A look into how beauty standards affect self-image.
Social & External
Woman in the Mirror
« Shunned by her peers, a ballerina struggles to find her place in her dance group. In echo, three women reveal the invisible scars left by beauty standards. »
The story centers on a group of gossipy, high-society women who spend their days at the beauty salon and haunting fashion shows. The sweet, happily-wedded Mary Haines finds her marriage in trouble when shop girl Crystal Allen gets her hooks into Mary's man.
Lily is a winner, but when her boyfriend leaves her for a vapid beauty pageant queen, she gets the notion that winning the Miss India America title would bring him back. Since Lily is perfect in everything else she does, it should be a cinch...or so she thinks. The pageant world isn't just pretty smiles and high heels, and her main competition, Sonia, gives her a run for her money.
Reina, who feels insecure about her looks, masters the art of makeup and transforms into a "goddess". Her makeover sparks a sweet, heart-throbbing love triangle with the enigmatic Shun and warm Yu, where secrets and tender emotions could change everything.
Reina's beauty and dreams dazzle, but her bare face exposes hidden truths as Shun and Yu vie for her heart, stirring tension and racing emotions.
After taking his dying father's advice, Hal dates only the embodiments of female physical perfection. But that all changes after Hal has an unexpected run-in with self-help guru Tony Robbins. Intrigued by Hal's shallowness, Robbins hypnotizes him into seeing the beauty that exists even in the least physically appealing women. Hal soon falls for Rosemary, but he doesn't realize that his gorgeous girlfriend is actually a 300-pound-not-so-hottie.
She tells Lalin's journey from Thailand to Japan. With the opportunity to study abroad, she flees to Sapporo, where no one knows her and can live under a new identity. Posing as a modern beauty, she becomes an idol on the internet and on social media platforms. The reality is that Lalin hides his face every day with a mask, hiding from the world and striving for self-acceptance.
A present-day young actor becomes convinced he is the reincarnation of Antinous, sparking a psychosexual drama that bridges the grandeur of ancient Rome with Hollywood’s obsession with youth, beauty and immortality.
In a fairy-tale kingdom where beauty is a brutal business, Elvira battles to compete with her incredibly beautiful stepsister, Agnes, and she will go to any length to catch the Prince’s eye.
As Hanna and her ten-year-old niece, Erle, get ready for a day at the beach, Hanna is faced with a dilemma: How can she manage to be both a cool aunt and a good role model?
When Magnolia becomes entranced by a make-up infomercial, her bottled up jealousy towards her friend, Florence, comes flowing out in a mixture of arguing, hallucinating, and creating.
MORENA tells the uplifting story of the Philippine National Surf Athlete Ikit Agudo, who overcame the pressure to blend into a society obsessed with skin whitening. Within the ocean, she found happiness, strength, and pride in her roots. Inspiring young girls around the world to embrace who they truly are. In the Philippines, skin-whitening remains a billion-peso industry, a legacy of colonial beauty ideals that for generations have led many to neglect their true identity and natural beauty.
"COMPLEXion is a documentary that aims to unpack the hegemony of skin color globally and challenge the archaic notions that exist surrounding it. Our mission is to defy toxic beauty standards through raw human stories."
“I Beg You To Like Me”, serves as a testimony of individuals who felt oppressed about their body image for not meeting the standard beauty criteria, and demonstrates how a reckless language based on others’ physical appearance could turn violent. It aims to achieve much more than simply stating the obvious, which is that we are not obligated to submit to the ideal beauty standards dictated by the media, consumerism and the beauty industry. The intimate stories about one’s own body image as told by women, men, disabled people and LGBT individuals make it apparent that any one of us could end up being a victim and a perpetrator at the same time. What if, this iconic body image is nothing but an unobtainable fallacy? “Is it not yet the time to openly discuss the conventional perception of beauty, and step up onto the catwalk in our actual likeness?
Behind the glitz of Miss Italia, director Patrizia Mirigliani fights to save the iconic pageant, now wavering amid scandals and changing beauty standards.
There's a witch that can grant any wish, but in return she takes a part of your soul to survive. However, is it really all what it seems? What would you wish for?
Juanjo (Antonio Pagudo) is a forty-year-old man who, despite not having low self-esteem due to his baldness, his wife, Inma (Eva Ugarte), obsessed with image and aesthetics, is in charge of making him complex about it. On the other hand, his friend Sebas (Carlos Librado "Nene") is affected by his lack of hair and is willing to do whatever it takes to regain his younger version, something that affects his ex-wife, Sofía (Amaia Salamanca) , and their daughters. Ready for anything, both get into a little trouble to get the money to allow them to travel to Turkey and have a hair transplant. In Istanbul they meet Rayco (Tomy Aguilera), a young reggaeton singer who is having great success, but after discovering his alopecia at a concert, he needs an urgent hair transplant. In this way, the three of them will try to seek happiness through aesthetics, but perhaps they will discover that there is something far beyond the physical.
Stanley manages his boxer brother Lion but when a devastating loss in the ring leaves the pair in debt, an opportunity to recoup the cash leads to a series of misadventures that threaten to break the bond between them.
Pete Bell, a college basketball coach is under a lot of pressure. His team isn't winning and he cannot attract new players. The stars of the future are secretly being paid by boosters. This practice is forbidden in the college game, but Pete is desperate and has pressures from all around.
Story of a promising high school basketball star and his relationships with two brothers, one a drug dealer and the other a former basketball star fallen on hard times and now employed as a security guard.
The story of golf icon and legend, Bobby Jones, who retired from competition at the tender age of 28.
Seventeen-year-old Pakistani American teenager Hala struggles to balance desire with her family, cultural, and religious obligations. As she comes into her own, she grapples with a secret that threatens to unravel her family.
The legendary Roberto Duran and his equally legendary trainer Ray Arcel change each other's lives.
94-year-old Eleanor Morgenstein tries to rebuild her life after the death of her best friend. As a result, she moves back to New York City after living in Florida for decades.
Drama telling the story of Blue, a young man of Jamaican descent living in Brixton in 1980, as he hangs out with his friends, fronts a dub sound system, loses his job, struggles with family problems and has his friendships tested by racism.
Based on the true story of a black girl who was born to two white Afrikaner parents in South Africa during the apartheid era.
Fred arrives at the doorstep of his beautiful young mistress Velvet after four years apart, claiming to have finally left his wife. But when she rejects his attempts to rekindle their romance, his persistence evolves into obsession — and a dark history between the former lovers comes into focus.
Long separated from his family, hitman Joshua returns to Brighton Beach for a contract killing for the Russian Mafia. His abusive father, Arkady, banned him from returning after Joshua committed his first murder. He takes up residence in a hotel, and soon everyone knows he has returned. He goes home to visit his dying mother, Irina, and prepares for the assassination, getting drawn back into the criminal community he left behind.
While serving life in prison, a young man looks back at the people, the circumstances and the system that set him on the path toward his crime.
Evangelist Carlton Pearson is ostracized by his church for preaching that there is no Hell.
After completing his military service, Walter Gulick takes a job as a sparring partner at a gym, the owner of which sees potential in Walter as a professional fighter—and takes him under his wing.
Up-and-coming sports reporter rescues a homeless man ("Champ") only to discover that he is, in fact, a boxing legend believed to have passed away. What begins as an opportunity to resurrect Champ's story and escape the shadow of his father's success becomes a personal journey as the ambitious reporter reexamines his own life and his relationship with his family.
A showdown decades in the making brings the Donovan family legacy full circle. As the events that made Ray who he is today finally come to light, the Donovans find themselves drawn back to Boston to face the past. Each of them struggles to overcome their violent upbringing, but destiny dies hard, and only their fierce love for each other keeps them in the fight.
A look at the mysterious relationship between Victorian art critic John Ruskin and his teenage bride Effie Gray.
An aging Hollywood star, Joe Scott, lives a life of narcissistic hedonism, observed by his laconic personal assistant, Ophelia. The death of his childhood best friend, Boots, takes our protagonist, and the movie, into an extended flashback to a sea-side town in 1970s Britain.
West Philadelphia basketball star Sergio Taylor deals with the pressures of fame while his brother and sister have their own issues with ambition.
When an unlikely ally enters the Bloom family's world in the form of an injured baby magpie they name Penguin, the bird’s arrival makes a profound difference in the struggling family’s life.