How It Feels (2016)

Nanook of the North

This pioneering documentary film depicts the lives of the indigenous Inuit people of Canada's northern Quebec region. Although the production contains some fictional elements, it vividly shows how its resourceful subjects survive in such a harsh climate, revealing how they construct their igloo homes and find food by hunting and fishing. The film also captures the beautiful, if unforgiving, frozen landscape of the Great White North, far removed from conventional civilization.

October (Ten Days that Shook the World)

Sergei M. Eisenstein's docu-drama about the 1917 October Revolution in Russia. Made ten years after the events and edited in Eisenstein's 'Soviet Montage' style, it re-enacts in celebratory terms several key scenes from the revolution.

A Truck Under Repair

Twenty-year-old Eugène is somewhat aimless and has not been doing well in university. He is staying in a small village for the summer. He awkwardly seduces Pierre, a slightly older man who is working for Mathilde as caretaker for the season. Pierre is initially open to the relationship, but quickly becomes reluctant to become too involved.

The Passion of Joan of Arc

A classic of the silent age, this film tells the story of the doomed but ultimately canonized 15th-century teenage warrior. On trial for claiming she'd spoken to God, Jeanne d'Arc is subjected to inhumane treatment and scare tactics at the hands of church court officials. Initially bullied into changing her story, Jeanne eventually opts for what she sees as the truth. Her punishment, a famously brutal execution, earns her perpetual martyrdom.

Battleship Potemkin

A dramatized account of a great Russian naval mutiny and a resultant public demonstration, showing support, which brought on a police massacre. The film had an incredible impact on the development of cinema and is a masterful example of montage editing.

La Jetée

A man confronts his past during an experiment that attempts to find a solution to the problems of a post-apocalyptic world caused by a world war.

A Tale of Yearning

This is a sad tale of a noble lady who is entranced by an opera singer. Hoping to get closer to the singer, the lady takes up lessons with her. Despite their affection, they must face obstacles.

A Search Through Nine Lifetimes

For love to travel for thousands of years, they will eventually meet.

The Block Signal

Joe Ryan, a veteran train engineer, is demoted to a flagman position after a disastrous crash-- one caused by his cowardly and opportunistic partner. Though Ryan's failing eyesight is named as the cause of the crash, he's undeterred as he designs an automatic braking invention.

The Fox Spirit Repays a Debt

A wife and a concubine seek freedom. In a game of seduction, together they join forces to defeat their oppressors.

Antoine and Colette

Now aged 17, Antoine Doinel works in a factory which makes records. At a music concert, he meets a girl his own age, Colette, and falls in love with her. Later, Antoine goes to extraordinary lengths to please his new girlfriend and her parents, but Colette still only regards him as a casual friend. First segment of “Love at Twenty” (1962).

Two Lovers

Set during the 16th-century Spanish occupation of Flanders, the story concentrates on the fiercely patriotic Mark Van Ryke (Colman). Donning the guise of "Leatherface," a swashbuckling masked avenger, Van Ryke performs his derring-do on behalf of the Prince of Orange (Nigel de Brulier). Naturally, Van Ruke considers beautiful Spanish aristocrat Donna Leonora de Vargas (Vilma Banky) to be a bitter enemy, and the feeling is mutual. To no one's surprise, however, Van Ryke and Donna Leonara eventually fall in love (hence the title). The pulse-pounding climax finds Van Ryke riding hell-for-leather through a rainstorm to warn the Flemish troops about the Spaniards' plans to burn the city of Ghent to the ground. Two Lovers was based on Madame Orczy's novel Leatherface, and adapted for the screen by Alice Duer Miller.

Ortolan

On the night of their mother’s wake, three estranged sisters divide their childhood home over a pot of magic mushroom tea while a family secret boils to the surface. A story about the tenuousness of memory, buried trauma, food... and psychedelics.

Days of Rage

Trump’s declarations concerning Israel and a Palestinian immigrant’s uncle’s medical diagnosis conspire to throw the latter into crisis, push him into provocative encounters, and jeopardize his relationship.

Bud

A little girl has a birthday dinner with her father that she'll never forget...

Do You Like the Taste of Beer?

A young businessman unexpectedly spends the evening with his one night stand, as they open up about their personal fears, loneliness, and the strain of LA, with good performances from the leads.

Lessons in Red

When a junior high student in 1963 suspects his teacher of being a communist, he investigates the truth to gain approval from his father.

Mamá

Lili wakes her sister Victoria and insists that they both leave the house.

July 96

July 1996, the beach, the sea, the sun. Sophie, 10, spends her summer vacations with her mother and her cousin Laurence. But Laurence has grown up and her mother's thoughts are elsewhere. While the whole country is still looking for two missing little girls, Sophie discovers that this will be her last summer as a child.

Wandering

This short by Tsai Ming-liang, completed in 2021, was filmed at "the Dune" in Yilan, Taiwan, where the eight films in his Walker series were being shown.

Cryhard

A biographic look at a break-up and infidelity.

Lialia‘s Home

Olga Alexandrovna was an easy-going person. She was beautiful, lively, never wanted much from life but never missed what was coming her way. She was on good terms with everybody: her husband, her son, her lovers… It was only with her daughter Lena that her relationship was complicated. Lialia had a theory that infidelity served to strengthen marriage ties. Once a schoolmate dropped in to see her son. He attracted Lialia’s attention and shortly they became intimate. Their relationship could have gone on and on but once Lialia caught her young lover with her own daughter…

Lulu

Henrik and his younger lover Lulu go on an intimate trip to France. Unexpectedly, Henrik's son, David, arrives.

Three Times

Mario is home alone. His parents are gone and it will take them a while to return. Enough time for their son to arrange a sex date on the Internet with a total stranger.

LUX

A stargazer from another planet named LUX dreams about her mysterious interstellar origins until one day she awakens to the crash of NASA's Voyager 1 probe which carries onboard a truly out of this world golden mixtape.

Komorebi

Returning home for his mother's birthday, Jhe-Ming must decide if he’s ready to reveal his secret: he’s married to the man he loves.

Timo's Winter

Timo, the youngest of a Greek community of Funfair workers, will have to face the hardest winter together with his loved ones.

Kepler X-47

A woman struggles to adjust to her new life in a human zoo exhibit on an alien planet.

I Am Afraid to Forget Your Face

After an 82-day separation, Adam travels a rough road to be reunited with the one he loves, whatever it takes.

The Lamb of God

The apparition of a bloodstain reaffirms the relentless cycle of life, filmed in all its fragility and complexity.

A Shore Away

Newly employed in an emergency shelter for people experiencing homelessness, Geneviève is shaken to meet a young woman there whom she believed to have succeeded in reintegrating when she was her social worker.

Doughnut

Things turn sour when an amateur improv class meet for the first time after one of the group misjudges the situation. https://shortoftheweek.com/2021/11/22/doughnut

Boxing

Rong, an amateur boxer, meets Wei during training, sparking an unexpected connection. As their bond grows, the ring becomes the stage for their unresolved feelings.

El Mito

In Querétaro at the end of the 17th century, a spanish maiden has given birth to a creature.

Encore Martha

Follows two women who re-encounter each other after 30 years apart. Against all odds, they fall in love once again, and despite that youth is no longer on their side, they decide to spend the remaining of their twilight years in each other’s arms, no matter how much that may be.

That Room

It's almost been one year since his boyfriend committed suicide on the day of the Moon Festival, in their own home. Wei, left alone, struggles to leave his memory behind and isolates himself in the apartment that torments him.

A Cohabitation

2013, Taipei, a gay couple who just moved in together are forced to separate because one of them has HIV...

Secret

Ji Hoon and Kyung Soo hook up on the university campus. The two enjoy dating and enter the dormitory of Kyung Soo and have sex. But the behavior of Kyung Soo who seems to hide something is strange.

Turnover

Sung-min tries to break up with his boyfriend, but it's hard for him to bring it up. Instead, he runs away from him. But what Sung-min really wants is a "changed boyfriend."

The Act

In 1965 - the eve of decriminalization for acts of male homosexuality in the U.K. - Matthews, a young gay man at odds with the world, discovers love, sex, and a new family in the backstreets and underground bars of Soho.

The Flock

Late afternoon, a bar and three individuals who apparently have nothing in common. Complaint about the preferential securities scam.

Echo

In 1977, the Voyager probe leaves for the galaxy with a message in Spanish recorded in the RNE (Spanish National Radio Studio). Almost 50 years later and sick with Alzheimer's, Carmen is facing being transferred from her home in her town to a residence in the city.

Polygraph

Yasmine, an openly lesbian Arab nurse, finds out that her lover, Or, an intelligence officer in the Israeli army has been reporting on their relationship. Yasmine's sister arrives for a visit from the West Bank, not knowing that she is going to meet the occupying enemy at her own sister's house.

The Dependent Variables

In a dark, velvety theatre, there is a first kiss between Pietro and Tommaso. When the lights come back on, however, the two students have different expectations of what might follow. The chaos of awakening desire in its complexity and sensuality is told and made almost physically tangible through looks and gestures, approach and retreat, hope and fear.

Permission

Marcus, a young intelligence soldier, became a national hero after his bravery in a terrorist attack. The authoritarian regime based on mass surveillance uses his image to value its action. As he returns to his parents' home for furlough, he will be faced with the reality of this ruthless administration he has come to embody in the media.

Black Constellation

A group of people are confronted with their sorrow and inner demons in the worst group therapy of their lives.

When the Wolf Is Not Around

Ariel must make an important decision.

Amissa Anima

Four boys survive on the seedy night streets of St Kilda’s red-light district in Australia in the 1980s, turning tricks for a feed and drugs. The fragile balance is broken when an act of betrayal pushes the boys to take action.

Clochard

In his stroll through the streets of Paris, Gaby, a tired homeless man, wonders about the notion of freedom, about social conventions, and finally about his condition through the people who meet him...