Female Filmmakers Too: BBC Introducing Arts (2022)

Slow Dance

During a middle school dance, a boy is struggling with his courage when experiencing his first love.

Consequences Of Any Kind

Lena and Rita are friends but they act like it’s something more. What do they want from each other and what do they really feel? The lack of clarity between them will have its consequences.

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 Girl Martyr

Ávila, Spain, March 28, 1526. With the help of her cousins, Teresa, who is eleven years old, writes a letter to her mother with the purpose of asking her to allow her to change her name to that of her favorite saint.

Whale Rider

On the east coast of New Zealand, the Whangara people believe their presence there dates back a thousand years or more to a single ancestor, Paikea, who escaped death when his canoe capsized by riding to shore on the back of a whale. From then on, Whangara chiefs, always the first-born, always male, have been considered Paikea's direct descendants. Pai, an 11-year-old girl in a patriarchal New Zealand tribe, believes she is destined to be the new chief. But her grandfather Koro is bound by tradition to pick a male leader. Pai loves Koro more than anyone in the world, but she must fight him and a thousand years of tradition to fulfill her destiny.

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.

Frida

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

Chamada a Cobrar

A high class lady from Brazil falls into a fake kidnapping scam when she answers a stranger’s phone call. Believing that one of her daughters has been kidnapped, she is guided by a terrifying voice for 12 hours through the cities of Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.

The Gathering

Between divorce, bad relationships and coming out as gay, a group of affluent friends realize that none of their lives are as easy as they seem.

Carne

After a dreadful incident coupled with an ungovernable paroxysm of violence, a butcher will fall into a downward spiral that will burn to the ground whatever dignity still remained in him.

Copying Beethoven

A fictionalised exploration of Beethoven's life in his final days working on his Ninth Symphony. It is 1824. Beethoven is racing to finish his new symphony. However, it has been years since his last success and he is plagued by deafness, loneliness and personal trauma. A copyist is urgently needed to help the composer. A fictional character is introduced in the form of a young conservatory student and aspiring composer named Anna Holtz. The mercurial Beethoven is skeptical that a woman might become involved in his masterpiece but slowly comes to trust in Anna's assistance and in the end becomes quite fond of her. By the time the piece is performed, her presence in his life is an absolute necessity. Her deep understanding of his work is such that she even corrects mistakes he has made, while her passionate personality opens a door into his private world.

Nowhere in Africa

A Jewish woman named Jettel Redlich flees Nazi Germany with her daughter Regina, to join her husband, Walter, on a farm in Kenya. At first, Jettel refuses to adjust to her new circumstances, bringing with her a set of china dishes and an evening gown. While Regina adapts readily to this new world, forming a strong bond with her father's cook, an African named Owuor.

When Saturday Comes

Jimmy Muir comes from a typical gritty, northern town where there are only two options: working down the pit or in a factory. But Jimmy has other ideas - he dreams of becoming a professional footballer. Confronted by a bitter and unsupportive father, hard drinking friends and a lifetime of bad habits...has Jimmy the will to achieve his ultimate goal?

A Real Young Girl

Bored and restless, Alice spends much of her time lusting after Jim, a local sawmill worker. When not lusting after him, Alice fills the hours with such pursuits as writing her name on a mirror with vaginal secretions and wandering the fields with her underwear around her ankles. And, in true teenaged tradition, she spends a lot of time writing in her diary.

The Private War of Joseph Sargent

Porn Star Grayson Lange along with Addison Graham and Robby Valls star in a film about two mercenaries on a secret mission in the jungles of South America. Once captured, their last night together will reveal dark secrets and create sexual tensions. So much so that it will cause unforeseen collateral damage that stretches well beyond the jungle. This highly provocative and erotic film was part of Eroddity(s) 2. Now re-worked as a stand-alone short the film seems to take on new meaning.

Me and You and Everyone We Know

Single dad Richard meets Christine, a starving artist who moonlights as a cabbie. They awkwardly attempt to start a romance, but Richard’s divorce has left him emotionally damaged. Meanwhile, Richard’s sons—one a teenager, the other 6-years-old—take part in clumsy experiments with the opposite sex.

The Cave of the Yellow Dog

The little nomad girl, Nansal, finds a baby dog in the Mongolian veld, who becomes her best friend - against all rejections of her parents. A story about a Mongolian family of nomads - their traditional way of life and the rising call of the City.

Domenica

Police inspector Sciarra, struggling with an identity crisis, and Domenica, an orphan who would like to know about her mother, spend one day together along the streets of Naples. It's Sciarra's last day of work and he has to take Domenica to the morgue, to identify a man who might have raped her. To Domenica, Sciarra is a father she never had, to him she is the daughter he couldn't have.

Private Photos

A sweet couple invite a third person over for the night, who brings a lustful energy to spice things up.

Empty

A disconnected husband and wife fill the void of their marriage with addictive technology to destructive results.

Land

On a boat at night, the secret journey of a man returning home.

The Young Wife

On her wedding day, all that stands between a young woman and marital bliss with her soon-to-be husband is surviving the chaos and expectations of family and friends, each intensifying her spiraling panic.

Avenue Montaigne

A young woman arrives in Paris where she finds a job as a waitress in bar next on Avenue Montaigne that caters to the surrounding theaters and the wealthy inhabitants of the area. She will meet a pianist, a famous actress and a great art collector, and become acquainted with the "luxurious" world her grandmother has told her about since her childhood.

Blood and Chocolate

A young teenage werewolf is torn between honoring her family's secret and her love for a man.

A Love Song for Bobby Long

A headstrong young woman returns to New Orleans after the death of her estranged mother.

The Wagner-Clan

After the death of genius Richard Wagner his wife Cosima fights for his legacy even against the will of her children Sigmund and Sieglinde.

The Python

An absurdist farce centering around a school in post-Soviet Latvia. After a rather disgusting prank (someone defecates in the school attic), the tyrannical headmistress deems that no one can leave until the culprit is caught. When the photographer's pet python escapes, havok breaks loose.

JONES

Jones' inner demons threaten to take over her life unless she outruns the voices in her head and the ticking of time.

Poem of the Sea

A Soviet dam project means that many old Ukrainian villages will end up under water. There are conflicts between the dam engineers and villagers who don't want to move.

2 Weeks

When 20-something-year-old Tanya begins to realize she’s asexual, the highly charged sexualized world she lives in as an actress and partner begins to fall apart and feels more and more like an unbearable nightmare.

Cut

In a Home for unwed mothers in 1962, a pregnant girl tries to save her friend’s memories in order to save their friendship.

Mr. Pregnant

A short about going CowboyMode.

Just Before I Go

Ted Morgan has been treading water for most of his life. After his wife leaves him, Ted realizes he has nothing left to live for. Summoning the courage for one last act, Ted decides to go home and face the people he feels are responsible for creating the shell of a person he has become. But life is tricky. The more determined Ted is to confront his demons, to get closure, and to withdraw from his family, the more Ted is yanked into the chaos of their lives. So, when Ted Morgan decides to kill himself, he finds a reason to live.

Mossane

A beautiful 14-year-old girl has just reached marriageable age in a village in Senegal. She has many suitors; however, she is in love a poor student who has returned to the village while the university is on strike. At birth, she had been promised in marriage to Diogoye, who went away to work in France. Diogoye, who supplied her parents with many things over the years, has now sent a dowry, and asked that she be married to him in the village in his absence; she would then be sent to France.

Cat Skin

A few weeks before Carnival, slum boys organize huntings for stray cats, whose leather can be used in Samba percussion instruments, like the Tamborim, a small drum.

Unicorn Store

A woman named Kit moves back to her parent's house, where she receives a mysterious invitation that would fulfill her childhood dreams.

Fiz Amizade com um Fantasma

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Good Boy

Two high school friends, Caleb and Macon, are reunited after many years. During the tense reunion, Macon fights his tortured mind, wrestling with a dark secret that is the source of Caleb's greatest pain.

Thirst

Two friends go on a hike to the desert. In the desolate wilderness something hidden comes out in their friendship. From then on, the only way they manage to communicate is sexually and violently. While one of them wants more than the other is able to give, he expresses his frustration by making sure they get lost and have no water - anything to escape from awaiting reality.

Sinner

In a dystopian future where the world has devolved into a pre-industrial state, the Purists rule supreme. The Purists blame technology for all the world’s past ills, and have deemed it to be inherently sinful. A handful of Companions, human-like artificial intelligence, have managed to make it through the apocalypse. They survive the only way they can –by hiding in plain sight.

Floating Melon

A journey of passion, a bitter night. Xiao Cheng ask for help to resolve a big trouble, the guy with whom he spend the afternoon is dead on his bed from the effect of a drug, not something the Chinese authorities look kindly on.

Stay

Being young and in love. a short story about Miscommunication. we follow Charlie and Molly from 18 to 21 years of age, after a long time apart Molly is back from University and bumps into Charlie. they spend the night reconnecting with each other.

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. Talking about his father’s loneliness soon leads to a meeting with a young female journalist, who has flown to Seattle to write a story about the boy and his father.

Scrapper

A resourceful 12-year-old, who secretly lives alone in her flat in a working-class suburb of London, makes money stealing bikes with her best friend Ali and keeps the social workers off her back by pretending to live with an uncle. But when her estranged father turns up out of the blue, she's forced to confront reality.

Bridget Jones's Diary

Bridget Jones is an average woman struggling against her age, her weight, her job, her lack of a man, and her various imperfections. As a New Year's resolution, Bridget decides to take control of her life, starting by keeping a diary in which she will always tell the complete truth. The fireworks begin when her charming though disreputable boss takes an interest in the quirky Miss Jones. Thrown into the mix are Bridget's band of slightly eccentric friends and a rather disagreeable acquaintance into whom Bridget cannot seem to stop running or help finding quietly attractive.

The Best Things in the World

Everyday family life as perfectly normal madness. “As Melhores Coisas do Mundo“ follows a few days in the life of the 15-year-old Mano, who is fighting on two fronts: his parents have just got divorced and he is going through puberty. Mano tries to make his way through life, with its first sexual experiences, his depressed brother and his self-centered parents. It’s a humorous homage to the pitfalls of daily life and the diversity of life.

Mixed Nuts

The events of a crisis hotline business on one crazy night during the Christmas holidays.

The Safety of Objects

In a suburban landscape, the lives of several families interlace with loss, despair and personal crisis. Esther Gold has lost focus on all but caring for her comatose son, Paul, and neglects her daughter and husband. Lawyer Jim Train is devoted to his career, not his family. Helen Christianson wants to find a new spark in life, while Annette Jennings tries to rebuild hers.

The Zerda and the Songs of Forgetting

“La Zerda and the songs of oblivion” (1982) is one of only two films made by the Algerian novelist Assia Djebar, with “La Nouba des femmes du mont Chenoua” (1977). Powerful poetic essay based on archives, in which Assia Djebar – in collaboration with the poet Malek Alloula and the composer Ahmed Essyad – deconstructs the French colonial propaganda of the Pathé-Gaumont newsreels from 1912 to 1942, to reveal the signs of revolt among the subjugated North African population. Through the reassembly of these propaganda images, Djebar recovers the history of the Zerda ceremonies, suggesting that the power and mysticism of this tradition were obliterated and erased by the predatory voyeurism of the colonial gaze. This very gaze is thus subverted and a hidden tradition of resistance and struggle is revealed, against any exoticizing and orientalist temptation.

Selma

"Selma," as in Alabama, the place where segregation in the South was at its worst, leading to a march that ended in violence, forcing a famous statement by President Lyndon B. Johnson that ultimately led to the signing of the Voting Rights Act.

Losing Ground

Sara, a cold college professor, and her husband, an ecstatic painter, spend a summer away from the city, straining their rocky relationship.

Skinned

In an old building, lost in the middle of the swamp, live two strange women, siamese twins by one leg. At night, the Flayed has terrifying nightmares in which she sees her sister's flesh covering her own body.

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.

Most Beautiful Island

Chronicling one harrowing day in the life of Luciana, a young woman struggling to make ends meet while striving to escape her past. As Luciana’s day unfolds, she is whisked, physically and emotionally, through a series of troublesome, unforeseeable extremes.

Lane 1974

At 13 years old and the eldest of three kids, Lane struggles to keep her family together as her iconoclast mother moves without warning through the communes and dusty back woods of Northern California.

Toyland

On a winter morning, a mother goes to waken her son Heinrich; his bed is empty. She leaves her flat to find him. The neighbors' door, with a Star of David painted on it, is ajar, the furnishings in disarray, the family gone. She asks passersby, runs to the police then on to the rail yard. Flashbacks show that Heinrich and the neighbors' son Paul are six years old and best friends. Paul's family's deportation is expected soon; Heinrich's mother tells her son that they're going to Toyland. Heinrich wants to go with them, has a bag packed, and listens for their departure. His mother realizes he's joined them, and her resolve becomes more urgent. Will she arrive in time to save Heinrich?

Last Night

Michael and Joanna are a young and successful married couple who appear to have it all. But when Michael finds himself alone on a business trip with an attractive new colleague and Joanna encounters the other great love of her life, each is thrust into an evening of temptation.