Mother

Placebo

David decides to assume the burden of his family after the stroke that suffered his father. Because of the situation and despite his youth, he is responsible for giving strength to his mother and sister. However, once he leaves the hospital and goes away from his family, David will look for the placebo he needs to let off steam.

The Obscure Spring

Igor is a plumber; Pina serves coffee. It is winter and they both deeply desire each other, but they are not free. In trying to figure out how to realize their love, she decides to make a lion costume for her little son and he decides to buy a photocopying machine for his wife. Spring will come at last and with it the consummation of love, filling their lives with hope and sex.

The Talking Car

Jack and Mary (and their dog, Rags) are walking down the street when a talking car stops them and begins lecturing them about traffic safety.

Point d'envie

Covert

In a covert listing station an operative picks up a telephone conversation between someone he suspects is an agent and someone called mother. He follows their communication and intercepts another message about cakes and candles. However has he stumbled upon a plot of major importance or just something innocent?

Sweet

In the window of the house, where some say the sweetness dwells, is reflected, every night, a delicious story.

Lucia, Before and After

After traveling hundreds of miles, a woman must wait another twenty-four hours before she can get an abortion.

Merits

At the end of Summer after finishing sixth form, two friends meet up for the first time in a year to talk about what happens next.

Citation of Merit

Psychological-thriller set during the Korean War that follows the twisted journey of two surviving marines trying to make their way back through enemy territory after their platoon was wiped out.

Beautiful Thing

During a long, hot summer on the Thamesmead Estate in Southeast London, three teenagers edge towards adulthood.

The Music of Regret

Simmons, best-known for her photographs of miniature rooms populated by dolls and of oversized objects—such as a house, birthday cake, and pistol—balanced on female legs, both human and fake, brings these characters to life in a three-act mini-musical. The film is inspired by three distinct periods of Simmons’s photographic work: vintage hand puppets, ventriloquist dummies and walking objects enact tales of ambition, disappointment, love, loss, and regret. Working with composer Michael Rohaytn ("Personal Velocity") and cameraman Ed Lachman ("The Virgin Suicides" and "Far From Heaven"), Simmons’s puppets come to life in miniature domestic scenes that echo real life.

Influmenteurs

Echo

A reframing of the classic tale of Narcissus, the director draws on snippets of conversation with a trusted friend to muse on gender and identity. Just as shimmers are difficult to grasp as knowable entities, so does the concept of a gendered self feel unknowable except through reflection. Is it Narcissus that Echo truly longs for, or simply the Knowing he possesses when gazing upon himself?

The Room

A man explains how he was obsessed when he was younger by a mysterious room and an extraordinary rarefied piano music that drifted through its open window during the night. Forty years later, returning to his home town after having spent most of his life abroad, in "a bunch of different places", he asks one of his friends to rent a room for him. As chance would have it, it turns out to be the same room which attracted him when he was a young man. What drew him again to this room?

Moment of Terror

When the only son of a working class woman is fatally struck by a car driven by the adulterous wife of a company president in a hit-and-run, the victim's mother changes her identity and infiltrates the couple's home to work as their maid, plotting to murder their similarly-aged son.

Existere

Horacio, a lonely young man, cornered between his routine and disturbing dreams, stops and isolates, revealing a vital message.

Mary IV

Mary Howell the Fourth is a chain-smoking promiscuous carpenter, famous in her small town for having recently and tragically dead parents. She's trying to hold it together for her two younger sisters, but grief is playing weird tricks on Mary. Those tricks are the three ghosts that share her name: her grandmother, great- grandmother, and great-great grandmother.

Pavane

For over 30 years, Cora has woken up every morning at 4am to go work at the factory and raise her daughter, Alex, gone to Paris, much to Cora’s regret, to try and become a filmmaker. As Cora is about to retire, she would very much like Alex to finally abandon this risky choice, but Alex is preparing her first film.

If Then Else

Edu is dancing in a bar when Alex comes looking for him. He has some news that will have a profound effect on Edu.

Triggerwarnung

Alina has her first Tinder date with Louis after a long-term relationship. After the date, they have sex, even though Alina didn't really want to.