Young Romanian Adrian works as a hustler in Zurich's underground in order to get his sister Ioana out of Romania and to Zurich, where they can both have a better future.
Social & External
The people behind it
Max Krause
Adrian
Julian Lehr
Sascha
Josefine Voss
Ioana
Christian Heiner Wolf
Franz Wagner
Edith Alibec
Ioana (voice)
Jack is the fastidious manager of a local supermarket. The harmless but disruptive actions of his customers frequently give him headaches, which he remedies by holding a can of frozen juice against his forehead. At home, however, Jack is consistently kind, loving, and patient with his wife and daughter. One day the child brings home a stray dog, and his life is turned upside down.
Anita and her children, Santa and Kristaps, live in an apartment in Riga. Every year, they celebrate New Year’s Eve with grandma, uncle Peter and a feast fit for kings…
In the communist Romania of Nicolae Ceausescu, a young Romanian woman marries a German citizen just to leave the country.
The Family decided to reunite for one last time before the daughter moves away overseas for work. But the father unexpectedly brings his new partner along to the party.
A teenager comes to terms with his place in the world when he learns of his mother’s immoral past the day before his grandfather’s funeral.
Walt is a lonely convenience store clerk who has fallen in love with a Mexican migrant worker named Johnny. Though Walt has little in common with the object of his affections — including a shared language — his desire to possess Johnny prompts a sexual awakening that results in a tangled love triangle.
The 8th short film as part of the Magica series dealing with pre-cinema. Fictionalised documentary about Emile Reynau who invented the praxinoscope and its system of central mirrors. He then projects his paper strips into the projection praxinoscope before creating the Théâtre Optique, presented at the Musée Grévin. The perforated strips are fragile and often break. The show is cancelled. Reynaud tries to apply photography to his praxinoscope, but without success. Desperate and ruined, he throws his strips into the Seine. Only two survived.
A group of three girls meet up after not seeing each other throughout summer break, but one comes back ‘different’. This short film explores breaking away from social expectations and expressing yourself unapologetically.
The 2nd short film as part of the Magica series dealing with pre-cinema. In the 18th and 19th centuries, optical views were shown in optical boxes with magnifying lenses. The showmen organised a real spectacle, with a barker, music and sound effects. The views played with light (transparencies, perforations). A series of engravings shows the public's enthusiasm for these shows. The second part of the film is a reconstruction of such a show. First, there are views of Paris, Venice, Constantinople and Versailles, followed by various disasters: plague, floods, fires and shipwrecks.
Iran, 1984. Homeless brothers struggle to survive in a country at war.
John despises his father for being a failure in life. When John returns home to facilitate his father's funeral, his life comes to a turning point, as he discovers the true motivation of his misjudged father.
Doina, a 12-year-old girl, has her first period on the day her grandma has a stroke. Since then, their roles are inverted and Doina has to learn how to deal with the challenges of adulthood.
A writer in self-exile is haunted by the memory of his long-lost love. Mysterious events and an unexpected visitor are about to offer him a chance to relieve his pain. Based on the famous poem of Edgar Allan Poe: The Raven.
In a society where children are not heard and traditions are not to be questioned, the peaceful life of a 5-year-old is disturbed by a terrible event that forces her to find a way to recover peace and save her loved ones.
Julian is in a dilemma. He loves the person, he is in a relationship with, less than his best friend.
Summer is a permanent state of mind in Limassol, a once small seaside town in Cyprus now transforming into the oligarch paradise of the Mediterranean. Within its asphyxiating environment, Tina, a depressed food stylist is ready to give up on everything on the day of her birthday, until an extraordinary encounter changes her life.
During the trip back from their vacation, a young couple is stranded in the middle of the road and they lose all forms of communication, including each other.
In 1999, a woman's life is forever changed after she survives a car crash with two bank robbers, who enlist her help to take the money to a drop in Paris. On the way, she runs into another fugitive from the law — an American doctor on the run from the CIA. They want to confiscate his father's invention – a device which allows anyone to record their dreams and visions.
A noir thriller set in Miami, the film follows an enforcer who discovers his femme fatale boss has branched out into cyber sex trafficking, putting a young runaway he’s befriended at risk. He sacrifices everything to save the young girl from the deadly organization he’s spent his life building.
Young teen girl Xiu Xiu is sent away to a remote corner of the Sichuan steppes for manual labor in 1975 (sending young people to there was a part of Cultural Revolution in China). A year later, she agrees to go to even more remote spot with a Tibetan saddle tramp Lao Jin to learn horse herding.
Short film made with the help of the Sundance Film Institute and serving as a proof-of-concept for the subsequent feature film.
A small-time hood must choose from among love, friendship and the chance to rise within the mob.
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.
The eldest son of a ruthlessly tough MMA champion must fight his way out of the abusive cycle his father has continued.
An urban love story set on the hard streets of the Bronx. A struggling female pimp, named Wednesday, grows up learning the game from her dad. Once he's gone she's left to look out for her prostitute mother and girlfriend Nikki.
A girl, Carola, whose vacation in Kenya takes an interesting turn when she becomes infatuated with a Masai. Carola decides to leave her boyfriend to stay with her lover. There, she has to adapt to the Masai's way of life and get used to their food which includes milk mixed with blood. She also has to face her husband's attitude towards women and what he expects from a wife. Nonetheless, Carola is welcomed warmly into the tribe she has chosen to join.
Based on the true story of the collapse of a mine in San Jose, Chile—that left 33 miners isolated underground for 69 days.
When a reclusive survivalist and his daughter rescue a mysterious, wounded woman from a river, they become entangled in a deadly web of violence and revenge, forcing them to confront a brutal criminal to survive.
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.
New technologies are transforming a 19th-century watchmaking town in Switzerland. Josephine, a young factory worker, produces the unrest wheel, swinging in the heart of the mechanical watch. Exposed to new ways of organizing money, time and labor, she gets involved with the local anarchist movement.
When seventeen-year-old Hannah stumbles upon a website about Thinspiration--an online community devoted to anorexia as a life choice--she becomes an obsessive follower of the site founder, ButterflyAna. By the time Hannah's family realizes what is happening and get Hannah the help she needs, the disease has fully taken hold and Hannah is refusing to eat. Will this family be able to exorcise the demon of anorexia from their lives?
A psychotherapist helps a law student cope with schizophrenia in one of five interconnected tales dealing with mental illness.
At the age of 17, Griselda Blanco, made her way to the U.S. with a fake passport with her first husband Carlos. Living in Queens with her three sons, Griselda became enticed by the money the drug world offered, and quickly became embroiled with local drug runners. Griselda masterminded the use of beautiful women, the elderly and children as the mules and created false-bottom suitcases to smuggle cocaine from Colombia.
Based on the writer/director's childhood, FARMING tells the story of a young Nigerian boy, 'farmed out' by his parents to a white British family in the hope of a better future. Instead, he becomes the feared leader of a white skinhead gang.
A young refugee of the Sudanese Civil War who wins a lottery for relocation to the United States with three other lost boys. Encountering the modern world for the first time, they develop an unlikely friendship with a brash American woman assigned to help them, but the young man struggles to adjust to this new life and his feelings of guilt about the brother he left behind.
A deadly car crash sets off three parallel stories of women at crisis points, faltering behind the doors of the same, plain Vienna apartment block.
A woman on the run from the mob is reluctantly accepted in a small Colorado community in exchange for labor, but when a search visits the town, she learns that their support has a price.
