Once Upon a Time in a Cinema

Helsinki

Candela

Bea is an immature 16-year-old girl who lives with her mother in a suburb of a big city. One day a mysterious 7-year-old girl named Candela appears. From then on, Bea's life will change, maturing and beginning a strong relationship between the two. But, who is Candela?

Mother

An everyday conversation between Marta and her mother turns into a tragic race against the clock when Marta receives a phone call from Iván, her six-year-old son, who is on holiday in France with his father.

Eyes on the Screen

Arvid and My are on a date at the movies. Suddenly Arvid hears My crying next to him. Arvid asks her why. Her answer brings back repressed memories of a childhood, a loving father and lots and lots of Hot Wheels. Arvid now has to do whatever it takes as to not be caught crying himself, however painful the means.

#Manhole

Kawamura is a promising young man with everything going for him. On the eve of his wedding, he falls into a deep manhole. Despite sustaining a debilitating injury, he is determined to attend his wedding as planned, and resorts to social networks for help.

I Saw the TV Glow

In late-90s suburbia, a lonely teenager meets a girl at school who introduces him to a mysterious late-night T.V. show — a vision of a supernatural world pulsing beneath their own. As time goes on, however, questions begin to arise about why the show sometimes seems more real than their own lives. In the pale glow of the television, their view of reality begins to crack.

LOSS-SHOT

Felix, a 16-year-old boy, receives a diagnosis of an incurable disease and sees his life turned into uncharted territory. Unable to accept this new reality, he goes through the stages of grief denial, anger, bargaining, depression and finally, a delicate beginning of acceptance. Amidst the emotional chaos, Felix finds an unexpected refuge in filmmaking. Films begin to offer not only comfort, but a new way of seeing the world and himself. It is then that his passion is born: telling stories. Driven by the need to give meaning to his life, he decides to transform his journey into art and begins to write and direct a film about his own life.

Goodbye, Dragon Inn

On a dark, wet night in Taipei City, a cavernous old picture palace is about to close its doors forever. A meager audience, the remaining few staff, and perhaps even a ghost or two, watch King Hu’s wuxia classic "Dragon Inn", each haunted by memories and desires evoked by cinema itself.

Four Minutes, Thirty Seconds Before...

Three friends, two who have recently broken up, go take photos for their class, unaware of something sinister that is about to happen at their high school.

La Haine : jusqu'ici rien n'a changé

Kassovitz revisits the story of his cult film by adapting it for the stage and highlights the film's eminently contemporary nature. Recorded in December 2024 at La Seine Musicale in Boulogne Billancourt, in the Hauts-de-Seine department.

At the Drive-In

Unable to purchase a $50,000 digital projector, a group of film fanatics in rural Pennsylvania fight to keep a dying drive-in theater alive by screening only vintage 35mm film prints and working entirely for free.

Refúgio

Shortcomings

When his girlfriend leaves for New York City on a 3-month-long internship, a strongly opinionated Berkeley arthouse movie theater manager begins exploring life as a bachelor.

Trailer

Trailer narrates the elaborate fiction of a young man—perplexingly named Alfgar Dalio--who unexpectedly discovers the story of his birth parents while visiting a rundown movie theater in Ohio. In the movie "trailer," he hears the bizarre tale of two long-lost cinema stars stranded by plane wreck in the jungle, and realizes he shares a name with an obscure, now-extinct Amazonian moth. Intuiting that this link holds the key to his origins, Alfgar must navigate a slippery, revelatory, and almost magical realism in which his own truth is both excavated and explored.

Love in Cinema

A documentary film that capture the moment of an old man in the dilapidated oldest cinema in Yangon reflecting his old day working in this cinema and missing the time with his beloved wife who has passed away.

Second Encounters

In this tale of second chances, two ex-lovers run into each other in a restaurant. Both are with new partners. Both are unhappy. Both are still in love with the other. Dormant feelings rush to the surface and the opportunity to rekindle the past presents itself. Will the outcome be different?

The Escort

When Eric pays an escort, Veronica, for 60 minutes of her time he intends to use this opportunity to convince her to quit this line of work. But Veronica is no damsel in distress and what ensues is a verbal battle of wits as sparks fly and the pair attempt to win their argument all the while peeling away the layers of who they really are. What they find out about themselves and the secret Eric holds will ensure nothing remains the same again. Told in real-time and set entirely in one location with only two characters 'The Escort' is a film about relationships today and the intimacy which is lost in the social media age. Written by Phoenix Waters Productions

BAUS: The Ship's Voyage Continues

Two brothers start working as benshi narrators of silent films in a cinema in the early 20th century. This premise is the jumping-off point for an epic family saga that follows the protagonists and their descendants through wars and technological developments.

United 93

A real-time account of the events on United Flight 93, one of the planes hijacked on 9/11 that crashed near Shanksville, Pennsylvania when passengers foiled the terrorist plot.

Cinema Paradiso

A filmmaker recalls his childhood, when he fell in love with the movies at his village's theater and formed a deep friendship with the theater's projectionist.