Women in Film: BBC Introducing Arts (2021)

Mateo

At the impressionable age of 16, young Mateo faces a dilemma about the direction his life will take when his corrupt uncle asks him to infiltrate a local Barrancabermeja theatre group to uncover its members' political activities.

Route-3

In a sweaty, overcrowded tram in Sarajevo, a shy teenager is beset by every imaginable impediment as he tries to capture the attention of his object of desire. Yet the overheated hero of this wild farce will not be easily defeated.

Sadla

A teen boy runs errands while being followed by various figures of authority. As he shares his experience with friends, this tense and controlled drama deftly explores the cyclical effects of victimization on the wider community.

Yandere

A miniature AI hologram, Maiko, is programmed to be utterly devoted to her teenage owner. But when he gets a real girlfriend, her passions may prove to be too large for her container.

Exam

A teenage girl gets involved in the process of delivering a pack of cocaine to its client, and gets stuck in a weird cycle of occurrences.

The Raft

In this stylish and ruthless satire, a famous performance artist faces an unexpected crisis when real-world political matters complicate her latest impeccably provocative and eminently bankable piece.

The Great Adventure

Ragna "Rags" Jansen has found local success and acclaim in her small town as an actress, but dreams of stardom on Broadway.

Cocoon

A medium leads a lost soul to the after life. However, she doesn't seem to know that she's dead...

Whale Rider

A contemporary story of love, rejection, and triumph as a young Maori girl fights to fulfill a destiny her grandfather refuses to recognize.

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.

The Miracle Worker

Devoted teacher Anne Sullivan leads deaf, blind and mute Helen Keller out of solitude and helps integrate her into the world.

Frida

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

Antonia's Line

After World War II, Antonia and her daughter, Danielle, go back to their Dutch hometown, where Antonia's late mother has bestowed a small farm upon her. There, Antonia settles down and joins a tightly-knit but unusual community. Those around her include quirky friend Crooked Finger, would-be suitor Bas and, eventually for Antonia, a granddaughter and great-granddaughter who help create a strong family of empowered women.

How Good to See You Alive

Four years after a military coup overthrew the Brazilian government in 1964, all civil rights were suspended and torture became a systematic practice. Using a mix of fiction and documentary this extraordinary film is a searing record of personal memory, political repression and the will to survive. Interviews with eight women who were political prisoners during the military dictatorship are framed by the fantasies and imaginings of an anonymous character, portrayed by actress Irene Ravache.

I Will Always Love You Conny

It’s minus 30 degrees Celsius (minus 22 degrees F) and 20 y/o Conny walks around like a restless criminal with his hoodie up in a small forgotten village in northern Sweden. He's not welcome anywhere and the whole village seems to hate him. Yesterday he panicked and drove away from his girlfriend’s delivery of their baby - but now he has repented and wants to come back. But what will it take for her to forgive him?

Sifter

Turns out Happily Ever After's aren't always so simple. As Smara and Nisha celebrate their first Karva Chauth together as a married couple, they realise that some issues can't be left unspoken.

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.

This Place

Living in the liminal space between worlds, two young women find themselves falling in love for the first time, while also being forced to unexpectedly confront their families, each complicated by legacies of love and loss.

Druid Peak

A troubled teen is sent to live with his estranged father, a park ranger. During his time there, he develops an unusual affinity with and passion for the wolves in a local pack.

Getting to Know the Big Wide World

On a rough and tumble construction site for a new factory, the conversation flows and love blooms for trio Lyuba, Misha, and Kolya. In the liminal space of their workplace, they build material and intangible connections.

By the Ravine

Senya, a young hunter, hunts for two wolves that have been preying on sheep of various farms in Siberia. Kira Muratova and husband Oleksandr Muratov's diploma film.

Fort Bliss

After returning home from an extended tour in Afghanistan, a decorated U.S. Army medic and single mother struggles to rebuild her relationship with her young son.

Flamin' Hot

The inspiring true story of Richard Montañez, the Frito Lay janitor who channeled his Mexican American heritage and upbringing to turn the iconic Flamin' Hot Cheetos into a snack that disrupted the food industry and became a global pop culture phenomenon.

Liberty Stands Still

As the heir and current marketing director for one of the nation's biggest gun manufacturers, Liberty Wallace is indifferent to the atrocities made possible through her business and her CEO husband, Victor. On her way to see her actor lover, Liberty ends up chained to a food cart full of explosives -- all at the insistence of "Joe", a sniper whose young daughter was a victim of gun violence, and who now has Liberty in his sights.

Hiwa

Jay wakes up in Manila, yet he dreamed of Athens. He has a nightmare, during which he has a special quest: to save his two daughters from a dangerous surgery. In his attempt to rescue them, he roams around Athens’ cityscape, seeing things under a very different light.

Zoo

Martina lives in the Rome's zoo, because her father is the guardian. She becomes friend with a young Slavic escaped from a gypsy camp. When the police arrives searching for the kid, they run away riding an elephant!

Only Human

Leni takes Rafi to meet her family in Madrid. Leni's family is Jewish - mother, father, older sister and daughter, brother, and grandfather. Rafi is Palestinian, in Spain since age 12. Before her father returns from work, Leni reveals Rafi's origins. He accidentally drops a block of frozen soup out the flat window, probably killing a passerby. Leni initiates a cover-up and Rafi figures out the body is probably Leni's father. The body disappears and without telling the rest of the family what they know, Leni and Rafi organize a search for dad. Mom is sure he's having an affair. Leni's belly-dancing sister kisses Rafi. Her brother grabs a rifle to shoot the Arab. Can anything be put right?

Wingwomen

Tired of life on the run, a pro thief decides to retire — but not before one easy last job with her partner in crime and a feisty new getaway driver.

Como en casa

Mateo is an unscrupulous young real estate agent. He lives in a house where nothing is lacking, but his well-off life will be disturb one morning because of the presence of an intruder.

The Forest for the Trees

As an awkward idealistic high school teacher begins her first job in the city, things turn out to be much tougher than she had imagined.

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...

Talk to Me

The story of Washington D.C. radio personality Ralph "Petey" Greene, an ex-con who became a popular talk show host and community activist in the 1960s.

Kopfschuß

Annie is a cashier in a Munich Cinema Center. Her everyday life is the complete opposite of the exciting screen adventures she sells at the box office, so she fantasizes about the movies during the day. At night, she also begins to stage her own adventure in real life.

Of Womb and Tomb

Hayat lives with his wife Sekar, a pregnant woman, in an illegal house built on a Chinese cemetery. Their peace is disturbed when Suwargono comes looking for his mother’s grave, which is believed to be in their house. To hide the truth, Hayat is caught in a deep inner conflict as his child approaches birth.

Dry Cleaning

A bored couple takes in a young man who turns their lives inside out.

Rosenstrasse

When Ruth's husband dies in New York, in 2000, she imposes strict Jewish mourning, which puzzles her children. A stranger comes to the house - Ruth's cousin - with a picture of Ruth, age 8, in Berlin, with a woman the cousin says helped Ruth escape. Hannah, Ruth's daughter engaged to a gentile, goes to Berlin to find the woman, Lena Fisher, now 90. Posing as a journalist investigating intermarriage, Hannah interviews Lena who tells the story of a week in 1943 when the Jewish husbands of Aryan women were detained in a building on Rosenstrasse. The women gather daily for word of their husbands. The film goes back and forth to tell Ruth and Lena's story. How will it affect Hannah?

Actresses

Marcelline is an actress. Forty, single and childless, she begins rehearsals for Turgenev’s A Month in the Country. Denis, the director, admires her greatly and promises he’ll make her happy on stage — she will shine. But things don’t go to plan.

Blue Fire

Deep in the snowy Green Mountains, two damaged lives come crashing back together when they discover something in the forest not of this world.

Charlie's Freedom

Charlie is a sensitive teenager who doesn't fit in. She cares for her disabled mom but gets bullied at school. When she turns down her place at university, her mom takes radical steps to ensure her daughter is free to complete her education.

Poster Boy

When the victim of a violent hate attack joins a gay gun club, he finds himself caught between two rival gay rights activists seeking to manipulate his story for their own agendas - one the club's charismatic leader, the other his domineering partner.

Stella

Paris, 1977. Eleven year old Stella knows poker better than grammar when she starts the year at a prestigious new school. There, she discovers the possibilities of a whole new world outside her parents' bar.

Lost and Delirious

After starting at an upmarket boarding school, a teenage girl forms close friendships with her two older roommates. However, when she discovers that her new friends are lovers she finds herself caught in a complicated situation.

Someone I Loved

One night, Pierre decides to reveal his painful secret to his daughter-in-law, who's just been abandoned by her husband. Pierre's secret is about his secret love to Mathilde, the woman he left to instead follow an easier path in life.

Thirteen Conversations About One Thing

In New York City, the lives of a lawyer, an actuary, a house-cleaner, a professor, and the people around them intersect as they ponder order and happiness in the face of life's cold unpredictability.

The Last Time You Had Fun

When Ida, cheeks streaked by mascara tears, unexpectedly shows up at her sister's, the staid Alison bargains her way out of mom duty for the night and the two head off to an Eastside wine bar. There, they run into Will and the freshly divorced, sweatpants-attired Clark. After some slightly inebriated commiserating about mismanaged marriages and other adult concerns, the foursome head out into the night, careening from downtown lofts to pot dispensaries to midnight swims and back again, determined to prove they still have what it takes to have a good time.

Forever's Gonna Start Tonight

Sonya, a 17-year-old Russian immigrant, lives in a claustrophobic Brooklyn apartment with her dad and his ever-growing menagerie of cats. When the Landlady threatens to kick them out, Sonya is forced to make an unimaginable decision to protect her aging father and herself.

Hush Little Baby

Four girls in rehab is on tour from their treatment centers and it becomes their life stories. The girls run off in a stolen Volvo and soon learns to know the freedom of good and evil. Both the fantastic feeling to be master of its own destiny, but also the heavy feeling of responsibility when you have to figure out what to do with his life. Before long, the girls learn that they can not continue

Limbo

Killed in war, a man must overcome the various obstacles he encounters in limbo to save his life and thus meet his son, about to be born.

A Million Miles Away

An adult woman (the conductor) on the edge of failing and a pack of teenage girls (the choir) simultaneously experience a supernatural version of coming-of-age. The transformation is equal parts tense and tender. It unravels patiently to the infectious beat of an 80s era heavy metal anthem rearranged as a lamentation.

My Biker

A summer trip with his friend Motor takes an unexpected turn when Gentle’s motorcycle breaks down, revealing feelings neither expected.

Two Women

A headstrong young woman is married to land baron. Her feelings for her son's tutor becomes a complex web of unrequited love.