"A LUMINARA FILMS Short Film."
INDEPENDENTS Season 1. Screened for the first time, worldwide at INDEPENDENTS PREMIER 2025. CUE: "First" Toronto Metropolitan University. 1/4
Social & External
The people behind it
Alem Djedovic
The Protagonist
Nolan Byrne
The Sitter
Arjun Rajagopal
Sportscaster
Tom Liu
The Friend
In a small Tokyo apartment, twelve-year-old Akira must care for his younger siblings after their mother leaves them and shows no sign of returning.
After a nasty break-up, Faith needs a new roommate to supplement the rent and finds that something very strange is going on with the tenant who decides to move in.
A group of masked assailants storms the office of the country’s top television channel, taking the staff and a prominent minister, who was there for an interview, hostage. While the nation's law enforcement agencies race to uncover the identity of the mastermind behind the attack, the mastermind reveals himself live on the channel’s program, exposing the stories of ordinary people who have fallen victim to high-level corruption. Thus begins a rampage against the injustices of the system.
At an elite, old-fashioned boarding school in New England, a passionate English teacher inspires his students to rebel against convention and seize the potential of every day, courting the disdain of the stern headmaster.
Two angels, Damiel and Cassiel, glide through the streets of Berlin, observing the bustling population, providing invisible rays of hope to the distressed but never interacting with them. When Damiel falls in love with lonely trapeze artist Marion, the angel longs to experience life in the physical world, and finds — with some words of wisdom from actor Peter Falk — that it might be possible for him to take human form.
Enraged at the slaughter of Murron, his new bride and childhood love, Scottish warrior William Wallace slays a platoon of the local English lord's soldiers. This leads the village to revolt and, eventually, the entire country to rise up against English rule.
Derek Vineyard is paroled after serving 3 years in prison for killing two African-American men. Through his brother, Danny Vineyard's narration, we learn that before going to prison, Derek was a skinhead and the leader of a violent white supremacist gang that committed acts of racial crime throughout L.A. and his actions greatly influenced Danny. Reformed and fresh out of prison, Derek severs contact with the gang and becomes determined to keep Danny from going down the same violent path as he did.
A journalist goes undercover to ferret out businessman Harrison Hill as her best friend's killer. Posing as one of his temps, she enters into a game of online cat-and-mouse.
In the class-obsessed and religiously divided UK of the early 1920s, two determined young runners train for the 1924 Paris Olympics. Eric Liddell, a devout Christian born to Scottish missionaries in China, sees running as part of his worship of God's glory and refuses to train or compete on the Sabbath. Harold Abrahams overcomes anti-Semitism and class bias, but neglects his beloved sweetheart in his single-minded quest.
An attorney is terrorized by the criminal he put away years ago when he was a cop.
When the San Francisco Giants pay center-fielder, Bobby Rayburn $40 million to lead their team to the World Series, no one is happier or more supportive than #1 fan, Gil Renard. When Rayburn becomes mired in the worst slump of his career, the obsessed Renard decides to stop at nothing to help his idol regain his former glory—not even murder.
While caring for her brother along with her audacious mother, a teenager strikes up an unlikely friendship with an eccentric activist who is protesting one of the most landmark medical cases of all time.
Fifteen years after murdering his sister on Halloween Night 1963, Michael Myers escapes from a mental hospital and returns to the small town of Haddonfield, Illinois to kill again.
In 1973, a precocious 15-year-old aspiring rock journalist lands a dream assignment from Rolling Stone to tour with a rising rock band, embarking on a coming-of-age journey as he discovers the exhilarating and heartbreaking realities behind rock stardom.
When their troubled brother’s car is found at the bottom of a lake, three siblings are forced back to their family home to bury the past, but their brother may have left behind more than memories…
Truck driver Teddy's late night stop at a gas station takes a dark turn when he meets the mysterious hooker Katerina, leading to unexpected consequences.
Some say blood is thicker than water, but in our fictional small town of Cypress, vengeance is bigger than family loyalty when Mayor Ella Johnson is arrested for killing Malik Thompson, whose body is found in her empty pool. Things get worse when her mother Leona sweeps in for a power grab and undermines her daughter's chance at freedom as she plots to take over the city of Cypress and New Hope church.
Chronicles the rise and fall of legendary blues singer Billie Holiday, beginning with her traumatic youth. The story depicts her early attempts at a singing career and her eventual rise to stardom, as well as her difficult relationship with Louis McKay, her boyfriend and manager. Casting a shadow over even Holiday's brightest moments is the vocalist's severe drug addiction, which threatens to end both her career and her life.
When a mother and son with a caustic history reunite to pack-up their old house, sparks fly as long-buried secrets are revealed, and it might fall upon the shoulders of the son's boyfriend to help heal old wounds.
A socially awkward woman with a fondness for arts and crafts, horses, and supernatural crime shows finds her increasingly lucid dreams trickling into her waking life.
Conman Robert Freegard poses as an undercover MI5 agent and kidnaps countless victims amidst a high-stakes manhunt, until the woman who fell for him brings him to justice.
20 men are chosen to participate in the roles of guards and prisoners in a psychological study that ultimately spirals out of control.
A psychic's ominous reading sends a man into a tailspin.
A group of friends' fishing boat capsizes off the coast of Mexico and they're left alone stranded at sea and struggling for survival.
A nightmarish evening unfolds for neighbors David and Robert when they accidentally hit a woman on her bike and flee the scene. While David is increasingly plagued by feelings of guilt, Robert shows no remorse and becomes overbearing and possessive.
An adrenaline seeking snowboarder gets lost in a massive winter storm in the back country of the High Sierras where he is pushed to the limits of human endurance and forced to battle his own personal demons as he fights for survival....
Thomas Montgomery, a married father of two young daughters, gets seduced by the world of online gambling and chat rooms where a virtual romance and sexual obsession ultimately leads to the murder of an innocent man.
A woman is released from prison after serving a sentence for a violent crime and re-enters a society that refuses to forgive her past.
High-powered attorney Marley faces her most personal case yet when she is tasked with uncovering the truth behind the murder of her best friend Fela’s husband. With the help of her boyfriend – a former cop turned private investigator – Marley’s search for what really happened leads her down a treacherous maze of deception and betrayal.
After a morally-bankrupt company tries to weaponize a brilliant scientist's revolutionary technology, he goes off the grid to safeguard humanity. When the company sends a strike force to find him, they make their biggest mistake of all – they weaponize the man they are trying to catch.
Set during the true and unconscionable Central Intelligence Agency MK ULTRA drug experimentations in the early 1960s. The journey of Ford Strauss, a brilliant psychiatrist, whose moral and scientific boundaries are pushed to the limit as he is recruited to run a subsect of the program in a rural Mississippi Mental Hospital.
A troubled young woman becomes obsessed with her mysterious new neighbor, who bears a striking resemblance to the girl's dead mother.
A pair of high-frequency traders go up against their old boss in an effort to make millions in a fiber-optic cable deal.
Inspired by Chris Marker's iconic 1962 featurette La Jetée; the year is 2073—a not-so-distant dystopian future—and the setting is New San Francisco, the scorched-earth tech-dominant police state where democracy and personal freedom have been well and truly obliterated.
A group of officers based in a labyrinthine top-secret prison must fight for their lives against Hatchet, a brilliant and infamous high-value detainee. When he escapes, his mysterious and deadly agenda has far reaching and dire consequences.
He’s a Wardriver: a hacker who steals from banks, not people—until he’s noticed. Now the money turns violent, and the woman caught in it could save him or kill them both.
A precocious and obsessive teenager develops a crush on a naive writer with harrowing consequences.
An attention-seeking psychic is kidnapped and tries to use the situation to boost his popularity.
Reclusive and controversial author Bruce Cogburn is drawn out of hiding by an obsessive fan, forcing the novelist to confront a past that he thought he could escape, and to account for events set in motion by his bestseller decades earlier. Cogburn's search for who is behind the manipulation and mental torment he encounters leads to an emotional roller-coaster ride full of fear and danger, where things are not always as clear as they seem to be, and where past deeds can have dire consequences.
A young woman with psychokinetic powers breaks out of a Louisiana asylum and makes her way to New Orleans, where she falls into the city’s netherworld of misfits and miscreants.