Held Back (2025)

Careful

The mountain-village passions of a German widow and her sons unfold in the style of a 1920s expressionist movie.

Resurrection

In the wake of a traumatic incident at a funeral, an aging widow is faced with a bizarre, impossible choice.

Red Wood Pigeon

Michele is a Communist MP who loses his memory in a car crash—although nobody seems to notice. Over the course of a water polo match ahead of election day, he begins to remember his past life, revealing the picture of a man whose personal and political identity crisis mirrors the one of Italian communism.

The Third Planet

Drawing heavily from Arkady and Boris Strugatsky's 1971 novella 'Piknik na obochine' ('Roadside Picnic') as well as Andrei Tarkovsky's 1979 film adaptation ('Stalker'), 'Tretya planeta' tells the story of a father seeking a cure for his ill daughter by venturing into an area known only as "The Zone" to request help from the mysterious healers that dwell within its forbidden borders.

The Motion

This experimental short film explores the reconstruction and recollection of traumatic events through fragmented memories, using a non-linear narrative and a layered visual approach. The film emphasizes the penetration of montage, with an anarchic and chaotic tone that reflects both fun and disorder. The film brings to life concerns about how a woman moves, how she speaks, dreams, and how she is stripped of her inherent qualities by a society which continues to sexualize and harmfully perceive her. It visualizes a recollection of thoughts, dreams and memories, symbolically intertwining the characters experiences of their conscious with their subconscious.

Endless Poetry

A portrait of the director’s young adulthood, set in the 1940s–1950s, in the electric capital city of Santiago. There, he decides to become a poet and is introduced, by destiny, into the foremost bohemian and artistic circle of the time.

The Ringing Bell

Judah is a young man with a condition - he dreams while he's still awake. His imagination makes it difficult for him to process the loss of an important person in his life, so when his cousin contacts him with a ridiculous scheme to get at the riches of their eccentric Uncle Airmid who has disappeared, Judah agrees to go along with it.

Buñuel in the Labyrinth of the Turtles

Paris, 1930. Luis Buñuel is penniless after the scandal surrounding the release of his last movie. Sculptor Ramón Acín, a good friend, buys a lottery ticket and promises Buñuel that he will pay for his next movie if he wins the prize.

This Must Be the Place

A bored, retired rock star sets out to find his father's tormentor, an ex-Nazi war criminal who is a refugee in the U.S.

Terrestrial

A reunion weekend spirals out of control for four college friends when the host - a science fiction writer on the verge of newfound success - fights to maintain his sense of reality in the face of sudden, uncanny dangers.

The Manor of Araucaima

In an old and mysterious tropical mansion cohabit the supposed owner, a friar, a convalescent pilot, the Haitian servant, the mercenary guardian and the Machiche, a mature and dominant female. A young model arrives there to unleash all kinds of passions.

Pitfall

A man wanders into a seemingly deserted town with his young son in search of work. But after a bit of bad luck, he joins the town's population of lost souls.

The Other Side of the Underneath

A therapist looks into the mind of a woman diagnosed as schizophrenic and finds, not madness, but tortured sexual guilt created by the taboos of society.

Worms in the Snow

Worms in the Snow is an experimental and timeless fiction in black and white. A film of fragments. A surreal policeman. A movie to BE IN THE MYSTERY.

Duffer

Duffer, an intense and bizarre study of obsession that is by turns beautiful and disturbing, tells the story of a teenage boy torn between the womanly charms of a kindly prostitute, and the sadistic attentions of an older man. Both whimsical and disturbing, with a quirky sense of the grotesque, Duffer is a film that defies easy comparison.

Something Awful

A surrealist poetic short film following a struggling filmmaker as he is tormented by his ambitions and anxieties, granted only to leave through a process of self-actualisation.

Æon Flux

400 years into the future, disease has wiped out the majority of the world's population, except one walled city, Bregna, ruled by a congress of scientists. When Æon Flux, the top operative in the underground 'Monican' rebellion, is sent on a mission to kill a government leader, she uncovers a world of secrets.

O'Horten

Odd Horton is dependable and contained: he's a train driver retiring after 40 years of service, living a simple life. His idea of adventure is to fly from one city in Norway to another. Starting on the night of his retirement dinner, Odd has a series of dislocating experiences: a boy insists that Odd sit by his bedside while he falls asleep; misadventure causes Odd to miss his last run; he witnesses an arrest; he assists an old man and makes a friend; he takes a trip with a blindfolded driver; he adopts a dog; he takes stock late one night at the roundhouse; he revisits his mother's disappointment in him. How should he live the rest of his life?

The Tree of Life

The impressionistic story of a Texas family in the 1950s. The film follows the life journey of the eldest son, Jack, through the innocence of childhood to his disillusioned adult years as he tries to reconcile a complicated relationship with his father. Jack finds himself a lost soul in the modern world, seeking answers to the origins and meaning of life while questioning the existence of faith.

Hellraiser

A hedonistic man finds a mysterious puzzle box that summons a group of gruesome beings known as the Cenobites. These otherworldly entities open the doors to a dominion where pain and pleasure are indivisible.

Boys Go to Jupiter

A teenager in suburban Florida desperately hustles to make $5,000 in this dreamy and surreal animated coming-of-age story.

Synecdoche, New York

A theater director struggles with his work, and the women in his life, as he attempts to create a life-size replica of New York inside a warehouse as part of his new play.

The Baby of Mâcon

Set halfway through the 17th century, a church play is performed for the benefit of the young aristocrat Cosimo. In the play, a grotesque old woman gives birth to a beautiful baby boy. The child's older sister is quick to exploit the situation, selling blessings from the baby, and even claiming she's the true mother by virgin birth. However, when she attempts to seduce the bishop's son, the Church exacts a terrible revenge.

Double Bluff

One man's attempts to defeat the tortures of his own mindscape come to a head in the midst of a game of poker, when a mysterious figure interjects the flow of things and everything takes a turn for the worst. As the audience and the protagonist experience the same horrors it leads them to ask the question - who's bluffing? Written and directed by Santino Benedetto, DB was brought to life by him and his fellow filmmaker and life long friend Thomas Dylan Gracey.

Sinners

Trying to leave their troubled lives behind, twin brothers return to their hometown to start again, only to discover that an even greater evil is waiting to welcome them back.

L'Âge d'or

The film consists of a series of tightly interlinked vignettes, the most sustained of which details the story of a man and a woman who are passionately in love. Their attempts to consummate their passion are constantly thwarted, by their families, by the Church and bourgeois society in general.

Protozoa

Darren Aronofsky’s AFI short opens with angry slacker Dave sitting in a dreary, empty junkyard. Dave stares into space, sips beer, and beats the hell out of a cracked guitar. We quickly realize the emptiness of the dump parallels the emptiness of Dave’s life which consists of smoking weed, staring at television screens and watching school children. Dave’s friend Pete is shortly introduced, along with their friend, Ari, who despite calling her pals losers, doesn’t seem to accomplishing much herself. These three are going nowhere fast. They’re the amoebas of life… protozoa….

Efreet

Sophia, who recently turned 10, is haunted by mysterious nightmares. In her nightmares, a girl named Selinka keeps appearing, showing her things about her mother Tina's past that she shouldn't know anything about. Tina thinks that her ex-husband Markus is secretly seeing Sophia, although he is not allowed to have any contact with her. But when one evening Sophia mentions the name "Efreet", Dana (a close friend of the little family) knows that they are dealing with evil forces.

Altered States

A research scientist explores the boundaries and frontiers of consciousness. Using sensory deprivation and hallucinogenic mixtures from native American shamans, he explores these altered states of consciousness and finds that memory, time, and perhaps reality itself are states of mind.

After Hours

Desperate to escape his mind-numbing routine, uptown Manhattan office worker Paul Hackett ventures downtown for a hookup with a mystery woman.

The Serpent and the Rainbow

A Harvard anthropologist is sent to Haiti to retrieve a strange powder that is said to have the power to bring human beings back from the dead. In his quest to find the miracle drug, the cynical scientist enters the rarely seen netherworld of walking zombies, blood rites and ancient curses. Based on the true life experiences of Wade Davis and filmed on location in Haiti, it's a frightening excursion into black magic and the supernatural.

Electroma

Two robots embark on a quest to become human.

The Doom Generation

Jordan White and Amy Blue, two troubled teens, pick up an adolescent drifter, Xavier Red. Together, the threesome embarks on a sex- and violence-filled journey through a United States of psychos and quickie marts.

From Forest To City

The story takes place in the year 1977 about the hero fleeing into the forest during the time when soldiers, police suppressed the communists. One day he meets the first villagers, everyone is afraid, but when the hero observes and analyzes that this villager is not disguised. A true villager Little knowledge due to loneliness of having to watch the spot alone, the hero tells the villagers to come back and forth. They are close to each other. It can be seen that only political ideology can divide us. One day the villagers suddenly didn't come as scheduled. The protagonist goes looking for the villagers. making the hero see bad things again

Stationed At Home

On a clear and frigid Christmas Eve in 1998, in a small, forgotten city, a solitary taxi driver on the graveyard shift breathlessly awaits the sight of the International Space Station. As the hours count down, a parade of offbeat misfits derail his plans, propelling the story to its exhilarating climax. In this poetic, hilarious and often absurd tale, complete strangers discover unexpected unity and a newfound understanding of their place among the stars.

Carrie

An awkward, telekinetic teenage girl's lonely life is dominated by relentless bullying at school and an oppressive religious fanatic mother at home. When her tormentors pull a humiliating prank at the senior prom, she unleashes a horrifying chaos on everyone, leaving nothing but destruction in her wake.

The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover

The wife of an abusive criminal finds solace in the arms of a kind regular guest in her husband's restaurant.

Amarcord

In an Italian seaside town, young Titta gets into trouble with his friends and watches various local eccentrics as they engage in often absurd behavior. Frequently clashing with his stern father and defended by his doting mother, Titta witnesses the actions of a wide range of characters, from his extended family to Fascist loyalists to sensual women, with certain moments shifting into fantastical scenarios.

The Holy Mountain

The Alchemist assembles together a group of people from all walks of life to represent the planets in the solar system. The occult adept's intention is to put his recruits through strange mystical rites and divest them of their worldly baggage before embarking on a trip to Lotus Island. There they ascend the Holy Mountain to displace the immortal gods who secretly rule the universe.

The Cell

A psychotherapist journeys inside a comatose serial killer in the hopes of saving his latest victim.

Silence

After being discovered trying to escape, a woman must survive the night with her abusive girlfriend.

The Trial

The surreal tale of an unassuming man who is accused of a never-specified crime and shambles through bizarre encounters to escape this nightmare.

Café Limbo

A young waitress in a desolate café surrounded by an overpowering snowstorm challenges an evil presence when she's forced to save the life of a female guest in labour.

Spice World

World famous pop group the Spice Girls zip around London in their luxurious double decker tour bus having various adventures and performing for their fans.

Southland Tales

Set in the futuristic landscape of Los Angeles on July 4, 2008, as it stands on the brink of social, economic and environmental disaster. Boxer Santaros is an action star who's stricken with amnesia. His life intertwines with Krysta Now, an adult film star developing her own reality television project, and Ronald Taverner, a Hermosa Beach police officer who holds the key to a vast conspiracy.

Requiem for a Dream

The drug-induced utopias of four Coney Island residents are shattered when their addictions run deep.

The Shining

Jack Torrance accepts a caretaker job at the Overlook Hotel, where he, along with his wife Wendy and their son Danny, must live isolated from the rest of the world for the winter. But they aren't prepared for the madness that lurks within.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Raoul Duke and his attorney Dr. Gonzo drive a red convertible across the Mojave desert to Las Vegas with a suitcase full of drugs to cover a motorcycle race. As their consumption of drugs increases at an alarming rate, the stoned duo trash their hotel room and fear legal repercussions. Duke begins to drive back to L.A., but after an odd run-in with a cop, he returns to Sin City and continues his wild drug binge.

Vanilla Sky

David Aames has it all: wealth, good looks and gorgeous women on his arm. But just as he begins falling for the warmhearted Sofia, his face is horribly disfigured in a car accident. That's just the beginning of his troubles as the lines between illusion and reality, between life and death, are blurred.

Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me

In the questionable town of Deer Meadow, Washington, FBI Agent Desmond inexplicably disappears while hunting for the man who murdered a teen girl. The killer is never apprehended, and, after experiencing dark visions and supernatural encounters, Agent Dale Cooper chillingly predicts that the culprit will claim another life. Meanwhile, in the more cozy town of Twin Peaks, hedonistic beauty Laura Palmer hangs with lowlifes and seems destined for a grisly fate.

Pi

A mathematical genius discovers a link between numbers and reality, and thus believes he can predict the future.

Wild at Heart

Young lovers Sailor and Lula hit the road to start a new life together away from the wrath of Lula’s deranged, disapproving mother, who has hired a team of hitmen to cut the lovers’ surreal honeymoon short.

Apocalypse Now

At the height of the Vietnam war, Captain Benjamin Willard is sent on a dangerous mission that, officially, "does not exist, nor will it ever exist." His goal is to locate - and eliminate - a mysterious Green Beret Colonel named Walter Kurtz, who has been leading his personal army on illegal guerrilla missions into enemy territory.

Donnie Darko

After narrowly escaping a bizarre accident, a troubled teenager is plagued by visions of a large bunny rabbit that manipulates him to commit a series of crimes.