Tickle Where It Hurts (2022)

People on Saturday

A sunny Saturday afternoon in Zurich. In the middle of a crowded square a businessman is lying on a bench, seemingly asleep. Someplace else, a teenager is longing for appreciation. A commuter is fighting the ticket machine. The film shows ten tableaux of everyday situations in the city. The people in them are confronted with small or big problems. Each one of them is a Sisyphos, endlessly rolling the little stones of daily life up the mountain.

1978

Pakistan, 1978. Lenny, a rockstar from the Christian community, is offered the chance to reinvent himself as a state-sanctioned singer. With Islamic fervor gripping the nation, he must decide if he can change along with the times.

Mishimasaiko

Mishima lives in the shadows surrounded by worms in his underground lair. Early one morning, he discovers a rose in the sun in which the beautiful Saiko awakens. Mishima will do everything he can to satisfy her needs. But worms are not supposed to live in the sun...

Shiba San and Meow Chan

Shiba San and Meow Chan, a hit children's show in which the two brothers act a dog and a cat respectively, has been sweeping through kids and thus bringing fame to the two. Though radiant on stage, they both have something on their minds. Shiba san has been secretly in love with a married man, while Meow chan miss his remarried mother and it confused him when she abandoned him. An journey later on will lead the two strays to confront their emptiness inside.

The Blanket

Shot and crewed by Riley Stearns while in quarantine, and described as "an exercise in trusting instincts and embracing limitations."

Restart

Janek is a young medical intern who struggles with financial problems and doubts about his future. Although he has been working so hard, the day before his promotion he makes a risky decision that may change his life forever.

Vétérane

Camelia, an escort with a troubled past, is newly employed at an erotic massage parlour in eastern Montreal. Met coldly by her competitive new colleagues, she struggles to establish a clientele while maintaining her dignity.

The Parallel State

Dan, a twenty-something security specialist, receives an ominous phone call. A spa resort. A high-profile client who triggers a game of unclear stakes. Dan gets a chance to go from nobody to somebody.

The Boyfriend Game

In the privacy of the Australian bush, two best friends play “The Boyfriend Game” where they each invent their ideal imaginary males. Unfortunately, one of the girls seems to want the other girl’s fantasy more than her own.

The Box Man

A man reacts with violence when a pair of eyes spy on him from inside a cardboard box.

The Amber Amulet

The Masked Avenger can make things happen. Though at 10 he is considered young for a justice fighter he has already proved himself highly effective in the pursuit of peace. He has discovered powers that are locked inside gems and minerals and uses them to keep Franklin Street safe. But something is wrong in the house at the end of the street. There is a woman in trouble. When The Masked Avenger leaves a 'happiness questionnaire' in her letterbox a series of events are set in motion that no one could predict. This is the story of a superhero, a beagle, an amber amulet and the potential that is locked inside all of us.

Destricted

A compilation of erotic films intended to illuminate the points where art meets sexuality.

Alaska is a Drag

Leo's dreams of being an international drag superstar are hard fought working in a fish cannery in Alaska.

Survivor Type

A disgraced surgeon stranded on a deserted island with no food and only a handful of supplies must go to great lengths to stay alive for rescue that may never come.

Noah

In a story that plays out entirely on a teenager's computer screen, Noah follows its eponymous protagonist as his relationship takes a rapid turn for the worse in this fascinating study of behavior (and romance) in the digital age.

Firecrackers

Lou and Chantal are gonna blow up. One day. Somehow. But girls don't get out of Coberge, Ontario by playing nice. All they've ever wanted, was to feel what it's like to be free.

Prora

In this deserted former Nazi holiday camp and communist military complex, teenagers Jan and Matthieu embark on an adventure that could change everything. Whilst exploring their surroundings they confront their identities and ultimately put their friendship at risk.

The Strange Ones

A man and a boy, traveling to an unknown destination, find respite in a motel swimming pool. On the surface all seems normal, but nothing is what it seems to be. Short film not to be confused with the 2017 feature film with the same name.

Suppietij

The extremities of a middle-class being ramble on, reflecting poetically on the wretchedness of moderation.

De Civitate Rei

Costante dies and leaves his wife Torella his computer discovery. Torella entrusts the disk to her husband’s friend Gervasio, a lazy man scorned by his family. Twenty years later, Torella tries to get back the disk but Gervasio, who has become rich thanks to the discovery, agrees to go to court over it and comes away the winner. He therefore summons divine misfortune: he loses his third son, suffocated by wealth; kills his wife in a blind rage; and is executed by his first-born son who, after a violent panic attack and reckoning with his conscience, chooses life.

Fiorenzo

A man is sick and he doesn’t show himself. Three people don’t go to visit him and they show themselves.

Beauty Boxed

Young take of a girl breaking chains out of her early child marriage to pursue a dream of becoming a makeup artist.

Behind the Curtain

School audition in the 80's. Steve has been training very hard, but singing in front of an audience is not easy. It might be easier to behind the curtain.

Jet Lag

A couple of gay men must break up due the impossibility of one of them to accept his homosexual condition. The farewell gets very difficult when the other one tries to convince him to accept himself and not to leave him.

Cabalerno

A young videographer is fascinated with filming a hunky skateboarder.

If I Die in America

According to Muslim practice, burial ought to occur within 24 hours of death — so after Manny’s immigrant husband, Sameer, passes away in an accident, he is confronted by a representative of Sameer’s family urging him to sign the paperwork needed to ship the body back to Kuwait. Manny initially refuses, clinging to his rights as Sameer's husband, while knowing that with every passing hour, Sameer's family grows more infuriated. After an emotional climax, spurred on by the family’s homophobic claim that Manny and Sameer’s marriage was merely a green-card arrangement, Manny comes to realize that his objections won't change the fact that his husband died — try as he might, he cannot delay grief.

Alkali, Iowa

On his family's farm in rural Iowa, young Jack Gudmanson is wrestling with his sexual identity, not an easy thing to do in the macho world of the Midwest. But things become clearer for him when he discovers via a rusty old lunch box filled with gay magazines that his father, killed in Vietnam, led a double life down on the farm. But as liberating as the discovery is for Jack, it is painful for his grandfather and mother, who have tried for years to keep it a family secret. Now Jack must decide whether to share this new information with his younger sister or allow it to remain buried a while longer.

A Kiss in the Snow

When a new boy moves into the area Cecilie and Peter's friendship is changed.

Little Boy Blues

A lonely and shy Michael succumbs to Zeno, a handsome and younger stranger in a gay bar.

Trunks

Steve knows he's straight but under the water at his local swimming pool, he feels gay. Will he tell his ex-girlfriend the entire truth and what does he dream of?

Field

An elegant, abstracted expression of provincial life in which ordinary everyday details become frozen and magnified as its young protagonists find themselves implicated in a moment of sheer madness.

Every Revolution Is a Throw of the Dice

A tribute to Mallarmé that not only asserts the continuing relevance of his work but also confronts its literary ambiguities with political and cinematic ambiguities of its own. In outline, the film could not be more straightforward: it offers a recitation of one of Mallarmé’s most celebrated and complex poems (it was his last published work in his own lifetime, appearing in 1897, a year before his death) and proposes a cinematic equivalent for the author’s original experiment with typography and layout by assigning the words to nine different speakers, separating each speaker from the other as she or he speaks, and using slight pauses to correspond with white spaces on the original page.

Dawn

On an evening commute, Tye detects racism from another passenger's glance. In revenge, he decides to follow and confront the man. Tye's preconceived notion of race and sexuality are tested when he discovered that his younger brother is gay, and the victim is in fact his younger brother's lover.

Mirrors

Julian is a melancholic teenager on holiday at the family cottage. His holiday gets a twist when a mysterious neighbor confuses him. A summertime coming-of-age drama.

Old Mammy's Secret Code

Jim Black, learning that his rival, David Durard, son of Colonel Durard, wealthy Southern wholesale grocers, has won the heart of Marion, plans to separate the lovers before war breaks out.

Carne

After a dreadful incident coupled with an ungovernable paroxysm of violence, a butcher will fall into a downward spiral that will burn to the ground whatever dignity still remained in him.

The Stench

In a housing unit, an old man's money has disappeared. All the neighbors are suspects.

The Son

Pedro is a 17 years old boy who attends high school as all the boys do. In the afternoon he and his friends mess around. What Pedro loves the most is mothers baked beans.

Primo

On a visit to meet his girlfriend’s parents in a remote village in Tuscany, Primo is forced to prove his masculinity on a wild boar hunt.