An Ode to Solitude (2020)

Follow Me

Jasper (20), on the edge of adulthood , wanders around lost in the Port of Ghent. Fragments of a phone call betray a loss.

Five Minutes a Day

Working in a small security kiosk, two men take advantage of the shift change to get to know each other and forge a touching bond.

Polaroid

Giuseppe, 33, is still struggling to build his life in a small Italian town where he has to hide his homosexuality. With a Polaroid in hand, he decides to leave for Berlin to find Peter, a summer love he has never forgotten. The shock of a cosmopolitan city is nothing compared to the moment he realizes that the German artist has a "normal" family. For him this represents the possibility of 'losing' himself and meeting Marco, who takes him around all night to arrive at dawn to the conviction that love is the only strength to find one's identity. "Polaroid" is one of five short film segments in an omnibus feature titled "A Quintet".

The S.O.S.S.B.U

3 Cornell students are broke and left with no money, they must come up with a plan to seek their way into wealth. Will they succeed?

Final Exams

Four friends are waiting for their final exam results... and their lives to begin. In the mean time, Lang-Vonh is worrying about his Asian heritage, Cédric is struggling to come to terms with being gay and Gaëlle and Chloé are trying to forget about everything until the results are in.

The Death King

Seven episodes, each taking place on a different day of the week, on the theme of suicide and violent death.

Escaping Gravity

To finally gain her father's acceptance, transsexual Leonie decides to return masqueraded as a man to the world of her childhood: the funfair. Though even the old owner of the ghost train has something to hide.

La Fin des étés

In this short fiction film, Marie has been living in the midst of a nightmare since the accident of Bernard, her brother. Clinging excessively to this handicapped being, she wants to take charge of it. Étienne, her fiancé, has no taste for sacrifice. He reproaches Marie for languishing in her adolescence. Love will prevail. In a definitive gesture, Marie will free herself from the bonds that still held her back to her childhood.

Two Funerals

"Two Funerals" is a film that focuses on portraits one individual, how does one's mind and values changes? How does social pressure affect him? Compared with the film about social issues, such a story reflects the intrinsic value of human beings.

9th Floor to the Right

One evening, in his apartment in Paris, Lorenzo is getting ready to receive Marvin for the first time, a boy he really likes. Marvin shows up at the door with Thomas, a homeless man he met on the street in need of a shower. Lorenzo doesn’t dare say no.

Late for Break Time

During a football training, two friends celebrate a goal effusively, which causes an unexpected reaction in one of them.

Harvey's Dream

A typical Saturday morning for an unhappily married couple decades into their lives together becomes anything but typical when the husband's neurological decline and uncertain memory may or may not reveal unthinkable tragedy.

Dedication

"Dedication" is the story of a maid working in a hotel who uses a black magic spell in the hopes of harnessing the talent of one of the hotel's frequent guests - an eccentric writer - and passing it on to her unborn son.

Two Fish

Max is spending his summer on campus. A lonely place in maintenance. His best friend Taylor comes back from Europe and their relationship takes a new turn.

Finding My Gundam

Hyun-dong is a hikikomori. He lives off of the joy of assembling and displaying Gundams in his only space, his home. Then one day, he makes a big decision to go out to buy a Gundam plastic model that a delivery man left next to his door. At that moment, the front door slams shut. He is trapped in an unfamiliar world, he can't remember the password and he decides to go on a long journey to find the key house.

Gary and Milo

Two brains in jars exist exclusively in a game of PONG, oblivious to the world falling apart outside of their computer.

Ballet Shoes

Two dancers are forced to confront their feelings for each other on the eve of a ballet competition.

The Sheets Must Be Silk

A young photographer doesn't know it, but he is about to take one of the worlds beloved photos. During the course of the evening, two people find love encapsulated in a moment. But love like this was never meant to be, unless it is captured forever in time.

Automagic

On his return home, androgynous-looking Madhu attempts to seduce Ratnakar, his rickshaw driver, who is practicing celibacy in preparation for a religious pilgrimage.

Room Closet: Truth or Dare

A couple of teenagers start playing truth or dare at a party.

Gold Star

Two black non-heterosexual masculine leaning men attempt to escape their sexuality.

Lazarus Come Out

45 year old Don Valter is a traditional priest who still wears an old fashioned black tunic out of nostalgia. One day young Claudio and his exuberant troupe of actors appear, proposing to perform an avant-garde show based on the Gospel's miracle of the rebirth of Lazarus*. The powerless priest is overwhelmed by this young upstart, who stirs within him emotions that will, whether he likes it or not, pull him into the modern era.

F for Freaks

An empty, undefined world. Gabriela (70) is seriously ill. By all means she tries to keep alive, to escape from her own death. In her suppressed and rising fear of death she refuses any moral argument. Gabriela becomes an animal.

Just a little here

During a chaotic day that begins with the stay of his dad in the hospital, Lily, a seven-year-old girl who only intends to see him, begins to question about the meaning of death.

Young Man's Dance

Mattis feels rejected by his dad and seeks attention from his male dancing teacher. But this night, something is different. Mattis induces a power struggle and when the dancing teacher desperately tries to set boundaries, they both loose control.

Crash!

Short film produced by the BBC about JG Ballard's Crash. “The film was a product of the most experimental, darkest phase of Ballard’s career. It was an era of psychological blowback from the sudden, shocking death of his wife in 1964, an era that had produced the cut-up ‘condensed novels’ of Atrocity plus a series of strange collages and ‘advertisers’ announcements. After Freud’s exploration within the psyche it is now the outer world of reality which must be quantified and eroticised. Later there were further literary experiments, concrete poems and ‘impressionistic’ film reviews, and an aborted multimedia theatrical play based around car crashes. After that came an actual gallery exhibition of crashed cars, replete with strippers and the drunken destruction of the ‘exhibits’ by an enraged audience.” (from: http://aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh.blogspot.de/2013/01/short-film-adaptation-of-jg-ballards.html)

Holy the Sabbath

A chilling portrait of loss and redemption when men create their own gods.

Somniphobia

A doctor with the ability to visit people's dreams helps a young woman confront the terrifying reality of her nightmare

Kissing Drew

Inside a drab middle school in 1992, a sexually-confused eighth-grader attempts to regain his dignity after being bullied by a sex-obsessed 'cool kid' whom he privately fantasizes about.

¿Por qué la gallina cruzó el camino?

A hen questions the meaning of her life on a farm.

Other Black Boys

A queer, black college student is forced to confront the masks he wears in his relationships.

My First Suit

14-year old Steve is caught between creatures he does not fully understand: two parents with very different ideas about the suit he should wear to his first school dance. Meanwhile everywhere he seems to look, images of men are taking control of his imagination. In Stewart Main's comical coming of age story Steve escapes his parents' good wishes, to discover his true desires. They aren't quite what his no-nonsense father had in mind.

Triptych on Matter and Death

A young woman, injured and alone, desperately seeks refuge in an empty house before finding an abandoned train car. Haunted by surreal visions, she repeatedly collapses. At dawn, her motionless form draws the curiosity of local children, leaving her fate uncertain.

A Chiara

Chiara feels that there is something wrong. She has a strange feeling she cannot explain to her mother or sister. During the night, after overhearing a heated argument between her parents and witnessing something shocking, her world is overturned and her safety net crumbles. Reality and dreams start to blur and Chiara’s life will never be the same.

The Room

Mariana must sacrifice her dog Frida after violently beating it for having destroyed her recently deceased son's toys. The pet's death helps Mariana accept and overcome the loss of her son.

Debut

Ivan has just scored a goal and rushes to kiss Marko.

Don't be late, Myra

Ten-year old Myra is forced to walk home alone, dodging men harassing her on the streets of Lahore. Soon things escalate in this thriller where a sinister turn quietly awaits her.

Dilution

Dilution is an experimental short film that explores the transit between resistance and (di)ssolution, between holding and releasing and a path towards obsessive repetition. They are layers, exposed pores, matter that oscillates between remaining or disappearing. The sound is not a background, but a puncture: friction, tearing, water that drags what still persists. A sensorial testimony of what refuses to vanish completely.

Goldfish

Two couples, in the same room, try to keep it together. The human couple fare differently to the pair of Goldfish in their fish tank. An artful piece exploring choice in life and love. The humour is derived from the wistful musings, in Cantonese, of the male fish and narrator.