Female Filmmakers: BBC Introducing Arts (2020)

The Long Run

When two oddball strangers leave their lives behind to chase their Hollywood dreams, they discover that what they lack in talent, they make up for with determination and a shared delusion, leading to an unexpected friendship that will make them question the realities of chasing a dream.

The Silence

Fatma and her mother are Kurdish refugees living in Italy. One day at the hospital, Fatma learns her mother has breast cancer.

Sorry, We're Dead

The ennui of a filmmaker, trapped between aspiration and reality, frames Lana Jing’s quirky, sarcastic, and cinematic-joke filled quarter-life crisis. At her lecture hall job, where aging white men wax on, self-involved, Lana accidentally frames her friend and co-worker when she destroys the only copy of an aging tech-bro’s high-profile lecture. Lana is forced to navigate stop motion animation, a secret admirer, and terrible bridge traffic to sort out a way forward to her destiny… kinda.

Women in Film: BBC Introducing Arts

Cultural historian Janina Ramirez presents a collection of intriguing and exciting short films by emerging women directors and artists. Each film gives a female perspective on modern-day topics from body image and new love to grief and belonging. Expect honest and refreshing storytelling that will make you laugh, make you cry and make you think. In a Room Full of Sisters; Blood Stains; Bridging the Gap; Cake; Ding-Ding, Next; Fruity; In Perpetuum; Owulide; White Dwarf; Cosmic Domestic; The Dead Are Jewels to Me; The Presence of Absence

Everything in the End

Stranded in a small village during Earth's final days, a man seeks solace in the brief human connections he encounters.

Wüm

It follows Bennett, a nonbinary new parent, who arrives late to their postpartum "Mamas Group" at a place called "Wüm" with 3-month-old daughter, Edie.

That Which Once Was

In 2032 an eight-year old boy, displaced by global warming, fends for himself as an environmental refugee in a hostile northern metropolis. Haunted by memories of flooding that left him homeless and orphaned, the boy forms an unexpected friendship with an Inuk ice carver who helps him confront his past.

Female Filmmakers Too: BBC Introducing Arts

Cultural historian Janina Ramirez presents a collection of intriguing and exciting short films by emerging female directors and artists. Each film gives a female perspective on modern-day topics from friendship and identity to freedom and belonging. Silent Pride; 0.5%; After the Break; Black. British. Muslim. Other.; Exhale; Hung Out to Dry; I Asked for Wonder; Midday; Sapphire of the Valley; The Skin I Move In; We know a better word than happy; Being Black in Northern Ireland

The Call

During a difficult visit to her single immigrant mother, Athena discovers that what she thought was age-related mental decline is in fact an inherited magical gift.

Pathless

A poetic translation of the universal feeling at one's unknown next step. It connects to the overwhelming periods of doubtful thoughts yet resilient ambition one may encounter. A visual and aural combination of fear yet fearlessness.

Kathryn Bigelow: Hollywood Adrenaline

For more than 40 years Kathryn Bigelow has been making films that explore male violence. With movies like Blue Steel, Point Break, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, the Oscar winning American filmmaker has impressed with hard-hitting moviemaking that holds a mirror up to contemporary America and the world.

Refuge(e)

Refuge(e) traces the incredible journey of two refugees, Alpha and Zeferino. Each fled violent threats to their lives in their home countries and presented themselves at the US border asking for political asylum, only to be incarcerated in a for-profit prison for months on end without having committed any crime. Thousands more like them can't tell their stories.

STEP OUT

Set in the sun-drenched landscapes of Okinawa, this heartfelt coming-of-age story follows Teruya Yō, a teenager living with his cheerful single mother, Akane, and younger sister, Mai. Despite their modest life, the family is close-knit and full of warmth. When Yō falls for Lisa, a student at a local dance school, he joins her class—discovering not only his passion for dance but a talent that quickly blossoms. Encouraged by his mother, a former dancer, Yō begins to dream big. The arrival of Hiroki, a music producer and Yō’s estranged uncle, brings news that shatters Yō's hopes of reconnecting with his absent father. As emotions erupt, long-buried truths between mother and son come to light.

Comrade Innokenti

About the initial period of the revolutionary activity of the Russian revolutionary Joseph Dubrovinsky (1877-1913, Innokenty is one of the underground nicknames of the Bolshevik), about the years of active propaganda work, a duel with the "king of the Okhrana" Zubatov, exile and the resumption of work underground.

Yatsuhakamura

During the Sengoku period, villagers brutally killed eight samurai, and in the Taisho era, the head of an old family murdered 32 villagers in the Eight-Tomb Village. Terada Tatsuya, who had long been estranged from the Terada family, returns as its successor. However, this return is the beginning of a tragedy. Grandfather, half-brother, monks, nuns... one after another, people related to the family are murdered. Yet, the truth remains elusive. In the midst of this, Tatsuya stumbles into a massive cave system. What he sees there is a wax figure of the head of the Terada family wearing the samurai armor. Meanwhile, Kindaichi, who has uncovered the secret of Tatsuya's birth, finds himself at the same cave. At that very moment, Tatsuya is cornered deep within the cave by villagers who fear the curse.

Baba Yaga Saves The World

Our days. Curious schoolboy Senka finds himself in a fairy-tale forest, hidden from human eyes by the spell of Yaga. To cast the spell again, Yaga goes to a modern city in search of a magical wonderful color. In the city, Koshchei, who remained alive after the battle with Ivan Tsarevich, has been waiting for a meeting with Yaga for a thousand years. Koschei is hiding in a dark dungeon and wants revenge, because it was Yaga who helped defeat him. There will be a new battle of good and evil. The winner will be the one who will be supported by the schoolboy Senka, who until the last did not believe that he was in a fairy tale.

Mariah Carey at the BBC

A celebration of the singer who conquered the 1990s and changed the sound of pop and R&B forever. A collection of some of Mariah Carey's most beloved hits, plus interview footage from the BBC archives.

Seems Like Dawn

Dante works the night shift editing violent content for TV. Several encounters over the course of his day make him realize this overwhelming routine is not the life he wants.

The Wrong Disguise

Catalina arrives with her family at the costume party for her cousin's birthday, on the outskirts of the city. Her presence makes her cousin behave strangely.

The Scoop

During the final months before Hong Kong's return to China, an ambitious young female reporter stumbles upon a murder scene.

Love Knows No Bounds

Zoe Tay, Martin Yan and Christopher Ming-Shun Lee star in this telemovie about a resolute divorcee who loses her financial assets after the divorce. She works hard in a restaurant business and later becomes successful.

Brainwashed: Sex-Camera-Power

Investigates the politics of cinematic shot design, and how this meta-level of filmmaking intersects with the twin epidemics of sexual abuse/assault and employment discrimination against women, with over 80 movie clips from 1896 - 2020.

Iravin Nizhal

A man on the run looks back on his crime-filled life, the people who have shaped it up, his sins and his one last hope at redemption.

The Strange Case of Delfina Potocka

In 1945, the new Polish government asked for the heart of Chopin previously buried in Paris. A woman called Paulina Czernika approached the government claiming to have some love letters from the composer to her great-grandmother, the Countess Delfina Potocka.

Prophetess

Ajoke, a local prophetess, makes a bogus prediction about a football match which sets off a chain of events beyond her control...

A Última Transmissão

Plot unavailable

Lifemark

David's comfortable world is turned upside down when his birth mother Melissa unexpectedly reaches out, longing to meet the eighteen year old son she's only held once.

Take Me to Amazing

When a detective is assigned to a missing persons case, she stumbles into an underworld of lies and deception.

Ribeirinhos do Asfalto

Young Deisy (Ana Letícia) dreams of moving to bustling Belém, but instead she lives on Combu Island, across the river, cut off from the city she often admires from afar. Her mother (Dira Paes), aware of her daughter’s longing, wants to help her achieve it — though her husband (Adriano Barroso) is firmly against the idea. Together, mother and daughter hatch a plan to make the dream a reality.