Two Black Boys in Paradise
Edan (19) and Dula (18) navigate love, identity, and self-acceptance on a journey about coming into oneself and out to the world. Confronting fear, shame, and societal expectations, the boys rediscover a sense of belonging in their own paradise, in this celebration of queer love, vulnerability, and the power of embracing who you are.
Meets the World
Yukari, a 27-year old fujoshi fangirl who loves the popular yakiniku-themed pretty boy anime "Meat is Mine", ends up meeting Rai, a pretty but enigmatic bar hostess. As they become friends and roommates in Kabukicho, Yukari starts to get concerned about how Rai doesn't take care of herself and keeps talking about death. Yukari wants to make Rai less suicidal by finding her ex-boyfriend, who she suspects Rai still isn't over. At the same time Yukari attempts to date a decent guy, pressured by her mother and thinking that love might be the answer to set her life straight. Nevertheless, she ends up spending a lot of time with Rai's friend Asahi, a cheery and friendly (but married) host club boy. Based on the novel by Hitomi Kanehara.
Land of Silence and Darkness
Through examining Fini Straubinger, an old woman who has been deaf and blind since her teens, and her work on behalf of other deaf-blind people, this film shows how the deaf-blind struggle to understand and accept a world from which they are almost wholly isolated.
Fat Chance
Alison, an overweight dental assistant, is challenged to find her self-worth when she falls into an online relationship with her long-time friend and crush, Justin. But there's a problem -- she used the photo of her attractive friend in her online dating profile, which is what caught Justin's eye. Alison spends the summer with Justin, balancing both versions of herself until the secret slips out. Inspired by a true story.
Red Herring
When Kit Vincent, a young filmmaker, receives a terminal diagnosis aged 24, his first instinct is to turn on his camera and document those closest to him.
Ruthful
When a Chinese-Canadian college student returns home to Toronto, she visits a Hong Kong cafe she frequented during her childhood. Through eating the food, she is suddenly able to relive suppressed memories of her deceased grandmother. Now she must confront their multifaceted relationship and her own identity to find her peace.
Scars
We admire beauty; we recoil from bodies that are marred, disfigured, different. Didier Cros’ moving, intimate film forces us to question what underlies our notions of beauty as we join a talented photographer taking stunning portraits of several people with profound visible scars which have dictated certain elements of their lives but have not come to define their humanity. The subjects' perceptions of themselves are dynamic, unexpected, and even heartwarming. This is an unforgettable journey to be shared with the world.
Rules of Living
It is a bilingual love comedy about a Japanese divorcee who has to take in an American male roommate to make ends meet. Mikuko Abe is stuck, both in life and in love. When her daughter sends her Vincent, an American visitor, the last thing she wants is to let him live with her. What she doesn't know is that opening up her door to this stranger will soon open up her world.
How to Blend In
When a teenage girl gives in to peer pressure and takes a mysterious pill, she soon discovers chilling consequences that force her to confront the cost of changing herself to fit in.
Earmark
Meet Mark. A daydreamer who has lived with hearing loss for his whole life. As his condition deteriorates, Mark must listen to his past and face the present, in order to move forward with his life. Sometimes loss doesn't mean lost. At a routine checkup with his lifelong audiologist, Mark is presented with a hearing aid and with a choice. Between the torment from his childhood - and his stigma around wearing the hearing aid - he lashes out. But he remembers his young self, loving and loved; along with the care his late mother showed him. Through courage, he is able to connect with her; as she guides him through this tumultuous time in his life. He realises he can either continue to shut himself off from the world, or open up and begin to accept himself for who he really is.
Hair or No Hair
Bel Davis has been hiding behind wigs for years until her Alopecia is exposed publicly. She uses this experience as a catalyst to break free of the shame she feels towards her baldness.
Not Too Hard and Not in the Face
The 30-year-old protagonist Slava wakes up in a strange place with missing memories from last night. He’s taken to a hospital where Slava learns that in this odd, even dystopian world he has awakened, all the men have gone extinct long ago, leaving him the only man left in the world. Experimental fever-dream-like voyage through the mind and emotional turmoil of a young man trying to make sense of life as well as accepting the end of his relationship.
Exposição
During the pandemic, introverted painter Hélio meets aspiring model Theo and begins a report that will make him face his deepest insecurities in a way he never imagined.
Prion
A surreal meditation on chronic illness and anxiety, Prion follows a character's struggle with self-acceptance as their fears manifest in the form of a sickly, white deer.
ATROPHIE
The Bird of Paradise
A colorful exploration into a lost girl's journey to self-acceptance as she learns to find her wings.
Echo
A peculiar pigeon navigates the city in search for validation and sheds his unique identity to fit in with different city groups. After losing his prized possession, he discovers the value of his own identity.
Thus Spoke the Late
A recently deceased denial-ridden young woman—wanders through a familiar park to confront The Man of her past and the manifestation of The Doctor who failed her, seeking to fully let go of her worldly self.
Impenetrable
Jules has a big goal for her birthday: get laid. But she's got a big obstacle in her way: herself. With an anthropomorphized dilator by her side, Jules learns she may need to open up in more ways than one.
body
The film follows an introverted 20-year-old girl, Duna Canet, as she leads a seemingly normal life. Yet, at its roots she is trapped and consumed by an eating disorder that refuses to accept. In as little as a day, the struggle unravels to the point where she hits rock bottom and sets out on a path of self-discovery and acceptance.