mexico City, meet by chance and fall in love. Every day they fight in order to achieve their dreams: Orlando wants to be a dancer and Marco wants to graduate from nursing school. As they go against a diverse, ever-changing, hostile world, they’ll learn that once the darkness of night is gone and through their intertwined bodies and their synchronized souls, they will have seen all those demons of dawn go by.

Transamerica

A transgender woman takes an unexpected journey when she learns that she had a son, now a teenage runaway hustling on the streets of New York.

Fat Girl

Anaïs is twelve and bears the weight of the world on her shoulders. She watches her older sister, Elena, whom she both loves and hates. Elena is fifteen and devilishly beautiful. Neither more futile, nor more stupid than her younger sister, she cannot understand that she is merely an object of desire. And, as such, she can only be taken. Or had. Indeed, this is the subject: a girl's loss of virginity. And, that summer, it opens a door to tragedy.

The Story of the Weeping Camel

When a Mongolian nomadic family's newest camel colt is rejected by its mother, a musician is needed for a ritual to change her mind.

Ghosts

Nina, an end-of-teenage orphan with mental problems, starts a new job as a garden cleaner when she meets Toni. They fell in love with each other, but soon Toni starts betraying Nina. In the meantime, Francoise is picked up at a psychic department of a Berlin hospital by her husband, Pierre. After seeing Nina, Francoise believes that she has found her kidnapped daughter Marie, but neither Toni nor Pierre believe her. Nina is unsure about what to think...

The Miracle Worker

Devoted teacher Anne Sullivan leads deaf, blind and mute Helen Keller out of solitude and helps integrate her into the world.

Frida

A biography of artist Frida Kahlo, who channeled the pain of a crippling injury and her tempestuous marriage into her work.

Rocky IV

Rocky Balboa holds the world heavyweight championship, but a new challenger has stepped forward: Drago, a six-foot-four, 261-pound fighter who has the backing of the Soviet Union. This time, Rocky's training regimen takes him to Siberia, where he prepares for a globally televised match in the heart of Moscow. But nothing can truly prepare him for what he's about to face – a fight to the finish, in which he must defend not only himself, but also the honor of his country!

Shortbus

In post-9/11 New York City, an eclectic group of citizens find their lives entangled, personally, romantically, and sexually, at Shortbus, an underground Brooklyn salon infamous for its blend of art, music, politics, and carnality.

The Tree and the Swing

Coming home to make amends with her estranged father, Eleni finds herself confronted with an unexpected kinship.

We Collide

A queercore romance - a visceral and immersive exploration of the power of the mosh pit and finding love in the most unlikely of places.

A Wall

Tommy (20), works as a builder in the house of Saulo (50), a composer. Tommy feels attracted to Saulo and seeks any pretext to get close to him. Nevertheless, there is no contact between the two men beyond the exchange of sounds, words and glances. One morning, Tommy arrives at the house and and finds Saulo dead. Tommy agrees to dress the corpse in order to touch the body at least this once.

Pond, Fish

Qingyan Yu confronts confusion and self-identity problems as she gets to the point where romance starts to take place in her adolescence.

All These Small Moments

A teenage boy's infatuation with a woman he sees on the bus further complicates his already tumultuous adolescence.

Chicken

Mick and Kev, teen Irish lads, are at the shore, throwing rocks at empty cans, drinking cider. Mick's the pushy one, engaging Kev in a game of mumbly peg, his hand on top of Kev's, fingers splayed. As Mick moves the knife between their fingers, a train is heard approaching. What's Mick's purpose?

He

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

Alice, Darling

Pushed to the breaking point by Simon, her psychologically abusive boyfriend, Alice becomes an unwitting participant in an intervention staged by her two closest friends while on vacation. As she rediscovers the essence of herself and gains some much-needed perspective, she slowly starts to fray the cords of codependency that bind her. However, Simon's vengeance is as inevitable as it is shattering, and once unleashed, it tests her strength, her courage, and the bonds of deep-rooted friendships.

Ponyboi

Unfolding over the course of Valentine’s Day in New Jersey, a young intersex sex worker must run from the mob after a drug deal goes sideways, forcing him to confront his past.

Carole's Christmas

An overworked businesswoman learns the meaning of "be careful what you wish for" after she off-handedly wishes she had taken another path in life.

Naked Acts

An aspiring actress has lost considerable weight to land her first movie role, but what the director didn’t tell her was that it includes a nude scene. Reluctant to do it, she embarks on a personal journey that unveils secrets once hidden under her weight, as she discovers emotional nudity is just as revealing as taking her clothes off.