Female Filmmakers Too: BBC Introducing Arts (2022)

Finnegan Begin Again

A schoolteacher in her early 40s, involved in a dead-end love affair with a married mortician, drifts into a relationship with an aging newspaperman.

All About Sex

Three friends in their mid-20s struggle to navigate their professional and personal lives, colliding head on with the messy, hilarious and dreadful growing pangs of adulthood.

Mario, Kike and David

Mario and Kike hook up on a dating app. What initially was never meant to be more than a sex date will turn into something else, in spite of their different ways of viewing their bisexuality and how they both cope with it in their respective social circles.

Paradigm

Innocence, sex and lust converge to tell the story of Guille, a teenager who seeks himself through others.

Cherries

Family tensions are slowly eroding what should have been a carefree summer for the young boy Jakov. A series of events ending in tragedy will incite his emotional revolt against the grown ups, but also his sense of guilt.

Grandpa Walrus

On the windy and cloudy beach, Granny is praying, Mum is shouting, the sisters don’t care, Lucas is alone. Grandpa was a weird guy, now he's dead.

A Drowning Man

Alone and far from home, The Kid makes his way through a strange city looking for the means to get through his day. Surrounded by predators he is forced to make compromises merely to survive, his life of exile grows one day longer.

Push It

Hedda tries to approach Adam in every way she can, but everything she does turns out wrong. And Adam gets to break all the rules. A film about never being able to win, even though you’re the best, with the gym hall as its arena.

The Midnight Swim

Spirit Lake is unusually deep. No diver has ever managed to find the bottom. When Dr. Amelia Brooks disappears during a deep-water dive, her three daughters travel home. They find themselves unable to let go and become drawn into the mysteries of the lake.

Yasmine

Yasmine, a high school student from Brunei, fed up with studying and her strict father, decides to learn silat, a martial art practiced in Southeast Asia, after a boy displays his own knowledge of silat in order to impress her.

The Man Who Would Not Shake Hands

A man believes he has been cursed after a horrific accident.

The Reach

An sick elderly women hears the voice of her deceased husband and he tries to convince her to travel to the mainland.

Fuego Fatuo

Noé receives a call announcing that they have found a woman who is most likely his daughter who disappeared 15 years ago.

Sylvia

Story of the relationship between the poets Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath.

Two Women

A headstrong young woman is married to land baron. Her feelings for her son's tutor becomes a complex web of unrequited love.

Suburbia

When household tensions and a sense of worthlessness overcome Evan, he finds escape when he clings with the orphans of a throw-away society. The runaways hold on to each other like a family until a tragedy tears them apart.

The Dark Sea

The girlfriend of Detective Luca Mocci moves from the house of her friend Charlotte to live with him. When the corpse of the upper-class escort and student Valentina Martini is found in an apartment, tied and beaten after a kinky sex, Detective Mocci becomes obsessed with his investigation in the underworld of sex in his city, arising dark desires and affecting his relationship with his girlfriend. Written by Claudio Carvalho

Bubble Gummed Girl

Emma is addicted to chewing gum and in the middle of puberty, but doesn't really want to admit it. She doesn't want to do anything with her sandpit friend Lasse other than swinging, playing with her father's railroad world and chewing gum - nothing should change. But Lasse suddenly has a girlfriend and, even worse, he's also interested in sex.

Soft Like Me

On a secluded prairie farm, adolescent boys labor in wheat fields for a sexually predatory warden and his farmhands, who threaten to feed them to a voracious beast if they ever disobey. The newly arrived Linus instantly catches the warden's eye, and begins to receive secret visitations from a mysterious girl. The other boys tell Linus the legend of a special boy who fled the farm and became a glorious angel that will one day return to free them all. When Linus asks the girl if she is the angel, her answer is enigmatic. After the warden's favorite boy dies, Linus is poised to become the next victim. The girl reappears and promises to help him escape, but with hope comes punishment.

The Man Who Would Not Shake Hands

A man afflicted with a curse while visiting Bombay, India at the turn of the 20th Century struggles to live life without ever touching another human being. His tragic lack of success in remaining free of all human contact causes the death of casual acquaintances and close friends alike. Ultimately, his curse turns back upon him and his story ends as tragically as those he affected with his curse.

Pittsburgh

An intimate, emotionally turbulent yet occasionally light-hearted look at a young deaf man's relationship with his boyfriend, who isn't quite ready to come out of the closet.

Two Belles in Love

She smells her fragrance, she sees her talent... The ancient love story of Cui Jianyun and Cao Yuhua. The plight of these two women is told as they fall in love due to the admiration for each other's stunning beauty and literary craft. Adapted from the Kunqu opera & story by Li Yu, "Fragrant Companion/Lianxiang Companion", this short film includes a parallel between the play and "reality." The ending has been altered from the original play.

Quiet

Ali must lie and say she is her wife's sister so she can be with her in the hospital. Through Ali's memories, we see the women's relationship develop as Ali faces the truth in the present.

Electric July

In the burning heat of July, Thomas and Victor, two 14 years old teenagers, are bored to death and want to escape. Victor decides to take Thomas to an abandoned bridge. He will have to confront his fears and desires.

Teach Me to Dance

In this drama, Lesia convinces her English-Canadian friend Sarah to perform a Ukrainian dance with her as part of their school's Christmas pageant. Sarah's father, angry at the growing number of Ukrainian settlers, won't allow his daughter to participate. Despite the prejudices of their parents, the girls' friendship remains strong, and they meet in Sarah's barn to celebrate Christmas Day together. Part of the Adventures in History series.

Love Under the Crucifix

The basic story in Love under the Crucifix is about Ogin, daughter of a tea master, who are both Christians in feudal Japan. Ogin falls in love with a feudal prince, also a Christian who is already married, and that creates problems. Further, when the Shogun bans Christianity, the situation worsens.

Dance: BBC Introducing Arts

Brenda Emmanus presents an innovative collection of dramatic short films from emerging artists. Compelling stories of identity and isolation, trauma and power combine with the visceral impact of dance to explore our place in today’s world in a thought-provoking and heartfelt way. Daughters of the Sea; Breadline; The Dupe; Happy Okay Mate; Mad Smooth; Rat King; Reesheh; Spectrum; Testimony; Turbine; Wounds; Beneath the Movement; Divis Tower, Both Sides Now

The Garden

In the summer of 1976, a shared family yard becomes the setting, as the adults bicker over selling the garden and the kids are free to explore the mysterious neighboring lot. Then they hear about a girl that has disappeared...

Adolescence

A teenager from an abusive household falls in love with a free-spirited runaway that leads him into the fast-lane lifestyle of drugs and addiction which threatens to destroy him.

Home for the Holidays

After losing her job, making out with her soon-to-be former boss, and finding out that her daughter plans to spend Thanksgiving with her boyfriend, Claudia Larson faces spending the holiday with her unhinged family.

To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar

Manhattan drag queens Vida Boheme and Noxeema Jackson impress regional judges in competition, securing berths in the Nationals in Los Angeles. When the two meet pathetic drag novice Chi-Chi Rodriguez — one of the losers that evening — the charmed Vida and Noxeema agree to take the hopeless youngster under their joined wing. Soon the three set off on a madcap road trip across America and struggle to make it to Los Angeles in time.

Now and Then

Waxing nostalgic about the bittersweet passage from childhood to puberty, four childhood girlfriends — Teeny, Chrissy, Samantha and Roberta — recall the magical summer of 1970. During their walk down memory lane, they reconcile experiences with boys, secrets, bullies and more.

Poison Ivy

A seductive teen befriends an introverted high school student and schemes her way into the lives of her wealthy family.

Orlando

England, 1600. Queen Elizabeth I promises Orlando, a young nobleman obsessed with poetry, that she will grant him land and fortune if he agrees to satisfy a very particular request.

Spokane

Two guys bail on a wedding, head to a strip club, and end up in a hotel room...

A Chapter in Her Life

Jewel stays with her grizzled, angry grandfather while her parents are overseas on business. Family squabbling is brought to heel through love and understanding from Jewel's pure love for others and trust in Divine Love.

Step Up

Tyler Gage receives the opportunity of a lifetime after vandalizing a performing arts school, gaining him the chance to earn a scholarship and dance with an up and coming dancer, Nora.

Lords of Dogtown

The radical true story behind three teenage surfers from Venice Beach, California, who took skateboarding to the extreme and changed the world of sports forever. Stacy Peralta, Tony Alva and Jay Adams are the Z-Boys, a bunch of nobodies until they create a new style of skateboarding that becomes a worldwide phenomenon. But when their hobby becomes a business, the success shreds their friendship.

The Quiet

After her widowed father dies, deaf teenager Dot moves in with her godparents, Olivia and Paul Deer. The Deers' daughter, Nina, is openly hostile to Dot, but that does not prevent her from telling her secrets to her silent stepsister, including the fact that she wants to kill her lecherous father.

Mädchen in Uniform

A sensitive girl is sent to an all-girls boarding school and develops a romantic attachment to one of her teachers.

The Woodsman

After twelve years in prison, Walter returns home. His family has abandoned him, save for his brother-in-law. Few know he's a sex offender and pedophile. Walter finds an apartment and is regularly visited by his parole officer. He gets a job at a lumber mill and starts seeing a coworker. Then his new world begins to unravel; as his past becomes known, he strikes up a high-risk friendship with a young girl and realizes that a man loitering near a schoolyard is a child molester prowling for his next victim.

North Country

A fictionalized account of the first major successful sexual harassment case in the United States — Jenson vs. Eveleth Mines, where a woman who endured a range of abuse while working as a miner filed and won the landmark 1984 lawsuit.

The Mistress of Spices

Tilo is an Indian shopkeeper in America with an ability to see the future and a magical connection to powerful spices, which she uses to help her customers satisfy their various needs and desires. One day she falls in love with an American man. But the spices forbid it.

Companions

A lone wanderer yearns for companionship in a world where everyone looks out for only themselves. However, in the midst of a newfound camaraderie during battle, tension soon begins to rise as the pair drudges closer toward the inevitable.

Rubber Band Pistol

Jūzō Itami's debut short film, concerning a group of unique young people in the high economic growth period who are into games with rubber band pistols.

Late Bloomer

Late Bloomer is the pastoral romance of an eternal recurrence. Director's talent to plea for love without any dialogue would touch the hearts of audiences. The old man's day out which at first seemed like the ordinary visit of his family's graves turns out to be the poem about the everlasting love. Actor Yoo Soon-cheol wrote this poem with his old and stoop-shouldered body.

Fragments

Chloe, a straight talking film director, tries to convince her friend Sam to be an actor in her next short film. Just after finding out that he once again didn’t get into medical school, Sam meets Alex, a hypochondriac 18 year old. A love triangle forms in these self-reflexive, humoristic fragments filled with sex talk , set in New Orleans.