Benchwarmers(2021)

Black Belts(en)

KJ, an offbeat middle schooler and martial arts movie nerd from Compton, challenges the top dojos in South LA, wearing his uncle’s old black belt. But when his former fighter dad gets too involved, both learn there’s more to life than keeping your guard up.

Project CC(en)

A brilliant child scientist must join forces with her sister when a cloning experiment goes awry.

Gabriela(en)

It's the summer after high school graduation and Gabriela, a young undocumented Guatemalan woman, pursues her dream of swimming for an illustrious Country Club swim team. Despite her single-minded determination, Gabriela is continually confronted with her overprotective mother’s ears, limitations on her economic and legal status, and self-judgment. As she questions her self-worth against the structures of contemporary American Southern life, Gabriela embarks on a quest towards personal freedom and self-acceptance.

Breaking the Silence(en)

Francesca, tormented by her past, breaks the silence to talk about surviving the horrors of the comfort stations of Imperial Japan.

Reconstruction(xx)

Reconstruction tells about a certain night in 1982, reconstructed in 2020 by the people who lived it through together. The film combines dance, drama and documentary, but most of all is a story of a friendship of a boy and a girl, and how jolly situations can turn sour and how, even though close, friends do not share same experiences – and that can have an effect on their friendship.

Sugar Glass Bottle(ja)

Near-future Tokyo. Kou, through the help of his high school best friend, finds a surprising way to express his mounting frustration at the insidious forces of commercialism that are forcing out the neighbors he cares most about. Initially inspired by a prank that the writer-director Neo Sora (The Chicken, 2020) had pulled on him in his childhood, a sense of warm nostalgia and cold, material reality intermingle to tell a tale set in the not-so-distant future about disappearing spaces and the forces of policing and gentrification that drills this process forward.

Jungle(en)

A young woman awakens to find herself in the midst of a living nightmare.

Calf Rope(en)

Calf Rope is the heartwarming tale of love, legacy, and the special bond between a grandfather and his grandson.

The Shadow Boxer(en)

Unable to overcome her sister's death or compete with her legacy, Lyssa risks sabotaging her own boxing career and personal life.

L'arche des canopées(fr)

Boydem(he)

This particular summer, at an age that falls between childhood and young adulthood, while their grandparents are taking their afternoon nap, Keren and Noam play games in the attic ("Boydem" in Yiddish) that introduces them to a new level of intimacy.

Polaroid(it)

Giuseppe, 33, is still struggling to build his life in a small Italian town where he has to hide his homosexuality. With a Polaroid in hand, he decides to leave for Berlin to find Peter, a summer love he has never forgotten. The shock of a cosmopolitan city is nothing compared to the moment he realizes that the German artist has a "normal" family. For him this represents the possibility of 'losing' himself and meeting Marco, who takes him around all night to arrive at dawn to the conviction that love is the only strength to find one's identity. "Polaroid" is one of five short film segments in an omnibus feature titled "A Quintet".

Grenadine(en)

How do three brothers change when their parents inexplicably disappear?

Thawing Out(fr)

Léo is dragged to a nudist camping resort by his mother. Like most boys at the age of 12 or 13, being nude in public holds little appeal for Léo, who protests by wearing extra layers. Until he meets a certain special girl, who captures his heart and releases his inhibitions.

Awaiting(ko)

A young woman named Yeon-hee is traveling to Pyongyang with a coach full of elderly people. As she flips through old photographs, she remembers telling her husband Min-woo that she wouldn't allow him to "cross over" to North Korea given the political situation of the day. But Min-woo left anyway and never returned home, and their marriage was torn apart by the Korean War. Now, sixty years after the division of Korea, she looks forward to reuniting with her beloved Min-woo again.

Tender Age(fr)

Sixteen-year-old Diane exists exclusively through her mother's gaze. But this intensely close bond between Diane and her mother, Sophie, is becoming increasingly problematic for the teenager. At high school, she would like to be loved like she is at home and expresses it in an awkward way like when she exchanges a favor for a look, in the toilets. A loudmouth, provocative, and seeking attention, Diane tries to stand apart from her mother and wishes, during a weekend, to live like an adult.

Laio(pt)

While out with his friends for fun one night in São Paulo, Leandro is confronted with glimpses of his own violence. The film is loosely inspired by the homophobic attack that occurred in the Paulista Avenue area, in which teenagers used fluorescent lamps as a weapon.

Hotori - The Simple Wish for Joy(ja)

At the Personality Plant, robots are being built and slowly outfitted with the artificial memories of real people. Suzu is one such robot, being made to replace the young boy a family has lost. By chance, he meets Hitori, a young girl suffering from progressive memory loss. The two children become friends and attempt to define themselves in the light of their changing memories.

ASIA A(en)

A recent spinal cord injury patient struggles to reconcile his sense of self-worth with his new reality as a paraplegic.

Possum(en)

In a backwoods cabin, a boy called Little Man lives with his dad (a trapper), his older sister Missy, and his younger sister Kid, who is feral, spends most of her time under the table, and can imitate the sound of any animal. Their mother is dead. One day, while dad's in town selling skins, Missy teases Kid and gets bitten. There's Hell to pay when dad gets home, and Kid runs off into the night to spend it with her animal friends. Little Man, who narrates much of the story as well as his reflections in a whisper, must sort out loss and emptiness.