The Presence of Absence (2024)

The Secret

Marie, who works as a successful door-to-door encyclopedia salesperson, has been married to her husband Francois for 12 years and has a two-year-old son. Though she is relatively content with her life, she feels something is wanting. Enter 50-year old African-American Bill. Initially she is annoyed by his insouciance, but she finds that she is irresistibly attracted to him. Soon the two are in the midst of sordid illicit affair. She knows little about her new lover, and he seems uninterested in learning about her, but the long sessions of lovemaking are something else entirely. Feeling out of control, Marie is increasingly repelled by her own actions. Psychologically, she struggles to reconcile her torrid encounters with Bill and mundane domestic chores such as bathing her son. Moreover, she finds herself incapable of hiding her adulterous behavior, rather she comes home with scratches and hickeys all over her body, to the devastation Francois.

Cherry Blossoms

After finding out that her husband, Rudi, has a fatal illness, Trudi Angermeier arranges a trip to Berlin so they can see their children. Of course, the kids don't know the real reason they're visiting -- and the catch is, neither does Rudi...

Love and Other Disasters

Flighty Emily "Jacks" Jackson works for the British edition of Vogue magazine. Rather than pursue a relationship, Jacks regularly hooks up with her devoted ex-boyfriend, James Wildstone, and lives with Peter Simon, a gay screenwriter. When Jacks meets Argentinian photographer's assistant Paolo Sarmiento, she assumes he is gay and tries to bring him and Peter together, unaware that Paolo is straight and in love with her.

According to Plan

It's mom's birthday and her three daughters want to throw a big party. But everything turns out differently. It's not just because the divorced dad arrives a few days early and brings his much-too-young new girlfriend with him, or because the birthday girl has to stage the end of the world with her village theater group.

10:30 P.M. Summer

A female traveling companion seduces a married man and his alcoholic wife.

Runaway Bride

Having already left three grooms at the altar, Maggie Carpenter is branded "the runaway bride" by jaded New York journalist Ike Graham. But, after his facts are called into question, Ike races to Maggie's hometown to save his reputation and report on her upcoming fourth trip down the aisle – during which he's convinced she'll run again. Though he's there on a muckraking mission, Ike can't help but fall for this breathtaking heartbreaker.

Male Hunt

A few stories about marriage and its problems. Antoine is about to marry Gisèle. His friend Julien, an established bachelor, desperately tries to convince him not to do it, recounting his own painful experiences.

Hannah and Her Sisters

Between two Thanksgivings, Hannah's husband falls in love with her sister Lee, while her hypochondriac ex-husband rekindles his relationship with her sister Holly.

Ardor

In revenge for her husband's infidelity, a young beautiful housewife, Mi-heun, starts an affair with an attractive young doctor, In-gyu. Despite her husband's efforts to regain her love and the disapproval by the conservative little town, Mi-huen gradually finds happiness and satisfaction in the affair and decides to turn her back on her quiet life.

The Intimacies of Analu and Fernanda

After separating from her abusive husband, Analu knows Fernanda, a lovely lady who offers her shelter. The friendship between the two turns into an intense love affair, but Fernanda shows possessive and violent. The situation worsens when her husband discovers her whereabouts Analu and starts chasing her. And even worse when Fernanda also rejected, decides to put an end to the life of the lover, without considering the consequences.

Boy Meets Girl

In Kentucky, a transgender woman and her best male friend lament the lack of eligible partners and step across old boundaries of love and romance.

A Guide for the Married Man

A man gives his friend a series of lessons on how to cheat on one's wife without being caught.

The Swimming Pool

Set in a magnificent villa near a sun-drenched St. Tropez, lovers Jean-Paul and Marianne are spending a happy, lazy summer holiday. Their only concern is to gratify their mutual passion - until the day when Marianne invites her former lover and his beautiful teenage daughter to spend a few days with them. From the first moment, a certain uneasiness and tension begin to develop between the four, which soon escalates in a dangerous love-game.

The Piano Player

A tale about the relationship between a businessman who launders money for a Mafia figure and his gangster bodyguard.

How Much Do You Love Me?

After winning the lottery, François goes to a bar in Pigalle and offers one hundred thousand Euros per month to a prostitute named Daniela to live with him as his wife until his money runs out.

Five Times Two

As young French couple Gilles and Marion officially separate, we see, in reverse order, the milestone moments in their relationship: Gilles revealing his unfaithfulness at a tense dinner party; Marion giving birth to their premature son while Gilles is elsewhere; Gilles and Marion's joyous wedding; and, finally, the fateful moment when they meet as acquaintances at an Italian beach resort, and their love affair begins.

Soultribe: A Dance of Life

Three families struggle to find their true selves and their soulmates in a world full of expectations, pressure and obstacles. Inspired by real events, this film shows how they pursue their dreams and potential without losing themselves.

Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown

Pepa resolves to kill herself with a batch of sleeping-pill-laced gazpacho after her lover leaves her. Fortunately, she is interrupted by a deliciously chaotic series of events.

Loitering with Intent

Fledgling screenwriters retreat to a quiet country manor to work on their script, but a constellation of needy characters produces constant interruptions.

Zero Motivation

Filmmaker Talya Lavie steps into the spotlight with a dark comedy about everyday life for a unit of young female Israeli soldiers. The human resources office at a remote desert base serves as the setting for this cast of characters, who bide their time pushing paper, battling for the top score in Minesweeper, and counting down the minutes until they can return to civilian life. Amidst their boredom and clashing personalities, issues of commitment—from friendship to love and country—are handled with humor and sharp-edged wit.

Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person

Sasha is a young vampire with a serious problem: she's too sensitive to kill. When her exasperated parents cut off her blood supply, Sasha's life is in jeopardy. Luckily, she meets Paul, a lonely teenager with suicidal tendencies who is willing to give his life to save hers. But their friendly agreement soon becomes a nocturnal quest to fulfill Paul's last wishes before day breaks.

High Fidelity

After his long-time girlfriend dumps him, a thirty-year-old record store owner seeks to understand why he is unlucky in love while recounting his "top five breakups of all time".

Bed and Board

Parisian everyman Antoine Doinel has married his sweetheart Christine Darbon, and the newlyweds have set up a cozy domestic life of selling flowers and giving violin lessons while Antoine fitfully works on his long-gestating novel. As Christine becomes pregnant with the couple's first child, Antoine finds himself enraptured with a young Japanese beauty. The complications change the course of their relationship forever.

Open Hearts

Cecilie and Joachim are about to get married when a freak car accident leaves Joachim disabled, throwing their lives into a spin. The driver of the other car, Marie, and her family don’t get off lightly, either. Her husband Niels works in the hospital where he meets Cecilie and falls madly in love with her.

About the Looking for and the Finding of Love

Director helmut Dietls and Patric Susskinds illustrate a legendary story of two lovers who cant keep themselves away from death.

Kebab Connection

In Hamburg, Ibrahim "Ibo" Secmez, of Turkish descent, wants to direct the first German kung-fu movie. For now, he makes commercials for his uncle's kebab restaurant. Titzie, an aspiring actress and Ibo's German girlfriend, finds she's pregnant. Ibo is uncertain about fatherhood - compounded by his father's disowning him for getting a German girl pregnant - so Titzie sends him packing. He makes attempts at getting it right, but as the birth approaches, he's still not ready. In the background are three thugs in search of good tripe soup and a Capulet-Montegue feud between the kebab joint and a Greek taverna across the street. Can Ibo be the glove upon that hand?

Barefoot

A hedonistic bachelor - he is his rich family's black sheep - falls for a suicidal mental patient.

I Love You to Death

Joey Boca is the owner of a pizza parlour, and has been married to Rosalie for years. When Rosalie discovers that Joey is a womanizer and has been cheating on her for a long time, she goes to extreme lengths to punish him.

Naked

Nackt is the story of three couples, one of which just broke up, one that seems to be about to and one perfectly okay. They are all friends and from time to time they gather to talk about everything.One time they gather for dinner at the second couple's "mansion" - the husband became rich with his business. We see each couple as they prepare themselves for the party and learn a lot about their relationships.At the dinner they get to talking about recognizing each other's peer with closed eyes and decide to try it (thus the title "Nackt"=naked in German).

Sorry If I Call You Love

A successful, attractive, intelligent and brilliant advertising executive is longing to finally find emotional stability in his life, and decides to propose to his girlfriend. After she refuses his proposal, his life takes a turn when a new young lady enters his life.

This Boy's Life

When a son and mother move to Seattle in hopes for a better life, the mother meets a seemingly polite man. Things go south when the man turns out to be abusive, endangering their lives. As the mother struggles to maintain hope in an impossible situation, the son has plans to escape.

Dan in Real Life

Advice columnist Dan Burns is an expert on relationships, but somehow struggles to succeed as a brother, a son and a single parent to three precocious daughters. Things get even more complicated when Dan finds out that the woman he falls in love with is actually his brother's new girlfriend.

The Edukators

Three activists cobble together a kidnapping plot after they encounter a businessman in his home.

Grill Point

In the style of a documentary this tragic comedy tells the story of a relationship crisis between two married couples and their longing to break out of their miserable daily lives. In this East German post-wall movie Andreas Dresen introduces the sad everyday life of two couples from Frankfurt an der Oder in a honest and tolerable manner.

Say You Will

A recent high school graduate cares for his mother and navigates his first relationship in the wake of his father's suicide.

Rojin farm

Kazuhiko seizes the opportunity of his mother's illness to quit work and return to his parents' home. He begins working at senior citizens' home, performing his duties despite having doubts about the facility's policies even as he listens to his mother's grumblings at home. Then he meets a rebellious woman, Aiko, who begins to have an influence on him.

The Guest

Alicia and Enrique are a young married couple somewhat distanced from each other. Their relationship is threatened when Carlota, a friend of Alicia's from long ago, comes to visit and stays with them for a while.

December Bride

At the beginning of the 20th century, a young servant provokes an independent Irish farm community by her relationship with two brothers. Pregnant, she refuses to reveal the name of the father.

New Life

Benjamin Morton's life changed forever the day he met the little girl next door. Ava was and always would be the girl of his dreams. From the innocence of a childhood friendship, through adolescent attraction, their love strengthens and grows. When life takes a turn neither of them expected, their entire future is called into question.

He's Just Not That Into You

Have you ever sat by the phone wondering why he said he would call, but didn't, or you can't figure out why she doesn't want to sleep with you anymore, or why your relationship just isn't going to the next level... they're just not that into you. Gigi just wants a man who says he'll call—and does—while Alex advises her to stop waiting by the phone. Beth wants a proposal after years of a committed relationship with her boyfriend, Neil, who sees nothing wrong with the status quo. Janine's not sure if she can trust her husband, Ben, who can't quite trust himself around Anna. Anna can't decide between the sexy married guy, or her straightforward, no-sparks standby, Conor, who can't get over the fact that he can't have her. And Mary, who's found an entire network of loving, supportive men, just needs to find one who's straight.

Big Girls Don't Cry

Kati and Steffi have been best friends since they were six. Now they're both 17 and enjoying the ups and downs of becoming adults together. While Kati's parents are religious and conservative, but argue constantly, Steffi comes from what appears to be a harmonious and liberal family. But the girls discover how quickly their attractive world can fall apart when, at a hip nightclub, they happen to see Steffi's father in the arms of another woman. Steffi is shocked, her trust in her small perfect world shaken to the core. She can only think of one thing: revenge.

Autumn in New York

Will Keane, a Manhattan restaurateur, is content with his playboy lifestyle until he meets Charlotte Fielding, a free-spirited young woman. Together the pair pursue a passionate affair that forces them both to reevaluate what they want out of life, even as fate threatens to steal away their future.

Happiness

The lives of several individuals intertwine as they go about their lives in their own unique ways, engaging in acts which society as a whole might find disturbing in a desperate search for human connection.

Crazy/Beautiful

At Pacific Palisades High, a poor Latino falls hard for a troubled girl from the affluent neighborhood.

The Taste of Others

Unpolished and ultra-pragmatic industrialist Jean-Jacques Castella reluctantly attends Racine's tragedy "Berenice" in order to see his niece play a bit part. He is taken with the play's strangely familiar-looking leading lady Clara Devaux. During the course of the show, Castella soon remembers that he once hired and then promptly fired the actress as an English language tutor. He immediately goes out and signs up for language lessons. Thinking that he is nothing but an ill-tempered philistine with bad taste, Clara rejects him until Castella charms her off her feet.

Far from Heaven

In 1950s Connecticut, a housewife's life is upended by a marital crisis and mounting racial tensions in society.

Angst

Oskar Roehler's drama Der Alte Affe Angst (Angst) is about the dissolution of a couple. Robert (Andre Hennicke) and Marie (Marie Baumer) have little in common other than their sex life. Since Robert is going through a bout with impotency, they are having a very rocky time. Robert learns that his father, whom he is estranged from, has died. This disturbs Robert so much that he visits a prostitute, and is able to engage in sex with her. Marie discovers the infidelity, and the prostitute has a surprise of her own. Angst was screened at the 2003 Berlin Film Festival.

Anything Else

Jerry Falk, an aspiring writer in New York, falls in love at first sight with a free-spirited young woman named Amanda. He has heard the phrase that life is like "anything else," but soon he finds that life with the unpredictable Amanda isn't like anything else at all.

Koi Aap Sa

An emotional Mumbai-based football player, Rohan (Shivdasani), seeks the assistance of childhood friend, Simran (Reddy), to successfully woo fellow-collegian, Preeti (Sharma). Simran herself is about to be engaged to U.S-based Vicky (Malik). After the engagement ceremony, Vicky returns back to the U.S - not realising that back in India nothing is the same anymore...

The Savages

A sister and brother face the realities of familial responsibility as they begin to care for their ailing father.

Summer Things

Two couple of friends, one very rich, the other almost homeless, decide to go on Holiday. Julie, a single mother, joins them too. Once at seaside, it starts a complicate love cross among them that will involve also a transsexual, a jealous brother, a Latin Lover and another nervous stressed couple. Not to mention about the daughter of one of them that is secretly in Chicago with one of her father's employees... At the end of the summer, all of them will join the same party...

Under the Tuscan Sun

After a rough divorce, Frances, a 35-year-old professor and writer from San Francisco takes a tour of Tuscany at the urgings of her friends. On a whim she buys Bramasole, a run down villa in the Tuscan countryside and begins to piece her life together starting with the villa and finds that life sometimes has unexpected ways of giving her everything she wanted.

Borderless Love

Borderless Love is a romantic comedy about two couples - Pedro and Joana, Brazilians; Martin and Pilar, Argentines - involved in an involuntary couples exchange. Pedro and Joana turn a blind eye to each other's infidelity. Their daughter, Paula, a jealous teenager, distrusts the father and ends up discovering his case with Pilar. Pedro opts for the family, but without his lover, he becomes a burden at home. Tired of her husband's depression, Joana asks Pilar to return to be Pedro's lover. In the end, everyone's life takes on new paths, but they remain united. Borderless Love is a fun and romantic journey of self-knowledge in the lives of these characters.

Great Great Great

Lauren simultaneously starts an affair with her boss, rents a bachelor apartment, and asks her boyfriend Tom to marry her.

Boiling Point

A head chef balances multiple personal and professional crises at a popular restaurant in London.

Ramante Edanthottam

Ram Menon is a nature lover who runs a resort in the middle of the forest to cater to people who wants to get away from their busy lives. Malini is an urban housewife who's having issues with her husband Elvis. She visits the resort for peace of mind and instantly falls in love with the place and eventually the owner.

My Bestfriend's Girlfriend

Evo and Grace are from different worlds. Their paths cross serendipitously when Grace, a waitress in a girlie bar, agrees to fill in for a stripper friend on a bachelor party attended by Evo. His not-so gentlemanly behavior during the party doesn’t endear him with Grace, and unfortunately, neither with his girlfriend who instantly breaks-up with him. Wanting his girlfriend back, Evo arrives at a scheme upon discovering that Grace happens to be his bestfriend’s girlfriend.

The Broken Hearts Club: A Romantic Comedy

A close-knit group of gay friends share the emotional roller coster of life, relationships, the death of friends, new beginnings, jealousy, fatherhood and professional success. At various stages of life's disarray, these young men share humorous and tragic relationships and always have each other to rely on.

Jason's Lyric

The story of a young man who must confront his own fears about love as well as his relationships with family and friends.

Nostalgia

A mosaic of stories about love and loss, exploring our relationship to the objects, artifacts, and memories that shape our lives.

Love & Basketball

Monica Wright and Quincy McCall grew up in the same neighborhood and have known each other since childhood. As they grow into adulthood, they fall in love, but they also share another all-consuming passion: basketball. As Quincy and Monica struggle to make their relationship work, they follow separate career paths though high school and college basketball and, they hope, into stardom in big-league professional ball.

Good Dick

A fidgety, wisecracking video store clerk develops a fixation on a particularly reclusive customer, a frequent visitor to the pornography section of Cinefile, the video store where he works in Los Angeles. After multiple failures to impress her during their brief daily transactions, he finds her street address in the store's database, drives to her apartment building and initiates an unconventional campaign to win her affections.

Fever Pitch

When Ben Wrightman, a young teacher, begins dating pretty businesswoman Lindsey Meeks, the two don't seem to have a lot of the same interests, but they fall in love, regardless. Their romance goes well until baseball season begins, and Lindsey soon realizes that Ben is completely obsessed with the Boston Red Sox. Though she tries to understand Ben's passionate team loyalty, eventually it threatens to end their otherwise happy relationship.

Sex and Breakfast

Two young couples using anonymous sex as a catalyst to fix their troubled relationships must rethink what makes a connection work.

Salaam Namaste

Salaam Namaste is about two Indians who have left their houses to make a life on their own, and how they meet and how they tackle their own relationships and problems and overcome them themselves without their families

Threesome

Som, an ordinary young woman who works as a movie make-up artist. Her longtime live-in boyfriend Rang is also in the business. But the handsome musclebound prop guy – always wearing tight, biceps-baring vest T-shirts – captures many adoring eyes, like that slutty actress, but also his straight-acting gay boss and just about anyone else with a pulse.

200 Cigarettes

In 1981 New York City, a collection of twentysomethings try to cope with relationships, loneliness, desire and their individual neuroses on New Years Eve.

Endless Summer Syndrome

When the mother of two adoptees is tipped off about the possible affair her husband may be having with one of their children, her sense of duty takes a macabre turn.

Mojave Moon

Al McCord is hanging out at his favourite restaurant when he meets an attractive young woman (Ellie) who is looking for a ride from the city out into the Mojave Desert, where her mother lives. Little does he know that while Ellie is falling in love with him, he is falling for her mother (Julie), despite the nearby presence of Julie's boyfriend who seems likely to go berzerk at any moment. Even more strange, hilarious events follow and it's up to Al to find some explanation. His life may never again be the same.

Scarlet Diva

A young Italian actress embarks on a self-destructive spree of sex, drugs and other excess while doing some soul searching to find the path for redemption.